Danielle Thornton (anxiety and OCD specialist) explains why reassurance seeking strengthens obsessive–compulsive disorder: people with OCD repeatedly seek certainty from others or behaviors (googling, asking, ruminating), which temporarily reduces anxiety but reinforces OCD and leads to more doubt and compulsions. She emphasizes that recovery requires tolerating uncertainty and imperfection and using exposure and response prevention (ERP) — specifically stopping compulsions like reassurance seeking so the OCD weakens over time. The transcript includes concrete examples across OCD themes (harm, relationship, contamination) and contrasts short-term relief from compulsions with long-term worsening.
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Welcome. My name is Danielle Thornton. I am an anxiety and OCD specialist and certified coach helping people recover long term from any OCD subset, including relationship ocd. So today I want to talk about reassurance seeking and why it is not a good thing if you have ocd. Essentially, reassurance seeking is when we're seeking certainty or answers from somebody outside of ourselves. And in general, this is not a bad thing. We're human beings, we sometimes look for advice or answers from somebody else when we're not sure about something. The difference is somebody without OCD might have a problem. They're not 100% sure what to do, so they might talk to a family member and a friend, and then they make a decision and then they move on. Right. Someone with OCD is going to seek reassurance over and over again. They're going to be googling. They're going to ruminate for hours and days and weeks. Right? So it's not that compulsions or the behaviors which we call compulsions in themselves are bad. It's just that somebody with OCD does them a lot more than somebody without ocd. And that is the problem. Reassurance seeking is essentially any time that we're seeking reassurance about an intrusive thought. And a lot of times when you're at the beginning of the recovery process, you don't even know what the thoughts are. You just feel the feelings. But there are thoughts underneath those feelings. And when we have the uncertainty in the thoughts followed by the uncomfortable feelings, a lot of people, before they get to the recovery stage are seeking a lot of reassurance. The reason why this is bad is because OCD wants certainty and perfection. When we engage with OCD and we try to give it that certainty, then we are engaging with it and it's happy and it stays active in our brains. This is a brain pattern that we're talking about here. The problem is OCD wants certainty, but it doubts everything. The minute you give it certainty, you might feel better in that short term, which most compulsions make us feel better in the short term, but 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, a day later, it's going to doubt something else. That's why engaging with OCD is not helpful and why seeking reassurance does not help. Sometimes we get the reassurance we want, sometimes we don't. But essentially we're looking for help outside of ourselves, which isn't going to be helpful. We have to find that strong sense of self within ourselves and make the decision within. So ocd wants certainty and perfection, and when we engage with it, you're always looking for certainty and perfection, but neither exist. This is part of the problem. Perfection doesn't exist. And the things that OCD latches onto, certainty also doesn't exist because we don't know what tomorrow holds. And a lot of the things that OCD wants to grab onto, there's always a small amount of risk. And really, in anything in life, inside the house, outside the house, and all things that we do. So those things don't exist, but OCD is always looking for them. So when we engage with that, then we keep the OCD cycle going. And so recovery actually requires that we get comfortable with uncertainty and imperfection and stop engaging with the ocd, which is why reassurance seeking is not a good thing and why it's so important to learn how you're seeking reassurance and to stop doing that. If you were to stop all of your OCD compulsions today, OCD would fade away over the next several days, and it would be gone. Okay. Now, easier said than done. Most of you cannot do that. That's not a realistic expectation. Okay. Which is why working with someone on recovery who can help you get there and sticking with the process is so important. So let's give you some examples of seeking reassurance, depending on the theme of OCD that you have. So let's say you struggle with harm OCD and you have an intrusive thought of. And most intrusive thoughts start with what if? Right. What if I end up doing X, Y and Z? Right. So if you're asking somebody, you know, did I do this? Do you think I'll do this? That's seeking reassurance. If you have relationship OCD and you're wondering if certain things are normal in a relationship or if your feelings are normal in a relationship, that's seeking certainty and essentially reassurance seeking, trying to find out if it's OCD or not. A lot of times OCD wants certainty about ocd, so we try to seek certainty about that, and there is no certainty there. So that is another example of reassurance seeking. It can look like anything. There's so many examples. I can never give you enough. Some people with contamination OCD struggle with certain types of food. So asking somebody if something looks done enough or if it looks clean enough is an example of reassurance seeking. So you will know by just kind of thinking a little bit about your type of OCD and what you typically seek reassurance about. And you know, it's OCD or an intrusive thought when you're either feeling anxiety or discomfort because over time that usually the anxiety turns into more of a discomfort. And even through the recovery process, sometimes you don't even feel discomfort, but something's bothering you, and then it's followed by compulsions. So knowing your compulsions is key because your brain is very easily going to talk you into saying, well, I really need to know this, or I just want to know, or this is important to know. Right? All the excuses that OCD gives about reassurance. So remember, if you've heard me talk about the OCD cycle before, and I'll put it up here again.
When we do the compulsion, we strengthen the OCD because we're engaging with it. And when we don't do the compulsion, we're standing up to OCD and not giving it our attention and not giving it what it wants, and. And it weakens it. So the more you're practicing exposure and response prevention, the response prevention is not doing the compulsions and in this case, not seeking reassurance. What you're going to do is you're going to feel a discomfort in the short term because you're not doing the compulsion or the coping mechanism that you're used to doing. But the discomfort will fade away long term versus when we do compulsions, we're trying not to feel the discomfort in that short term, and it usually works. But long term, we feel a lot more discomfort.
The compulsions. And the OCD doesn't work to get rid of the discomfort. Essentially, it's a mask, it's a game. It doesn't work. You actually feel worse by doing compulsions than you do by choosing not to experiencing that discomfort in the short term, but in the long term, it goes away and you don't have to deal with it anymore. Okay? So when you find yourself seeking reassurance, I want you to remind yourself, this is a compulsion. It doesn't help me. I can be uncomfortable in the short term and not know I can handle this. And I'm not going to give it attention. And this is ERP you're exposing yourself to the uncertainty. You're exposing yourself to the uncomfortable feelings in the short term, and then the response prevention is no longer engaging with it and it will fade away. ERP works every single time. As long as you're practicing exposure. With response prevention, this is the piece that people don't do. They practice exposure, but they're still doing compulsions. And you can't do them separately. They have to both come together. Okay, so a tip for you. If you're posting in groups and you're looking for reassurance, don't do it. Don't give each other reassurance. Okay? If you're wanting to know some tips on recovery, ask for recovery tips. Ask what you can do to make it better, but not for certainty or reassurance about your particular fear. That's just engaging with the fear and it'll make it worse. Okay, so as always, I always suggest getting ERP help for your ocd. Learn about ocd, learn about the recovery tools and you're going to get better. Don't try to do it by yourself, or by all means do it by yourself, but also get help. You are going to make a little bit of progress on your own, but you don't know what you don't know. So working with somebody who can guide you and help you through that process is so important. I have done it myself and I do it with people every single day. I have a few options for you, some very cost effective, some working with me one on one. I make these options available to everybody. So please check out the link in the description if you need additional assistance with recovery. It is possible. I've done it and you can do it too. We'll talk to you next time.
