If you can’t stand uncertainty and do everything you can to get rid of it, you might have noticed a problem… it is impossible to get rid of all uncertainty in your life. What this means for you is that all the work that you are doing to get rid of uncertainty is useless; it just doesn’t work! If it did, you would probably not be struggling with anxiety and worry.
If you can’t get rid of uncertainty in your life, then the only way to manage your intolerance of uncertainty is by learning to be more tolerant of uncertainty.
The best way to learn to become more tolerant of uncertainty is to start acting “as if” you are tolerant of uncertainty. That is, you can change your behavior around uncertainty, and this will eventually help you to change your thoughts and feelings around uncertainty.
STEP 1: Make a List of Behaviors Start by writing down all of the things that you do to try to feel more certain, or to get around or avoid uncertainty. A good way to compose this list is to be a detective in your daily life: notice when you are feeling anxious, and what it is that you do to try to feel less anxious. For example, if you have to buy a present for someone and you start to feel anxious about what to buy, what do you do? Do you call your friends and ask for advice about what to get? This reassurance-seeking behavior can then go on your list.
STEP 2: Rank Them According to Anxiety If you want to start acting “as if” you are tolerant of uncertainty, it is best to start small. That way, you are more likely to do it, and to succeed. If you pick something too difficult, you might be unable to do it, and you probably won’t want to try it again. With this in mind, look at the behaviors that you do that might be easier to try to change. You can then rank your behaviors on a scale from 0 (“no anxiety at all”) to 10 (“extreme anxiety”) by imagining how anxious you would become if you could not do them.
STEP 3: Practice Tolerating Uncertainty Once you have a list of behaviors that you do to reduce or avoid uncertainty, then start picking small items that you can do to practice tolerating uncertainty. Try to do at least three things a week. For example, you might try going to a restaurant and ordering a meal that you have never tried, and then you might send a few emails without checking them first (and no cheating! Don’t send the email to yourself as well so that you can check it later…)
STEP 4: Write It Down! Keep a record of all the times you were acting “as if” you were tolerating uncertainty. Write down:
- What you did
- How you felt while doing it (was it harder or easier than you thought?)
- What happened (did everything turn out ok?)
- If it did not turn out as planned, what did you do?
If you write things down, you will be able to see all the work that you did in facing uncertainty, and as you keep practicing, you will see how things that you once thought were difficult in the beginning are now much easier.
STEP 5: Record What Happened If you are taking some risks and not being 100% certain in your life, there is the chance that things will not go perfectly. For example, if you tolerate uncertainty and go to a movie without reading a review, you might not like the movie. If you go grocery shopping without a list, you might come home and realize that you forgot something.
When you allow some uncertainty in your life, sometimes things go wrong! For this reason, it is important to write down the outcome of your tolerating-uncertainty exercises, and what you did to cope. For example, if you forgot an item from the grocery store, what did you do? Did you pick it up the next day? Did you go back to the store? How horrible was the outcome?
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Did things turn out ok even though I was not 100% certain?
- If things did not turn out ok, what happened?
- What did I do to cope with the negative outcome?
- Was I able to handle the negative outcome?
- What does this tell me about my ability to cope with negative outcomes in the future?
REMEMBER: Sometimes things will not go exactly as planned if you allow some uncertainty into your life. But this is not a sign of failure on your part. Most people who tolerate uncertainty learn that even if bad things happen, they can cope with them.
It is also important to realize that even when you were trying to make everything certain, things often still didn’t always work out. It just took a whole lot more energy and time trying to be certain. By becoming more tolerant of uncertainty, you get to let go of all of the problems associated with being intolerant, and you get to realize that you can deal with things, even when they don’t go perfectly.
STEP 6: Build Momentum! When you feel comfortable with the small steps that you have taken to tolerate uncertainty, gradually try more difficult things.
Anxiety Canada, How to Tolerate Uncertainty, Captured 2024