Yeah. Generalizing, naturally, but "exposure therapy" is an approach of getting people past phobias and trauma that involves lots of small steps in controlled

Yeah. Generalizing, naturally, but "exposure therapy" is an approach of getting people past phobias and trauma that involves lots of small steps in controlled environments, and it's not recommended in all cases or for all conditions. I think it's also a bit simplistic when we frame avoidance solely as a product of being unwilling to face pain. In some cases (certain forms of PTSD), substance abuse is used to numb because you've exceeded your local tolerance for the pain you've been facing, or because the only thing you've been experiencing/facing is pain and its exhausted your coping mechanisms. Learning at mid-life that you're no longer the person you knew, while also dealing with the traumatic source, compounds the process of processing the events. Particularly when getting into how life altering traumas work, coping and accepting are processes that require different treatments/approaches at different times.