Safety Behaviors: Why They’re Keeping you Stuck, Not Safe

Safety (noun)

1. the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury.

Anxiety’s number one goal is to keep us safe. Sometimes, it takes that job a little too seriously. A safety behavior is any type of behavior that provides a feeling of safety or control including, but not limited to, reassurance seeking, avoidance, distraction, carrying specific items or taking a “safe person” with you to places. This can even include some “coping skills” like deep breathing. Similar to compulsions in OCD (behaviors an individual engages in to attempt to get rid of intrusive thoughts and/or decrease distress), safety behaviors can keep you in the “anxiety cycle” by reinforcing fears and the need for escape or comfort.

Examples of how safety behaviors are keeping you stuck: 

1. If you avoid the grocery store, this further convinces your anxious brain that it is an unsafe place and that you cannot handle being there. 
2. If you ask for reassurance that you aren’t a bad person every time you have a difficult social interaction, you don’t have the opportunity to sit with uncertainty and learn that you can tolerate it (reassurance can never give us 100% certainty anyway 😉).
3. If you tell yourself that you must take 3 deep breaths every time an anxiety or panic symptom arises, you teach your brain that these feelings are not safe to be felt and you must make them go away. This can further increase your fear of fear.
4. If you bring a “safe person” (i.e. – parent, spouse, friend) out with you in case you have a panic attack, you are not allowing the opportunity to prove to yourself that you can get through it on your own.

While safety behaviors may feel effective in the short term, as they can reduce feelings of anxiety, they inhibit long term growth and healing. This is why it’s so important to work with your therapist to identify what safety behaviors you’re relying on. This is especially true with Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), as safety behaviors can reduce the efficacy of exposures. 

Thank you for your concern anxiety, but we’ve got this.