How Maladaptive Coping Strategies Maintain Anxiety Disorders

Individuals with anxiety disorders use a variety of behaviors to help quell the effects of anxiety. However, many of these behaviors can be maladaptive in that they do not solve the root cause of the issues and prevent someone from making progress. Since these maladaptive coping strategies actually maintain anxiety, effective strategies and treatments need to be implemented to truly get to the root cause of anxiety and provide long-lasting relief.

What is Maladaptive Anxiety?

Maladaptive anxiety refers to anxiety that is accompanied by a variety of maladaptive behaviors, which ultimately lead to anxiety maintenance. In order to understand these behaviors, it’s first helpful to understand anxiety itself.

Anxiety is a natural response to perceived threats. In normal, adaptive anxiety, this is actually beneficial because it helps someone become aware of potential threats, which then sparks action to eliminate the threat or whatever is causing distress. ^[1]

However, anxiety can easily turn maladaptive, especially in individuals with clinical anxiety disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), panic disorder, and specific phobias.

In these instances, individuals can become excessively cautious and hypersensitive, even in situations that don’t pose any threats. In turn, they engage in maladaptive responses that prevent them from effectively adapting to their environment and navigating life’s challenges appropriately. While these behaviors may provide short-term relief of symptoms, they ultimately perpetuate anxiety in the long run, which can create a vicious cycle. ^[1]

Common Maladaptive Coping Strategies

Individuals with anxiety disorders use many different maladaptive coping strategies. In fact, most people with anxiety engage in several different maladaptive behaviors. They may: ^[2]

• Avoid the situation
• Engage in “safety behaviors”
• Self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, or food
• Withdraw socially
• Ruminate excessively about their fears
• Distract themselves
• Try to control their thoughts or even try to “not think”
• Excessively seek out information

Cognitive Distortions

Cognitive distortions, which are disruptive and negative thought patterns, can greatly contribute to the initiation and maintenance of maladaptive behaviors. Some of the most common cognitive distortions seen within anxiety disorders are: ^[3]

• Catastrophizing: Imagining or expecting a very bad (or the worst) outcome
• Overgeneralization: Assuming a previous outcome will happen in all other situations
• Negative filtering: only thinking about the negative aspects of a situation or thing
• Black and white thinking: believing that things are either good or bad, a success or failure, etc.
• Mind reading: Having strong beliefs about what others think or feel (without any evidence)
• Personalization: Blaming oneself for things outside of one’s control

All of these cognitive distortions lead to very high levels of anxiety and stress, which in turn makes it much more likely that someone will engage in avoidance and other maladaptive behaviors to lessen these feelings in the short term. Of course, this only maintains anxiety because the issues aren’t resolved properly. ^[2]

The Role of Avoidance

Avoidance is one of the most common maladaptive reactions. If someone feels threatened by a particular situation, they may simply avoid it to reduce anxiety. Common examples of avoidance include:

• Someone with social anxiety may avoid going to a party
• Someone with panic disorder avoids going to a store where they had a previous panic attack.
• Individual with GAD declines a work promotion due to fear of not being qualified

While avoidance feels good in the short term due to lessened anxiety and stress, it actually backfires in the long run. For one, this is because avoidance sends a signal to the body that there is, in fact, a threat to be wary of. Secondly, avoidance, by its very nature, doesn’t allow for someone to develop skills or the confidence that they can actually get through anxiety-provoking situations, instead maintaining their negative beliefs and anxious thought patterns. ^[1][2]

Overreliance on Safety Behaviors

Individuals with anxiety also use a variety of safety behaviors, which are specific behaviors that one uses to reduce anxiety or prevent bad outcomes. Examples include:

• For social anxiety: Avoiding eye contact, standing at the edge of a room, or avoiding asking questions even when one needs the information.
• Seeking excessive reassurance from others that there is no threat or problem
• Engaging in other activities to distract oneself
• Frequently checking and analyzing things to make sure they’re right
• Bringing certain items (e.g., water bottle, medication) in case something happens

Just like with avoidance, these safety behaviors temporarily decrease anxiety and stress. However, they are maladaptive because they don’t actually lead to an improved ability to handle anxiety, nor do they allow someone to realize that their anxious thoughts or beliefs are unfounded. Thus, individuals with anxiety will continue to believe that they need to engage in these behaviors and cannot cope without them, which leads to anxiety maintenance. ^[1][2][4]

How Does Maladaptive Coping Impact Daily Life?

Maladaptive coping behaviors cause significant disruptions to one’s ability to lead a rich, fulfilling life. These behaviors can negatively impact relationships, work, personal growth, and overall well-being. ^[5]

Someone with maladaptive anxiety can experience many negative relationship consequences. Avoidance and other related behaviors can lead to social isolation, which makes it very hard to develop new friendships, romantic relationships, or other important connections. In addition, maladaptive behaviors can reinforce negative beliefs about oneself in the context of relationships, such as not being good enough, being “weird,” or not deserving of various relationships. ^[5]

Maladaptive anxiety can also cause roadblocks to one’s work life and career. For example, someone with anxiety may decline a promotion or turn down job offers because they believe they won’t be good enough and are anxious about starting something new. Other examples include not speaking up in meetings or interacting effectively with coworkers due to social anxiety and taking a long time to complete projects due to worries about it not being “perfect.” ^[5]

The maladaptive behaviors used by someone with anxiety also prevent personal growth and development. This is partly related to the above two points, but more generally, maladaptive responses make it harder for someone to develop self-esteem, confidence, and other important characteristics.

By constantly avoiding the things that cause anxiety or using safety behaviors, one will end up stuck in the same thought patterns and beliefs. By never putting oneself through anxiety-provoking circumstances, one will never be able to develop the necessary skills to get through those obstacles, nor will they be able to realize that they actually can succeed even in the face of anxiety.

Lastly, maladaptive anxiety can negatively impact overall well-being, often resulting in lower life satisfaction and loneliness. In addition, the anxiety that accompanies these behaviors can impact sleep and cause various physical issues, such as headaches, tension, and nausea. Finally, maladaptive anxiety often involves the use of alcohol, drugs, junk food, or other unhealthy coping mechanisms that can decrease overall health. ^[5]

Breaking the Cycle: Identifying Maladaptive Coping Patterns

As you can see, there’s often a cycle that’s created in which anxiety leads to maladaptive coping responses, which then contribute to anxiety maintenance. Therefore, it’s important to break this cycle in order to minimize the impact it has on overall well-being.

In order to break this cycle, one has to actually identify these maladaptive behaviors so that they can then be replaced with more adaptive ones. While it may seem tricky to identify these behaviors (and it can be at times), the first important thing to do is look at the effects these behaviors are having on one’s personal growth and well-being.

For example, if you are wondering whether certain behaviors are maladaptive or not, you can ask yourself questions such as:

• “Am I engaging in these behaviors to avoid something?”
• “Are my responses to situations different from the way I truly want to live my life?”
• “Are my behaviors interfering with work, relationships, and overall ability to function?”
• “Am I using these behaviors for short-term relief?”

Answering “yes” to these questions is indicative that you are using maladaptive behaviors.

One of the main things to understand is that maladaptive behaviors are behaviors that provide short-term relief but ultimately do not contribute positively to long-term growth and mental well-being.

Now, it’s certainly understandable why these behaviors are used. After all, avoiding anxiety-provoking situations or using various safety behaviors feels good because it lowers stress and anxiety. However, they only feed the anxiety because they never allow someone the chance to see that they can actually work through the anxiety and come out on the other end just fine. And this is why maladaptive behaviors ultimately lead to the perpetuation of anxiety, which can make someone feel like they will never get out of feeling this way.

How to Develop Healthy Coping Mechanisms

Once the maladaptive coping behaviors are identified, it’s important to replace these with healthier alternatives. Doing so will allow someone to manage their anxiety in a more effective way while supporting growth and well-being in a more positive way.

For example, rather than outright avoiding situations that make one anxious, a healthier alternative is to face the situation and use specific techniques to help manage anxiety and stress during it. This may include deep breathing, mindfulness, or trying to focus more on external stimuli (e.g., other people, conversations) rather than being overly self-conscious.

Of course, this takes time, and it’s important not to jump into something that causes excessive anxiety, as this will only backfire. But when done in the right way, facing the feared situations helps someone to realize that the situation may not be as scary as they thought and that they may even enjoy it as a part of their life.

Another way to develop healthier coping mechanisms is to gradually reduce and eventually eliminate safety behaviors. For someone with social anxiety, this may mean gradually trying to make more eye contact or talking more in conversations. For someone with GAD, this could involve a variety of things, such as not researching as much information and trying to tolerate a higher level of uncertainty or learning to develop more self-confidence to decrease reliance on the reassurance of others.

Over time, this helps someone to realize that they can manage situations successfully even without the use of safety behaviors, which promotes greater self-efficacy.

Also, when trying to replace maladaptive responses with healthier ones, working on one’s mindset is also essential. Specifically, it’s important that individuals challenge the negative thoughts and beliefs about themselves and their situations. Here are certain examples with healthier alternatives:

• I can’t go to that event because I’m too anxious.
  • Alternative: I do feel some anxiety, but it will likely get lower as I start connecting with others. I’ve done this before!
• That was a total failure. I messed up everything.
  • Alternative: I made some mistakes, but there were many things I did well. I’ll work on my mistakes and try to be better next time.
• I have to triple-check everything is working in the car before I go because I don’t want to get into an accident.
  • Alternative: I haven’t noticed any issues with my car lately. I’ll keep an eye out if I notice anything unusual, but I won’t worry until then.

When to Seek Professional Help

While the above healthy coping mechanisms are beneficial, professional help is often needed for the greatest effectiveness. This is especially true if someone is faced with moderate to severe disruptions to their health and overall function. In these cases, specific therapies can be beneficial, such as exposure therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Exposure therapy helps someone gradually face what is causing them anxiety, yet in a controlled, progressive manner unique to each individual. They also learn techniques to help manage stress during the exposure, such as deep breathing and cognitive restructuring. ^[1]

CBT is also quite effective for maladaptive anxiety. This therapy helps individuals to identify their negative thought patterns (e.g., catastrophizing, perfectionism, excessive worry) and behaviors (e.g., avoidance) and replace them with healthier alternatives. Thus, it helps to resolve the cognitive distortions and maladaptive behaviors, which are the key components of maladaptive anxiety. Through CBT, individuals gain more confidence in themselves and develop new skills and behaviors to handle future anxiety-provoking situations more effectively. ^[2][4]

Along with therapy, medication may also be implemented, especially in more severe cases. Selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are one of the most common medications used for anxiety disorders in general. Benzodiazepines may also be implemented, particularly in short-term scenarios or on an as-needed basis for panic disorder and specific phobias.