Change can be a challenge and we can all struggle to know how to cope with change and uncertainty at times. Even positive changes that we’ve been working towards can feel stressful. Moving house, starting University or changing jobs are examples of things we may have worked hard to achieve but still feel stressed about. Similarly, exciting life events can also leave us feeling overwhelmed in the lead up to them. Wedding planning and holiday packing are two common examples of this. When we notice feeling stressed and overwhelmed in these situations, it can feel confusing. We can be quick to dismiss these feelings or berate ourselves because these are supposed to be positive experiences that we are happy about!
The theme across all these examples is uncertainty. Change and things in the future are unknown. When things are unknown, we can feel a lack of control. And most of us like to feel in control. This blog aims to help you understand why we struggle with change and uncertainty and offer some reflective questions to help you reframe your thinking. Perhaps you’ll surprise yourself and embrace change by the end!
Intolerance of Uncertainty
Most of us don’t like uncertainty, that’s a given. An intolerance of uncertainty is much more intense than a dislike. For some, uncertainty feels unbearable. Within Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), we understand intolerance of uncertainty to be a core feature of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). One of the assumptions beneath GAD is that we don’t know how to cope with change and uncertainty. To treat GAD, we work on building up this tolerance to learn that the unknown is not inherently negative and our ability to cope is usually far greater than we give ourselves credit for. However, we don’t need to be struggling with a clinical presentation of anxiety to relate to feeling a degree of discomfort with uncertainty. And we don’t need to wait until we are struggling with our mental health and wellbeing to be able to improve it.
Self-Doubt and The Unknown
If we don’t know how something will turn out, we can often doubt our ability to cope if we were to face difficulties or unwanted outcomes. We lack confidence to do things we haven’t done before because we don’t have previous experiences to draw on. If we don’t have experience that tells us we can manage, we don’t have the certainty that we can cope.
To manage this self-doubt, we imagine different outcomes to help us prepare or reassure ourselves that we would manage. You may have noticed that in these situations, we tend to play out the negatives rather than the positives. We can find ourselves wondering, what if it rains on the wedding day? What if the weather on holiday is terrible and it’s a huge waste of money? What if I don’t make friends at Uni? What if changing jobs was the wrong decision? What if the new house has a problem that didn’t show up in the survey?
The function of imagining negative outcomes is to gain some control over the unknown by making predictions and mentally playing out what we would do in each situation. The intention is usually to reassure ourselves or build up our confidence that we could cope, but the outcome is often the opposite. By focusing on all that could go wrong, we can overwhelm ourselves. Feeling overwhelmed can make us think that we are not coping in the present. And if we feel we are not coping in the here and now, how can we feel confident in our ability to cope with that disaster we just imagined? Our confidence takes another knock.
Worry and Catastrophic Thinking
It’s common for us to think about the future and play out different scenarios now and again. We tip over into worry and catastrophic thinking when the scenarios we are thinking about are disproportionately disastrous. For example, ahead of starting a new job, we may imagine mispronouncing the name of our boss and looking foolish in front of our team. We can respond to this thought in different ways. We may attribute this to nerves and shake off the thought, knowing it’s unlikely that we’ll make a poor first impression.
Or, we way keep playing out the mental film of this scenario. In this case, we may go on to see our new colleagues judging us, excluding us from lunches and work drinks. Then we fast forward to a year later and the dynamic is so unbearable that we have no choice to leave, but our boss hates us and we can’t get a good reference and so we’re either stuck there forever or left unemployed.
The second example is just as it says on the tin – catastrophic. With worry, ‘what if’ thoughts can quickly spiral and we can find ourselves caught up pre-empting all of the possible terrible eventualities and going to extremes. When we look at this in black and white, it’s clear to see that this would make us feel stressed and anxious. However, in the moment, the high anxiety it causes means our logical thinking is diminished. We are therefore less able to recognise this as unhelpful.
Worrying Vs Planning
I’m a planner and advocate for a good plan. However, there is a fine line between worrying and planning. A plan involves actionable steps towards an outcome, with the intention to actively take these steps. Worry is the illusion of a plan because we spend so much time thinking about what to do, we feel like we are in action but we haven’t actually done anything. Worry is passive. It happens in our head. We don’t actually take any physical action.
With worry, mentally playing out so many different scenarios makes us feel exhausted. It’s mentally taxing! We’ve put ourselves through so many bad outcomes in our imagination that now we feel too anxious to take action. The urge to avoid kicks in. We may cancel plans, or procrastinate. A plan helps us take steps closer towards something. Worry keeps us away from it.
Why Change and Uncertainty is a Challenge
Change and uncertainty are new and unknown, which means we don’t know what to expect. Without a frame of reference for a new situation, we can find ourselves doubting ourselves and lacking confidence. To try and manage this, we may try to predict how things will turn out. We all have a negative bias which means we are hardwired to notice, and look for, far more negatives than positives. When we focus on all the negative outcomes for the upcoming change, we can tip into worry and catastrophising. This can make us feel anxious and overwhelmed and cause us to want to avoid the new situation. This urge to avoid feeds our initial self-doubt and low confidence. We can end up in a vicious cycle.
How to Cope with Change and Uncertainty
It’s clear how we get stuck in a vicious cycle, but how do we break out? Here are three reflective questions to help you reframe your thinking about change and uncertainty.
Reflective Questions to Help with Cope with Change and Uncertainty
What changes and unknowns have you already coped well with?
Everything is new and unfamiliar to start with. This means you have had and managed countless new situations and experiences over your lifetime so far. You might not have a frame of reference for this exact upcoming change, but you have so many from other experiences that you can learn from. Take some time to reflect on all of the previous changes and unknowns you have managed. What does this tell you about the likelihood of your ability to manage now?
What good things have come from changes you’ve been through so far?
We’ve all had things we have dreaded but we have come through the other side of them. I’m a big believer that we can learn and grow from even the most difficult life experiences. What are some of the positives that have come from change and uncertainty you’ve experienced before that you’d expected to be negative?
What could go well?
Let’s try and balance our negative bias here by focusing on what could go well. We are in charge of our imagination. Rather than thinking about the worst-case scenario, try thinking about the best-case scenario. How would you like things to go? Are there things you can look forward to? Are there opportunities here that you are minimising or overlooking?
Summary
It is common to feel unsettled and uncomfortable ahead of change and uncertainty. There are things we do to try and manage this that unintentionally make us feel worse. This includes worrying, catastrophising and avoiding things. These things have a negative effect on our confidence and feed our belief that we can’t cope with uncertainty. However, there are also things we can do to build our confidence, like taking time to reflect on previous experiences and learn from them.
What Next?
Watch a short video about coping with change on my Instagram page, @meera_brighterminds.
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