Surprising Ways You Might Be a Reassurance Seeker

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People who deal with anxiety concerns are notorious reassurance seekers. Nobody likes feeling anxious, so understandably, people would want to do things to reduce their anxiety.

Many people try to get rid of their anxiety by seeking reassurance from others. They might directly ask a loved one if what they said in a social situation was OK, if they left the stove on, or if a weird body sensation is something to worry about. Someone with anxiety about their relationship might ask their partner if they are sure they still love them.

Other ways people get reassurance is through doing a behavior such as doing an internet search on a physical symptom, re-checking the locks, or checking their pulse if they feel like a panic attack might be coming on.

Covert Reassurance-Seeking Behaviors

However, many people engage in more subtle reassurance-seeking behaviors and often don't know they are doing it. These are called covert reassurance-seeking behaviors. Here are some examples:

Social Anxiety

• Trying to "read" other people's behaviors, moods, or reactions to see if they like them.
• Making demeaning statements about oneself, hoping others will refute them.
• Overly apologizing to make sure someone is not angry or upset with them.

Obsessive Compulsive Symptoms

• If someone is unsure about the cleanliness of something, they might wait until someone else touches it first.
• Waiting until someone else eats an item of food if someone is anxious about whether or not it is contaminated.

Generalized Anxiety

• Contacting a loved one to see if they are OK (without directly saying why they are reaching out).

Panic Attacks or Health Anxiety

• Paying a lot of attention to body sensations to make sure everything is OK.

Trauma-Related Anxiety

• Looking at other people's behaviors and reactions to determine whether or not a situation is safe.

The Problem With Reassurance-Seeking Behaviors

The issue with any reassurance-seeking behavior, either obvious or covert, is that it reinforces and feeds into your anxiety. You give yourself the message that you need reassurance that everything is OK because your anxiety feels intolerable.

Reassurance is often very effective, and it can help your anxiety decrease quickly. However, you get caught in the anxiety/reassurance cycle: the next time your anxiety spikes, you continue to ask for reassurance, causing a decrease in anxiety, making it more likely that you will seek it in the future the next time you feel anxious. In fact, reassurance can feel a little "addictive," almost like a drug.

How to Cut Down on Covert Reassurance-Seeking Behaviors

1. Awareness. You can ask yourself what situations cause you a lot of anxiety. Next, you can be mindful of when you seek reassurance to manage your anxiety in those situations.
2. Notice and name the urges. It can be helpful to articulate to yourself your desire to seek reassurance. For example, you can say, I want to call my mother to make sure nothing happened to her, or, I have the urge to scan my body to ensure everything seems OK.
3. Validate and resist the urges. You can tell yourself that it is understandable that you want to reassure yourself. However, to help your anxiety in the long term, it's best to resist doing it. If it's difficult to resist doing the behavior, try to resist at least doing it for a short amount of time. Even if it's only for a minute or two, you are starting to break the cycle reassurance/anxiety cycle.
4. Reinforce yourself. If you successfully resisted the urge to seek reassurance, or even if you could delay doing it for any amount of time, give yourself props! If you weren't able to resist, use it as a learning opportunity, try to understand why you couldn't do it, and commit to trying again the next time you have an urge.

Knowledge and Awareness are Power

Often people don't even realize when they are engaging in covert reassurance behaviors. Once you understand what you are doing and how it feeds into your anxiety, you can be in a better place to make changes. The more you can resist, the more manageable your anxiety will be in the long term.