Fear generalization is the process by which conditioned fear spreads to new, objectively non-threatening stimuli, which, when inappropriately avoided, can lead to psychopathology after trauma. Although fear overgeneralization and maladaptive avoidance are implicated in the development of anxiety and stressor-related disorders, there is little evidence that fear overgeneralization and avoidance are associated with each other. Individuals with “high stress load,” characterized by high neuroticism and prior trauma exposure, may be at higher risk for both fear overgeneralization and experiential and behavioral avoidance. Eighty women, 41 with high stress load and 30 with low stress load, completed questionnaires measuring experiential and behavioral avoidance in their lives and completed a novel, ecologically-valid fear generalization paradigm. In this paradigm, two neutral female faces served as conditioned danger and safety cues, and ambiguous faces, morphed on a continuum between the danger and safety cues, served as generalization stimuli. We predict that participants with high stress load will report higher levels of both experiential and behavioral avoidance. We also predict that high self-reported avoidance will be strongly associated with higher fear overgeneralization in the task. This study will examine the extent to which self-reported avoidance maps onto active avoidance, assessing whether experiential and behavioral avoidance are related to avoidance of non-threatening generalization stimuli. Given that gold standard interventions for anxiety and stressor-related disorders target threat cues, this research highlights the potential importance of helping patients learn how to resist avoiding ambiguous and non-threatening cues.