Reassurance seeking is one of the most common compulsions in OCD, and one of the most easily missed. It rarely looks like a symptom. It looks like asking a reasonable question, talking something through, or checking a fact. That is exactly why it is so effective at keeping OCD going.
What reassurance seeking looks like
Reassurance seeking is any attempt to get someone, or something, to confirm that everything is alright. It can include:
- Asking a partner, friend or family member whether something is okay, often the same question in slightly different ways
- Confessing thoughts or small mistakes so that someone else can tell you it's fine
- Searching online for symptoms, stories, statistics or explanations
- Asking a doctor, or a therapist, for confirmation that you are not ill, not dangerous, or not a bad person
- Reassuring yourself: going over the arguments for why the fear can't be true
That last one is easy to overlook. Self-reassurance is a form of reassurance seeking that happens entirely in your head, and it works in exactly the same way. I write more about these hidden compulsions in Pure O: when compulsions aren't visible.
Why it feels so necessary
OCD produces doubt that feels urgent and intolerable: What if I left the door unlocked? What if I hurt someone? What if I don't really love them? Reassurance offers what OCD seems to demand, which is certainty. When someone you trust says "it's fine", the anxiety drops. In the moment, it works.
Why it keeps OCD going
The relief doesn't last, and it comes at a cost.
The doubt comes back. Reassurance answers today's version of the question, but OCD simply produces a new one. But what if they only said that to make me feel better? What if they didn't understand what I meant?
The threshold rises. Over time, more reassurance is needed to get the same relief. One answer used to be enough; now it takes three, or it has to be phrased exactly right.
It confirms the threat. Each time you seek reassurance, you teach yourself that the thought was dangerous enough to need checking, and that you couldn't have coped with the uncertainty on your own.
Other people get drawn in. Partners and family members often end up answering the same questions many times a day, adjusting routines, or avoiding certain topics. They do it out of love, but it can quietly become part of the OCD, and it can put real strain on relationships.
Why it is hard to change alone
Knowing that reassurance backfires doesn't make it easy to stop. It tends to hide in ordinary-looking conversations, in a quick search, or in your own head, so much of it goes unnoticed. Stopping abruptly can feel unbearable, and the people closest to you are often unsure how to respond: refusing to answer feels unkind, while answering seems to make things worse.
In therapy, we identify all the forms reassurance takes for you, reduce it gradually at a pace that is workable, and, where it helps, involve the people closest to you so they can support you without feeding the cycle. This is part of exposure and response prevention, and underneath it is learning to tolerate not knowing, which I write about in OCD and intolerance of uncertainty.
Reassurance seeking is one of the most treatable parts of OCD, and reducing it often brings relief faster than people expect.
In my practice
I am careful in therapy not to become another source of reassurance. If every session ended with me telling you that you're a good person, or that your relationship is fine, you might feel better for an evening, but the OCD would have been fed rather than treated. That doesn't mean being cold. It means being clear about what actually helps, and supporting you while you do it.
Reassurance seeking is a feature of every form of OCD, and it is especially prominent in relationship OCD and harm OCD. For more on how I treat OCD, see my OCD therapy page.
If any of this sounds familiar, you may find it useful to talk it through. I offer an initial assessment, online or in person in Queen's Park, and can tell you honestly whether I think treatment with me is the right fit.
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BABCP-accredited CBT therapist and EMDR Europe accredited practitioner, in clinical practice since 2015. Guy works with adults online and in Queen's Park, North West London, with a particular focus on OCD, anxiety and trauma. More about Guy