Anxiety and Safety Behaviors: Anxiety Therapist in Orange County CA explains
Anxiety and Safety Behaviors
When you are anxious, feeling dread, restless, scared, it is only natural that you seek an activity, a person, or article to help calm you. Like avoidance and checking behaviors, your brain is just trying to do things that allow you to feel safe. It’s logical and you can’t beat a product of evolution. If it didn’t seek safety, we would have become extinct a very long time ago.
Doing a behavior that keeps you safe is not inherently wrong, but depending on it to avoid feeling anxious in the long run can actually perpetuate and reinforce anxiety. It’s tricky and nuanced and trying to figure out what you do as a safety behavior can be a bit of a challenge. However, it comes down to this. If you rely on that behavior to avoid feeling anxious, and believe that if you would not be able to carry on without it, it is likely to be classified as a safety behavior.
What is a safety behavior? An anxiety therapist in Orange County CA explains
I’ll make up a scenario. Let’s stick with the fear of driving since I’ve been using that one lately. You have a fear of driving long distances, you determine as 20 miles, away from your home. You avoid driving anywhere that is 21ish miles and farther. If you have to go anywhere farther away for whatever purpose, a birthday party, wedding, or work conference, you either don’t go or get someone else to drive you. You recognize that this is interfering with your desired lifestyle so you begin to address the issue by doing some driving exposures that involve you driving somewhere 23 miles away. You start working on some exposures, and it’s scary. But a friend gave you a beautiful rock to carry with you to support you in your efforts. You decide to bring the rock with you on every exposure. Why not you reason? it may help. And then you notice after doing an exposure with the rock you don’t feel as afraid. Your anxiety about driving the 23 miles decreases and then you increase it to 25miles, then 30. Woo hoo you are doing great! Must be the magic rock!
Now you start carrying the rock with you everywhere, especially when driving. You become dependent on the rock and attribute your decreased fear to its special power. Now you don’t drive without it. If you are out somewhere with a loved one and he asks you to drive and you don’t have your rock with you, you decline. Or you say yes and notice you feel afraid again.
What a silly example Anne Marie. I would not rely on a rock.
OK I say, but do you understand the dependence issue here?
You may not rely on a rock, pendant, essential oil, figurine or symbol to drive the distance.
But you may have a bunch of other things that you insist you must have or do to perform the activity without anxiety. Maybe you must have a bottle of water. You must hold your hands on the steering wheel just so. You must have your safety person with you. Or no passengers at all. You must have already eaten food.
Now your brain has made this connection and every time you drive doing these behaviors you reinforce their necessity.
But your brain is wrong.
You do not need to do those things in order for you to drive to your destination. It may be more pleasant and comfortable, but not absolutely necessary.
When you first start out doing exposures, it’s amazing to just do them in the way that you can. But once you start doing them for a while, you may want to notice if there are safety behaviors you are doing that have become a dependence for you, remembering it is you, not the behaviors, that is doing the tough scary work in facing your fears.
But what about behaviors that you should do while you are driving, like checking rear view mirror, keeping both hands on the steering wheel at 10:00 and 2:00, looking left, right left before making a left-hand turn?
I’m not telling you to not do behaviors that can increase your safety. That is not the point. It is looking at behaviors you do that have teeter in compulsive territory. I’m not saying you are doing things that are compulsive. More that you may not be aware that you are depending on behaviors or people that bring short term comfort but long term may be contributing to your anxiety.
For myself, when I was addressing my fear of driving with my teen daughter who needed hours of adult supervision to get her drivers license, I first began my exposures driving with her as a passenger in the back seat. My husband, calm, cool and collected, sat in the front seat. I did several exposures with him in the front. That is what it took for me to do the exposures. But after a while I had to do these exposures without him. I transitioned to driving without him. By doing that I showed my amygdala (part of the brain that detects threat response) that I was safe driving with my teen. This was difficult and I did not want to face my fear. I did it so that my daughter could learn this skill and become safe and competent at it. My values of family and fostering independence in my children drove my desire to address my anxiety.
Motivation to do hard things is difficult when you are in the anxious state. The fear takes over most of the time. You may value your job but find it impossible to complete a work obligation if it triggers your anxiety. You may love your kids but say no to their requests when you are anxious. This was me with her older sisters. I declined being their sole driving companion, leaving this task to their father or other trusted adults. Do I love them less? Of course not. Choosing to do frightening exposures is very hard, and I rationalized it to being busy and delegating the responsibility to someone else. However, I decided it was time to walk the walk. It took a lot of courage and distress tolerance for sure to embark on the driving exposures.
Get help from an anxiety therapist in Orange County CA
As an anxiety therapist in Orange County CA, I understand and appreciate the difficulty involved in exposure work personally and professionally. I truly empathize with my clients when they share their challenges. The process of understanding and implementing interventions in addressing anxiety is an individualized process. Perseverance and self-compassion are key.
You have the ability to do your exposures without safety behaviors. Experiment and find what works for you. You don’t have to do all that hard work alone, I can help with this process. Contact me to schedule a free consultation to explore your next steps to get relief from anxiety symptoms today.