12 Activities to Reduce Intolerance of Uncertainty

Many people with anxiety experience distress in situations with high uncertainty. Low tolerance for uncertainty is common across anxiety disorders such as OCD, simple phobias, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. Uncertainty can appear in everyday events like not knowing what food will be served at a restaurant, ordering and paying for items, purchasing airline tickets, experiencing minor aches without knowing the cause, waiting for messages, or selecting classes. These situations can cause significant distress even when they seem minor. Research links intolerance of uncertainty with poorer emotional health and worse prognosis for chronic health conditions. People may respond by seeking excessive information, repeatedly asking for reassurance, overthinking outcomes, checking schedules and weather, avoiding decisions, performing rituals, or making elaborate plans.

"If your tolerance for uncertainty is low, you might find yourself engaging in behaviors aimed at increasing certainty. For example, faced with a medical uncertainty, you start to research excessively online or repeatedly seek reassurance from experts. If you are unsure about the outcome of a job application, you think through every possible outcome or try to convince yourself it wasn't a good job anyway. While traveling, you continually check airline schedules or weather reports."

Read at Psychology Today