The Checking Trap: Reassurance is Making it Worse

Procrastinating, postponing and delaying, Taking my thoughts too seriously

There is a reason reassurance never fully lands. It’s not because you asked the wrong person or didn’t search long enough.

It’s because certainty is not what’s actually available, and your mind knows it, which is why the loop starts again twelve minutes later.

Episode 102 of the Playing-It-Safe podcast is about the checking trap: what it is, why it works in the short run, and the ACT skill that actually interrupts it.

Show notes with time-stamps

0:00 The reassurance-seeking loop (texting, googling, checking again)
2:22 The hidden cost of reassurance: it trains your mind to need more of it
3:07 What reassurance-seeking is really costing you (judgment, relationships, life)
4:19 The psychology behind it: Stanley Rachman’s research on safety behaviors
5:18 Michael Dugas and the intolerance of uncertainty model
6:19 Skills you can try to interrupt a reassurance loop
9:24 Addressing the shame underneath reassurance-seeking
10:12 The values question: what is the checking protecting you from?
11:01 Dr. Z’s personal example
12:10 This week’s challenge: sit with uncertainty for 5 minutes

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About Dr. Z.

I’m originally from Bolivia, South America, and am a psychologist by training. I’m formally trained in empirically supported treatments, and when I say “formally,” I mean that since 2004 I have received intensive training in them, particularly in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT). 

Over the past 18 years, I have created resources for and worked with overthinkers and overachievers dealing with all types of anxiety-related struggles: perfectionism, procrastination, productivity anxiety, uncertainty intolerance, indecision, impostor phenomenon, overthinking, phobias, rumination, panic, worry and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I absolutely love my job!

In 2019, I was nominated as a fellow by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science because of my contributions related to the applications of ACT for anxiety-based struggles. I’m the author of seven books and the co-author of three (see the section on previously written books).

I’m the founder and director of the East Bay Behavior Therapy Center, a boutique private center in the San Francisco Bay Area that offers therapy and coaching for anyone experiencing anxiety-based struggles.

In 2023, I gave a TEDx talk, “Stop playing-it-safe and start living” that has more than 264K downloads.

While I’m a psychologist by training and science-based by passion, my style is jargon-free, accessible, caring, and lighthearted; teaching ACT skills doesn’t have to be boring or inaccessible, so I do my best to make every skill I teach—in any format—as engaging as possible. 

I believe that learning to navigate anxiety-based reactions is one of the key skills of the 21st century, and I’m passionate about it.

I'm passionate about disseminating ACT skills for anxiety-based struggles.

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