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?

Intolerance of uncertainty is the tendency to react negatively on an emotional, cognitive, and behavioral level to uncertain situations and events.

There are two beliefs that maintain intolerance of uncertainty:

1) Uncertainty has negative behavioral implications for me and means something bad.

2) Uncertainty is unfair and spoils everything. I shouldn’t feel uncertain.

There are two types of intolerance of uncertainty:

1) Fearful anticipation of uncertainty often leads to avoidance.

2) Inhibitory anxiety in the face of uncertainty often leads to difficulty thinking, talking, making decisions, and taking action.

Self-talk that reduces intolerance of uncertainty includes:

● “It’s okay to feel uncertain. Feeling uncertainty doesn’t mean I’ve done something wrong.”

● “Anticipatory anxiety is a feeling, not a fact or prediction. That is, it is an indication of my past, not a prediction of my future.”

● “Uncertainty signals opportunity. I don’t know if something will go poorly, but I also don’t know what could go well.”

● “It’s okay for me to take the next small step in the presence of uncertainty.”

Behavior that reduces Intolerance of Uncertainty includes:

● Commit to valued behavior to reduce indecisiveness. Practice guessing at the smallest next step.

● Practice living in your decisions, including taking responsibility for the consequences of those decisions.

● Attempt to bring up an attitude of curiosity so that you can learn from the consequences of your decisions and alter future decisions. This type of learning prevents paralyzing self-criticism and eventually allows you to relax into uncertainty.

Many psychologists talk about embracing uncertainty as a neurological opportunity. I like to think about it like the process of learning how to walk.

As a baby is learning how to walk, they’re going to take a few steps. Their brain is going to start making neurological connections that they didn’t previously have before they took those steps. Along with those neurological connections, the baby’s going to keep walking and their mind is going to start to believe that they can do it.

There’s a loop between the neurological connections, the behavior, and their mind perceiving that they can do it, and they’re going to practice in a number of different settings. They’re going to fall sometimes. They’re going to get back up and their mind and their brain is going to understand. They’ll make some more neurological connections. Their mind will interpret that this is something that they can have confidence in until suddenly it’s something that they can easily do.

I want you to embrace uncertainty by taking responsibility when you have the ability to respond and not taking responsibility when you don’t have the capacity to respond. I want to encourage you to try new behaviors and I want to reinforce what you accomplished when you tried the new behaviors.

The anxiety loop is maintained by negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement isn’t inherently problematic. For instance, turning off your alarm in the morning is a helpful use of negative reinforcement. You get up really fast because you want to turn off that loud sound. Negative reinforcement is one way in which a behavior is strengthened. In the case of anxiety, if you avoid in order to reduce the uncomfortable stimulus that is anxiety, then avoidance is going to become more likely in the future.

The neurological opportunity is that you have the opportunity to do the opposite to change that pattern. Not only should you do the opposite in the exact way that the avoidance is showing up, but this is why we want to think about exposure as something that is frequent, flexible, and willing. It’s just like learning to walk and then run by practicing, getting good at it, and getting reinforcement through the feeling of confidence.

To start with the basics, remember that avoidance creates, maintains, and intensifies emotions.

You have an uncomfortable thought, feeling, or sensation.

It feels like a threat of danger.

You do something to make it go away.

What you do to make thoughts, feelings or sensations go away are compulsions, avoidances, escape strategies, safety behaviors, and reassurance seeking.

These are functionally synonymous. They mean the same thing.

Great job, Mind! For a second or two, that avoidance gave you relief. If your thought, feeling, or sensation was actually a threat to you, you’d be in the clear from danger. You also just taught your consciousness to watch out for that thought, feeling, or sensation so that next time it can do something to make it go away even faster. What a helpful process! Such a clever brain you have there.

Compulsions, reassurance seeking, and safety behaviors are the dirty words in the psychology world for what we, humans, do to maintain emotional disorders. I obviously use these words too, but I don’t think they are dirty. Rather than evidence of weakness or a limitation, I think it’s an incredible process. I have nothing but the utmost respect for what your mind comes up with to try to alleviate your suffering.

I strongly believe you should respect your mind too. In fact, I think the only way to alleviate your suffering in the long-term is to befriend your own mind. Watch it, listen to it, and learn to work with it compassionately.

We need to learn to work with our urge to avoid because avoidance makes emotional disorders worse in the long-term. In addition to remembering how avoidance maintains emotions notice how avoidance and escape strategies undermine your potential. An emotional moment is an opportunity for confidence and escaping it undermining your potential for confidence.

I actually mean it when I say that uncertainty is an opportunity. When you feel uncertain about whether you have a disease you fear, it probably doesn’t feel like an opportunity. Fearing that you’ll panic in front of people you like probably doesn’t feel like an opportunity. Same for worrying all night rather than sleeping. Not an opportunity. I get you. And, I disagree with you.

When you are relating effectively to yourself in the middle of the night when you’re stuck on a random intrusion, you will know it. It is a private confidence that only you share with yourself. Once you have that confidence, you can do anything.

This is why your emotional disorder is a gift. Because you have to practice observing yourself, you get to develop a strategy for how you’re going to relate to yourself. Because you purposely experiment with yourself in smaller moments, you have the chance to develop a much deeper confidence in yourself that can carry you at all other times in your life.

If you expose yourself to anxiety or another emotion, but then you check or get reassurance, you undermine your chance for self-confidence. The habit of undermining yourself leads to doubts, self-criticism, and uncertainty. Doubts, criticism, and uncertainty narrow your thinking. When your thinking is narrow, your awareness of the opportunities available to you is limited. So, avoidance narrows your thinking, limits your opportunities, and undermines your potential.

Don’t just refrain from avoidance because your psychologist told you that it makes your emotional disorder worse. Stop avoiding so that you can develop the internal resources needed to reach your potential. Practice patiently and compassionately with yourself so that you have the chance to see who you can become.

It’s okay if you forget your strategy and avoid anyway sometimes. Meet yourself where you are. That moment is your opportunity! When you engage in an avoidance behavior, try thinking, My mind works perfectly. What can I do right now that would give me more self-confidence rather than more fear?

Your distressing moment is your opportunity for greater confidence.