Those who have generalized anxiety tend to worry about multiple different things in their life. Hours are spent analyzing past events and ruminating over potential future threats. If you have this type of anxiety, I don’t need to tell you just how exhausting it can be. In this three-part series, I will be talking about how to understand and improve debilitating worry.
As I have talked about in past posts, the “Intolerance of Uncertainty” (IU) plays a critical role in the worry process. IU, as you might expect, is the difficulty accepting uncertainty in life. People with generalized anxiety tend to have very high levels of IU. As a result, people with generalized anxiety do a variety of things to try and increase their sense of certainty over the future. They might research excessively to gain as much information as possible before making decisions, constantly seek reassurance, avoid making decisions because the outcome cannot be guaranteed or engage in over-planning (e.g., make schedules, detailed lists and back-up plans). The things they do to try and increase certainty is as exhausting as the anxiety itself.
So, what is happening here? The problem with trying to seek certainty is that we live in an uncertain world. We simply cannot guarantee a given outcome, no matter how hard we might try. When planning for a trip, you can spend hours researching the best hotels and restaurants, but you cannot prevent the hotel from having a power outage or finding hair in your food at the restaurant. Likewise, to reduce the chances of getting injured in a car accident, you might have purchased the safest vehicle, wear your seatbelt every time and even limit your driving to essential places like grocery stores and medical appointments. But there is no way to guarantee safety when at any time another driver could be texting or drinking and driving and plow into you.
Okay, I sound pretty morbid right? The point here is this: you can take REASONABLE steps to increase the likelihood that your trip goes well or that you are safe. But you can never guarantee that such things happen. And therein lies the little golden nugget of truth: the more comfortable you get with this inevitable uncertainty, the less anxious you will be and the more enjoyable your life will be. Researchers and practitioners have figured this out and, therefore, there are effective therapeutic strategies that can help you improve your tolerance and acceptance of uncertainty. I’ll even be so bold to say that you can even get to the point where you EMBRACE the uncertainty. Can you imagine the freedom in that? In the next two posts, I will teach you about cognitive and behavioral strategies that can help you achieve this goal.
