19 Nov How to Keep Uncertainty From Destroying Your Happiness
No one really likes uncertainty.
Yet uncertainty is an inevitability; quite simply, it’s part of life and can’t possibly be avoided.
So, learning how to manage or even embrace uncertainty can be great for our mental health and happiness. And here’s how …
via Psychology Today by F Diane Barth
KEY POINTS
- Uncertainty is part of life, but human beings long for certainty.
- Recognizing and accepting your feelings about uncertainty can help you manage them.
- Uncertainty is a lot like “ambiguous loss” in that it is often a time of loss, sadness, anxiety, and lack of closure.
- Fortunately, there are things you can do to make uncertainty more tolerable.
After three years of trying unsuccessfully to have a baby, Janisha* was moving into her second trimester of pregnancy. “Those were difficult years,” she said. “Every month, we faced the uncertainty—am I going to get my period? Could this be the month? What’s going to happen?” I thought when I finally conceived that all of that would be behind me. But now we’re back in the middle of uncertainty. Will I miscarry? Is everything OK with the baby? Even if I make it full term, will the delivery be alright? Will the baby be OK? Is it a boy or a girl? And, oh yes, will I be a decent mother?”
She said she told her older sister, who has three children, about her fantasy that once the baby was born, she’d breathe a sigh of relief. “My sister just laughed,” Janisha said. “She said she thought uncertainty was the one constant in parenting.”
Marc*, who was going through his second round of treatment for cancer, came to therapy to get help with some of the painful and confusing feelings that were coming up around his illness. “I’m getting too angry about too many things,” he said. “My partner told me he’s there for me, no matter what, and that he completely understands my anger, but he said that I was driving everyone, including him, away.” Marc was silent for a minute. “Maybe that’s the point,” he said. “I can’t stand not knowing what’s going to happen. Maybe I need to push everyone away just to have something I’m sure about.”
Marc had just pinpointed something therapists often struggle to help our clients see: that many of our behaviors, often without our knowing it, are efforts to protect ourselves from undesired or painful feelings. And uncertainty is one of those emotions…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE