How to Ask for (and Give) Good Reassurance

I stumbled on this reflection from my clinical internship and wanted to share it again. Reassurance is hard for me, and maybe for you too.

In session, Max encourages our client to stop asking for reassurance, and I feel my body quietly tense in response. It is safe for Max and I to disagree; in fact, it has been a valuable resource in our relationship as scholars and activists for years and it is now a valuable tool in our therapy practice. I often hear Max telling clients that reassurance only feeds anxiety. It does not comfort.

This provokes curiosity and consternation in me because I, a very anxious person, think of myself as using reassurance frequently and effectively, including in my relationship with her. Moreover, when I ask her for reassurance in the way I do, she supplies it without discouragement of the practice (and I wonder if she does so without noticing that is what I am asking for). Our disagreement in session allows us to explore our thoughts about reassurance and satisfaction with each other and the client, leading to a session that seems satisfying all around. We continue our productive disagreement into the charting room, and at the end she says “good. Now go write a Facebook post.”

And so, without further ado, some dialectically derived tips on getting and giving reassurance that actually reassures:Generic reassurance is almost never comforting.

Often, reassurance takes the form of something like “no, you’re great!!!” and this does nothing, I think because it does not answer the question. Likewise, reassurance does not help when it is specific but misses the point. If I go to my partner in a panic saying, “I don’t know if I can get through grad school,” my partner might say, “of course you can!” or “that’s okay, I’ll love you even if you drop out” or “don’t say that, you’re so smart.” These are extremely different types of reassurance–you can do this, I’ll still love you, you’re smart. And any of these COULD be the reassurance I needed. Or none of them. Maybe the reassurance I need is actually something like, “this is extremely difficult and it’s reasonable to feel scared about it.” Maybe it’s “yeah this system is exhaustingly transphobic but I’m going to be here the whole time and we’ll find a strategy together.” Maybe it’s “you don’t HAVE to do this.” The right reassurance is the reassurance that answers the question.

1. What’s the question?

Yeah. That’s the hard part. That’s where reassurance goes off the rails, feels empty or even anxiety-producing. Because, for instance, if I need to hear that my fears are reasonable and someone says “no, you’re so smart!” my anxiety brain might go “wait should I also be worried that I’m not smart enough oh god am I not smart enough why did no one tell me I might not be smart enough????”

Anxiety points to values. We feel anxious about things that are important to us. Reassurance, in its relationship with anxiety, asks us to reach out to an important other to reaffirm a value that is so important it feels like a wound. But the same situation could provoke anxiety around many different values, and it may not be immediately obvious what is happening (especially for the hapless friend or partner who seeks to reassure).

When anxiety requests connection and affirmation in the form of reassurance, one option is to say yes, I’d love to get that for you. But first, may I take some measurements? I want it to fit perfectly.

What is underneath the anxiety? What is the fear present?

For a while, any time I met a new person socially, no matter how well it goes, my anxiety would inform me that TRAGICALLY that person thought I am a horrific racist and UNFORTUNATELY they were correct. This anxiety points to two important values for me: antiracism, and values-centered relationships. The way for my anxious brain to hurt me, then, was to respond to a positive social interaction with an imagined scenario in which I was reviled for failing at a value that is important to me. For me, in this scenario, the questions were, “what evidence did I receive about how these new people responded to me?” and “did I enact racism in that encounter?”

2. Who can answer this question?

Okay maybe THIS is the hard part. Because if we already have anxiety, we are likely to turn to the people we trust the most with our vulnerabilities, and those people may or may not be positioned to reassure us. If my friend came to me with anxieties about being good at speaking Greek and I assured them that actually they are amazing at Greek, my reassurance would be kind but useless because I speak zero Greek. I cannot render a useful reassurance on this point. I can offer things like “haven’t you maintained excellent grades in Greek classes?” or “I also feel like a complete pudding in language courses” or “why don’t we do some flash cards?” but I cannot usefully say “no, you’re great at it” because what do I know?

Sometimes the person who can give the right reassurance cannot be asked. In the example I gave earlier, for instance, it would actually not be at all appropriate for me to call up every new person I meet and say “hey just checking in, how racist did I seem this morning?” Because, among other things, if I met someone and their impression of me was that I was horrifically racist, and they chose not to say anything about it, that was likely a calculation about their safety, and chasing them down would not actually be in service to my values about antiracism or values-centered relationships. In such cases, some helpful options are to provide internal appraisal and self-reassurance. “Is there any reason to think that I enacted racism in that encounter? There are no places where the room went cold, where the wind changed, where they pulled away or seemed uncomfortable… and in fact, the person I just met asked if they could hug me, which is not a way people respond to horrific scary racists they hate and revile, so actually that is probably the reassurance right there, yeah?” and to get second-order affirmation about the experience of anxiety with a friend who understands anxiety, like “yep my brain does that too and it is the WORST but you handled it super well.”

Sometimes it can even be reassuring to say that you’re not really a useful reassurance-giver on the subject but you’re there for the person. “I don’t know anything about Greek but I see you working really hard and I believe in you” might be more comforting than “you’re awesome at Greek, buck up champ!”

A big factor in who can answer the question is credibility, and that includes both specific authority on the subject (e.g. “you’re a great mom!” from a mom versus a non-parent) and trustworthiness. I encouraged the client yesterday to seek reassurance from the friend who is least likely to say something to other people “just to be nice” and when friends accuse me of reassuring them “just to be nice” I challenge them to think of a time they’ve seen me say something nice to anyone that I did not mean.

2.5. What kind of answer do you want?

Gosh this part is pretty tough too. One way that reassurance fails is when people ask questions opposite the ones they really want to ask. Often people ask for appraisal when they want reassurance, and then do not trust friends’ appraisals because they assume friends are simply being reassuring. Do you want someone to cosign a decision you are afraid to make? Or do you want an honest appraisal? Or do you want someone to cosign UNLESS there is a massive red flag?

The specific language you use will be specific to your own context and relationships but here’s language that I would use in my own life:

• “I know you’ve been really stressed but my anxiety is telling me you’re mad at me. Can you remind me that you love me?”
• “I’m feeling so overwhelmed and useless right now. Could you just like… cuddle me and give me compliments?”
• “Can I check in about the negative feedback our department got recently? I’m feeling a little unclear about how big a problem this is and what specifically should change.”
• “I feel like a complete failure at everything. Is grad school just this hard? Or am I doing it badly?”
• “I am about to send out this article and I don’t really have time for a major rewrite but could you glance over it and tell me if anything in it would like, ruin my career?” (I use this often)

3. Can I receive reassurance?

Okay no THIS is the hard part. For real this time. Sometimes the answer to “who can answer this question” is nobody, not because no one has the authority or generally tells the truth, but because the asker generally dismisses positive feedback. If you struggle with compliments and reject positive feedback generally, it may be very difficult to find satisfying reassurance.

I conceptualize this as tightly related to the concept of foreboding joy. Joy is a vulnerable feeling, and a way to discharge the vulnerability of joy is to ruin it, either through literal self-sabotage or by rehearsing disappointment in the face of joy. Like, for instance, by responding to a positive interaction with whole-body anxiety that Tragically you are hated and reviled and immoral. For instance.

To receive effective reassurance, you may need to practice receiving in general. I have a mindfulness practice based on something my rabbi told me about the wonder of createdness, which is extremely easy and lovely to do even if you don’t have this problem, and it goes like this:

When you notice a thing that you like, ever throughout your day, pause in what you are doing for 3-5 seconds and inhabit the sensation of enjoying the thing. For me, this is often birds and flowers I notice as I walk around my neighborhood. I enjoy birds and flowers. But you might enjoy cars or clouds or the noises of children or the scent of cooking or any number of wonderful things. As you get into the habit of noticing and enjoying, start to linger a little bit longer. Maintain the feeling of enjoying until you become bored of it. A flower or bird or smell or a nice car will not captivate you forever. Spend a few minutes occupying an enjoyed thing every now and then. As you build tolerance, try inhabiting enjoyment of experiences with other people. Then try inhabiting enjoyment of yourself, not as a conduit of experiences or sensations but as a being, as if encountering yourself from the outside and deciding that you would like to be friends.

The last step took me about a year of this practice. So. It’s a journey.

This is what I know about getting reassurance so far.

• Notice the question underlying the desire for reassurance.
• Find the person who can answer that question (in terms of authority, trust, and appropriateness).
• Ask for that thing, specifically.
• Receive.

How to give good reassurance

This is a little bit harder because you have less access to the crucial information. But you can get it by asking yourself or your friend good questions.

• Notice your friend’s values. Give spontaneous affirmations or solicited reassurance that connects with their values. It is so lovely to hear that you are showing up in the world in alignment with your core values.
• If you don’t know what value is on the table when someone asks for reassurance (and you can/want to), explore their anxiety to get clearer about what would help most.
• Name when your positionality compromises your reassurance but don’t stress about it. It’s not a failing.
• Don’t say stuff just to be nice. Be able to point to that when someone worries that you’re just saying something to be nice. If you feel tempted to say something you don’t feel just to be nice, don’t! Instead, say the thing that’s both kind and true.

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