When asked to provide real life examples from the paper conclusion:

Workplace Example

Scenario: An employee has a colleague who tends to send aggressive emails if they don’t receive updates on time.

Healthy Active Avoidance: The employee learns, “If I send a quick status update every morning, I avoid the stress of hostile emails.” They adopt this as a habit.

Depressive Active Avoidance Deficit: A person with depressive symptoms may take longer to make this connection or fail to act even after realizing it. They know sending updates might help, but initiating the behavior feels too effortful or pointless. As a result, they keep receiving stressful emails, reinforcing the feeling of helplessness.