Are you deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty?

Anxiety sufferers often have a hard time tolerating uncertainty, which can lead to catastrophic thoughts and unhelpful behaviors. One of those behaviors is excessive reassurance seeking.

Reassurance seeking often involves asking for validation, comfort, or information to reduce anxiety. For those who struggle with anxiety, it is often done compulsively or repeatedly.

Reassurance-seeking behaviors can take many forms. Here are some examples:

Reassurance seeking can often be extremely effective in the moment. Consider what happens: Something causes you to feel anxious, your anxiety spikes, you engage in a reassurance-seeking behavior, and your anxiety immediately gets better.

Sounds great, right? Well, it’s actually not.

When you constantly get reassurance for your anxiety, you don’t learn how to tolerate your anxiety and its related uncertainty, which is key to anxiety recovery.

Also, you can become very dependent on reassurance-seeking behaviors. When I tell my clients who are trapped in the........

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