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Key points
- Safety behaviors are things you do to protect yourself from whatever makes you anxious.
- Safety behaviors can backfire because they reinforce anxiety and make recovery more difficult.
- To reduce reliance on safety behaviors, be mindful of how you manage a situation and try to eliminate unproductive behaviors.
If you struggle with anxiety, do you have safety behaviors? Safety behaviors are things you do to protect yourself from whatever makes you anxious. They are common across all anxiety issues.
Given that most people don’t like to feel anxious, it makes sense that you would want to do things to keep yourself safe and ward off anxiety.
The Problem With Safety Behaviors
While safety behaviors might be effective in the short term to make you feel more comfortable, they get in your way of feeling less anxious in the future.
The way to effectively deal with anxiety is by teaching yourself that you can cope and don’t need to avoid or change your behavior to deal with the anxiety.
Safety behaviors do the exact opposite. Doing them is like telling yourself that you must change your behavior to accommodate your anxiety because you cannot handle it. It feeds directly into your anxiety and ultimately strengthens it.
Common Safety Behaviors Across Anxiety Issues
One common safety behavior seen across most anxiety problems is avoiding anxiety-related situations. Here are some other examples.
- Avoiding eye contact; being on your phone during social situations
- Asking a lot of questions in social situations to deflect attention from yourself
- Sitting in the back of the classroom or at other events
- Over-preparing for presentations; re-reading emails or texts before you send them
- Mentally rehearsing conversations before they occur
- Using alcohol or other drugs to decrease anxiety in social situations
Panic Attacks:
- Monitoring your body mentally or by excessively checking pulse or blood pressure
- Having anti-anxiety medications with you at all times in case an attack occurs
- Avoiding going into certain situations alone, needing someone to accompany you
- Creating an escape plan for feared situations
- Sitting in the back (e.g., in class, in the theater) of feared situations
Generalized Anxiety and Worry:
- Asking for a lot of reassurance that everything will be okay
- Over-preparing to avoid the worst-case scenario
- Contacting a loved one frequently to check on their health or safety
- Using worry to prepare, for control, or to prevent bad things from happening
Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms:
- Asking for reassurance from others
- Acting on compulsions (e.g., checking, washing/cleaning) to counteract a bad thing from occurring
Trauma-Related Anxiety:
- Being overly cautious
- Creating an escape plan for any situation
- Staying awake too long to ensure your home is safe
- Being excessively aware of surroundings at all times
Health Anxiety:
- Excessively focusing on and monitoring body symptoms
- Asking for reassurance from others
- Searching the internet for symptoms
- Misusing doctor’s appointments (going too much or avoiding going)
How to Reduce Your Reliance on Safety Behaviors
Here are some steps to reduce your reliance on safety behaviors:
- Assess your safety behaviors. Ask yourself what types of situations or things tend to cause you anxiety. Then, be mindful of your behaviors to manage the situation. If you are unsure if it is a productive or unproductive behavior, you can ask yourself, if someone didn’t have issues with anxiety, would they be doing this behavior? If the answer is no, it’s probably a behavior that would be helpful to work on reducing.
- Ask yourself about what you value. How have your anxiety and related safety behaviors gotten in the way of the things you find important and meaningful? Do you want to be in a relationship but avoid dating apps and social situations where you might meet someone? Do you value being healthy but avoid going to the doctor’s office for fear of getting bad news? Being aware of your values can help motivate you to make changes.
- Reduce your safety behaviors. Consider which safety behaviors you could reduce or eliminate. Consider the easiest to address if you engage in several safety behaviors. You can also work on delaying urges to do a safety behavior. For example, if you want to check the locks or search for a symptom online, ask yourself if you can delay it for at least a few minutes. Then you can work your way up from there. If you pay too much attention to body sensations, you could work on redirecting your attention to something outside of your body. You can also set small goals for yourself. For example, if you want to avoid a work-related networking event, you could tell yourself that you only have to go for a half hour.
- Give yourself positive reinforcement. Make sure you acknowledge any changes you can make, no matter how small. If you give into using a safety behavior, rather than berate yourself, ask yourself what got in your way and what you can do differently next time.
Get Back Into Your Life
Reducing behaviors that feed into your anxiety will loosen the grip anxiety has on your life. Although safety behaviors help you avoid short-term anxiety, they ultimately reinforce it. Small changes can often build each other and assist you in the long run. The result might be a more fulfilling and meaningful life.
References
Telch, M. J., & Zaizar, E. D. (2020). Safety behaviors. In J. S. Abramowitz & S. M. Blakey (Eds.), Clinical handbook of fear and anxiety: Maintenance processes and treatment mechanisms.(pp. 27–44). American Psychological Association.
