I think that reassurance does work when we’re little. If we have parents who give us a sense of safety and let us know that we’re not alone in trying to figure stuff out, we might internalize the ability to reassure ourselves and to find (some of) the reassurance we need just from being in proximity to our attachment people. If we don’t have that capacity, we try to get other people to tell us we’re safe in a million different ways that are usually unsuccessful-to-disastrous. It’s like we’re missing the pockets that were meant to hold reassurance. It’s really a [bummer] actually. It’s my ongoing experience that learning to reassure oneself is a slow, painstaking project.