Safety behaviours: tricks that help and trap you

A safety behaviour is any action, object or thought you use to feel safer in a feared situation. Bringing water on a flight "in case". Always sitting near the door at the restaurant. Carrying unopened Diazepam tablets. Going on a difficult journey only with your partner.

In the short term, safety behaviours work: they lower anxiety enough to let you face the situation. In the medium term they are one of the main reasons exposure does not work and phobias get stuck.

Why they trap you

The mechanism is subtle but devastating.

When you face a feared situation with a safety behaviour and nothing happens, your brain does not learn "the situation was safe". It learns "the situation was safe because I did X". The result: X becomes essential and the underlying fear stays intact.

Concrete example: a person with claustrophobia goes up in a lift carrying a water bottle and squeezing it hard. The trip ends fine. Conclusion of the brain: "the lift was tolerable because I was holding the water". Next time, no water? No trip. The water bottle has not solved the phobia: it has prevented its solution.

Typical safety behaviours by phobia

Aerophobia

• Drinking alcohol before flight.
• Sitting always in the same row.
• Squeezing the armrest until knuckles go white.
• Constantly looking at flight attendants' faces to check the situation.
• Mentally repeating "nothing's going to happen".
• Listening to specific music that "calms" you.
• Flying only with a specific person.

Claustrophobia

• Always being near the door.
• Going up in lifts only off-peak.
• Going up with someone known.
• Constantly checking time.
• Drinking water during the journey.

Social phobia

• Drinking alcohol before social events.
• Rehearsing aloud what you will say.
• Watching exits from any room.
• Looking at the phone constantly.
• Quickly finding a familiar person and sticking to them.
• Standing in corners.
• Internally rehearsing reactions in case "things go wrong".

Specific phobias (animals)

• Wearing tall boots into nature even in summer.
• Going always with someone "less scared".
• Carrying repellent at all times.
• Scanning the ground constantly.

BII (blood/needles)

• Telling the nurse "I'm a fainter" so she lies you down.
• Looking away always.
• Crossing arms hard.
• Carrying salt-sweet drink "in case".

How to identify yours

Honest question: in the situation that scares me, what would I be incapable of doing without?

If the answer is "going with my partner", "bringing water", "tablets in my bag", "specific music", "specific clothing": those are your safety behaviours.

It is not always obvious. Some are very subtle:

• Specific perfumes.
• Specific objects in pockets ("a coin from grandfather always", "specific keyring").
• Pre-situation rituals ("I always go to that café before").
• Specific mental rituals ("I count to 100 before").
• Pre-situation prayers (if they were not part of your normal spiritual practice).

The difference between safety behaviour and real care

Not everything is safety behaviour. There are reasonable cautions that have nothing to do with phobia:

The clean test: would I do this if I did not have phobia? If the answer is "no, I do it because of my phobia", probable safety behaviour.

How to retire them: gradual sub-ladder

Just as you have a ladder of feared situations, you can have a ladder of safety behaviour retirement.

Example for aerophobia, behaviour "drinking water during turbulence":

1. Bring a full bottle, drink only twice during the flight.
2. Bring a half-full bottle.
3. Bring a small bottle, only sips when really thirsty.
4. Do not bring a bottle.

In a typical exposure programme, retirement of safety behaviours starts when you have already gone up 2-3 steps of the main ladder. Doing both things at once (climbing ladder + retiring everything) is usually too much.

What to do when withdrawing produces panic

Withdrawing a safety behaviour can produce a transient spike in anxiety. That is normal and expected. The day you fly without your water bottle, your SUDS will probably be higher than the previous flight with water.

That spike is the work. The brain is finally exposed to the situation without the crutch and can finally learn it is tolerable on its own.

To bear it:

• Accept that the first time without the behaviour will be harder.
• Plan it on a "good" day (not exhausted, not coming from an argument, not after little sleep).
• Use general regulation strategies (breathing, grounding) but not the specific safety behaviour.
• Register your SUDS. Document the drop.

Plain mental safety behaviours

Some are not actions but internal cognitive processes:

• Constantly self-reassuring ("nothing will happen, calm down").
• Constantly thinking "calm down".
• Distracting yourself (watching a film mid-flight as primary strategy).
• Mentally repeating data ("1 in 8 million crashes, 1 in 8 million").
• Imagining you are not really there.

These are harder to retire because they are automatic and invisible. But they count and contaminate the exposure equally.

When you can keep some

Not all safety behaviours need disappearing. Some are habits without clinical impact ("I like flying with my favourite hoodie"). Concrete criterion:

If you can do the situation without the behaviour and your SUDS does not spike more than 2 points, the behaviour is no longer safety: it is preference. You can keep it.

The aim is not flying robotically without any object. It is the experience not being conditioned by the absence of those objects.

Closing

Safety behaviours are subtle, intelligent, almost invisible. They are the brain trying to take care of you with the resources it has. The work is not despising them — it is recognising they had their function and gradually outgrowing them. The day you fly without your water bottle and nothing happens is the day the phobia really loses ground.