Remember the last time you let your guard down and something really unpleasant happened? Getting shocked, maybe even panicking, or feeling unsafe in a public area? Don’t worry if you think you are the only one who experiences this: everybody has had to experience this, often several times across a lifetime. How do we cope with these experiences? We start using safety behaviours. Safety behaviours are behaviours or activities which we carry out to minimise or prevent the perception of something bad from happening. Although, at first glance, these behaviours seem to be helping one manage the fears and anxieties, it often makes the person continue to worry or makes it more likely that the perception of threat or danger will come back.
These responses also prevent us from learning that we often overestimate the “danger” we think we are in or underestimate our actual coping abilities. This happens because each time we end up feeling “safe”, we attribute the success to the safety behaviour that we performed.
For example, someone who is scared of getting a panic attack in the public might always take a partner out with them. What this does is, when they don’t have a panic attack, they attribute this success to having someone with them. But what are they to do when they find themselves in a situation where they have no choice but to immediately go outside? They are more likely to have a panic attack only at the thought that they are outside alone without their friend. This panic attack now works as a reinforcer of the belief that the only way to avoid panic attacks is to be with a friend. This in turn will make them dependent on their safety behaviours.
So how are we to keep this cycle from taking over our lives? Instead of letting the thought of getting a panic attack persist, if they were to go out alone and think, “I will call my friend in case I get a panic attack,” they would manage to deal with not only the current predicament they are in but also deal with the original effect of the experience. This would be called a functional coping behaviour.
Think of which situations cause you anxiety and what your safety behaviours are. Try and reflect on whether the behaviour is indeed helpful in the long run or acting as a temporary crutch until the next time the same worry or “threatening situation” comes along. Replacing the safety behaviours with more coping behaviours which are functional will surely lead to an easier life.