This is a guest post by Alegra Kastens, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, founder of The Center for OCD, Anxiety, and Eating Disorders.
Reassurance-seeking is a compulsion that people with OCD commonly carry out in response to obsessions and the associated distress. It can entail asking other people for reassurance about obsessional content, using the internet (ex., Google or ChatGPT) or other educational materials as a source of reassurance about obsessions, and/or repeatedly reassuring yourself about obsessional doubts. Reassurance-seeking can be sneaky, too. Instead of outright asking your partner a question such as “what if I poisoned this meal and don’t remember?” you might say something like “this tastes weird” in the hopes that your partner will say “it tastes normal to me.”
Oftentimes, people with OCD seek reassurance about questions they already have the answer to. It’s called reassurance for a reason. They have already been assured that POCD is not pedophilia, that they didn’t text their friend a slur, or that their partner doesn’t think they cheated by talking to the cashier, but that information doesn’t satiate in the long run. The reassurance might temporarily reduce anxiety, but the obsession comes up again, and so does the urge to ask again: Are you sure I’m not a pedophile? Are you sure I didn’t text you something bad, and you’re just not telling me? Are you sure you don’t consider that cheating?
OCD is called the doubting disorder for a reason. People with OCD tend to experience pathological, unfounded doubt that is not rooted in reality. They stare at a locked door, and OCD says “What if it’s not locked?” They hug their partner whom they love, and OCD says “What if you don’t actually love them?” Of course they doubt the information and further reassurance offered to them, too.
Why reassurance doesn’t really help you (and in fact, makes OCD worse)
OCD often involves a distrust of what a person knows to be true. Sometimes, though, true uncertainty exists, and the person with OCD doesn’t have an answer available in the present moment. In these cases, they may seek reassurance to find certainty that doesn’t exist. For example, someone with contamination OCD who rode the subway earlier in the day might repeatedly ask ChatGPT if they’re going to get sick from touching the subway pole and standing near other New Yorkers. The answer to that question is unknown. We can’t see germs. It’s possible that the person could get sick, and no amount of asking other people questions will resolve it.
There is no answer that will provide 100% certainty at that moment. Still, not having an answer is an answer that can be accepted. Instead, though, when there is true uncertainty, people with OCD commonly seek reassurance in search of information that isn’t presently available.
Reassurance might temporarily reduce anxiety but, like any compulsion, it makes OCD worse in the long run. Every time you seek reassurance, you are reinforcing to your brain that the obsession is meaningful, dangerous, and important to pay attention to when that is the exact opposite of what we want to be doing. Reassurance-seeking doesn’t quell doubt. It fuels it.
Let’s use a non-OCD example. If you were on a date with someone and they kept saying things like “I don’t lie, I’d never lie, I’m not a liar, I’m always honest, I don’t lie, I won’t lie to you,” it would likely make you suspicious. You might think, are you really not a liar when you’re having to repeatedly tell me that you’re not? The same principle applies to OCD. Seeking reassurance tells the brain that the doubt is meaningful when it’s not.
Why resisting the urge to seek reassurance is a much more helpful solution
Reassurance-seeking, especially when it offers temporary relief, also reinforces that the only way to feel better in the face of an obsession is by performing a compulsion. But the obsession will arise again, and the reassurance won’t have satiated so you’ll feel the urge to ask again to feel that relief. This temporary relief is one of the main reasons that people keep asking for reassurance even when they know it doesn’t help for long. They want to feel better in the short term and believe that compulsions are the only way to do so.
There is a much more helpful solution in the long run, though: resisting the urge to seek reassurance. It might feel uncomfortable temporarily, but the discomfort will eventually pass when you are not engaging with OCD in a way that adds lighter fluid to its fire. Feeling better—truly better in the long run—means resisting compulsions and working to trust in the information that you have available to you (even if the answer is that there is no answer).
The urge to seek reassurance might be strong, but it will pass when you aren’t engaging with it. This is called response prevention, which I like to think of as short-term discomfort for long-term gain. Thinking about the bigger picture is a helpful strategy.
When you feel the urge to seek reassurance, it may help to ask yourself:
- Is this compulsion going to get me to where I want to be in the long run? It won’t, which is motivation to resist it.
- Is this compulsion going to help me rewire my brain? It does the opposite: it strengthens pathways in the brain that keep OCD alive. Resisting compulsive rituals rewires the brain, which is motivation to practice response prevention.
Exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy can help you learn to stop reassurance seeking
Exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, the frontline treatment for OCD, entails gradually facing triggers head-on while simultaneously resisting compulsive rituals, which only make your symptoms worse. Response prevention includes resisting the urge to seek reassurance. This process can help you see that anxiety, like any other feeling, eventually passes, and you don’t have to seek reassurance or do anything else for that to happen.
The best way to practice ERP is to work with a therapist who is trained in ERP. If you’re struggling with reassurance-seeking or other OCD symptoms, NOCD is here to help. At NOCD, all of their therapists specialize in OCD and receive ERP-specific training from some of the top OCD experts and researchers in the world. They’ll use their expertise to design a treatment plan for the OCD themes you’re experiencing, help you address the compulsions you’re engaging in, and provide non-judgmental support every step of the way. Book a free call with the NOCD team to learn more and get started.
