Why Anxious People Need More Type 2 Fun
How stepping outside your comfort zone can help you overcome anxiety, people pleasing, and conflict avoidance.
If you're an anxious people pleaser or someone who avoids conflict at all costs, I have a challenge for you:
Go find some Type 2 fun.
If you've never heard the term before, Type 2 fun is the kind of experience that's miserable while it's happening—but hilarious, meaningful, or rewarding in retrospect. It's the story you tell for years afterward.
Maybe it's the backpacking trip where you get snowed on in June. Maybe it's getting caught in a rainstorm halfway through a hike. Maybe it's the road trip where everything goes wrong, but somehow you make it home with inside jokes you'll laugh about forever.
In the moment, you're questioning all of your life choices. Later, it's one of your favorite memories.
What Type 2 Fun Has to Do With Anxiety
At first glance, Type 2 fun doesn't seem related to anxiety therapy, buuuuuut it actually teaches one of the most important skills anxious people can develop:
Learning that you can handle discomfort.
Many women who struggle with anxiety, people pleasing, and conflict avoidance spend years trying to avoid uncertainty, embarrassment, failure, or emotional discomfort.
Your anxious brain tells you:
Stay safe.
Don't take risks.
Avoid hard conversations.
Don't rock the boat.
Stay where you know you'll succeed.
The problem is that confidence isn't built by staying comfortable. Confidence is built by experiencing difficult things and discovering that you can survive them.
Every Type 2 adventure becomes evidence that you're more capable than your anxiety wants you to believe.
Why Type 2 Fun Builds Confidence
When you finish something difficult, your brain learns an important lesson: "I can do hard things." That's a powerful message for anxious women.
Whether you're navigating a challenging hike, trying a new skill, traveling somewhere unfamiliar, or pushing yourself physically, you're collecting real-life proof that discomfort isn't dangerous. You stop relying on reassurance and start trusting yourself.
That's the same skill that helps you:
Set boundaries without guilt
Speak up when you disagree
Have difficult conversations
Stop people pleasing
Recover from mistakes
Tolerate uncertainty
The courage you build on the trail often follows you back into everyday life.
Why Your Adventure Partners Matter
There's another reason I recommend Type 2 fun to people pleasers: you don't typically bring chronic complainers on these adventures. You bring your ride-or-die people. The friends who encourage you when things get hard. The ones who don't let you quit the second things become uncomfortable. The people who believe you're capable of more than you think.
If you're recovering from people pleasing or conflict avoidance, surrounding yourself with courageous people matters.
Confidence is contagious - and so is avoidance.
Choose relationships that challenge you to grow rather than relationships that reinforce fear.
Therapy, Anxiety, and Learning to Trust Yourself
One of the goals of therapy for anxiety isn't eliminating discomfort; it's learning that discomfort doesn't have to control your decisions. Whether you're setting boundaries with family, speaking up at work, or trying something new, growth requires a willingness to feel uncomfortable.
Type 2 fun gives you a safe way to practice that skill.
You learn through lived experience that difficult things can also be meaningful things, and sometimes the experiences that feel hardest in the moment become the stories you're most proud of later.
Your Challenge
If you're an anxious millennial or Gen Z woman who struggles with people pleasing, conflict avoidance, or self-doubt, consider planning your own Type 2 adventure.
Take the hike.
Sign up for the class.
Go on the trip.
Try the thing that feels a little scary and a lot exciting.
Your anxiety will probably have opinions about it. That's okay.
Confidence isn't built by waiting until you're fearless. It's built by discovering that you're capable, even when fear comes along for the ride.
And who knows? It might just become one of your favorite stories.
If you're looking for therapy for anxiety, people pleasing, or conflict avoidance in Montana, I help millennial and Gen Z women build confidence, set boundaries, and learn to trust themselves without losing their kindness. Reach out today to learn more about anxiety therapy in Montana.
