today we're going to be talking about different types of safety behaviors and social anxiety
why these behaviors are so problematic and what you can do about them
hi everyone social anxiety is a common anxiety condition associated with fear of something we
almost are always exposed to other people and social situations it's hard to avoid people and
so for people suffering from social anxiety they can end up using what we call safety behaviors to
try and help them reduce their anxiety in social settings the problem is this doesn't work and so
today we're going to be talking about types of safety behaviors and social anxiety and how to
improve anxiety and social situations by reducing the use of these safety behaviors but before i get
into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province of
british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not
intended as a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental health professional
now with those things out of the way let's start talking about safety behaviors now i've done a
few videos talking about a model of understanding social anxiety and the role that safety behaviors
play in keeping social anxiety going so i'd strongly encourage you to take a look at some
of those videos first if you haven't already because it will help give you a lot more context
for understanding uh the safety behaviors that i'm going to be talking about in today's video
now in brief safety behaviors are anything that a person does before or during a social situation
that makes them feel safer or that helps them try to prevent feared outcomes from happening
so while the term safety behavior makes it sound like it's a good thing right like any behavior
to keep you safe should be good right not really because in reality all these safety behaviors do
is make social anxiety worse and like i said if uh if you want to understand more of how these social
anxiety these safety behaviors make social anxiety worse i strongly encourage you to check out
the uh the explanation of how safety behaviors how safety behaviors do this in a previous video
so in today's video i want to discuss the scope and nature of safety behaviors
and social anxiety to give you a sense of what they are just in case these are some of the
things that you might be doing without knowing that they're that you're actually doing them and
without knowing that these behaviors are actually making your anxiety worse so let's talk about
a series of different types of safety behaviors in social anxiety so the first cluster of safety
behaviors or things that you might be doing to make sure that you are coming across well
to other people so so things like making an effort to get your words right rehearsing sentences in
your mind or or maybe having a script written out if you're gonna make a phone call to somebody
having a predetermined list of things that you can talk about so think about okay well i'll talk
about the weather i'll talk about how school's going i'll talk about the local sports team
another thing people do in this context is prepare excessively uh before a social
situation so if i've got a presentation i'll prepare excessively in order to make sure
that uh it goes well and i get my words right
another group of safety behaviors are things that people do in social situations to almost make
themselves invisible in those social situations so things like deliberately avoiding eye contact
hiding or covering your face wearing certain clothes that will cause you to blend in and
and not stand out so avoiding uh bright colors or flashy clothes that might draw attention
uh positioning yourself uh in a social situation so as to not be noticed maybe
sitting at the back of the class uh going into the the corner of the room so that
you're not at front and center that people may not notice you staying to
the edge of a group or speaking very softly or quietly doing anything to try to not attract
attention to yourself because if you don't draw attention to yourself you're less likely to do
something embarrassing people are less likely to judge you negatively or think negatively about you
another thing that people will do in terms of safety behaviors is to try to keep
really tight control over their behavior so uh if i'm at a party and there's dancing
i'm not really gonna let loose i'm gonna make sure that my dancing is
very controlled maybe just shuffle from side to side but nothing too
expressive nothing too out of control because i need to keep in control of my behavior
um another form of safety behavior is to limit the content of what i'm talking
about or what i might talk about in a social situation so i may censor some things that
i was going to say because i'm not sure how someone might take it i might avoid expressing
my opinion i may stick to talking about only safer neutral topics so i will talk about the weather
but there is no way i'll talk about religion there's no way i'll talk about politics
other things i can do is limit how much i say in a social interaction so people with
social anxiety may say little or nothing they they may talk as little as possible because
the less i say the less likely i am to say something wrong i might avoid talking about
myself or saying anything about myself and in doing this one of the ways i may do this is
deliberately asking lots of questions of other people if i can keep the conversation on them
and ask them more and more questions about them what that does is it means i don't have to talk
about myself and if the conversation is going on too long i may try and cut that conversation
short because the longer the conversation goes the more likely something bad might happen
sometimes people can do the the opposite in terms of safety behaviors they can talk a lot uh talk
excessively in order to avoid those uncomfortable pauses in conversation so uh doing anything to
try to avoid uh pauses in the sp in my speech or pauses in the conversation so deliberately
talking a lot to ensure that the conversation is going and that there's no breaks or pauses
sometimes what people will do is mentally keep track of how the social situation is going
so uh constantly sort of checking in with myself while i'm engaged in the conversation
to make sure that i'm coming across well almost like i'm trying to picture how i appear to
other people so rather than being engaged in the conversation i'm imagining myself from like this
camera angle over here and trying to picture how i'm appearing to other people form of
safety behavior and social anxiety is trying to disengage mentally from the social situation so
i'm so anxious in this social situation i feel so uncomfortable i almost want to get out of my body
and get out of my head so i'll try and think about other things i'll try and sort of blank myself out
or switch off mentally so i don't have to think about or or feel what i'm feeling right now
uh another thing i might do is to actually avoid social contact in
social situations so uh trying to appear distant to other people trying not to
welcome any social interaction so if i'm at the bus stop waiting for the bus i'll have my face
in my phone so as to not potentially attract any information or any contact from other people or
any attention from anyone else so that appearing distant don't talk to me type of behaviors
this is what people can feel in social situations is that they they feel like they have to be on for
other people and put on a show for others so the safety behavior really revolves around
almost like being a performer or feeling like i have to be a performer
in social situations so uh always trying to say something way witty or or entertaining in order to
uh sort of come across well or to to feel like i'm performing well in that social situation
uh then there are some things that people will try to do to to hide physical signs of anxiety
and social situation so i'm going into a social situation and i i know i i might feel anxious
and so i'm almost like preparing myself for what am i gonna do if i start to have sort of physical
symptoms or physical signs of anxiety in those social situations
so one of the things i might do is to if i'm feeling like shaking in my hand i'll try to
control that shaking by gripping a glass or a cup really tightly might wear clothes that might hide
signs of anxiety so if i'm concerned about sweating and people noticing that i'm sweating
i will probably avoid that light gray shirt which will turn to dark gray sweat stains if
i start to sweat so i'm going to try and wear clothes that will kind of hide the sweating
i may wear makeup to try and hide blushing so trying to limit any potential signs
of anxiety that may come across to other people in terms of my physical reactions
and finally one of the more common or one of the frequently used safety behaviors is
actually using alcohol and drugs to manage anxiety in social situations this is very common
people do this a lot uh may have a few drinks before going to that party in order to sort of
take some of the edge off my nerves uh really all it's doing is uh artificially suppressing
the anxiety and uh in making it feel like well yeah i have something to feel anxious about
and so i need to uh use drugs or alcohol to suppress that anxiety now
the thing is so these are a lot of different types of safety behaviors that people will use in social
and social anxiety and so you may look at some of these things and say that they actually don't seem
to make a lot of sense that some are actually the stark opposite of others so for example
safety behaviors of not seeing anything versus safety behaviors
of talking a lot they seem complete opposite of one another and you're absolutely right it's true
but i think what this does is it highlights that these safety behaviors actually don't make you
safe these safety behaviors aren't actually keeping you safe in these social situations
so the question becomes what can you do with this information what can you do with this
information about these different types of safety behaviors how does this help with social anxiety
well the first step is to be aware and to recognize what are the safety behaviors that you
use in various social situations now this may be a completely new concept to you so it's important
to really understand which safety behaviors might be playing a role you may be surprised that some
of the things that you thought were making you feel less anxious in social situations
were actually contributing to your anxiety these things are actually making you more anxious
in the long run so the first thing you need to do is to be aware of your safety behaviors what are
the safety behaviors that are specific to how you approach these various social situations
it's about understanding your unique safety behavior fingerprint it doesn't really matter
what safety behaviors other people do it's really about understanding your safety behaviors
and what you do in particular social situations to try and make yourself feel less anxious
and so once you're aware of what are some of the safety behaviors i use in various
social situations i encourage my clients to set up what i call on day off day behavioral experiments
essentially behavioral experiments in which i alternate between using safety behaviors
in social situations versus not using the safety behaviors in the same social situations
and comparing the two and seeing what happens
so for the on day the idea is to do a behavioral experiment using safety behaviors as usual
so notice the safety behaviors as you're using them paying attention to the safety behaviors
and reflecting on how the safety behaviors make you feel during the social interaction essentially
doing the social interaction with the safety behaviors and see what happens then on the off day
the idea is to do the same experiment but without the safety behaviors and to see what happens
so to see what was that like for you as you did the social interaction without the safety behavior
now you might find that this feels very unnatural and it may actually
cause more anxiety but the question is what was the outcome what actually happened
and so you do this on day off day and then the idea is to do it again repeating the on day off
day process and seeing what happens because the more you do these on day off days what it does
is it gives you an idea of how protective these safety behaviors are it gives you an
idea of whether or not these safety behaviors are actually doing anything to keep you safe
so let's talk about an example suppose i always wear darker clothes so as to
not stand out in a social situation so for my on-day behavioral experiments what i'll do
is i'll go to a coffee shop wearing gray hoodie dark pants i'll order coffee and see what happens
now on the off day go to the same coffee shop but i'll be wearing a much brighter shirt so
i'll wear maybe a white shirt or a red shirt or even dare i say a yellow shirt something
bright and bold i go into the coffee shop i order the coffee and see what happens
now chances are nothing's going to happen so i go in and i order the coffee either way same thing
happens i get my coffee well the thing is i might say to myself well maybe i just got lucky so idea
is i do it again a few more times alternating on days off days and repeatedly seeing what happens
if i'm consistently getting the message if i'm consistently getting the outcome
that there's no difference in terms of the social interaction between
wearing dark clothes and wearing bright clothes then what that tells me is that
the safety behavior isn't necessary it's not actually keeping me safe
so essentially by dropping the safety behaviors what you're doing is you're
giving yourself a chance to see if there's actually any danger in these social situations
if there isn't any danger then you're not going to be so fearful and your anxiety will go down
because the problem is the safety behaviors prevent you from really learning
how dangerous or threatening these social situations are so dropping these safety behaviors
can lead to you feeling less anxious in these social situations more spontaneous
less constrained and more free overall and that's the ultimate goal so i hope that makes sense to
you i i'd love to hear uh some of your thoughts or ideas or questions about this so please leave me
some comments in the comments section down below if you've been enjoying my videos and would like
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one