yourself to these feelings can help you to become more comfortable with them. The goal 
is to reach a point at which sensations, like shaking or a racing heartbeat, are, at worst, 
mildly uncomfortable but not frightening. The general principles discussed throughout 
this chapter will be relevant to overcoming your fear of physical symptoms. However, 
speciﬁc exercises for overcoming these fears are discussed more thoroughly in chapter 9.
Subtle Avoidance Strategies and Safety Behaviors
Subtle avoidance behaviors (also called safety behaviors ) are not-so-obvious strate -
gies that people often use to cope with anxiety-provoking situations. Unlike completely 
avoiding a feared situation, subtle avoidance strategies involve partial avoidance of the 
situation. Often these behaviors are not noticeable to others. In fact, they may be so 
subtle that even you are not aware of them. As is the case with more obvious types of 
avoidance, learning to let go of your subtle forms of escape will help you to overcome 
your fear, just as removing training wheels is an important step in learning to ride a 
bicycle, and letting go of crutches is an important step in relearning to walk after an 
injury. We will now discuss some examples of subtle avoidance strategies.