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Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight
So here's my experience with that. My therapist seems to be a realist. He doesn't offer false reassurance. It's something that bothered me for a long time, but that I've come to accept and even respect. In part because people in my past (like my parents) gave false platitudes, like "everything will be OK" or "I'm sure it will be fine" (including if I was getting a medical test), and I learned that was ultimately not helpful to me, as someone with anxiety, because how did they *know* that?
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I would say such reassurances are meant to convey a sense of normalcy and to help ground you. That the world didn't suddenly turn upside down, that you can keep going with your sense of "things are as usual, even if there are difficulties ahead of me". It's just returning back to a very grounded sense of life. I don't know if I'm explaining this well but the idea is that especially after experiencing trauma, it can be easy to lose this groundedness. (Or maybe if you are an anxious person in general but maybe that comes from early trauma too) And then you may need more reassurances like that.
I don't know if thread OP needs this kind of reassurance.
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So this may be a case where she doesn't want to say "everything will be OK" because she doesn't know that will be the case. So she doesn't want to mislead you or lie to you or give you empty platitudes. This is how my T has been with the pandemic, for example.
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With the pandemic, me saying that wouldn't have been an empty platitude. I don't know if I can explain it well right now but it's like what I said above. And I can support that factually too in this case, like I'm aware of how other pandemic situations played out in the past and I like to keep up with advancements in medicine etc. So I would be willing to try and give some reasoning for why it's not likely that it will be the end of the world, a true disaster, etc.
I'm trying to do the same for the Ukraine situation but for me personally it's a bit harder there. It's still possible to keep grounded, I do try to focus on the facts and that sense of normalcy and groundedness, it's just that I have access to fewer solid facts and experience but I'm trying to make do with what I have access to.
I think the goal is really just that anyway, keep grounded, not get overloaded or overwhelmed by anxiety, fear, panic.... I mean, obviously even if it's a 99% chance that everything will be fine, the 1% that cannot be guaranteed is still there but the point is that right here and now we are fine and we can just try and keep a level head at all times, and manage our feelings. Trusting in the 99%, and steeling ourselves for the case of the 1% and not even focusing on this 1% while it's not needed in the present, in the here and now.
That's how I approach this, and I can just hope it helps some people.
Something else.
Can I ask you, what validation of your fear looks like for you? (Before talking about how to deal with it, like in your examples)