Before a difficult phone call, do you rehearse what you’re going to say? Not just run through it once - but go over it several times, covering every possible direction the conversation might take. And then, even after all that preparation, you still pick up the phone with your heart going faster than it should.

That rehearsal is a safety behaviour. And you probably do several others without realising.

Safety behaviours are actions we take to protect ourselves from feared outcomes in social situations. Things like rehearsing conversations, avoiding eye contact, or staying near exits. They feel helpful in the moment - but in CBT, they’re understood to keep anxiety going, because they prevent us from learning that the thing we were afraid of probably wouldn’t have happened anyway.

What actually counts as a safety behaviour?

The term comes from cognitive behavioural therapy. A safety behaviour is anything you do to prevent a feared outcome or reduce the discomfort of a situation. In social anxiety, that might look like:

• Rehearsing what you’ll say before a call or conversation

• Only speaking in meetings when you’re completely sure what you’re going to say

• Checking in afterwards - “Was that okay? Did I come across weird?”

• Positioning yourself near the door or exit at social events

• Holding a drink so you have something to do with your hands

• Keeping your phone out so you look busy

• Staying quiet rather than risk saying something wrong

None of these are shameful. They make complete sense as responses to anxiety. The problem isn’t that you’re doing them - it’s what they prevent you from learning.

Why do they keep anxiety going?

Here’s the cycle. You go into a situation fearing something - that you’ll say something embarrassing, that people will notice you’re anxious, that the call will go badly. You use a safety behaviour to prevent it. The situation ends okay. And your brain concludes: it ended okay because of the safety behaviour. Not because the feared outcome probably wouldn’t have happened anyway.

So the anxiety - and the behaviour - stays intact for next time. The evidence never gets tested. In CBT this is sometimes called the confirming the threat problem - the safety behaviour reduces anxiety in the moment but prevents any new information from getting in.

The reassurance-seeking loop

One safety behaviour worth its own mention is reassurance-seeking - asking someone “Was I okay?” or “Do you think they liked me?” after a social situation. It reduces anxiety temporarily. But it also reinforces the idea that you needed to check, that you couldn’t trust your own reading of the situation. Over time, it can make the need for reassurance stronger, not weaker.

That’s not a reason to feel bad about doing it. Most people with social anxiety do it, including most WalkTheTalk members. It’s just worth noticing.

What to do instead

The alternative - and this is the hard bit - is to drop the safety behaviour and find out what actually happens. This is the basis of exposure work: you enter the feared situation without the protection of the behaviour and let the anxiety run its course. Over time, your brain learns that the outcome it was dreading doesn’t happen - or that if something slightly awkward does happen, you can handle it.

Most people need to work up to this gradually, starting with lower-stakes situations. A fear ladder - a ranked list of situations from least to most anxiety-provoking - is a useful way to structure this.

One thing to try

Pick one small safety behaviour you use regularly. Something low-stakes - checking your phone so you look busy, perhaps, or positioning yourself near the wall at a social event. This week, try going into one situation without it. Just once. Notice what happens - not to prove anything, just to collect some information. Bring it to a WalkTheTalk session if you want to talk it through.

Sessions are every Monday at 8pm, online and free.