Hello everyone! Welcome to Black Girl in the World! If you don’t know me, you will and if you do? Welcome back! Today I want to talk about reassurance and reminding yourself that it is okay to be reassured but to an extent. This might help me and you so let's get started!!
I am a person who wants a lot of reassurance, and I realized that mainly when I was going to therapy more often, our sessions were usually situational where I’m talking to her about a particular problem, venting about it, only to come back around knowing exactly what I have to do and how I have to do it by asking for some kind of approval. My therapist would reassure me that my feelings about it are okay and then proceed forward with my decisions because my decisions by her standard were okay. Maybe that's what trauma does to you… . sometimes I will say that it can be a bit much because you KNOW what you have to do and seeking that approval can stunt your growth! But I’ll tell you something tho… According to the Chelsea psychology link, Constant reassurance is driven by anxiety. Now, we all ask for people’s opinion every now and then and nothing is wrong with consulting someone you value and make decisions from that. But if not regulated, it can be too much. This cycle of constant reassurance continues when we feel anxious, get reassured, the anxiousness subsides, and then it's a cycle again where we get anxious again and ask for validation. Seeking reassurance like it is a drug. Constantly feeling uneasy about the actions and decisions we make and not being able to be OKAY with the fact that we might not get the best outcome out of this.
We can even be in doubt in our relationships because we don’t want to make mistakes and feel too many doubts in how we make decisions. Since I am so indecisive, it only makes it worse. So instead of you always thinking positively about how you move with things, you think that you are making the worst decision ever. When you are able to confide in someone about said things, especially if it's a person you trust and respect, it only makes it safer for you to move forward on what you want to do or what is happening around.
It hurts because if you are already a person who doesn't want to be a burden by needing constant validation, you don’t wanna talk about anything to gain that reassurance and you result into handling it for yourself but without techniques, all you have are your thoughts and that's not good…
But I was taught something recently… I was taught that these emotions of feeling uneasy, of feeling that doubt… is what happens in life. You won’t always know where you are going and what the outcome will be but it is very helpful to understand that you still have the ability to express who you are in this world.
We have to find strategies to help ourselves because we cannot lean so much on others to heal us. We need to find some time to learn who we are in this life, what triggers us, what makes us laugh and smile, and just communicate what we want. When we feel overwhelmed or anxious, We need to keep ourselves more present by self-soothing and allowing our body to breathe and acknowledge that it is here and it is okay. All we really can control is us so we need to start taking hold of our life by controlling our actions and way of thinking. Challenge your thoughts, own your body, be who and how you want to be and understand that the reactions of others are not reactions you can control. It sucks that you cant please everyone, it sucks to know that you can disappoint someone and they just may not forgive you but you have to trust that you are doing things honestly and with good intentions. Sometimes that can look like doing things that people may not like. You also have to be okay with people not wanting to feed into you being constantly reassured. It starts with you.
In conclusion, I will say that community is very important. I say that because we all help each other in some form of way, whether we ask for it or not. Some of us cannot mask the pain any longer and honestly we really shouldn't. As we get older, the load is heavier and less people are around so we have to hold each other tight and continue these strong bonds. People are here to help in the best ways they can and it is amazing that we are able to lean on each other in times when it is just too much. I honestly don’t expect people to not lean on each other. We need a village to make the load a lot less for ourselves. We take these techniques on how to ground ourselves and recognize our worth and show others that they can take hold of their life as well. That they can trust themselves and trust others.
Thank you for taking the time to listen. I placed a link at the bottom that further explains these techniques. Share, subscribe, and comment. Check out the other episodes if you haven’t already, alright y'all this is my time. Bye!!!
