If your results from Dr Elaine Ryan’s anxiety assessment showed that you have safety behaviours, I am going to explain to you
- what they are, and
- how they act as maintainers; that is, how keep your anxiety going.
What are safety behaviours?
Safety behaviours are things you do (or do in your mind) to stop a feared outcome or to feel safer/more comfortable when anxiety shows up. They can be obvious (like leaving) or subtle (like checking your body or rehearsing what to say). For example, when I had panic attacks, I always had to carry a bottle of water with me, which seems harmless enough, made me feel comfortable and allowed me to leave the house, but the problem with it, I would panic if I had left the house without it, I didn’t have what I thought kept me safe, my just in case thing.
They usually work in the short term because they bring anxiety down quickly, as in my example, I had my water if my mouth was dry, or I felt nervous. The problem is that they also keep the anxiety pattern going.
Anxiety often comes from overestimating danger and underestimating your ability to cope.
Common examples (and what they’re trying to prevent)
You might notice you do some of these at times:
- Avoiding or leaving early
“If I stay, I’ll panic / won’t cope / it will go badly.” - Keeping an exit plan (sitting near the door, timing things, needing a way out)
“I’ll only be okay if I can escape.” - Checking your body (heart rate, breathing, dizziness, stomach)
“I need to check in case something is wrong.” - Reassurance-seeking (asking others, googling, re-checking to feel certain)
“I need certainty that I’m okay / that nothing bad will happen.” - Over-preparing (rehearsing, scripting, over-planning, doing things ‘perfectly’)
“If I don’t prepare, I’ll mess up / be judged / not cope.” - Mental safety behaviours (replaying events, running ‘what if’ loops, analysing, trying to push thoughts away)
“If I think it through enough, I can prevent it.”
Another really common safety behaviour that I hear in sessions with clients, is where they fight their anxiety, trying to forcefully make it stop, either in their body, by tensing, bracing, knots in shoulders, or
in their words, I must calm down, I can’t let this happen. If you recognise yourself here, I recommend you read my page on fighting anxiety, as this also keeps your anxiety going, and something that you need to work with.
Any of these behaviours can be normal in other situations. What makes it a safety behaviour is that you’re doing it mainly to manage anxiety or prevent a feared outcome. For example, when I had really bad anxiety, I got into the habit of secretly checking my pulse, either on my arm, or casually having my hand at my neck. If I was doing this as part of a physical exam, or check-up, it would appear normal, but the function of this behaviour, was to check I was still okay.
If you work with me, you will hear me talk about the function of behaviour, it’s an important aspect of your anxiety and I shall take a moment and talk about it now.
The function of behaviour
The function of a safety behaviour is to artificially lower the perceived danger, but the problem is, that by relying on the behaviour, the brain mistakenly “thanks” the action for preventing the disaster, rather than realising the disaster was never going to happen in the first place. That’s why it’s important to try to eliminate your safety behaviours, you have to get a different learning in your brain; in effect you are retraining your brain to operate without the behaviours that are keeping you stuck.
You can do all of this as part of self-help as this retraining is part of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT); it’s the behavioural part and I teach this in my Retrain Your Brain® course, which you are welcome to look at.
It can be helpful to categorizse behaviorrs by how they function in the moment:
- Preventative: Aimed at avoiding the threat entirely (e.g., skipping a meeting).
- Restorative: Aimed at reducing anxiety once it has already started (e.g., checking your pulse or quickly finding an exit).
- Impression-Management: Aimed at hiding signs of anxiety so others won’t judge you (e.g., wearing heavy makeup to hide blushing or rehearsing every sentence).
The best way I know of to tell if something is a safety behaviour or not is to ask yourself –
“How anxious would I feel right now if I could NOT do this behavior?”
If the answer is “much more anxious,” the behaviour’s function is likely to provide a false sense of safety.
If the function of your behaviour is to manage anxiety, or provide a crutch. I shall provide a few worked examples to help you with this.
Example: Mine own example when I carried water.
- Function A (Not a safety behaviour): To stay hydrated
- Function B (Safety behaviour): Make sure I won’t choke if panic.
Maybe you do things to hide signs of anxiety if you believe you might be judged negatively.
Example: Wearing a thick scarf or polo neck jumper.
- Healthy Function: Staying warm in cold weather.
- Safety Function: “The Shield.” It functions to hide physical blushing or neck sweating, preventing others from “seeing” that you are anxious.
You might have a safety behaviour that involves manipulating your physical space to ensure you have a “way out” if things go wrong.
- Example: Sitting near the aisle or exit in a lecture or theatre.
- Healthy Function: Wanting a bit more legroom or easy access to the snacks.
- Safety Function: “Escape Route.” It functions to lower the fear of being “trapped” or humiliated if you need to leave suddenly due to a panic attack or embarrassment.
In social situations, the same behaviour can serve very different purposes.
- Example: Asking lots of questions.
- Healthy Function: Building a genuine connection and showing interest in others.
- Safety Function: “Deflecting.” By keeping the other person talking, you ensure they don’t have the chance to ask you anything, thereby avoiding the risk of saying something “boring” or “stupid”.
Why safety behaviours keep anxiety going
Safety behaviours keep anxiety going because they teach your brain the wrong lesson.
1) They give short-term relief, which trains the habit
When you avoid, check, get reassurance, or over-prepare, anxiety usually drops. That relief is powerful. It teaches your brain:
“That worked — do it again next time.”
So the safety behaviour becomes more automatic.
2) They stop you finding out you could cope without them
If you always use a safety behaviour, you don’t get the chance to learn:
- “I can handle feeling anxious,” and/or
- “The feared thing doesn’t happen (or I can cope even if it does).”
So the fear belief stays in place.
3) If things go okay, you may credit the safety behaviour
When nothing bad happens, it’s easy to think:
“It was only okay because I left / checked / rehearsed / had an exit plan.”
That increases reliance on the safety behaviour and keeps the situation labelled as “dangerous.”
4) They keep your attention on threat
Many safety behaviours involve monitoring: scanning your body, scanning the room, watching for judgement, running “what ifs.” This keeps the alarm system switched on, so anxiety feels more intense and more convincing.
The key point from your formulation
From your assessment, we can see that safety behaviours are helping you get short-term relief, but they are also maintaining the anxiety pattern by preventing your brain from learning:
“I’m safe / I can cope without these strategies.”
What we’ll do in treatment
We won’t try to remove everything at once. We’ll do it gradually and safely.
The approach is:
- Notice the safety behaviour in the moment.
- Reduce one small part of it (delay it, do less of it, or drop one “safety rule”).
- Stay long enough to learn what actually happens.
- Review the result so your brain updates its prediction.
Aim: confidence comes from experience — not from safety behaviours.
A short tracker (optional)
Situation: ____________________________
What I feared would happen: ____________________________
Safety behaviour I used: ____________________________
Small change next time: ____________________________
What actually happened / what I learned: ____________________________
Your safety behaviours checklist (tick what fits)
Use this to notice patterns (you don’t need to stop everything at once).
Avoidance / escape
- ? I avoid certain places/situations/tasks.
- ? I leave early or plan exits “just in case.”
- ? I only go if I can keep full control (timing, seating, route).
Reassurance / certainty-seeking
- ? I ask people to reassure me or confirm things are okay.
- ? I seek reassurance from professionals or repeatedly look things up.
- ? I Google or research to get certainty or reduce doubt.
Checking / monitoring
- ? I check my body sensations (pulse, breathing, dizziness, stomach).
- ? I scan the environment for risk or “danger signs.”
- ? I check messages, mistakes, doors, social cues, or reactions repeatedly.
Over-preparing / controlling
- ? I rehearse/scripting what to say or do.
- ? I over-prepare to prevent mistakes or embarrassment.
- ? I carry “just in case” items or rely on a safe person.
Mental safety behaviours
- ? I replay conversations or events in my mind.
- ? I run through “what if” scenarios to feel prepared.
- ? I try to push thoughts away or distract to shut anxiety down.
We’ll help your brain learn, through experience, that you can cope.
Step 1: Notice the safety behaviour (what you do to feel safe/certain).
Step 2: Reduce it gradually (delay it, do less of it, or drop one part).
Step 3: Stay long enough to learn that anxiety rises and falls and you can handle it.
A helpful goal:
- “I can do this with anxiety present, without needing my usual safety behaviour.”
Tracking (optional):
- Situation: __________ Safety behaviour reduced: __________
- Anxiety at start (0–10): ____ Anxiety after staying: ____
- What I learned: _______________________________________
