Chapter 4

Playing It Safe

We’ve all observed the classic supermarket scene where a frazzled parent, in an attempt to quiet the tantrums of a three-year-old, grabs a box of animal crackers off the shelf to quiet the child. Perhaps you have played the role of the parent in this drama yourself. Every observer, as well as the parent, understands the futility of this transaction. While a temporary peace is assured, the takeaway for the child is, If I cry in the supermarket I will get a treat.

We can’t expect the monkey mind to stop making us anxious if we continue to give it treats for doing so. If you are truly serious about gaining freedom from your anxiety, an examination of your present monkey-feeding habits is in order. As an experiment, begin to observe yourself as you go through your daily life. When are you feeling anxious? How are you responding to the monkey’s call to action?

For example, if you encounter bad traffic driving to work, do you drive any differently? If you are late for an appointment, does that change how you enter the room? If someone says something that contradicts you, how do you react?

Don’t try to change anything just yet. Simply watch and listen to yourself without judging anything as good or bad. Just by noticing your present safety strategies you are taking a giant step toward freedom. Why? Because when you notice safety strategies you are noticing the monkey mind. This creates space between you and the little critter, helping you to see the difference between “it” and “you.” Every thought, feeling, or action you notice helps build awareness of what I will call, for lack of a better term, the “higher self.”

Don’t let the simplicity of this assignment fool you. My clients have a difficult time recognizing safety strategies at first, as will you. Safety strategies are so embedded in your daily routine and so commonplace in our culture that they will be difficult to spot. But trust me, once you get the hang of it, you’ll see plenty. If you make an honest assessment of yourself, I believe you will be shocked at how much of your daily activity maintains your anxiety.

So what exactly are we looking for? Certainly not behaviors that actually do keep us safe from real danger. I want you to continue to brush your teeth twice daily and drive on the correct side of the road. A safety strategy, for the purposes of this book, is whatever you do to feel less anxious or to neutralize a misperceived threat. If you’re overestimating the threat, or underestimating your ability to cope with the threat, trying to neutralize the threat is a safety strategy.

But it is often difficult for us to judge whether our anxiety is the result of a wild monkey guess that something is wrong—woo-woo-woo—or a signal that something really needs to be done. When we are hijacked in a monkey mind-set our judgment is clouded. We both overestimate the threat and underestimate our ability to cope if the worst should actually happen.

To help you determine whether a suspect strategy is feeding the monkey, here are two criteria:

  1. The strategy gives only temporary relief and must be repeated.
  2. The strategy takes you away from either your goals or your values in life.

When you are examining a questionable strategy, these are the questions to ask: Are you repeating the behavior? Safety strategies are always part of a pattern—a cycle of anxiety. Are you giving up your long-term interests or compromising your personal values in exchange for short-term anxiety relief? If the answer is yes to these questions, you’ve found a safety strategy.

Behavior and Mental Strategies

There are two types of safety strategies. The first type consists of behavioral safety strategies, the actions we take that feed the monkey mind. These behaviors can be obvious, like not going to a party because you feel uncomfortable meeting new people, or subtle, like going to the party but waiting for people to approach you instead of approaching them. My doing chores instead of writing, Eric’s avoiding decisions, Maria’s Googling symptoms, and Samantha’s checking up on her son were all behavioral safety strategies.

The second type of safety strategy is not easily observable in our behavior. I am speaking of the mental safety strategies we employ to keep anxiety at bay. Rehearsing what you are going to say before engaging with someone at the party or second-guessing what stupid thing you may have said or done at the party the following day are mental safety strategies.

Other common mental safety strategies include making lists in your mind so that you don’t forget something, reviewing your actions to make sure you did not forget to do something important (such as turning off the stove), and monitoring physical sensations that might be linked in your mind to a health concern or possibly to a panic attack. But the most universal mental safety strategy is worry.

I know it is counterintuitive to think about worry as a safety strategy. Worrying certainly doesn’t make us feel any safer…or does it?

When I first started writing books I worried about my writing skills, as well as whether my message was fresh and accurate. I ruminated over past efforts I’d made to write in high school and college. My husband had always teased me about my grammar and spelling, and getting what was perfectly clear in my head down on paper was always a challenge.

Did my worrying keep me safe from writing poorly? No. What it kept me safe from was actually feeling the risk that I was taking. By worrying I was attempting to solve the problem, which kept me from experiencing the full force of my fear. Agonizing over what I wanted to say was better than the agony I would feel if I accepted the possibility that I’d embarrass myself and let everybody down by writing a lousy book.

The truth was, writing the book would actually help me clarify my message, and even if it wasn’t especially book-worthy, I would survive. The threat was only a perception of my monkey mind, a perception I confirmed when I worried. The more I worried, the more I joined with my monkey. Together we agreed that writing a book was dangerous—it could lead to me losing status in my tribe.

Worry is so ubiquitous that we are largely unaware of when we are doing it. Revisiting the same challenges and problems over and over in our heads doesn’t resolve them or make them go away. It is our instinctive response to the monkey’s call to action: Something is wrong. Do something! Worrying is doing something.

It is important to remember that safety strategies, both behavioral and mental, do actually alleviate anxiety in the short term. They keep us safe from the monkey’s perceived threats, and the anxiety that perception triggers. If we could trust the threat perceptions of the monkey mind, we would have no reason to examine our safety strategies. We would get anxious only when the threat warranted it and we would simply do what’s natural to be safe.

But, since we can’t trust the wild guesses of the monkey, and you are experiencing chronic anxiety and stress, isn’t it in your interest to look at your strategy? What are you doing to try to control your anxiety? How are you feeding the monkey?

“I Must Be Certain” Strategies

My favorite example of intolerance of uncertainty, and the one I have the most personal experience with, is overplanning. Do you also need to have all your ducks in a row? When your wedding plans are so time-consuming you forget what your fiancé looks like, when your vacation agenda is so rigid that an unforeseen event ruins everything for you, or when your meeting agenda doesn’t allow for the possibility of a new idea surfacing, your strategy is a safety strategy.

Right up there with overplanning is compulsive list making. We list the chores we need to do, the things we don’t want to forget, what to pack for an upcoming trip, what to ask the doctor, or what to do in our free time. And don’t forget the list of all your lists!

When you cannot be happy until everything on your list is checked off, you are not allowing much opportunity for yourself to be happy. Not only will there likely be something you couldn’t quite get done, but there will be another list waiting for you to start on. When everything has to be nailed down and under control, what you’re trying to control is anxiety.

Are you an over-checker? To ward off fears of financial disaster we monitor our stocks and the business news. To avoid feeling left out we check our social media, favorite sports team’s posts, or our text messages. These behaviors are perfectly acceptable in our culture. Are the kids safe at their friend’s house? Text them (again) and find out. Our smartphones make it possible to seek certainty whenever the urge hits, wherever we happen to be. But if you need to do a particular behavior in order to not feel anxious, that urge is a safety strategy, employed to neutralize perceived threats.

There is also mental checking. When you left the house, did you remember everything you need? Did you close the garage door? Do you review things in your mind to be sure? Do you mentally monitor your physical sensations looking for signs that something is wrong?

Lots of these behaviors do work, and they aren’t always problems. But when they are employed to reduce anxiety about a threat you’re overestimating or that you are underestimating your ability to cope with, the behavior is a safety strategy. For example, if your anxiety about feeling trapped in your seat keeps you from flying, then taking the train is a safety strategy. If you can’t tolerate the possibility that the train might be late, then renting a car is a safety strategy. And what about that recent terrorist attack? You never know where terrorists will strike. Maybe you shouldn’t be traveling at all right now, since you can’t be sure.

“I Cannot Make a Mistake” Strategies

For the perfectionist, not being allowed to make a mistake brings up a lot of anxiety. Picking a college, a job, a mate, or even a dessert could prove fatal if your choice turns out to be less than perfect. Your safety strategy might be to consult another friend, put the decision off, or in the case of the dessert, observe what others are ordering and choose the same. If everything you do on the job has to be perfect, safety strategies might include rewriting reports, repeating research, putting in overtime, or making excuses in advance for what you imagine might not be good enough.

When you cannot make a misstep, interacting with others is like walking through a minefield. Don’t approach anyone; let them come to you. (It’s safer when you know they are already interested in you.) Think before you speak, and make sure you’re not misunderstood. Don’t ask questions that could make you sound stupid. Best not to state your opinion unless everybody shares it. Make a toast? Are you kidding? I haven’t had time to prepare!

Like the quest for certainty, the quest for perfection can include overplanning and list making. It can mean spending too much time on clothing and grooming, as well as decorating and cleaning. If you’ve got the biggest screen, the coolest kitchen, and the latest smartphone, who can criticize? As long as everything is “just right,” you won’t have to feel “less than.”

Mistakes, of course, are inevitable. So your safety strategies will also include damage control. Mentally review everything you’ve said or done that might disappoint or offend. Justify your actions, first to yourself, then to everybody else. Everything can be explained if you put your mind to it. Once they understand what you’re up against, nobody can blame you.

The safety strategies associated with perfectionism all share the same objective: neutralize the perceived threat and the anxiety that comes with it. If you can use these strategies occasionally without maintaining an anxiety cycle, good for you! For the rest of us, they bring only temporary relief. The cycle repeats and the quest for perfection continues.

Over-responsible Strategies

One of the great truisms in our culture is the assumption that caring for others’ needs is what brings the greatest happiness. But if you are saddled with a responsibility that is straining your resources—a chronically sick or mentally ill relative, for example—you can testify that taking care of others when you cannot take care of yourself can be a joyless burden that burns you out. When you are acting out of obligation or fear of disappointing others, caretaking is a safety strategy.

Perhaps your partner has problems that you take on and try to manage, like poor diet, lack of exercise, or substance abuse. Unless he or she is happy and healthy, you can’t be happy and healthy.

Are you the essential person in your work environment, someone everyone can depend on? Maybe things fall apart unless you pick up the slack, so you wind up working overtime and filling in whenever someone else is sick. Have you been doing more than your fair share for so long that you’ve become irreplaceable?

Or maybe you’re stuck in a relationship where, if you stand up for yourself or set a limit, you’re afraid your partner may become upset with you. When you believe your partner’s feelings are your responsibility, you’ll need to keep him or her happy. Needing to please your mate can have you engaging in activities you don’t enjoy, compromising on decisions like vacations and purchases, or constantly uprooting yourself and moving to enable his or her career.

With this mind-set you are ultimately responsible for everyone and everything. Your actions are designed to keep everyone happy except you. When care of others takes precedence over care of oneself, it is often motivated out of anxiety and not just love. When you say yes to something in order not to displease others, when you go along with the crowd so as not to risk feeling left out, when you accept a task that is more than you can handle so you won’t be judged as selfish or not a team player, or simply so you won’t lose the connection, you are performing a safety strategy. You are attempting to neutralize the negative emotion that would accompany the risk of displeasing others, which is a primordial threat to the monkey mind.

This “need to please” can also manifest in parents who can’t set limits for their children, or who try to protect them from any pain or hardship by trying to pave the way for them. Offering unsolicited advice, probing for personal information, and constantly checking in can feel intrusive to children. And needing to please your parents can put you in the wrong church, sports program, or college, or keep you in your hometown. These behaviors have the outward appearance of demonstrating loyalty, but when they get in the way of being honest and authentic they are safety strategies to keep us from feeling disconnected and out of the loop.

As you examine your association with others, a good question to ask is, Am I taking care of myself in this transaction? If the answer is no, or if you’re not sure, there is a good possibility you are trying to please.

What would happen if you did take care of yourself? If the answer scares you, you’ve found the monkey you’ve been feeding. While this safety strategy keeps you temporarily free of anxiety, it is not sustainable. More anxiety, and less personal health and peace, lie ahead.

Common Safety Strategies

Here’s a list of some common safety strategies. I’ve labeled each with a code for the monkey mind-set they are associated with.

You will notice that some are very obviously something you would want to change, while others appear perfectly reasonable and normal. Remember, what makes a “normal” behavior a safety strategy is that it 1) only gives temporary relief of anxiety and needs to be repeated, and 2) takes us away from what we value and where we want to go. As you read through these safety strategies, which do you recognize as yours? You can download a complete list of safety strategies at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.

Behavioral Safety Strategies

Mental Safety Strategies

There are two other safety strategies that I want to make special note of here. The first is so ubiquitous and embedded in our culture that a list long enough to cover all its variations would fill several books. The default, go-to strategy to fend off anxiety in our everyday lives is, drumroll please…

Distraction

Distraction is not a problem in and of itself. For example, a hobby like quilting, photography, or playing guitar can distract you from the normal pressure of daily life. The same could also be said for the e-mails and texts, news feeds and social media, computer games and movies that compete for our attention day and night.

A distraction becomes a costly safety strategy when it is done in response to a perceived threat. This perceived threat could be in the form of a thought, a negative emotion, and/or a situation.

Maria was worried her headache was possibly an aneurysm, and this thought was highly distressing to her. When she was not monitoring the sensation or Googling it, she tried to distract herself. Reading a book or watching television often worked, temporarily. But unless the headache went away, the thought that it might be an aneurysm inevitably returned just as strong as ever. Trying not to think it by distracting herself only confirmed the threat that the thought was dangerous. Ultimately her distraction was feeding her monkey.

Faced with a decision or project that caused him performance anxiety, Eric procrastinated. Distracting himself by responding to e-mails, incoming phone calls, and employee requests was an attempt to avoid the anxiety he would feel if he actually made a decision or started on a project. The message he sent to his monkey mind by distracting himself was that the threat was real and too much to bear.

When Samantha thought about her son, she felt not only anxiety, but a profound sadness. She found that these emotions were less distressing for her if she kept herself busy, so she often brought work home with her and did extra cleaning and organizing around her house and yard. At best, these distractions worked only as long as she kept them up. The painful feelings returned in full force as soon as she stopped. Samantha’s distraction was sending a clear message to her monkey mind that the feelings themselves were dangerous, something that she could not handle.

Even seemingly harmless little activities like me doing my nails and other household chores, when employed to distract me from the anxiety waiting for me at my laptop, become safety strategies. They confirm the threat that sitting down to write is dangerous. When we use distraction to avoid a perceived threat, whether that threat is triggered by a thought, a feeling, or a situation, it comes at a high cost. It not only guarantees anxiety in the future but it keeps us from following our heart’s desires.

Here is a short list of common distractions that are used as safety strategies. Which of them do you use to feed your monkey?

The second special safety strategy I want to highlight is, like worry and distraction, something you wouldn’t normally think of as a strategy to keep you safe.

Trying to Relax

When the perceived threat is anxiety itself, the safety strategy of choice is trying to relax. While it may sound nonsensical to suggest that trying to enter a state of relaxation might maintain anxiety rather than reduce it, unfortunately that is often the case.

As I said in chapter 1, the monkey mind monitors everything going on in your head and body—not only what you take in with your senses from the outside but what you are thinking and feeling on the inside. When you are thinking anxious thoughts and feeling negative emotion for an extended duration, or at a high level of intensity, such as in a panic attack, your monkey mind notices that too, and will misperceive it as a threat. You may interpret this anxiety about your anxiety as losing control, as going crazy, or as death itself. Your reaction? I need to relax to get rid of this threatening sensation.

In the introduction, I described my own experience with panic attacks, specifically how the relaxation exercises my therapist prescribed did nothing to ease my attacks. We didn’t realize that trying not to feel anxious sensations—even the extremely uncomfortable ones like the pounding heart, dizziness, tightness in chest, tingling or numbness, nausea, blushing, sweating, or shaking you feel during a panic attack—only confirms the perception that they are dangerous.

I have nothing against relaxing. Relaxation is essential for our overall health, both mental and physical. But if you are trying to relax because you are afraid of anxiety itself and see your anxious sensations as a threat, it is a safety strategy. This is a problem because you are feeding your monkey mind. If you reinforce what you are trying to decrease, you are trapped, and have little to look forward to except more of the same.

How we try to relax varies from person to person. You might take a warm bath, go for a hike, pour a glass of wine, watch a movie, talk with a friend, pick up a book, or even meditate. Your behavior itself isn’t nearly as important as your motive and the message you are sending to your monkey. If your relaxation is an attempt to reduce or avoid anxious thoughts and feelings, that message is, You are right, little monkey, feeling anxious is dangerous. Thank you for alerting me that I need to relax. The more you try to relax, the more impossible relaxing becomes.

Here are a few common activities we often employ to relax. They may be harmless in and of themselves, but when they are used to ward off negative emotion and uncomfortable physical sensations, they are safety strategies. Which apply to you?

During the next week start a list of the safety strategies you employ throughout your day. The more you examine your own thoughts and behavior, the more traces of the monkey—and of your feeding the little guy—you are likely to find. As your list grows, which it inevitably will, a question is likely to arise. How much control of your life are you willing to hand over to the monkey in order to temporarily stay safe from negative emotion?

The price you are paying is huge. If you do not reclaim the responsibility to determine what are reasonable risks to take in each situation, your monkey will continue to determine that for you. Your life will continue to disappear into a black hole of safety strategies. Here’s an example.

With the advent of SARS and Ebola, many of us were afraid we would pick up a virus from something we had touched. Every time we washed our hands with antibacterial soap we confirmed the threat, telling the monkey mind, You’re right, touching things is dangerous! Thanks to our need-to-be-certain mind-set and our safety strategy, sales and profits from anti-bacterial soaps soared.

The fact was, these were airborne diseases and the threat was misperceived. All that washing was unnecessary, and after the dust settled, most of us returned to washing our hands just as we had before, with regular old soap. But some of us have a cycle going. If we don’t have access to antibacterial soap, we get anxious. Or we might take precautions touching things. After you’re done rinsing, how do you turn the water off without recontaminating your hands from the faucet? With your elbow? And what about that public restroom door—do you want to touch that now? Better use a paper towel.

There is no limit to how far off course an anxiety cycle can take you. I’ve had OCD clients who were washing their hands with bleach. That was an undeniable problem. How will you decide which safety strategies are working for you and which are working against you? Are you ready to find out?

I cannot begin to tell you how much I love spotting safety strategies. Seeing how we feed the monkey, whether through my clients’ eyes when I share in their process of discovery, or with my own eyes when I see safety strategies in my own life, is an insight I never tire of. To me, there is nothing more exciting and empowering than to shine the light on the little critter we’ve been feeding, and to realize exactly what we are doing that maintains anxiety. Once we know how we contribute to our pain, we have the power to change!

Your present mind-set and your present behavior are keeping you safe. Yet a bigger life is beckoning. You want more and you deserve more than “more of the same.” In the next chapter we’ll find out what happens when we stop feeding the monkey with safety behaviors. We don’t just stop the cycle of anxiety. We start something new!

You can download a comprehensive Checklist of Safety Strategies at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.