You’re Not Staying Informed, You’re Seeking Reassurance

How the quest for certainty fuels a destructive anxiety loop you don’t even realize you’re in.

Every morning during hurricane season, I check the forecast before anything else. Before coffee. Before I even check on my daughter. Sometimes before my feet hit the floor.

I scan projected storm activity for the next seven days. Relief washes over me. Seven more days clear. Okay. I can relax. But the relief never lasts. By afternoon, I’m checking again. By evening, a dozen times. Same brief relief. Same creeping anxiety that follows.

My husband doesn’t check at all. We prepped at the beginning of the season — batteries, water, supplies. He trusts that if a hurricane threatens us, we’ll know. This year, with no threats, he called it the most relaxing hurricane season ever. I, however, was exhausted from tracking potential threats that never materialized. The difference between our experiences was my checking.

This pattern is everywhere. We check email compulsively. We refresh social media. Monitor baby monitors, Ring cameras, news apps, bank accounts, grade portals, Slack, even our body metrics. We frame this as responsible. Vigilant. Staying informed. But we’re not managing anxiety. We’re feeding it.

Here’s what’s actually happening: when we check and get reassuring information, our anxiety drops. Our brain registers: checking = less anxiety. So the next time uncertainty creeps in, our brain insists we check again. But we can never be certain enough. The anxiety always comes back. And now our brain knows how to fix it: check again. The loop intensifies.

This is called reassurance-seeking. And it’s one of the most common — and destructive — anxiety patterns.

The first time I checked the hurricane forecast and saw “seven days clear,” that relief lasted all day. By the end of the season, hours. Reassurance has diminishing returns. This is how all compulsive behaviors work — they demand more frequency for less relief over time.

We’ve spent the last two decades being conditioned to expect certainty on demand. We can track everything in real time. Get instant updates on global crises. But we’ve lost our ability to tolerate not knowing.

Uncertainty is the natural state of life. We can never know for sure what will happen. But our brains crave certainty because certainty feels like safety. So when we feel uncertain, we gather more information, hoping to create certainty where it doesn’t exist.

Here’s the trap: checking doesn’t create certainty. It creates the illusion of certainty. “Nothing for seven days” doesn’t mean I’m safe. It means nothing is projected right now. But my brain treats it like certainty. Until reality reminds me it’s not, and I need reassurance again.

And here’s why reassurance-seeking is so destructive: every time we seek reassurance and get it, we’re teaching our brain that uncertainty is dangerous. That we can’t handle not knowing. That we need external confirmation to feel okay. We’re reinforcing the very anxiety we’re trying to relieve.

Checking doesn’t keep us safe or prevent bad things from happening. It just gives us the illusion of control while making our anxiety worse. And here’s what we lose: sleep, presence, energy, life itself.

I think about how often I have checked the hurricane forecast before checking on my daughter. How I have been physically present with her but mentally somewhere else. How many times I’ve researched parenting tips on social media (which all tell me to be more present with her!) while I miss the moments of connection happening in front of me.

Of course, some checking is still necessary. You need to respond to work emails. You probably should check the baby monitor before bed. You need to know if a hurricane is actually coming. The problem isn’t gathering information — it’s seeking reassurance.

This is what makes breaking the cycle so difficult. We live in a world where checking is unavoidable. The technologies that enable compulsive checking are the same ones we rely on to function in modern life. You can’t just delete everything and opt out.

So the goal becomes to distinguish between information-gathering and reassurance-seeking. Before you reach for your phone, ask yourself: “Will this information help me do something? Or am I just trying to feel less anxious?” If you’re checking the baby monitor because you heard a noise, that’s information. If you’re checking every few minutes even though your baby is sleeping soundly, that’s reassurance-seeking.

You don’t need a perfect system, but you can make reassurance-seeking harder through friction. Turn off notifications. Log out of apps. Put your phone in another room at night. Create space (or physical distance) between the urge and the action.

Then, when you want to check, take a moment to pause. Notice the discomfort in your body. Breathe. Your anxiety will spike. But if you can sit with it without seeking reassurance, it will naturally come down on its own. You’re teaching your brain that you can tolerate uncertainty. You don’t need external reassurance to be okay.

When reassurance-seeking becomes your primary tool for managing anxiety, you’re not managing life, you’re missing it. Your job isn’t to monitor everything; it’s to show up for what’s in front of you. Everything won’t always be okay, but compulsive checking won’t change that. What it will do is make sure you miss what’s actually happening right before your eyes.