How can you handle anxiety that comes from not knowing what will happen? That is just about definitive of what causes anxiety, isn’t it? We don’t know what will happen and we want to. There is a lack of control and further a lack of trust in the outcome.
You have to make an important decision. It will not only affect you, but also your family, or your coworkers, your world. And feeling worried doesn’t help. Worry is more or less a total waste of your precious time. A better way to consider it that you have a concern. There needs to be a plan, follow the plan, recheck and repeat.
But sometimes, that logic eludes a person, In that case, how do you deal with your runaway mind on those occasions when tolerance for ambiguous situations just isn’t happening and you want that open loops closed as quickly as possible. Closing open loops to quickly will adversely impact your decision making process.
After all, there are areas of life where that works well. For example it is useful to deal with an email one time so it is off your plate. It solves that problem. Other times, tolerating ambiguity is a path for growth. Thus, it would be extremely useful to be less reactive to those situations when they arise.
First, lets address some underpinnings. It is quite helpful to understand a bit about the structure of how your brain works. What you will find here is quite simplified. However it is useful. It helps you comprehend that actually, you do have agency and are not an eternal victim of your mental habits.
How to be less reactive
First, when you are thinking about your thinking it is called metacognition. People often use metacognition when reviewing how they handled a situation to consider how they might responded differently. You want to improve your ability to manage crisis.
In this case, we are considering a more a specific way of teaching yourself to be less reactive in situations that typically create anxiety and stress so that your recapitulation later will be filled with more success outcomes and less remorse for “I should have done that differently”.
This is a form of mental rehearsal. Mental rehearsal is doing something in your mind before physically following through, like visualizing hitting a baseball, making a putt, talking to your spouse about a difficult topic beforehand.
make Peripheral Vision an ally
Begin by first taking a breath, then second expanding your peripheral vision, BEFORE engaging in the difficulty at hand.
Most everybody has their version of taking a big nice relaxing breath. So you will do that. Expanding your peripheral vision might be new for you.
Why do that? Remember how it feels when you stop at a scenic overlook? You widen your vision to take it all in and it feels magnificent? This relaxes you, an automatic response from your autonomic nervous system. This is an obvious reason for the popularity of scenic overlooks.
So expand your visual awareness out to each side as far as you can go while keeping your head facing straight forward.
Next see how far your visual awareness can expand vertically. Stay with it for 10-15 seconds. You will find that you naturally deepen your breathing and feel more relaxed.
Practice expansion of your peripheral vision until it becomes an anchor for your approach to difficulties. So when those situations come up, this is automatic. This mental rehearsal just like what athletes practice to improve their performances. The third step is to take this out into the real world. You will be much more likely to handle your stressful situation in an improved manner.
Skip making it hard for yourself
Most people can up with is a challenge at work that is stressful. When people are confident, they imagine that they will handle it. That said there are occasions with more perplexing challenges arise that are not so easy to deal with.
Thought about the situation could be that “This is hard” or “Everything will get harder” or a similar negative thought. Examine what your automatic thoughts are. Note them, preferably taking the effort to write them down.
Whenever people have a thought, their reticular activating system then scans the environment for evidence that that the thought is true. (I have written about that elsewhere). This is part of how beliefs are born.
Meanwhile, there are positive elements that are also true. Perhaps people come to you for answers. There is a lot of evidence that people see you as very competent. Consider this and again note this evidence. Again, writing it down is helpful.
Mental Rehearsal made easy
- Think of one of the people who has come to you with questions that then triggers the uncertainty for which you do not have an entire plan to deal with just yet.
- Think of that person talking to you.
- Imagine taking that slow deep breath. Expand peripheral vision.
- Imagine thinking, “This is interesting and I am going to navigate all this just fine”.
Repeat this several times. You can accomplish this by mentally thinking about it and imagining it. Or, again, if you are the kind of person whose mind tends to get distracted, a helpful strategy is to write this out and read through it. Just reading it through provides been a repetition of the process.
The next step is to literally put this into practice. use it with something not so stressful that generates a mild level of uncertainty …. take that nice deep breath, briefly expand your peripheral vision and thinking “this is interesting and I am going to navigate all this just fine”. Because this is an easy one. You an believe it.
After practicing this a few times, put it to the test with something more challenging. You will be pleased with your improved response and your confidence will grow.
why does this work?
This does a couple of good things. First, your reticular formation will now look for evidence that you navigate challenging just fine instead of looking for evidence that it will be difficult.
Second, you have a relaxation response instead of a physical response of tightness and unpleasant tension. This in itself makes things easier. We do not think well when we are tense.
Third, tension and anxiety produce no good result. Thinking is impaired when in fight/flight/ freeze survival mode, So, this is an improvement regardless of your circumstances.
You will have better results figuring out a course of action from an improved physiological state. I hope you find this useful.
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS
An event is an event is an event. How we think about anything that has happened is what gives it meaning. Your thinking then creates a feeling. Research indicates that feelings are required to make decisions at all. To make sure that your feelings are your own and work for you rather than against you is a valid use of your time.
There are elements in our environment that seek to shape our experience of what things mean. This occurs in advertising, in politics, religious leaders for example.
So, questioning if something true or not, holding ambiguity, that it is possible that the answer is different than what we think, is useful. It checks us. Confirmation bias is a hazard. the ability to maintain ambiguity rather than rushing to certainty to close an open loop is beneficial.
Some people really like to get into debates as a way to consider different viewpoints. This is a worthy pursuit if you feel inclined towards that sort of thing.
So, question things, especially those that come to you on screens. The research has long been that we go into alpha waves when watching TV and so we accept that information into our subconscious minds more easily. This is why TV advertisers pay so much money for that screen time.
Questioning helps you to be in charge of your own thinking rather than accepting whatever narratives are coming your way. Even if two people witness the exact same thing at the exact same time, no two people are going to have the exact same experience. Nor are we supposed to. It is what makes us human.
Marian Haftel Smith Copyright 2025