What's the difference between unhelpful reassurance-seeking and practical research?

Compulsive reassurance-seeking is a safety behaviour designed to reduce distress. This coping strategy has a variety of emotional motives. It may be used to gain a sense of control over doubts, a sense of certainty about what the future holds, or to assuage personal insecurities.

Regardless of the emotional impetus, all forms of reassurance-seeking focus on obtaining information that is comforting. This can take a variety of forms, such as surveying others’ perspectives, searching the internet for answers, or seeking professional advice. Even ruminating may be a form of auto-reassuring-seeking (i.e., mining one’s memory or judgment for reassuring answers).

In moderation, information gathering is useful, providing a sense of know-how and confidence to solve a matter of concern. But when this otherwise practical strategy goes too far, it devolves into a self-reinforcing, marginally informative, emotional habit with negative long-term consequences.

Superficially, the goal of compulsive reassurance-seeking is to gain knowledge and clarity. However in reality, the behaviour persists long after all relevant and useful learning has been exhausted. At this stage, the more information one seeks, the muddier the picture becomes, leaving one feeling hopeless, stuck, and frustrated.

Unfortunately, if you struggle with a compulsive reassurance-seeking habit, knowing where to draw the line isn’t easy. Let’s help you distinguish between useful information-gathering and compulsive reassurance-seeking by describing five aspects of the compulsive variety.

1. The goal of compulsive reassurance-seeking is to soothe distressing urges.

The hallmark of compulsive reassurance-seeking is that it has an acute emotional undercurrent. Although the behaviour focuses on obtaining information—for instance, by searching the internet for a medical explanation of a symptom—the primary goal is to reduce acute anxiety caused by uncertainty or doubt. The more emotional intensity and urgency one feels, the more likely their information-gathering is really about reassurance.

2. Compulsive reassurance-seeking is repetitive.

Constructive information-gathering is a relatively efficient process. It starts with clear research objectives and ends when those objectives are met. As soon as the information is found, the search is terminated, and the inquirer moves on.

In contrast, reassurance-seeking often involves reviewing information that one has already obtained. Since the purpose is to soothe, not to inform, the individual may crave the same comforting insight repeatedly. Every time a detail unlocks a sense of relief, it compels the person to seek it again. The result is a circular quest for comforting yet redundant information.

3. Compulsive reassurance-seeking is exceedingly granular.

Whereas practical information gathering focuses on gist, compulsive reassurance-seeking focuses on minor details that add marginal value to the overall picture. The goal is to quell the compulsive nerve with an ever more precise and comprehensive answer. What starts as a straightforward question, such as Is the door locked, may escalate into a barrage of follow-up queries with granular variations, such as Is it locked now? What position was the latch in? Did you test it, et cetera? These queries do not meaningfully update the person’s knowledge. They merely prolong the questioning until a satisfying threshold of reassurance is reached.

4. Compulsive reassurance-seeking tangles with the unknowable and unpredictable.

All forms of information-gathering start with a lack of knowledge. After all, the reason we seek information is to find something out that we do not currently know. But what if satisfying answers do not exist?

Consider, for instance, that one wishes to know that nothing bad will happen in the future due to actions taken today. Because this is impossible to predict, it signals that it is time to terminate the search. However, in compulsive reassurance-seeking, the absence of a satisfying answer is taken as a sign to push the inquiry even further.

The individual may believe “I need to understand detail X or factor Y better to minimize this uncertainty and put this concern aside”. So, they persist in the search for answers to unknowable things.

5. Compulsive reassurance-seeking overvalues second-degree information.

The search for unknowable things often focuses on approximations of the information one craves. I call these second-degree indicators because they provide a loosely connected indication of something one wishes to know without providing the actual answer.

For instance, when one cannot predict what will happen in the future, their focus turns to estimates and conjectures. Perhaps they ask a confidant for their opinion. Or maybe they browse internet chat forums to read about similar experiences and how it worked out for others.

They may also gather objective information on a range of neighboring topics. The goal is to gain a comforting estimation of the picture when concrete factual answers are unavailable.

Summary

Compulsive reassurance-seeking is an emotional habit activated by an acute urge to find something out. It manifests as a redundant and granular set of queries focusing on the same basic insight with minor variations. Often, the thing one wishes to know is not truly knowable. This forces them to focus on approximate answers with marginal value, such as others’ opinions, experiences, or loosely related facts.

In the short term, reassurance-seeking may provide a sense of relief. But with time, tolerance builds, and the relief becomes increasingly elusive. This drives individuals to ramp up their search to an exhaustive degree and only muddies the picture more, resulting in a self-reinforcing and distressing cycle.

What can you do instead?

1. Build mindful awareness of your underlying motivations and emotional state. The next time you find yourself seeking answers, take a moment to observe your inner experience. Is your anxiety surging? Do you feel impatient? Is there a part of you that doesn’t even care if you resolve your concern as long as you can hear something soothing right now? Building awareness is the first step in creating change.

2. Limit your queries to knowable, factual, and objective information. Start by taking a moment to consider the type of question you are asking. Have you asked this question before, maybe even many times? Are you focusing on minor details or looking for loosely connected indicators of things you can’t really know? Limiting your search to concrete and direct facts you haven’t collected before will spare you from cycling through frustrating loops.

3. Focus on seeking support and not reassurance. Support-seeking emphasizes your emotional state, not the content of your questions. So instead of asking a confident whether your nagging symptom is cancer, tell them you are anxious and ask them to hug you or join you in some other engrossing activity. You may be surprised how quickly urges subside when you stop giving in to them and focus your efforts elsewhere.

Some readers will find these suggestions sufficient to make meaningful adjustments to their reassurance-seeking behaviour. Many others will find it too difficult to manage alone. That’s OK. It is hard to change emotional habits without support.

If you find yourself struggling with compulsive reassurance-seeking, seek out the support of a qualified mental health professional.

A version of this post originally appeared on Dr. Riven’s Psychology Today blog, Demystifying OCD, with the title “Understanding and Managing Compulsive-Reassurance Seeking“.