today we're going to be taking a deep dive into intolerance of uncertainty and i'm
going to explain how you can tell the difference between behaviors that are tolerating uncertainty
versus intolerant of uncertainty
hi everyone in today's video i'm going to be going deeper into the concept of intolerance
of uncertainty which is a major maintaining factor in a number of anxiety disorders 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
if you've been finding my videos helpful and you want to see more please hit that subscribe button
down below and notification bell and you'll be alerted every thursday when i post a new video
now with those things out of the way let's talk more about intolerance of uncertainty
which is a topic i've covered in a couple of previous videos in which i talk about
what intolerance of uncertainty is which at its core you can think of intolerance of uncertainty
as kind of like a psychological allergy that for people who are intolerant of uncertainty
all it takes is for there to be just a little bit of uncertainty in a situation and it creates this
big uh anxiety reaction for for them and makes them a lot more anxious than someone who's not as
intolerant of uncertainty and if you want to see more about that i'll post some links to
the video about intolerance of uncertainty down below or in the in the corner of the screen
i also talked in another video about various different manifestations of intolerance of
uncertainty the various different behaviors that people will do that are intolerant of uncertainty
now one of the things that can happen is that people look at this list of behaviors so things
like procrastinating things like avoiding doing certain things seeking a lot of reassurance um
checking and double checking things um sort of collecting lots of information before
making a decision so people look at these various manifestations of intolerance of uncertainty and
will sometimes think to themselves okay great as long as i don't do any of these things then um
then i'm not being intolerant of uncertainty but the thing is and this is a key point
what defines a behavior as whether or not it's tolerating a certain uncertainty or intolerant
of uncertainty isn't so much the behavior itself it's the underlying motivation for the behavior
so i'll give you some examples now suppose uh i've been avoiding doing laundry
and that's because um i'm kind of lazy and i don't like doing laundry so i haven't done laundry in
a week because i just haven't really gotten around to it and i don't really want to do it
that's not really intolerance of uncertainty that's just laziness
it's just me not doing something i don't really feel like doing or i don't enjoy doing
so even though that's avoiding doing a certain task that's not really being driven by
a fear of uncertainty it's being driven by preference and just a general underlying laziness
now if the reason why i'm avoiding doing laundry though is that i'm afraid that a red sock is going
to get into my my washing with all of my white towels and it's going to turn everything pink
and that's why i'm avoiding doing laundry or because i think i'm going to screw it up and
i'm going to shrink some of my clothes and that's why i'm avoiding doing it well then in that case
that behavior of avoiding doing laundry is in is intolerant of uncertainty so in the first scenario
where i just don't avoid doing laundry because i don't really like it that's not intolerance
of uncertainty that's laziness in the second scenario where i'm avoiding doing laundry because
i'm afraid that i'm going to mess up the laundry somehow that is intolerance of uncertainty
now the exact same behavior depending on your motivation can sometimes be tolerating
uncertainty or intolerant of uncertainty again depending on why you're doing that behavior
so this is where it gets a little bit more complex it's not just trying to figure out okay what are
the things that i do the certain behaviors that i do that are intolerant of uncertainty
it's understanding why is it that i'm doing those behaviors and it's the motivation trying to avoid
uncertainty so take for example one morning i wake up and i've got a really bad headache
and i think to myself wow i've been having a lot of headaches lately
what if this is a tumor what if this is brain cancer what if this is something serious
and i think to myself okay i i've gotta i've gotta find out right away so i pick up my phone
i call my doctor's office and i make an appointment right away to get tests and to get
information to figure out exactly what is going on well in that case picking up the phone and calling
my doctor's office and making an appointment right away that would be intolerance of uncertainty it's
me collecting information to give me certainty as to what is going on with these headaches
a more tolerating uncertainty approach in that situation would be to put off making a call
to my doctor's office so maybe i'd give it a week and if in a week from now i'm still having these
terrible headaches then i make an appointment with my doctor to get checked out and see what happens
so in scenario one calling the doctor to make an appointment is intolerant of uncertainty putting
off making the appointment or calling to make the appointment that would be tolerating uncertainty
now let's imagine the exact same scenario except this time when i wake up with a bad
headache i think to myself oh my goodness what if this is a tumor
what if this is cancer what if i'm going to die and i think to myself oh my god i
can't deal with that i i i don't want to know i can't um i can't be diagnosed with this and so
i avoid calling my doctor's office i avoid uh checking things out i avoid going and getting
examined to determine what's going on here because i'm afraid of what the answer might be
well in that scenario me avoiding making the call to my doctor's office to book an appointment
that would be intolerance of uncertainty a more tolerating uncertainty thing to
do in that situation would be to pick up the phone and make an appointment to see my doctor
as soon as possible because my motivation is to avoid getting any information that might be bad
news so that motivation is driving the intolerance of uncertainty i i'm
not sure what the doctor's going to tell me and so i want to avoid getting any bad news
so i hope that helps explain some of the the nuance of this concept of intolerance
of uncertainty in the first scenario picking up the phone and calling my doctor's office
to make an appointment right away is intolerant of uncertainty and the second scenario picking up the
phone and calling my doctor to make an appointment right away that would be tolerating uncertainty
it's all about the motivation all about the reason why i'm doing it so i hope that explanation has
helped you understand this concept of intolerance of uncertainty on a little bit of a deeper level
not just this particular behaviors but the motivation behind the behavior i'd love to
hear your thoughts and ideas about this so please leave me some comments down below
thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one