What Are Safety Behaviours?

Safety behaviours are the protective actions we take even when they are unnecessary. They are like protective sidekicks, always ready to shield us from discomfort, fear, or embarrassment – even when they’re disproportionate and not needed.

What do I need to know? – Safety behaviours quietly and unconsciously reinforce anxiety.

Examples of Safety Behaviours:

• Fear of Rejection: Avoiding friendships, dating, and seeking social connection.
• Porous Boundaries: Excessive sacrifice to please someone to avoid conflict.
• Work Escapism: Overworking to prevent perceived negative judgment.
• Perfectionism: Time-consuming attention to detail and need to avoid making mistakes.
• Reassurance-Seeking: Constantly seeking reassurance from others to alleviate anxiety. Feeling like everything is not okay, needing to check in if you are ‘acceptable’.
• Over-explaining: Repeatedly trying to be understood to the point of trying to convince someone who may not have the same ideas and attitudes.
• Avoidance of Specific Situations: Avoiding people, places, or things due to fear or discomfort. For example: crowded places, elevators, or places someone might be.
• Selective Friendships: Limiting friendships to people who feel ‘safe’, have the same problems, etc. Not stretching beyond known relationships to connect with a diverse range of individuals. Settling for less and justifying supportive imbalance.
• Over preparation: Excessive planning and preparation to prevent any potential mishaps or mistakes. Over-connecting failure to lack of planning.
• Self-monitoring: Constantly monitoring your behavior, thoughts, or physical sensations to prevent any perceived negative outcomes and other’s judgments.
• Rejecting Learning: Closed-minded to new information. Deciding that trying different, even evidence -based ideas are not relevant or valuable to you or your situation.

Challenges of Safety Behaviours:

Safety behaviours inadvertently maintain anxiety. Our brains are wired to detect threats. When faced with any possibility of harm, our nervous system triggers avoidance behaviour. Unfortunately, our brains often overestimate the likelihood or severity of threats, leading to frequent ‘false alarms’ that condition false responses.

This can become a significant challenge when safety behaviours prevent us from having experiences that could disconfirm the perceived danger and build new responses.

For example:Imagine experiencing a major car accident while driving. Now, your amygdala triggers anxiety whenever you get behind the wheel. Relying on someone else to drive becomes a safety behaviour, reinforcing dependence. Even statistical facts and reality checks may not fully calm this automatic response. Our brains need to see and ‘feel’ evidence to believe otherwise.

By challenging these behaviours, we can gradually reduce their impact and regain control over our well-being. This creates more possibilities in our life.

Barriers Created by Self-Protection:

While safety behaviours offer short-term relief, they often hinder our connection, flexibility, and full participation in life. These behaviours take us out of the present moment and create an illusion of control. Each time we default to them, the illusion is reinforced. The past is behind us, and the future hasn’t happened yet. We can prepare, but there’s no foolproof way to anticipate every emotionally charged event.

The Amygdala’s Role:

Our brains are wired to expect the worst, and the amygdala (our threat-detection system) constantly provokes fight, freeze, flight, resist, defend, flee, or control responses. When this system is on false alert, we don’t benefit from reactions to false alarms. As we react to the physical nervous system signals without question, we ultimately strengthen our automatic response to the triggered need.

Awareness of safety behaviours is the first step toward managing anxiety effectively. By challenging these behaviours and responses, we can gradually reduce their impact and regain control over our well-being.

Breaking the Cycle:

• Recognize Prominent Safety Behaviours: Use curiosity to identify the safety behaviours that play a significant role in your life. These may be subtle habits or automatic responses.
• Practice Resistance: Challenge yourself to resist these safety behaviours. When anxiety surges in the moment, allow it to be there without judgment. Pause and create space, knowing that the intensity will always pass.
• Wasted Worry: Most of the things we worry about never actually happen and the outcome is not made different through rumination. By letting go of safety behaviours, we build a new relationship with the mechanisms we’ve subconsciously implemented to avoid anxiety.
• Present Management: This new relationship allows us to manage anxiety in real-time, on real terms. It builds our courage, confidence, and skill to handle unexpected situations.
• Face the Fear: Exposure therapy means diving into the scary stuff without safety nets. It’s like Batman without the cape.
• Trust the Unlikely: Most worries never happen. Let go of safety behaviours and build a new relationship with anxiety.
• Real-Time Courage: Manage anxiety in the moment. When you notice you have done this, stay with that feeling of self-empowerment to tell your nervous system you’ve got this. Our confidence changes as we move through the risks our survival system fears.

Embracing discomfort and facing our fears directly is badass and helps us break free from anxiety’s grip. By doing so, we create space for growth, resilience, and a more fulfilling life.