Critical Thinking

Section C6
Assignment No.1
Fiza Maqbool F2019125011
Ifza Qadir F2019125026
Submitted to Sir Shahid Ali Khan
Anxiety is a signal that danger is imminent. When the danger is real, anxiety can
help to keep us safe. The problem is that for many people, anxiety becomes a
false alarm – and it can lead someone to feel just as threatened as if there were
real danger ahead .(1) Most of us are familiar with the physical sensations of
anxiety, such as a rapid heartbeat or a sinking feeling in the stomach, and the
mental symptoms such as racing and worrisome thoughts. In terms of
behaviour, avoidance is the hallmark symptom of anxiety. Simply put, we avoid
what we feel anxious about: if we are afraid of heights or snakes, we avoid
skyscrapers or walking in tall grass. People who experience social anxiety often
avoid social gatherings or situations where they might have to speak in front of
people.

However, avoidance is not always possible, so people who have anxiety often
develop behaviours to keep themselves feeling safe when they are unable to
avoid a situation completely. These behaviours, known as ‘safety behaviours’, are
a subtle kind of avoidance: one enters a feared situation, but does so without
really facing the fear. In the above examples, somebody with a fear of heights
might always hold on to a handrail when they are on a balcony. People with a
snake phobia might go hiking but they’ll wear big boots and carry snake bandages
and antivenom even in places where there are no snakes. In the case of social
anxiety, someone might wear sunglasses to avoid making eye contact with others,
or rehearse a speech over and over again.

The problem with avoidance and safety behaviours is that, although they may
reduce anxiety temporarily, they reinforce anxiety in the long term. Anxiety is
characterised by exaggerated fears – eg, I will fall off this balcony; I’ll be bitten by
a snake; people will think I’m stupid – and safety behaviours prevent someone
from learning whether the fears are really true or not. Someone might mistakenly
think the safety behaviours themselves are what stopped the feared situation
from coming true. The person with social anxiety who rehearses a speech dozens
of times might assume that this repetition is what prevented them from making a
complete fool of themselves.

Because avoidance and safety behaviours maintain anxiety over the long term,
they are key targets in psychotherapy. The part of therapy that deals with them is
called exposure therapy because it involves helping people to gradually expose
themselves to their feared situation. Facing the situation helps them to learn not
to fear the physical sensations of anxiety and to challenge their exaggerated
predictions. With regard to safety behaviours, therapists and their clients work
together to uncover all the unhelpful things clients do to try to feel less anxious in
a feared situation. Then, the client will gradually drop these habits.

Unfortunately, disentangling unhelpful safety behaviours from helpful behaviours

is not always as straightforward as it sounds. In many cases, making the
distinction can be quite challenging.

Imagine that you’ve been asked to give a presentation in front of your colleagues
and several senior managers. The idea of public speaking elicits some anxiety in
you, as it would for most people. You spend many hours over the next week
drafting your presentation and rehearsing it repeatedly, staying up late on several
nights to ensure you feel sufficiently prepared. Is this intensive preparation a
safety behaviour that will reinforce your fear of public speaking? Or is it simply an
appropriate way to prepare for an important task?

This issue becomes more complicated when the behaviour in question is intended
to prevent physical harm. When is holding on to a handrail while standing on a tall
building a maladaptive safety behaviour, and when is it a reasonable precaution?
What about carrying pepper spray or phoning a friend while walking alone late at
night? When someone feels that their physical safety is on the line, it can be even
more challenging to recognise safety behaviours – and more nerve-racking to
relinquish them.

It becomes harder still to recognise and disentangle safety behaviours in the

context of chronic physical illnesses. Living with a chronic illness can open up a
range of new illness-specific fears about things such as re-injury, seizures,
hypoglycaemia, or the return or worsening of an illness. Several studies have
revealed that anxiety is particularly prevalent among people with chronic
illnesses. For example, anxiety disorders are more common in people
with epilepsy, diabetes, chronic pain and cancer, compared with the general
population.

We recently reviewed the evidence for the negative impact of safety behaviours
and anxiety in the context of chronic illness, finding some notable examples. In
gastrointestinal illnesses, for example, safety behaviours may include scanning for
the nearest bathroom, wearing sanitary items or carrying spare clothes to prevent
the feared outcome of soiling oneself or to reduce embarrassment should it
occur. In chronic back pain, people have been shown to engage in safety
behaviours such as tensing their abdominal muscles before lifting a heavy object
to prevent further back injury. In cases where preventative behaviours are not
truly necessary, they may ultimately just worsen the anxiety that is layered on top
of an already challenging chronic illness.

So, how can one distinguish safety behaviours from sensible precautions? We

cannot simply say that a particular behaviour is always ‘good’ or always ‘bad’. For
example, routinely using a walking frame might be a safety behaviour for
someone with lower back pain, but could be helpful and necessary for someone
who is elderly and has a history of falls. A clinical psychologist can help a person
to explore their precautionary behaviours in context and to work out what
behaviours can be gradually reduced, and how.

To help guide decision-making about whether a particular behaviour is helpful or

unhelpful, we recently developed a framework that features a series of questions
to ask about the behaviour. This framework was created to help people who are
experiencing anxiety in the context of chronic illness, and to assist mental health
professionals in working with these individuals. But the questions are also
relevant to the behaviours of people with anxiety more generally.

Deductive Argument

Inductive Argument
Deductive Arguments:

1. The first deductive argument is valid and sound.

2. The second deductive argument is

3. The third deductive argument is

4. The fourth deductive argument is

5. The fifth deductive argument is