I definitely find it to be helpful in the shorter term and, to some extent, in the longer term. My marriage counselor (MC) tends to provide reassurance (that he's still there, that he's not angry at me, that he won't reject or abandon me, etc.), which I find to be helpful and comforting. But then he'll say he needs to stop reassuring me, because then I just get caught up in that cycle where I'm looking outside for reassurance. (Which I admit is easy to do...) What I need to do is to learn to reassure myself. Which is much easier to say than to do. Yet he still tends to end up reassuring me if I'm looking for it... I do think his reassurance is helping me become more secure over time, both with him and with others (like H).

T2 has done something helpful at the end of the past two sessions, after I told him a few weeks ago that I worried I'd shared too much and he wouldn't want to work with me anymore. The last two sessions, he's ended by saying something like, "Nothing you've told me during this session has made me not want to work with you. Unless I'm hit by a bus or stuck under something heavy in the basement, I'll be here for our appointment next week." I think of that as "preemptive reassurance," since my fears of rejection/abandonment don't tend to pop up until after the appointment. The past couple weeks, I've just tried to replay what he said at the end of the session to remind myself, and it seems to be working.