The difference between stakes and odds

Anxious thinking arrives with a whoosh of fear sensations, it feels urgent, and seems like a message or a threat. Anxious thinking also creates unreasonable thinking about stakes and odds.

When you experience non-anxious thinking, your mind is likely good at managing risk and assessing the likelihood of a feared situation. When you experience anxious thinking, your mind decides that even if the odds of something bad occurring is very low, the stakes of that possibility are too high and any risk is intolerance.

Here are a few examples:

It is possible that you will get in an accident while driving. If you approach that uncertainty anxiously, you might decide that the stakes of death or injury by car accident are too high and stop driving. If you approach that uncertainty without anxiety, you will likely assess the relatively small odds of an accident compared to the high stakes of not driving and decide that the risk is worth the chance.

It is possible that your food will be contaminated at grocery stores. If you approach that uncertainty anxiously, you might decide that the stakes of death or injury through contaminated food is too high and take unsustainable, compulsive measures to acquire food. If you approach that uncertainty without anxiety, you will likely assess the odds of the safety measures failing compared to the stakes of not getting groceries in a reasonable way and decide the risk is worth the chance.

It is possible that you have a fatal disease that is currently undiagnosed. If you approach that uncertainty anxiously, you might decide that the stakes of death or chronic suffering due to an undiagnosed health issue is so horrifying that it is worth all of your time, regardless of the odds of it. If you approach that uncertainty without anxiety, you would assess the odds of a life-threatening disease compared to the stake of making constant doctor’s appointments, doing research, and getting constant reassurance. Spending all of your time attempting to protect against a health issue costs you your life anyway. You might decide instead that you can live with it as a possibility.

Perhaps these are areas of your life where you have trouble making values-based judgments about stakes and odds. That is, you have anxious thinking about these topics that arrives with a whoosh of fear sensations, feels urgent, and seems like a threat every time. This anxious thinking might make you feel like these risks are not worth taking.

The reality is that they might not be. It’s true that people die in car accidents every day and it’s true that life-threatening diseases that go undiagnosed have a worse prognosis. When those who don’t feel anxious about the situations above decide that it is safe enough, they are doing it based on a feeling. Or rather, they act based on lack of feeling. People often decide that because they don’t feel anxious and it doesn’t seem like a threat, that it is a reasonable risk to tolerate.

What risks are you willing to take in areas where you feel anxious?

You may find this reasoning intolerable for your content area. I want to challenge you about your logic, though, because there are all kinds of uncertainties that we all live with all the time because they don’t give us anxiety. The uncertainties don’t give us anxiety so we don’t compulsively protect against them. Anything could be contaminated. Anything can suddenly break. Anything could catch fire. Anyone can get injured or sick at any time. You could make a mistake or do something embarrassing. You might just be a bad person. You live your life with all of these possibilities and more. The world you live in is both incredibly dangerous and incredibly safe, depending on that to which you are turning your attention.

Rather than using feelings or logic in any attempt to rationalize the threat of danger, try using your values. All areas of life have some uncertainty to them. You can never be completely certain that you will be safe, healthy, and happy.

What risks seem reasonable in light of what you value in life, even if they don’t feel reasonable according to your anxiety?