Five Myths About Anxiety Treatment in Maryland: Myth #4 (reassurance)
Anxiety’s “Greatest” hits—From a Maryland Anxiety treatment SPecialist
How do we best support an anxious egg/person/friend/loved one? Ok, not an egg. Read on for guidance from a Maryland anxiety therapist.
Not great as in good, wonderful, yay! Greatest as in among the most frequently played tunes. And this myth has been a chart topper for years and years. This one goes out to not only all the folks with anxiety out there, but for all the people that love and support them too. This one’s for all y’all. If you’ve missed Myths 1-3, check those out in earlier posts.
Myth 4: Constant, unconditional reassurance is the best way to help someone (or yourself) with anxiety.
Back in Myth #2, we debunked the myth that avoidance is a wise way to deal with anxiety. This myth has a little bit of the same rhythm, different lyrics. The motivation to avoid or to seek reassurance is understandable. Anxiety can feel horrible and we want to stop feeling horrible (or help someone we care about to stop feeling horrible).
Anxiety tries to demand certainty
You know that old saw about how the only certainties in life are death and taxes? Anxiety hasn’t gotten that memo. Anxiety still thinks it has a shot at this so will try to demand certainty over and over and over again, often coming in the form of seeking continuous reassurance (sometimes from people, sometimes from information or data). When we are anxious we may get an answer to something but need to ask 5 more people (and then still maybe secretly feel like we haven’t gotten all the information). If we are anxious, we might be told that the likelihood of a negative outcome is low in a situation, but we’re likely to grip on to the idea that it could still be possible and spin up in worry about it, thinking, “If it can happen to someone then it’s probably going to happen to me”. Anxiety doesn’t want to step down until there is a guaranteed 0.0000% chance of the bad thing happening, so it keeps seeking reassurance and we keep believing the myth that if we can just get the right reassurance or information, then we can finally settle down and relax. Sometimes, when we get frustrated with the lack of certainty, we’ll jump into Myth #2, avoidance.
for all you loved ones out there
If the anxious person in your life isn’t you, but is your kid or your partner or your friend or some other loved one, you might notice that you’ve done a whole lot of reassuring of them over time, out of care and not wanting them to suffer with the discomfort of anxiety. Nobody wants to see a loved one suffer and will usually think nothing of doing a small thing, like offering repeated reassurance, to help them. Unfortunately, this doesn’t actually solve the problem. It can help in the moment, but anxiety is never satisfied and will always return for more reassurance because there is no certainty. It’s a fine line to walk about wanting to be actively supportive of someone you care about who is anxious but not get caught in the repeated reassurance trap. A seasoned professional can help provide some guidance, if you are stuck.
tolerating the intolerable—uncertainty
Learning how to tolerate uncertainty is the exit door from the endless, ineffective rounds of repeated reassurance seeking. Very few people like this idea. It means having to learn to sit with and manage discomfort when all we really want is to end the discomfort. But it is an essential part of treatment for anxiety disorders and can make a big difference in reclaiming some of your time and energy in your life. When we were looking at the issue of avoidance in Myth #2, I was pointing out that it’s not necessary or helpful to go with a sink or swim model. The same applies here in learning how to tolerate uncertainty. Effective anxiety therapy will help you work on this step-by-step, with appropriate levels of support along the way. Many of us learn best when we work at our “edge”—where there is definitely some challenge but we are not completely overwhelmed by it. The edge is the place where if you push any further, it’s way too much; but if you back off, it’s not really all that challenging. We’re going to explore this idea more in a future post about yoga in the Moving Into Healing blog series, so stay tuned if you want to hear more about working at our edge.
Anxiety therapy maryland
We are almost at the end. Come on back for the final post in this Five Myths About Anxiety series. In the meantime, if you are interested in how I work with people in College Park, and online throughout Maryland, looking to reduce or manage their anxiety, you can read more about that on my anxiety treatment Maryland page.
