intolerance of uncertainty

Our brain is often in search of clarity in order to make sense of what is going on. In fact, he tries to define events by categorizing them in the process of making sense. He makes generalizations. So much so that anything that it cannot categorize and provide clarity on is danger signals to our brain. Because it evokes uncertainty. Many things that are uncertain are new and cause uneasiness because they do not fit into any category.

The state of approaching the innovations and uncertainties in our lives with anxiety is actually quite functional evolutionarily. Because the message of anxiety is to be on the alert for possible dangers. When we perceive a higher probability of threat in new and uncertain situations than in situations we know and are used to, we become more vigilant to protect ourselves. Just as in the presence of a new person joining our tribe, we are more wary of that person than our current acquaintances. Therefore, in such cases, anxiety is experienced as a protective emotion that serves to take precautions when used functionally.

However, in addition to all this functionality, the term intolerance to ambiguity emerges precisely when the balances here are distorted. In this state of uncertainty, if the thoughts that cross our minds, especially if they include negative thoughts and disaster scenarios, we may experience many emotions such as stress, anxiety, anger, sadness and helplessness, and we may have difficulty coping with these emotions. In addition to the uncertainty of the event, the negative thoughts and intense emotions we feel make it difficult to tolerate this uncertainty. For this reason, we may experience outbursts of anger, a large amount of stress and anxiety in situations where there is uncertainty, and we may impoverish our lives while trying to avoid environments where there is a possibility of uncertainty.

Although this state of strain is quite understandable, one of the steps that helps us cope is to intervene in our feelings and thoughts that feed intolerance.

We can benefit from relaxing activities, breathing, relaxation and safe place exercises to calm intense emotions. On the other hand, we can try to transform our negative thoughts, which are in our minds and reinforce our intense emotions, into realistic and functional thoughts. We can try to stay in the grays instead of the “black or white thinking” style, which is one of our cognitive distortions, which allows us to evaluate events as completely positive or completely negative. Instead of disaster scenarios or fairy tales, we can nurture thoughts that realistically contain all possibilities, that consist of a synthesis of concrete evidence and anti-evidence, and that we see that our thinking has a functional benefit on our emotions and behaviors.

If we are right-handed and want to strengthen our left arm as much as our right arm, what we would do would be to exercise our left arm as much as our right arm. So we would often expose our left arm to weights to increase the weight-bearing capacity of our left arm, right? Right here, this is one of the things we can do to improve our capacity to tolerate uncertainty. In this method, we aim to consciously expose ourselves to uncertain situations and improve our coping skills. It is precisely in these exposures that we can increase our tolerance. We strengthen our ability to make unrealistic thoughts that feed our negative emotions more realistic, to soothe emotions, or to stay with the intense negative emotions we sometimes feel. By acknowledging the emotion’s existence, we can allow space for that emotion to come and go like a crashing wave.

When we look at the group outside of our control area, we may have noticed that we also try to control the situations in our lives that we cannot control. In this situation, a few of the valuable questions we can ask ourselves are, “What is the use of trying to control situations that I can’t control? What could be the disadvantages?”.