Safety Behaviors (Anxiety)

Safety behaviors, also called safety-seeking behaviors, are coping behaviors people use to reduce anxiety and fear when they feel threatened; a documented example in social anxiety is thinking up excuses in advance to escape a potentially uncomfortable social situation. Although safety behaviors are useful for reducing anxiety in the short term, they can become maladaptive over the long term by actually prolonging anxiety and fear toward situations that are not genuinely threatening, a problem commonly seen in anxiety disorders. Because of this detrimental long-term role, treatments such as exposure and response prevention focus specifically on eliminating safety behaviors, though there remains a disputed claim within the field that safety behaviors can still be beneficial when used during the early stages of treatment.