On this page we are going to discuss two key behaviours for people struggling with social anxiety: avoidance and safety behaviours.
They are both part of the process that keeps social anxiety going – see our page on the social anxiety maintenance cycle.
If you have social anxiety disorder, the symptoms can be very unpleasant. It is understandable you may feel you want to avoid all the situations that are difficult for you. Or, if you cannot avoid a situation, you may engage in specific actions called safety behaviours (these are discussed further below).
Avoidance
There is no complete list of the types of situations we might avoid, but they might include:
attending appointments, meeting new people, small talk conversations, going into a cafe or shop alone, eating or drinking in public, shopping or queuing, asking for help, making a complaint, sharing your real opinions, talking to people in positions of authority, talking to people you are attracted to, speaking up in meetings, making or receiving telephone calls.
Avoidance might be tempting, and very human, however, there might be some unintended consequences to avoiding anxiety-provoking situations. In the short-term avoidance can reduce our anxiety, but in the long-term it can maintain or worsen levels of social anxiety for a number of reasons:
- We don’t have the opportunity to find out what may have happened if we stayed. If we stay in a situation, using our new thoughts and strategies, we might find out that things often turn out better than expected.
- We miss out on positive experiences, if we continue to avoid social situations we have no chance of having positive social experiences that might encourage us to do even more.
- The avoidance can spread, for example, we might only avoid larger social groups at first but as time goes on we start to avoid smaller groups, then going to shops, or even seeing friends.
- Avoidance and a loss of social interaction can affect self-esteem, confidence and affect other aspects of mental health.
How to reduce avoidance
See our pages Making Progress and exposure therapy and hierarchies.
Please also see this article www.cci.health.wa.gov – Overcoming Avoidance
Safety Behaviours
Sometimes we are not able to avoid the situations that cause us social anxiety. To manage going into these anxiety-provoking situations many people engage in a specific type of avoidance behaviour called a safety behaviour. Safety behaviours can either be something overt (that is visible to others) such as avoiding eye contact or scrolling on your phone, or covert (something we do in our minds) like planning out what to say or having excuses ready. Each person might use different safety behaviours to help them cope, here is a longer list of potential safety behaviours:
• asking constant questions (to avoid having to speak about yourself)
• avoiding eye contact
• avoiding giving opinions
• avoid doing anything to bring attention to yourself
• being monotone or unanimated when speaking
• finding a task to look busy
• going out at the quietest times of day/night
• having an excuse to leave if anxiety gets too much
• hiding visible signs of anxiety (a jacket to cover sweating, make-up to hide blushing, sunglasses to avoid eye contact, hiding your tense or shaky hands)
• keeping quiet
• people pleasing
• playing with your phone
• rehearsing each sentence before you speak (in case you get tongue-tied and reveal yourself as nervous or socially unskilled)
• staying close to someone you know
• staying on the edges of a group
• sticking to safe subjects (like work)
• talking too much or too fast
• talking softly (so other people won’t really hear what you are saying)
• using alcohol or recreational drugs
there are many others too….
Safety behaviours can help us to feel less anxious in social situations, but much like avoidance are only helpful in the short-term. There are usually unintended consequences to using safety behaviours and they play a role in maintaining social anxiety long-term. Safety behaviours keep us socially anxious for a number of reasons:
- Using safety behaviours to cope reinforces the idea that social situations are dangerous
- Safety behaviours can backfire, for example, avoiding eye contact or being quiet might actually draw attention or make others think we are unfriendly
- We may come to believe it is only the safety behaviour that we got through the situation (thus reinforcing the need for even more safety behaviours!)
- Safety behaviours make us focus more on ourselves causing even more anxiety (also called a feedback loop)
How to reduce safety behaviours
Firstly, you need to identify your own safety behaviours which may differ depending on the situation.
Try using the My Safety behaviours Worksheet.
Once you are more aware of your safety behaviours, you can begin to try and reduce them. This can be hard at first, as you may have come to depend on your safety behaviours to manage your anxiety.
Two of the evidence-based ways of reducing reliance on safety behaviours are through CBT techniques called behavioural experiments (link to be added) and exposure therapy.
In both techniques you identify particular challenges (such as dropping a safety behaviour) and work through a plan where you test your fears, through gradual and achievable real-world experiments.
For example – if your safety behaviour is to avoid talking about yourself (because it makes you feel self-conscious or you assume the other person wouldn’t be interested) you might deliberately test this out. Perhaps you might share what you are doing at the weekend – or what you watched on TV last night. Did the other person show interest? What did you learn and how can you get better at speaking about yourself and your interests?
You can find out more about dropping safety behaviours here www.cci.health.wa.gov – Stepping-out-of-Social-Anxiety Safety Behaviours
Please also see these links to international websites:
www.aboutsocialanxiety.com – Safety-behaviours
www.nationalsocialanxietycenter.com – The-silken-trap-of-safety-behaviours
