Surprising Ways You Might Be a Reassurance Seeker

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.

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

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.

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.
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.
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.

Read the complete article available at Psychology Today!

Reflection:

Do you tend to seek constant reassurance?

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