This might date me, but when I went off to my freshman year of college in the mid- 2000s, I didn’t even have a cellphone.
I can remember using a prepaid card to call my mom from my dorm room phone once per week to check in with her. If she needed to contact me, she could call my dorm room, but the chances that she called when I was actually in the room were slim to none (I didn’t get along with my roommate). So in reality, our only consistent form of communication was that weekly checkup call.
I laugh thinking about it today, in the world of smartphones and our ability to constantly be in communication with each other. My mom would have no clue what to do with Life360, an app that allows people to track each other’s location.
While our advances in technology are certainly good, there are times when I wonder about the side effects. I think that our interconnectedness has at times caused us to worry about things that generations before us wouldn’t have even thought about due to their own limitations.
Take, for instance, a client I worked with several years ago who worried about their adult children. This client told me that they would track their children’s online activity via a social media app that would tell them how long it had been since the last time they had opened the app. As long as their children had been active in the last hour or so, my client wouldn’t get that anxious. But if their profile said that they had been inactive for several hours, suddenly my client’s anxiety would begin to spike, and they would start to wonder about all of the potential things that could have happened to their child.
The thing that we ended up working on was not checking the app anymore. You see, in checking the app, they were seeking reassurance that their children were alright. And while reassurance temporarily relieves us of anxiety, it’s never permanent. There’s always a need for another check because something new could have gone wrong.
We seek reassurance in more ways than just checking on the physical safety of loved ones. Sometimes we might try to reassure ourselves that we didn’t leave our door unlocked. Maybe we double check with a friend about something that we said to make sure they didn’t take it the wrong way. Perhaps we google our physical symptoms over and over to see if there might be some diagnosis that we missed.
While reassurance relieves our anxiety in the short term, it’s never a long-term solution. Instead, it creates a vicious cycle in which we need to continually reassure ourselves that the thing we worry about hasn’t happened. If we are unable to gain the reassurance we want, our anxiety often peaks and we begin catastrophizing. Also, reassurance chips away at our ability to tolerate discomfort (since we often seek a relief from said discomfort as soon as we feel it) and can even cause us to doubt our own ability to make decisions.
What can you do if you notice a reliance upon reassurance?
First, identify the times in which you are gathering information (something you do the first time) and seeking reassurance (something you do multiple times). It’s OK to ask clarifying questions, but begin working on recognizing when you are trying to gather information or wanting to reassure in order to calm discomfort. Then, practice delaying your reassurance. Maybe wait five minutes and see if you still feel the need to reassure yourself. Also, if you seek reassurance by talking to someone (for example, checking to see if a person is mad at you or asking for reassurance if you did the right thing in a situation) ask them for help by not answering your question, but instead asking you what you think about it.
Reassurance might seem harmless, but it can actually increase anxiety in the long run. My client who kept checking the social media activity of their children eventually ended up deleting the app and found that their anxiety decreased greatly.
Identify ways in which you might use reassurance, and look for opportunities to limit its power over you.
- Mischa McCray is a licensed professional counselor and a licensed marriage and family therapist. Send questions or topics you’d like him to discuss to mmccray@wpcgreenwood.org.
