How To Be With Uncertainty Without Letting It Run You

The macro is serving a lot of uncertainty. AI, the Middle East, the American political climate, the market. And then there’s your micro uncertainty: work, relationships, kids, loss, home, etc.

I have a lot of uncertainty in my world right now. Not just because you and I live in the same one, but also in my micro. As a therapist, I’m very interested in how my mind, body, and nervous system respond to phenomena. And lucky for me (and in theory, my patients), that insight can typically extend to all of us humans. So I’ll share it with you too.

I can tell a lot about how I’m doing by my relationship to uncertainty. Does uncertainty feel exciting and spacious? Or scary and tight? And not pretending or trying to change that. Dharma teacher Matthew Brensilver said at a daylong retreat last weekend, “Any time you find yourself pretending, a part of you is alienated. Folding in what is excluded by bringing awareness to it shows it that it belongs.”

So when I’m looking at uncertainty and feeling fear, I take the fear on a walk or sit with it on a park bench. I give it space to air out its concerns. I ask what it needs. I let unpleasant experience be just that—unpleasant experience. I let my system cycle through intensity and attempt to play the witness to its magnitude rather than identifying with it. Or needing to do something about it.

Luckily I’m able to do this in my head, so I don’t look quite as wild as this may sound. But it helps.

Often, the instinct is to shove the feeling away or replace it with a positive experience—or just any different experience. This could look like reaching for your phone to scroll social media, putting on a podcast, etc. There’s nothing wrong with any of that activity. It just won’t do anything to alleviate your situation—the fear of what’s next. When we take the “avoid” route, the sensation tends to compound over time and then turn into overwhelm.

It could also look like gaming out every scenario so you convince yourself that nothing could surprise you (because you’ve already thought of it). This, I’m sorry to say, also ends up compounding the fear. You also get the added bonus of putting your system through different difficult scenarios and emotionally living out some of the worst-case situations you will likely avoid. Even if you do end up in your worst-case scenario, you’re forcing your system to go through it twice—once in fantasy, once in reality.

I also heard in a meditation setting, “Often we stabilize when we orient to goodness, to love.” When the system feels imbalanced or scared, the medicine is deep listening and care. Many of us know how to do that for others, but not for ourselves.

Ask yourself: what species of love needs to be applied here? Buddhism and Buddhist psychology give you a small menu:

Loving kindness — May I be happy
Compassion — May I be free from this fear, this worry
Equanimity — May I open and allow this to move through me
Appreciative joy — Delighting in the happiness of others (kids are good outlets for this)

Hope that helps. Take good care, y’all.