 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 the anxious morning.com. I have a confession to make I'm growing tired of the word reassurance. I hear it probably 100 times every day in our community You're seeking reassurance. This is just your need for reassurance Reassurance seeking will keep you stuck Now these are not inherently bad or wrong statements But I think we're collectively suffering from that disease where we use a word without necessarily always understanding what it means So let's clear this up Assurance is not a bad thing It can be productive especially for someone new to the recovery process and new to disordered anxiety Access to accurate information and clarity about what's going on is critical Knowing that anxiety can feel like a heart attack or that fearing a psychotic break doesn't make one possible is a needed step early on Getting assurance is learning Providing assurance is educating Technically in our community, we'd probably call it psychoeducation and it's usually a major part of therapy at the start of the process Things start to veer into the wrong lane when assurance seeking becomes repetitive and automatic There's a reason why we call it reassurance When you've been told 50 times that your anxiety symptoms are not dangerous and you want to be told 50 more That falls into the realm of non productive reassurance seeking When you've learned that anxiety symptoms are normal and varied But you want to continually talk about one symptom that you find most frightening That can become unproductive reassurance seeking This does not help us and can actually impede our progress and even feed the disorder So when people are calling each other out for seeking reassurance, sometimes it's not wrong However context matters We have to be mindful of the bad habit of immediately yelling reassurance in every situation and in response to every question Not every question or comment is reassurance seeking Who is asking the question? What stage of recovery are they at? How much exposure have they had to the concepts and principles of recovery? Has anyone tried to teach them yet? What is their particular situation? You see how many questions there are here? This is the one reason that social media is not therapy and can never be We don't know context. We don't actually know each other We can become familiar with each other through repeated interaction, but that still isn't enough Sometimes we are seeking excessive reassurance and having that pointed out is helpful But not always this can be a tricky balance to strike at times Let's at least start with keeping an eye on the difference between assurance and reassurance If we can stay grounded in these concepts We minimize the risk of misappropriating and misapplying a key idea in recovery when talking to ourselves and to others 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