False Certainty: Mitigating Uncertainty to Avoid Vulnerability

Uncertainty is a powerful space. It can feel as though you’ve forgotten to exhale as you’re waiting for the reprieve of certainty. I detest speaking in absolutes, and it is rare to find someone who genuinely enjoys uncertainty. Many learn to accept the reality that there are endless unknowns in the world, while acknowledging this can be a difficult truth. For some in their past, uncertainty has meant potential death, making uncertainty in the present unbearable.

When uncertainty is unbearable, we use what is at our disposable to create certainty. This becomes problematic for people who struggle with vulnerability and trust, because there is difficulty with seeking answers in the people who hold them. Some will have hypothetical conversations with the person in question for days, replay all the possible scenarios, and come to conclusions about peoples’ intentions, desires, thoughts and feelings. What they’re left with is rumination and hypervigilance, searching for an answer within their own mind that they will never find. Yet many will find a conclusion and operate from this newfound certainty:

“They just don’t want me to succeed.”
“They didn’t answer my text because they don’t want to be friends with me anymore.”
“They gave me that look because they thought what I said was stupid.”
“I’m going to see them and they’re going to humiliate me in front of the school.”
“Everyone hates me because they didn’t follow my page. They think I’m going to fail.”“He’s texting different than usual. He’s going to break up with me.”

They’ve created a falsehood, and maybe worse, a falsehood potentially based in the patterns of their past, not from the present. They’re speaking to a truth they have experienced: someone didn’t want them to succeed, someone rejected their friendship, someone has thought they said something unintelligent, someone humiliated them, didn’t believe in their capacity, and have been broken up with. These are the patterns of their past and what they have known to be true. It would make sense for them to operate from this perspective, yet the certainty they create is the repetition of the relationships and hurt they have already experienced.

What is harder, yet more accurate, is they do not know if these conclusions are true. These are possibilities, but not certainties. The ask here, would be to navigate the uncertainty with curiosity:

What would you need answered to have certainty based in the present?

If curiosity feels too vulnerable because those who hold the answers don’t seem reliable, that’s okay. There is nothing wrong with choosing not to be vulnerable. The ask then is not approaching the situation with curiosity, but to accept uncertainty. To disengage with curiosity and vulnerability, while simultaneously finding certainty, would be a falsehood.

Certainty, regardless of how grounded it is in truth, will be the foundation of significant decisions. When we create the certainty we are looking for, rather than find the answers we need outside of ourselves, while accepting what we will not know, we won’t see past our current understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. We will only operate from what our past has shown us will happen, not from what could be happening in the current situation.