The Trap of Avoidance and Safety Behaviors

Anxiety can be both painful and uncomfortable. You may feel your body start to shake or sweat, or your pulse may quicken. You may fear your anxiety will get so bad you’ll lose control. Or you may find yourself preoccupied with thoughts about all the most dire and catastrophic outcomes of a situation.

It’s natural to come up with strategies so you don’t have to feel these ways. The two most common tactics are avoidance and safety behaviors.

Avoidance refers to ways you might try to stay away from a particular situation that triggers worry or fear. For example, if you feel anxious talking to people you don’t know, you may avoid talking to strangers.

Safety behaviors are the things you do, either mentally or in actions, to prevent whatever you fear might happen in a situation that triggers anxiety from actually happening. For example, if you fear driving on freeways, you might check traffic conditions and only drive when the roads are clear, or you might only drive when a trusted relative or friend is with you to provide a sense of safety.

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Avoiding situations that trigger discomfort is the most common way people try to manage their anxiety. For situations they can’t avoid, they may rely on safety behaviors.

You may think avoidance and safety behaviors are healthy coping strategies because they do reduce your anxiety in the moment. But the opposite is true: Relying on these behaviors actually feeds and maintains your anxiety in these situations over the long run.

There are a variety of reasons why avoidance and safety behaviors make anxiety worse and keep you trapped in the anxiety cycle. Let’s look at the four main ones.

1. It becomes a habit.

When you avoid doing something, you also avoid any negative outcomes that might occur if you do that behavior. Your brain experiences temporary relief when the behavior stops or prevents anxiety. Over time, your brain learns that the behavior is effective and starts to rely on it more and more. Thus, a habit is formed. And once a habit is formed, it can be hard to break.

For example, suppose you get super anxious whenever a friend or family member is late for an activity. You insist they install a location-sharing app on their phone so you can know exactly where they are at all times. Then, if you worry about your son even before he’s late, you check the app to see if he is heading home rather than wait. You feel relief: He’s safe! No anxiety! Pretty soon, you’re checking the app several times a day just to be sure he’s OK.

2. You don’t learn anything new.

If you never take a risk and try to do something differently, you can’t learn anything new. If you don’t take a risk and get on a bike, you’ll never learn to ride it. If you don’t get in the water, you can’t learn to swim. It’s the same with social anxiety. If you keep doing avoidance and safety behaviors, you can’t learn that nothing terrible will happen in a feared situation when you don’t do those behaviors.

For example, let’s say you fear flying on airplanes. Even so, you’re an adventurer at heart and love seeing new places and things. To avoid feeling the anxiety that comes with getting on a plane, you limit your trips to places you can reach by car or train. This means you never learn that you wouldn’t have died on that flight and that your anxiety would actually dissipate if you flew more often.

3. You miss out on good stuff.

If you never take a risk, you also can’t discover that something good can happen. For example, if you don’t ever get on a plane, you’ll miss out on many trips with family and friends. You’ll miss out on experiencing all those exciting places that are not within driving distance. Similarly, if you avoid talking to people you don’t know well because you fear being judged negatively, you’ll miss out on making new friends.

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4. You make the problem worse.

Each time you use an avoidance or safety behavior, a message is sent to your brain that signals danger in that situation. In this way, you continue to feed your fear. Rather than feeling less anxious, your anxiety increases over time—whether it is about your child finding their way home or about dying in a plane crash or something else. Your reliance on avoidance or safety behaviors has made the problem worse.

Extricating yourself from the anxiety trap

Have you ever wondered why anxiety still bothers you despite your best efforts to avoid situations or take steps to reassure and convince yourself there is no danger? You thought your strategies made sense. Well-meaning mental health professionals and advice columnists may have even told you to follow such strategies. Heck, you may have suggested or engaged in such strategies with your children.

Understanding the four reasons these strategies keep you trapped is the first step in extricating yourself from the anxiety cycle. I suggest you start by identifying the avoidance and safety behaviors you use. What exactly is your strategy? When do you use it? What are the results?

Identifying and then beginning to change your behaviors is the first step in retraining your brain so you don’t have to experience the pain and discomfort of anxiety. I suggest you begin by giving up one safety or avoidance behavior at a time. Start with one you feel is easiest to do without, one you feel highly confident you can consistently forgo. Practice being in situations that trigger the urge to use the behavior. Do this for a week or two or until you feel comfortable in that situation. Then pick another behavior to give up. Being consistent is important, so only do what feels manageable.