Is There Such Thing as Unproductive Coping When it Comes to Managing my Anxiety?

Many people who experience difficulties with anxiety or OCD often turn to behavioural or mental rituals to help cope with the uncomfortable feelings that come with each disorder. Managing anxiety can be stressful and difficult and it’s not uncommon for people to turn to unproductive coping to manage with their symptoms. I purposely chose to use the word unproductive, because I can’t say that certain coping strategies (for example medication use, self-talk specific to providing reassurance, and exiting the situation) don’t alleviate anxiety. In fact, many times it does. However, the long-term implications of performing behaviours to reduce anxiety may influence individuals to feel worse. This could be explained best by an experiment conducted by Solomon, Kamin, and Wayne (1953). The researchers used light to bring on a fear response in dogs. Whenever the light was displayed it would be followed by a shock.  The dogs became fearful of the light and acted in panic, even when no shock followed. Solomon et al., also had another group of dogs who were also shown the light and then shocked. This group had an option to escape the situation. What was fascinating was that when the first dog group (the group that couldn’t escape) was presented with the light repeatedly without the shock, they began to not fear the light. The group of dogs given the escape option, continued to be anxious and fearful when presented with the light (and anything that resembled the light) (Springer and Tollin 2020). What this helps provide perspective on is how the escape option serves only to maintain the fear. Not only is escaping the situation maintaining the fear response it is also maintained through avoidance, reassurance-seeking, and other behaviours that are utilized to reduce anxiety.

Examples of avoidance include:

An individual who is afraid of social situations may avoid going to family gatherings

A teenager may not attend school because they are avoiding failure.

Examples of reassurance seeking:

A person fears getting COVID-19 and is repeatedly getting tested.  

A partner has an intrusive thought about harming her child and looks for reassurance that she won’t from her partner.

Examples of behaviours:

A worker takes medication to ‘calm his nerves,’ before conducting a meeting.

A person takes marijuana at night to help reduce his anxious mind.

We want to educate our clients that turning to unproductive coping strategies can help maintain a fear response. We also want to help train our clients to tolerate anxious thoughts and feelings. We do this by having them sit with their fears and educate on how to manage their symptoms. This is done by reducing safety behaviours and teaching tolerance distress skills. Therapy is carefully designed to be respectful of the client’s readiness and done so with care and consideration. Working with our clients to let go of safety behaviours is important the in treatment for anxiety. This work may take a few sessions, but it’s worthwhile in helping manage symptoms of anxiety and getting to healthy recovery.

Springer and Tollin, Big Book of Exposures 2020.