today we're going to be talking about how avoidance is a form of intolerance of uncertainty
and how to stop avoiding the things that make you anxious
hi everyone in today's video we're going to be talking about the concept of intolerance of
uncertainty and how it relates to avoidance this is going to be the first in a series of multiple
videos discussing various manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty and what
we're going to be talking about today is how avoidance contributes to a person being more
intolerant to uncertainty and ways to build tolerance for uncertainty through overcoming
the avoidance behavior but before i get into that just a couple of disclaimers to go over
i'm a registered psychologist in the province of british columbia canada and this video
is for informational purposes only it is not intended as a substitute or replacement for advice
from your doctor or mental health professional now with those things out of the way let's start
talking about intolerance of uncertainty and avoidance now i want you to imagine that you
and your best friend had a big fight a few days ago and you feel really bad about what happened
however you find yourself constantly worrying and worrying about and how upset or angry your friend
might be about some of the things that you said during the argument you might start to generate
a lot of what-if questions like what if my friend never forgives me what if my friend hates me now
what if my friend is going to tell other people what an awful person an awful friend that i am
what might you be tempted to do in this situation well if you're a person who worries a lot you
might find yourself avoiding dealing with the situation entirely you don't reach out to your
friend to apologize you don't send them a text message to check in and see how they're doing or
to see if they want to talk it's tempting to want to avoid the situation entirely because the danger
is if i reach out to my friend to talk about the argument it might lead to an art it might
lead to another argument or my friend might tell me that they don't want to talk to me ever again
my friend might not answer my call and that would just confirm how upset and angry they
are with me this is an example of how avoidance is a manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty
and i've done a number of videos on the concept of intolerance of uncertainty and how intolerance of
uncertainty tends to drive excessive and difficult to control worry essentially intolerance of
uncertainty causes a person to focus on all of the potential negative outcomes in a situation
and therefore makes the person feel much more anxious and worried about what might happen
avoidance is a very common manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty
by avoiding things that we're worrying about what that does is it creates a temporary state
of certainty a state of certainty in this moment so in the example of the argument with my friend
by avoiding reaching out to my friend i have a temporary state of certainty
that they're not yelling at me that they're not telling me i'm a horrible friend and that
they're not telling me that they don't want to have anything to do with me ever again
none of those things are happening right now because i'm avoiding interacting with my friend
because i don't know how my friend feels or what they're thinking about me
after our fight the intolerance of uncertainty gets me to think about all of the potential
negative thoughts that my friend has about me and all of the negative outcomes that might result
from our fight and i don't want any of those negative things to happen and so i avoid my
so i avoid putting myself in any situation where those things might happen so this is how avoidance
is a manifestation of intolerance of uncertainty we avoid things that we're not sure about and that
we worry will lead to bad outcomes and in doing so we create a temporary state of perceived safety
so you might be wondering what's the harm in this if avoidance makes me feel better and i
feel less anxious if i avoid doing certain things so what what's the problem with that
now i don't think you have to think very hard to recognize some of the
potential problems with avoidance as a way of coping with uncertainty in life
if we avoid everything that we're uncertain about because we worry that the uncertainty is going
to turn out negatively then our life becomes much much smaller we avoid trying new things
we avoid taking risks in life we avoid learning something new we avoid talking to new people
we avoid traveling anywhere outside of where we feel comfortable and what we know so our
world becomes very tiny and very restricted very mundane very boring and very predictable
for someone who engages in a lot of avoidance of things that they're
uncertain about or that are new it's almost like they're trading in experiencing new
and potentially enjoyable life experiences for the safety and security of what's known
however this is all based on an assumption that if i'm not certain about something
then it's going to turn out badly if i try anything new it's going to turn out terrible
now you probably know that at a logical level that's not the case but as typically
is the case with intolerance of uncertainty it's not a matter of logically knowing that uncertainty
doesn't always turn out badly it's more a problem of a person not behaving as if it's true so if you
find yourself avoiding doing certain things how do you know if that avoidance is due to intolerance
of uncertainty or if that avoidance is due to simply not wanting to do the behavior for example
if i find myself avoiding going grocery shopping because i hate grocery shopping and i'd rather
just order in food that's not an example of intolerance of uncertainty
in that example the avoidance is more me being lazy and disinterested in grocery shopping
however if i find myself avoiding going grocery shopping because i'm worried that i'm going to
forget to buy something or that i'm going to spend too much money or that i'm going to run
into someone at the grocery store and have a weird or awkward interaction that's more indicative of
intolerance of uncertainty avoidance so the key to determining whether the avoidance is intolerance
of uncertainty or something else relates to the motivation behind the avoidance if i'm avoiding
because i'm not sure how the situation is going to turn out and i'm concerned that
something bad is going to happen that's a pretty good sign that i'm being intolerant of uncertainty
okay so you find yourself avoiding something and you recognize that it's
you being intolerant of uncertainty what do you do about this how can you fix this
well the first step you've already done which is recognizing that you're avoiding something
and that the avoidance behavior is intolerance of uncertainty the next step is to think about
a behavioral experiment that you can do in the situation that involves you not avoiding what
you're afraid of now this doesn't have to be a huge step but it can be a small shift in behavior
in which you plan to engage in an approach behavior rather than avoidance so you can think
about these behavioral experiments as tests of your worry prediction let's use the example of me
getting into the argument with my friend and talk about an example of a behavioral experiment
what i might decide to do is to send my friend a text message checking in with them
apologizing for some of the things that i said and seeing if they're open to talking about it
that's the behavioral experiment that's what i'm going to do differently the next step is to think
about what i worry is going to happen in that situation this is essentially my prediction of
what will happen when i send my friend the text message now it's important to think about your
worries as predictions because that's all they really are worries are always just predictions
so what might my what might my worry predictions be in this situation well i might think that my
friend isn't going to respond to my text message or that my friend is going to tell me to get lost
and that they never want to talk to me again my friend may block me from contacting them those
are my predictions as to what's going to happen when i text my friend so we have the experiment
what i'm going to do and we have my prediction what my worry tells me is going to happen
so the next step is to actually do the behavior and see what happens this is the data collection
step in the tolerating uncertainty experiment and this is often where people who worry a lot
get surprised by how excessive and unreasonable their worries are
often when people engage in these behavioral experiments not avoiding things that they're
afraid of they're surprised that it doesn't turn out nearly as badly as they anticipated
so by collecting the data you have evidence which you can now compare
to what your worry prediction actually was
and that's the last step comparing what actually happened to what you predicted was going to happen
and this gives you a sense of how accurate your worries are at predicting what's going to happen
if you find over and over and over and over again that what you predict was going to happen
doesn't happen then it probably tells you that your worries are pretty terrible predictors
of the future and what this can do is to get you to start questioning how necessary it is
to avoid uncertain situations or avoid things that you're not sure about
and therefore it allows you to start expanding your world and trying new things because you
have experience with your worry not being an accurate predictor of what actually happens
so behavioral experiments around doing exposure to things that you're avoiding
can be very powerful to help you overcome intolerance of uncertainty
now the other thing you can do is to take advantage of all of the naturally occurring
opportunities to tolerate uncertainty on a day-to-day basis for example if you find yourself
avoiding ordering something new at a restaurant or avoiding trying a different restaurant because
you're not sure if you're going to like it a tolerating uncertainty way of approaching that
is to recognize that you always order the same thing and you always go to the same restaurant
and so maybe what you do is you order something different and see what happens maybe you like it
maybe you don't but you just allow yourself to try it out and see what happens
i always encourage my clients to imagine the following question tattooed to the frontal
lobe of their brain if i were more tolerant of uncertainty what would i do in this situation
this question can be a major avoidance buster if you find yourself avoiding doing something
avoiding returning a phone call avoiding sending that email avoiding taking that new exercise class
ask yourself if i were more tolerant of uncertainty what would i do in this situation
well you'd probably make that phone call you'd probably send that email you'd probably sign
up for that exercise class and in doing so you build your tolerance for uncertainty
because you're no longer avoiding all of the things that you're uncertain about in your life
and this can result in you feeling a lot freer more spontaneous and less anxious
because you see that the world isn't as scary or as dangerous as your worry would get you
to believe so i hope that helps explain how avoidance is a form of intolerance of uncertainty
and how to recognize when you're avoiding things because of intolerance of uncertainty
and some of the things that you can do to tackle and overcome the avoidance behavior
i'd love to hear any questions or thoughts you might have about this so please leave me
some comments in the comments section down below if you've been enjoying my videos and
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one