Are therapists not allowed to offer reassurance?

This whole Ukraine situation has me on edge yet when I ask my therapist if its the end of the world she won't give me a yes or no answer. She basically just says something along the lines of "live life to your fullest." How hard is it to offer a bit of reassurance to your clients? Is she maybe not allowed to do that? I know other therapists have kinda B'S around it when I have asked for reassurance for things.

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?

I've come to learn that validation of my fear is more helpful to me. Or the other person admitting that they don't know how things will turn out, but that they trust I can get through it if things are difficult. (I mean, I guess in the possibility of nuclear war, if that's what you're thinking, that isn't particularly helpful).

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.

However, all that being said, I completely get that you want--and need--some reassurance. I would try talking to her about what that would look like for you. Maybe it's something like her saying "I don't know if it's the end of the world. So how can you deal with the possibility that it is?" Or "What are things you can do to help you deal with that uncertainty?" As in, validating and not minimizing your fears, while talking about ways to deal with them. I think much of fear is the lack of control, so if there's even some little thing you could do--I don't know, donate a small amount of money (even $5) to support Ukrainian refugees, say? So you can feel you're doing something. Or to figure out some other way that you can feel more in control. Like, I don't know, making a plan if you would have to evacuate, say?

But I'd talk to her about what you find to be not helpful vs. potentially helpful (or even saying you don't know what will help, just that what she's saying doesn't help!).

Your T can't answer that question, not honestly at least with a yes or no. How could she? She can't forsee the future. Life is not black and white. Much of it is between.

I’ve had a similar conversation about the situation in Ukraine with my T.
His response was as follows: ‘you’re right there are so many uncertainties, nobody knows what is going to happen and that in itself can be frightening. I don’t want to sit here and give you false reassurance that everything is going to be ok and you’ve got nothing to worry about. That wouldn’t be fair as I have no idea what the future holds and overall that reassurance won’t be enough to counteract everything else that you are hearing on the news anyway. But what I can do is tell you that what you’re feeling is completely understandable, worry and fear when something like this is happening are emotions that lots of people will be experiencing and we can talk through them and explore them together. I know this response falls short because you want reassurance from me and perhaps guarantees about being safe, so I’m sorry I can’t give you what you need but it wouldn’t be fair for me to tell you something that I have absolutely no idea is going to be correct or not.’

In addition to the excellent points above about not being able to offer reassurance because it would be false reassurance, many Ts won't offer reassurance because of the belief that it offers short-term relief but actually reinforces anxiety in the long run. The theory as I understand it is that anxiety has a cycle. If left alone, it will rise and then peak and subside. Any attempts to avoid the anxiety (like reassurance-seeking) interrupt that cycle instead of allowing it to peak naturally and subside. And there is relief in that, but the theory is that it reinforces the notion that you were right to be anxious in the first place by sending the message that whatever you were anxious about is indeed dangerous and that action must be taken to avoid it. And so, by taking action to avoid your anxiety, you inadvertently strengthen/reinforce it. I don't know if there is solid research to support this notion, but I think it's a theory that a lot of therapists subscribe to.

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.

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)

This is some awesome in-depth empathy about the perspective of some people asking for reassurance. This therapist really seems to make all effort to empathise. I personally would very much appreciate that.

I think I personally would just be annoyed though if I was told about the very end "I have absolutely no idea is going to be correct or not". I mean, it feels like, still a lack of groundedness there. Sure, you can't literally predict the future, but you can have a sense of probabilities and it does matter if something has a probability of 99% or 50% or 0.00001% to happen. So to me what wouldn't be helpful at all is being told that it's a 50/50 (i.e. "absolutely no idea") when it's maybe just a 99/1.

Also I would be annoyed being prompted to explore fear and worry. I don't even know what that is supposed to look like, explore such things.... I do always take the focus off such things as soon as I recognised them and placed them like "oh ok that's just a random feeling next to the real situation, let me move on" or "oh ok I have this feeling because of my past making me feel like things could suddenly turn upside down, ok let me move on". So like I move on instantly.

And so I wanted to say that I don't believe that this theory applies universally, for everyone in every situation. When some feelings work like this then sure? But when they don't work like this then no?

Some people don't even *experience* anxiety (or other emotions) as *waves* like, "it will rise and then peak and subside". So obviously it's worth a look at revising the theory in such cases.

Just my input.

Also! What's wrong with moving on, which I suppose you termed as avoidance? (Let me know ofcourse if you don't mean that by avoidance, but I assumed you meant avoidance of the *emotional experience*.)

And the most interesting part to me: where you said that if you decided you needed to take action about whatever you were concerned, worried, anxious or fearful or feel terror about, that would send the message that the thing is actually dangerous and that this would strengthen or reinforce the feeling. Why would it have to be that way? Why can't the action be seen as a solution that would then actually have the opposite effect, i.e. it would decrease intensity of the feeling?

It's not about giving reassurance, your therapist was truthful. How could she say it's all going to be all right?! She has no way of knowing that, none of us do.

There is a major distinction between providing reassurance and offering empty words or lying. To her credit, your therapist did not want to lie to you.

When I've talked to my T about world events (pandemic, Ukraine, etc.) the conversation generally centers on accepting that some things are completely out of my control, and figuring out what I want to do in my own life, in the realm of things that I do control. It's important to know what's going on, and respond in the ways that are possible, but beyond that, I'm an average person without enormous power and my sitting around worrying about nuclear war won't change a thing.

On reassurance in general, my T has said he doesn't do reassurance because it doesn't work. If he says "everything is okay" it might feel good for a second but that won't last because it doesn't address the source of anxiety. Better to figure out what the anxiety is really about and where it comes from, and then maybe you can get a better handle on how to deal with it.

In Nov/Dec 2020 I was having major panic about the end of democracy. T and I spoke about the anxiety of our times a lot. One day I spoke to someone else about this who said, “listen, we’ll likely be called on to fight [nb: they did not mean with violence] fascism in our lifetimes; we won’t be the first or the last and all we can do is move forward with as much integrity and compassion as we can muster each day.”

I found this very consoling. It felt true and honest: when we know our values and apply our skills for good, we find meaning in our lives. And meaning is a great antidote to existential fear and dread.

I told my then-T this and she surprised me by suggesting my anxiety was unwarranted and tried to offer reassurance that things were not so bad (she did apologize come January).

Essentially I thought her reassurance was totally hollow and worthless. It meant nothing to me. Like if we were in the midst of a blizzard and all she saw was a sunny day. I’d have appreciated it a lot more if she’d acknowledged how hard it is to make sense of our lives in a turbulent world.

This is a long way of saying that you probably want a T who is real with you, even when reality is crappy.

This is kinda strange but last night I kinda got how the whole reassurance thing isnt always helpful. I have been feeling very sick lately and last night my mom said dinner would be ready right at 3. I asked a couple of times. She reassured me it would be ready at 3. And it wasn't ready at 3. Then I freaked out a bit just because of all the other personal stuff going on. But its like if I had just not asked in the first place when dinner was going to be ready and accepeted that it could possibly be later then normal then I wouldnt have had an issue in the first place.

Sorry I hope I am somewhat making sense. I do seem to get it now.

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.

It sounds similar to expecting perfection. I read something awhile ago that talked about how perfectionism is an attempt to control anxiety...or something like that. It rings true for me personally.

I love this. This helps me because the systemic injustices I'm experiencing as well as witnessing on a regular basis often triggers despair, hopelessness, and suicidal ideation.