I mean that when I was younger, I would just engage in the obsessions and distractions without thinking about them as such. Acting out without knowing that I was avoiding something else. It caused me a lot of problems (some very characteristic repetitive behaviors, e.g. avoiding dealing with practical things, avoiding real, healthy commitments) and took a while to recognize this was happening actually. The anxiety associated with these distractions/obsessions was not on the surface much either when I was young so I would mostly just engage in my obsessions, enjoy the superficial gratification they had provided, and when all this caused issues, I would rather move on than deal with them.

The difference now is that after all these years, I have recognized the patterns and where they come from (yes, insecurities) but the pull is so strong and the habit is so ingrained, I still have the same desires and often act out despite the now clear and predictable consequences and how they disrupt other areas of my life, or knowing well that the distractions do not allow me to experience healthier ways of living. Hence the cognitive dissonance, citing a definition from Wikipedia:
"cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas, or values".

I think this state can be very confusing and disruptive when one of the drives is mostly unconscious -- then we become aware of the consequences, patterns etc. What I mean for me now is that I know most of the time in a very clear way that I am distracting myself and what I should be really dealing with (and that would be satisfying). But because of this habit, I often do not resist the obsessions and distractions, engage -- while I am aware of the whole mechanism and what better ways to cope would be. This can generate the most unsettling state, painful and very vulnerable because the defenses (denial etc) are no longer protecting me the way they used to but I have not found stable, consistent other ways of dealing either. It's a limbo state and while I find therapy helpful in a few ways, in this sense it can actually make it worse by increasing awareness further and then leaving me alone to figure out what to do with all of it.

For me actually the area of relationships is far from being the most problematic in this sense but that suffers as well. To be exact, for me it's not even the obsessiveness that is the biggest culprit (unless it manifests in very destructive ways like substance addiction), but the avoidance. Well, the combination of the two.