Areas › Worry and anxiety › Living with uncertainty
When something feels unbearable to risk, follow it downwards. If that did happen, what would it mean, and what would happen after that?
Keep asking gently, and stop when you reach something that is a statement about the person rather than about the situation, such as it would prove I cannot manage anything. That is the sentence doing the work, and while it stays unspoken there is nothing to be done with it. Written out in daylight it is usually far less convincing than it was underneath.
Qur’an and Sunnah
I will tell you the meaning of the things you could not bear with patiently (Quran 18:78). The meaning of an event is not obvious while it is happening, which is exactly why the meaning you have assumed is worth checking.
قَالَ هَٰذَا فِرَاقُ بَيۡنِي وَبَيۡنِكَۚ سَأُنَبِّئُكَ بِتَأۡوِيلِ مَا لَمۡ تَسۡتَطِع عَّلَيۡهِ صَبۡرًا
He said, ‘This is where you and I part company. I will tell you the meaning of the things you could not bear with patiently
Qur’an 18:78read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In patients carrying a range of anxiety and depressive diagnoses, discomfort with not knowing was raised across the board, and how far it fell during treatment tracked how much their symptoms improved. That suggests it is a working part of the problem rather than a by-product of it. It is still a relationship observed over the course of treatment, so it does not prove that lowering it is what causes the improvement.
James F. Boswell; Johanna Thompson‐Hollands; Todd J. Farchione; David H. Barlow (2013). Intolerance of Uncertainty: A Common Factor in the Treatment of Emotional Disorders. Journal of Clinical Psychology doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
You cannot examine a conclusion you have never actually put into words.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
When a decision feels impossible, put a date on it rather than pressing for the commitment. We will try this and look at it again in three months turns a life sentence back into a choice.
A no is usually information about fit rather than a report on your worth. Some of them have to happen before you can tell which places are right for you.
Listen for the condition you have attached to acting: I will apply once I know I will get it, I will go once I know I will like it. If that condition could never actually be met, it is not caution, it is a door you have quietly locked.