“I Just Want Them to Be Okay” – When Reassurance Isn’t Enough

“They keep asking. I keep answering. But it’s like nothing I say gets through.”

Many parents of anxious or distressed children recognise this pattern. You try your best to reassure them. You explain. You soothe. You tell them that everything is okay, that nothing bad will happen, that the scary thought isn’t true. And for a brief moment, they seem settled. But then the question comes again. And again. And again.

It can feel maddening. It can feel frightening. And perhaps most of all—it can feel like you’re failing them.

Not Just a Thought

What we often forget, in the urgency of the moment, is that this kind of repetitive questioning isn’t really about the content of the thought. Not deep down. It’s not just about whether the germs have been washed away or whether you really locked the front door.

It’s about what the child is feeling underneath—something they can’t yet say, something they may not even know themselves. Often, it’s a mixture of fear, shame, guilt, or panic that hasn’t found a shape. The mind clings to the question because the feeling has nowhere else to go.

Bion and the Problem of Emotional Digestion

Wilfred Bion, a pioneering psychoanalyst, had a striking way of describing this process. He said that the mind needs to digest emotional experience in the same way the body digests food. But when a child is overwhelmed, their emotional system shuts down. The feeling becomes indigestible. Stuck. Undigested.

And so it gets pushed back out—projected—into the nearest, safest person: you.

The child isn’t trying to manipulate. They’re trying to survive. Their question isn’t really a question. It’s an emotional evacuation. And they’re asking you, without words: Can you hold this for me? Can you help me think when I can’t?

When Reassurance Doesn’t Go In

That’s why the usual reassurance doesn’t work. Because what’s being asked isn’t factual—it’s emotional. They don’t just want to hear that the dog won’t die, or that they didn’t sin by thinking something bad. They want to feel safe enough to believe it.

Containment—the term Bion used—isn’t about being perfectly calm or having the right script. It’s about staying present, mentally and emotionally, with the child’s fear. It’s about receiving their projection and slowly making it bearable.

You might not be able to fix the thought. But you can survive it, stay with it, and gently return it in a more digestible form. Like this:

“It’s really scary not knowing for sure, isn’t it?”

“I can feel how anxious you are about this.”

“Let’s just sit with this together. You don’t have to solve it all right now.”

A Word on Exhaustion

None of this is easy. Especially when you’re tired, when the thought has come up twenty times already today, when you’re juggling work, siblings, and everything else. You’re human. And containment doesn’t mean being perfect—it means being present enough. Even a small moment of connection can help the child begin to think again.

If you find yourself snapping, walking away, or becoming flooded—that’s okay. It just means your emotional container is full too. Take a breath. Get support. You matter in this process.

Letting the Thought Land

Over time, when a child feels that their unbearable feeling can land in another person without being dismissed, attacked, or anxiously batted away, something begins to change.

They begin to think more for themselves. They begin to feel more safely. They begin to trust that the world—starting with you—can handle what’s inside them.

And that’s when the questions begin to settle.