Avoidance, vicious cycles, and experiential disconfirmation of script: expanding transactional analysis methods for depression and anxiety therapy. Review of the article by Mark Widdowson about working with avoidance in transaction analysis

This paper contains a review of Mark Widdowson’s article “Avoidance, Vicious Cycles, and Experiential Disconfirmation of Script: Two New Theoretical Concepts and One Mechanism of Change in the Psychotherapy of Depression and Anxiety” published in “Transactional Analysis Journal” in 2014. The article defines the avoidance process, points out the connections between anxiety, depression and the avoidance process, provides comments on how avoidance is handled in various psychotherapeutic approaches, as well as practical recommendations for confrontation with the avoidance process and a step-by-step plan for working with avoidance in psychotherapy. The interrelationships between the script process and avoidance are also investigated, and a comparison is made between avoidance in transactional analysis and the theory of passivity proposed by Schiffs.