Tool 15 · Exposure
Avoidance Cost Counter
Name the thing you keep avoiding. Get honest numbers — minutes lost, things missed — and a comparison view of what you could be doing with that time instead.
What are you avoiding?
e.g. social events skipped, deadlines missed, bill overpayments. Rough number, your call.
What it's costing
What this actually does
Avoidance feels like a free option. It isn't. There's a per-occurrence time cost (the dread plus the thing), and an opportunity cost (what you do instead, and what you miss). Putting numbers on both makes the trade visible.
This isn't a moral accounting. It's an attempt to make the cost as concrete as the benefit your brain is currently overweighting ("I can't face it today, that feels real, the long-term cost doesn't").
Who it's for
People whose anxiety shows up as a vague sense of "things I should be doing". Especially useful for small repeated avoidances (calls, emails, admin) where the per-item cost is small but the annual total is large.
Less useful for genuinely impossible things (you can't afford the thing being avoided) or for acute crisis.
Limitations
Numbers here are estimates you provided to yourself. Doubling them or halving them won't change the structure of the result — a year is still a year. What the tool can't capture is the relief you get from not doing the thing right now; that's real too, it's just smaller.
Cost counting is not a substitute for exposure work. Use the Bravery Ladder for the actual climb.
FAQ
My numbers feel exaggerated. Should I shrink them?
Probably not. People systematically underestimate avoidance time (they forget the dread). If anything, double the minutes for a truer picture.
What counts as a "thing missed"?
Anything you would have had if you'd done the thing — a social event, a sale, a deadline you didn't blow, a job offer. Some are soft. Use your gut.
This feels manipulative. Is that OK?
It's not therapy. It's a calculator. If the year number feels motivating, use it. If it feels like guilt, ignore it. The point is clarity, not self-punishment.
Where does my data go?
localStorage on this device only. Nothing is uploaded.
What are the common mistakes when using Avoidance Cost Counter?
Most common mistakes come down to four habits: entering 20 when the field expects 0.2 because the field is a percentage; leaving a field blank and accepting the default without checking what it stands for; changing one input and reading a result that was calculated before the change; and quoting the output as an exact figure when the page describes it as a reference estimate. Press calculate again after any edit, and treat the number as a reference point rather than a final answer.Advertisement