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We can think of our managing anxiety by one of three basic ways: avoid, block, or approach.

Avoiders suppress their anxiety, blockers control it through rigidity, and approachers attack their problems.

In relationships, these styles shape each other. Approachers can be a supportive role model for the others.

What do you do when you feel anxious? According to psychologists Mueller and Kell, we have three learned, basic options for managing our anxiety: avoid, block, or approach. Here are the characteristics of each:

As the word implies, folks who tend to avoid their anxiety often push the source to the side, whether it is a situation—like a social event—or a specific problem, like doing their taxes. The feelings of anxiety—the shakiness, the obsessing, the sense of being overwhelmed—are for them the front-burner problem they focus on and try to eliminate—by avoiding the social situation or taxes, or by numbing the feelings with drugs or alcohol.

While avoiders feel their anxiety, blockers often do not, because they learned long ago how to keep it out of their lives. How do they do this? By staying within a narrow channel of routines, rules, and behaviors—rigidity. And should a potentially anxious situation arise—for example, their partner complains about them—they........

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