 Welcome to the Anxious Morning, where each weekday morning we take a look at ideas, concepts, and lessons designed to help you understand and overcome your anxiety. For more information, visit us at theanxiousmorning.com. Yesterday, we looked at how we confused being soothed with being saved. If you have not read yesterday's edition of The Anxious Morning, go check it out then come on back for today's, we'll keep your seat warm for you. If we are not going to be saved because we don't need saving, where does this leave us? If we're asking for soothing, is that bad? What's so wrong about wanting to have someone soothe us when we are afraid? Well, at face value, nothing is wrong with that. That's a bit of a basic human need. We all need and want someone to stroke us and tell us that everything is okay now and then. That's not a crime, nor is needing that a failure of some kind. Feelings and life are sometimes hard. We all deserve a little help at times. But in the case of somebody struggling with forms of disordered anxiety, where the fear of fear have gone off the rails, the continuous demand for soothing is just like anything else in life. Too much can be too much. When we demand to be soothed, whenever we experience anxiety, we trample all over the important concept that holds the key to recovery. Bringing our safe people to comfort and soothe us as standard procedure never teaches us the central lesson of recovery, that we are capable of being okay even when we are afraid or anxious. In fact, it does the opposite. If you see being anxious as a disaster from which you need to be rescued, then being carried out of the flames every time teaches you that your assessment is correct. Demanding the rescue by way of soothing reinforces the mistaken belief that discomfort and danger are the same things. This mistake in cognition is what drives the disordered state. Rewarding the mistake keeps us stuck. So in this case, soothing crosses the line from useful to borderline harmful. Think about it. In all the time that you've been relying on your safe people to save or soothe you, what have you learned about your own strength or ability to move through anxiety or discomfort? If you insist that you must be saved, what does this say about your belief in your own strength and capabilities? Digging your heels in and insisting that your partner, sibling, friend, or anyone else must be close by just in case is based on a premise that stands 180 degrees in opposition to the premise that gets you out of this jam. We recover by learning experientially that we are capable of handling the things we are sure that we cannot handle. This means that we learn to stand on our own two feet rather than jumping into the arms of a rescuer at the first sign of trouble. In the process of recovery, we leave habitual and automatic soothing behind in favor of challenging experience that show us that we ourselves are strong and able to deal with all aspects of our humanness. So soothing as a default strategy isn't such a great idea if you're hoping to enact change and move forward in recovery. This is not to say that you are never allowed to lean on another human ever again. Of course you are. Because with anything else in recovery, we are learning to bring things back into a normal healthy position in our lives, the use of soothing included. But what about self soothing? Where does that fit in? Good question, Drew. Let's talk about that tomorrow. If you're enjoying the anxious morning and you'd like to get a copy of the podcast delivered into your email inbox every morning, visit the anxious morning dot email and subscribe to the newsletter. If you're listening on Apple or iTunes, take a second and leave a five star rating. Maybe write a small review. It really helps me out. And finally, if you find my work useful and you'd like to help keep it free of advertising and sponsorships, you can see all the ways to support the work at the anxious truth dot com slash support. Thanks so much.