Can't stop asking whether your home is earthquake-resistant? Learn how to separate building safety anxiety from real risk and find your peace of mind again.
You lie down in bed at night and your eyes catch on the thin line across the ceiling. It was there yesterday, and last month too. But this evening you watched a news report, and the line suddenly seems to have grown. You pick up your phone and start searching for the year your building was constructed, the soil class, how far your neighbourhood is from the fault line; it is past two in the morning. "Is my home earthquake-resistant?" is a question that circles endlessly in the minds of millions of people in Turkey. In this article we look at when this question is healthy attentiveness, when it becomes a cycle that eats away at your peace, and what you can do in either case.
Is My Home Earthquake-Resistant? Why Won't the Question Leave My Mind?
There are several reasons why this question is so sticky.
First, home is our most basic place of safety. When a person who retreats from the tiring outside world begins to think that the refuge itself may be a threat, there is nowhere left to rest. This is why building safety anxiety, unlike other worries, rises not throughout the day but precisely when you are trying to unwind: in the evening and at night.
Second, the answer is often unknown. Many people do not know which building code their building was designed under, whether it was built according to the plans, or whether a soil survey was carried out. The mind tends to fill the gaps with the worst possibility.
Third, the images left by the 6 February 2023 earthquakes are still fresh. Seeing one of two neighbouring buildings left standing while the other collapsed brought the question "which one would ours have been?" into everyone's home.
Fourth, control is limited. If you rent, you have almost no say over the building; if you are a co-owner, decisions are made together with your neighbours; economic conditions make moving difficult. Anxiety grows most around matters that seem both important and beyond our control.
Signs of Building Safety Anxiety
Being curious about your building's safety and seeking information is a rational thing to do. However, some signs may indicate that curiosity has turned into anxiety:
- Frequently photographing cracks in the walls and comparing them with earlier photos
- Interpreting every small sound (the lift, a door slamming, a heavy vehicle passing) as the building "moving"
- Spending hours researching online about the building's construction year, the ground beneath it or the contractor
- Avoiding sleeping in certain rooms at home, for example the top-floor bedroom
- Checking the columns and beams first thing in every home you visit
- Constantly raising the subject with family members and clashing with them when they say "you're exaggerating"
- Being unable to feel relieved even after receiving an expert report, thinking "what if they measured it wrong?"
This worry sometimes shows itself in quite unexpected places. Someone excited about moving into a new home cannot enjoy the day they get the keys; the first thing they do is go down to the basement to look at the columns. Or someone invited to a friend's new flat cannot stop asking, throughout the conversation, how old the building is.
Seeing several of these signs in yourself does not mean there is a problem. The real measure is how much of your time these thoughts and behaviours take up and how much they narrow your life.
The Difference Between Real Risk and the Voice of Anxiety
We need to be honest here: some buildings in Turkey really are at risk. So brushing off building safety anxiety as "completely unfounded" is both wrong and an attitude that leaves the person alone. What matters is being able to separate two different questions:
- What do I know about my building, and what can I find out? This is an engineering question. Its answer lies in technical assessments such as risk evaluations, structural analyses and concrete core samples carried out by licensed organisations.
- How am I living with this uncertainty? This is a psychological question. Its answer lies not in online forums or late-night searches, but in your own patterns of thinking and behaviour.
Anxiety mixes these two questions up. You try to solve a technical question by thinking, researching and checking; but thinking does not measure the strength of concrete. On the other hand, you try to close a psychological question with technical information; but even once the report is in your hands, new questions beginning with "what if" are generated.
Let us say a family had a risk assessment carried out on their building and the result was favourable. One partner takes a deep breath and returns to life, while the other rereads the report every night, questions which part of the building the sample was taken from, and considers having it examined a second time by another firm. In this case the problem is no longer in the building but in a mind that finds it hard to tolerate uncertainty. You can find more detail on how this cycle works in our article on overthinking.
Anxiety cannot measure the strength of your building's concrete; it only drains your capacity to rest. Leave the technical question to the experts and keep the question of living with uncertainty for yourself.
Tenant, Homeowner, Co-owner: The Faces of This Anxiety in Turkey
Building safety anxiety is not experienced in the same way by everyone. Housing realities in Turkey give it different shades.
Tenants
For tenants, the question is often intertwined with another one: "Can I afford to move?" Given high rents, deposits, removal costs and the difficulty of finding a suitable home, feeling forced to stay in a home you consider unsafe can create deep helplessness. On top of that, asking the landlord for an assessment brings the fear of damaging the rental relationship.
Homeowners and co-owners
For those who own their home, the anxiety usually comes with a dilemma: if I have the building assessed and the result is bad, what happens to the value of the home I put my savings into? Persuading neighbours at the owners' meeting, sharing the cost, and arguing with neighbours who say "our building is solid, let's not waste money" are a separate source of stress. Some people never raise the subject at all to avoid this conflict, and carry the anxiety inside.
Parents
For parents, anxiety is often accompanied by guilt: "I am raising my children in an unsafe building." This thought weighs especially heavily when the parent's options are limited. Here it is important to remind yourself of what you can do within your means: securing furniture, making a family plan, and talking with the children about safe spots.
Steps You Can Take When Wondering "Is My Home Earthquake-Resistant?"
First, take the technical question to a technical channel
If you genuinely want information about your building, you can ask your municipality or the relevant provincial directorate which route to follow, and get information from licensed organisations. If you need to act together with the other owners, raising the subject within a framework of shared safety rather than blame makes things easier. Taking this step is the first and most concrete way of breaking the cycle.
Make a "knowable" and "unknowable" list
Divide a sheet of paper in two. On one side, write what you can find out (the date of the building permit, any assessment report, unsecured items inside the home); on the other, write questions no amount of research can answer with certainty (when will an earthquake happen, will my building stand in every scenario). Make an action plan for the items on the first list. For those on the second, tell yourself: "This question has no answer today, and I can live without one."
Put a limit on research
Choose a specific, short time slot each day for reading about buildings, soil and fault lines; for example, fifteen minutes before dinner. Note any urge to "just have a look" that arises outside this slot and postpone it until then. Take particular care not to research these topics in the hour before bed.
Cut down on crack checking
Remember that plaster cracks and cracks in load-bearing elements do not mean the same thing, and that only an engineer can assess this. If you are curious about a crack, photograph it once and show it to an expert; measuring it again every day gives you no new information, it only keeps the anxiety alive.
Spread the decision over time
Big decisions such as moving, applying for urban regeneration or having the building retrofitted should not be made on a night when anxiety is at its peak. It is healthier to decide in the morning, with a calm mind, writing down the pros and cons and, if needed, talking with family members or someone you trust. If indecision has kept you stuck for a long time, our article on indecisiveness may also help.
See talking to neighbours as a joint project, not a conflict
When building safety is raised at residents' meetings, the atmosphere can quickly become tense. One person talks about cost, another about the value of their flat, another, because they have lived there for years, about the feeling that "nothing will happen". Most of these reactions are, in fact, different faces of anxiety too. When you raise the subject, using inviting language such as "Shall we get some information so we can all feel at ease?" instead of definite and frightening statements like "This building is rotten" reduces defensiveness. Rather than expecting to persuade everyone in one go, sharing the information and giving everyone time to think also works. Remember that your neighbours may take time to decide; during this process, if your anxiety rises at every meeting, you need to look after your own limits as well.
Pay attention to your body too
Building safety anxiety does not live only in the mind. Tension in the shoulders, jaw clenching, a knot in the stomach and, especially, being easily startled at night are common. Focusing on slow, long out-breaths a few times a day, taking short walks and cutting down on caffeine in the evening help lower the body's alarm level. When your body settles, the question "is my home earthquake-resistant" also becomes less urgent and more thinkable.
Make home a "lived-in place" again
As anxiety grows, home can turn into a space associated only with risk. Consciously make room for the small things you enjoy at home: Sunday breakfast, reading a book in a favourite corner, having friends over. This is not ignoring the risk, but protecting the other meanings that home holds for you.
When Should You Seek Professional Support?
Thinking about building safety is not a problem in itself. However, you might consider seeking support from a mental health professional in the following situations:
- Your anxiety does not ease at all even after obtaining technical information, and only new questions arise
- Checking and researching take up hours of your day
- Your sleep pattern is disrupted and you never feel safe inside your home
- This subject constantly leads to arguments within the family
- Nightmares, startle reactions and vivid memories follow an earthquake you lived through
- Hopelessness, helplessness and lack of motivation have begun to affect your daily life
Individual therapy to work with this kind of anxiety is available face to face or online.
How Is Building Safety Anxiety Addressed in Therapy?
The first step in therapy is to understand your anxiety without dismissing or exaggerating it. Building safety is a real issue; the therapist's job is not to persuade you "don't think about it", but to help you make the way you think about it more workable for you.
Within cognitive behavioural therapy, thinking patterns such as catastrophising ("our building will definitely collapse"), overestimating probability and intolerance of uncertainty are examined together. The person learns to see their thoughts as predictions rather than facts.
Worry time and postponement techniques help gather thoughts scattered across the day into a specific time slot.
Behavioural experiments, such as not checking cracks for a week and observing how the anxiety unfolds, allow the person to see through experience that checking actually keeps anxiety going.
Values-focused work explores how the person can make room for what matters to them, such as time with their children, their work and their relationships, even while uncertainty continues.
If a deeper sense of insecurity lies beneath the anxiety, for example if you grew up in an unpredictable home environment as a child, the link between these experiences and present-day anxiety can also be explored from a schema-focused perspective.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will having a core test or risk assessment done make my anxiety go away?
A technical assessment gives you real information and brings significant relief for many people. However, if your anxiety is fed by intolerance of uncertainty, even a good result can soon make room for new doubts. In that case, alongside the report, it is necessary to work on the anxiety itself.
Is every crack in the wall a sign of danger?
No. Plaster and paint cracks are different from damage to load-bearing elements, and telling them apart is a civil engineer's job. Showing a crack you are curious about to an expert once is far more meaningful than checking it every day.
I'm a tenant and my landlord doesn't want an assessment done. What can I do?
First, try discussing the matter with your landlord calmly, within a framework of shared safety. Getting information from the municipality or relevant institutions about which routes can be followed will also give you a concrete framework. Sharing the helplessness you feel during this process with someone close to you or a professional can lighten the load.
I can't afford to move. How do I live with this thought?
When economic conditions limit your options, it is important to focus on what you can do with the means you have: securing furniture, making a family plan, knowing what to do during an earthquake. It is possible to live without dismissing your anxiety, yet without letting it take over every evening; this is a skill that is often learned with support.
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Eda Erkan Alapala
Klinik Psikolog. İstanbul Kent Üniversitesi Klinik Psikoloji Tezli Yüksek Lisans mezunu; bilişsel davranışçı terapi, çocuk merkezli oyun terapisi ve çocuk-ergen psikoterapisi alanlarında eğitimlerini tamamlamıştır.
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