Responding strategically to uncertainty

When you are feeling very anxious, it’s normal to attend to anxious sensations, uncomfortable feelings, and catastrophic thoughts over everything else. You are not being selfish or going crazy. The nature of the anxious response is such that your mind fixates itself on potential threats in order to survive. Some part of you knows that you aren’t running from a tiger and it would be okay to stop scanning the environment for danger. Another part of you does not know whether or not you are in danger. That part of you is uncertain.

You need to be more strategic.

Breaking the anxiety cycle involves recognizing it as a trick. You get tricked into thinking that avoidance is helpful for you. It isn’t. Some part of you still thinks it’s helpful. You need a strategy to override that part of yourself. You need to do it gradually, compassionately, and strategically or that part of you is going to panic and force you to avoid again.

Strategic thinking means starting with acknowledging what is going well and reinforcing it with curiosity, compassion, and courage.

Hitting a child who stole a toy is an ineffective strategy because it doesn’t teach the child a new way of acting. An effective strategy would be calming the child down, listening to what he was thinking and feeling when he stole, and then teaching him some alternative ways to communicate his needs.

Similarly, criticizing yourself for avoidance is an ineffective strategy because it undermines the possibility of new learning. If you notice that there are areas of your life where you feel intolerance of uncertainty and you have the urge to avoid, you should try turning towards that part of yourself with curiosity.

There is nothing certain about life. We are all in constant states of uncertainty. We don’t feel intolerant of that uncertainty in every domain of life. Thus, the uncertain parts of life that give you anxiety and the urge to avoid provide a roadmap to your core fears. Rather than beating yourself up about those fears, seek to understand them so that you can create a strategic plan to overcome them.

As you try turning towards yourself with curiosity, here are some questions that you can ask yourself to help you cope better with uncertainty.

In what areas of life do you tolerate (or even like) uncertainty?

● How do you approach uncertainty in the areas of life that you like it?

● In what areas of life is uncertainty hard for you to tolerate?

● What fears make uncertainty in that area of life feel intolerable?

● In what way is your response to your fears making the uncertainty less tolerable?

● What are some other options for how you can respond to your fears?