More Answers... (05/13/25 Newsletter): Unknowns in an Un-Knowing Time

More Answers from Ask Christa! 

Hi Everyone, 

Here are More Answers... to help you head into the work week. Remember, you can see previous newsletters at askchrista.com/MoreAnswers.

Today’s topic: Unknowns in an Un-Knowing Time

I write a lot about navigating, managing, and resetting or recharging from chronic stress these days. Most of my Ask Christa! questions are about stress, and it's no wonder: there's a surplus of stress and a deficit of relief, much of it related to how many unknowns we're anticipating every day during a time when we all THINK we can predict things based on 100+ years, but... yeah, no. Not really.

This chronic stress environment often leads to hypervigilance (even a mild form of it), which is correlated to feeling anxiety, or that dreaded feeling of danger and what we need to be considering to confront it, avoid it, or manage it.

When you feel like the danger is everywhere all the time... well, that's hypervigilance.

We Are Not Built for Uncertainty as a Norm
(and yet, it abounds these days...)

The future, by definition, is uncertain, and most cultures raise their children with the mental, emotional, and spiritual tools to manage the natural anxiety that comes from the unknown. We do this by teaching about and then normalizing things that might feel scary, but are actually embedded in our society without causing harm. 

Some of the most common elements are ones that we can hear: a loud motorcycle suddenly speeding down a nearby street. A balloon that pops amidst other balloons when we didn't expect it ("oh no, when will the next one pop?"). A loud school bell signaling the start or end of the school day. 

Others are what we see: an insect we may think is ugly but is harmless (spiders, folks, let's hear it for spiders... I'll never understand why most are more afraid of spiders than mosquitos when the latter is SO MUCH MORE HARMFUL to us!) 

Or what we taste, or smell, etc. For example: we learn what a campfire smells like, so in theory, if we see smoke at a campsite or smell campfire in an appropriate setting, our first inclination isn't one of worry or concern. We are taught what we should be afraid of by way of learning what could cause harm: a rattlesnake's rattle in the desert, the smell of rotten food, hearing thunder outside and seeing lightning. 

We may not feel anxious about the potential of those items causing harm, but that's because we have learned how to identify them as harmful and how to confront, avoid, or manage each one.

But even getting a vaccine or bloodwork done: the very thought of being harmed by a needle is enough to send someone spirling into such a bout of anxiety (and hypervigilance) that it takes hours to recover.

Overall, though, we are not build to manage or deal with uncertainty all. the. time. 

And when it does-- when there's a chronic uncertainty we live with-- it changes how we think. It changes our habits. It increases our vigilance as we anticipate and then consider ways to confront, avoid, or manage potential harm brought on by uncertainty. We simply aren't built for uncertainty as a norm. Our brains naturally seek predictability and control (Grupe & Nitschke, 2013).

These days, it's more than scary looking insects or getting our blood drawn at a lab, though, right? It's about whether we have a job. Whether we can afford groceries while we still have a job. Gas prices. Raising children or supporting parents or loved ones. Guardianships. anticipating what the next few months will look like "just in case..."

And that chronic exposure to uncertainty changes things. We see it, and we feel it. Research supports it, too: chronic uncertainty, stress, and prolonged ambiguity (unknowns) can increase vigilance, emotional fatigue, and difficulty concentrating (Mishel, 1988; McEwen & Morrison, 2013).

(duh... we don't need research to know that, though, do we? who hasn't felt this way??)

This creates a cycle of questions: 

What is going to happen?
What should I do?
What if things get worse?
What if they do not get better?

One of the best things we can do to counter this effect is to anchor ourselves to what we DO know, what is constant within us and in our worlds, and what we can control within us (not what we can control all around us).

Actions, Relationships, Routines (Oh My!)

Research on tenacity and coping consistently shows that people function better in uncertain times when they focus on actionable steps, meaningful relationships, and routines that restore a sense of the worlds we live in as individuals in communities (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

The key message? Most times we simply need to feel some level of stability, and we can often feel that in closer proximity than we give our lives credit for. 

Another way to look at it is to balance some time focusing on our local worlds vs putting so much attention on the global world. There is a remarkable grounding force that happens when we gaze our eyes on the closer world we live in before we spend all our sight on the bigger world we hear about.

Here are some tips with some great research:

Stay close to real people (yeah, I said it).
Stress and uncertainty become heavier in isolation. Supportive social connection is one of the strongest predictors of strength and focus during difficult periods (Ozbay et al., 2007).

Limit overconsumption of chaos (yeah, I said that, too).
Yes-- be informed, but be picky about who informs, how much, and when. News cycles are like soap operas from the 1908s: if you skip a few days you'll tune back in realizing you didn't miss much. Sure, you might miss the latest crazy episode of "who made a worse decision," but in the larger scale of things, is a new crazy any different than the crazy that happened three days prior?

Constant informational immersion will feel like chaos because that's the point. So get picky about who informs, how much, and when. Then mix it up a bit and seek out the funnier, more creative, and episodic bits, too. We all know that frequent exposure to distressing news can amplify stress and anxiety responses-- and is there any such thing as non-distressing news right now?  Look to Holman, Garfin, & Silver's work (2014) to learn more, and that was published 12 years ago... which means the study was done nearly 20 years ago, and still holds.

Reset your gaze to what is directly in front of you.
Stability. Stability is a powerful antidote to the chronic concerns, worries, and anxieties habituated in a world that feels chronically uncertain, and here's the good part: it doesn't take much to invite and then cultivate stability into our lives (but it DOES take effort if you've already become hypervigilant about the world).

Focus on good relationships, build routines, and create trust within your little world to offset uncertainties from the bigger world. Small moments of control help restore psychological stability during uncertain periods (Southwick & Charney, 2018).

Booster for the Week!

This week I'm offering an engaging, informative video called, "The Essential Skill to Regulate Your Nervous System - Relaxed Vigilance vs. Hypervigilance 21/30" At 13 minutes, it is a good watch at any time of the day, and walks through what happens with our nervous system when we experience stress (even when triggered by micro-stressors that might not seem like much in the moment, but can have a compounding effect).

The speaker, Emma McAdam talks about simple skills that enables your nervous system to self-regulate (and self-calm).

With kindness,

Christa

(Helpful? Interesting? Please feel free to forward and invite others to subscribe at askchrista.com/newsletter.)

References

Grupe, D. W., & Nitschke, J. B. (2013). Uncertainty and anticipation in anxiety: An integrated neurobiological and psychological perspective. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14(7), 488–501. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3524

Holman, E. A., Garfin, D. R., & Silver, R. C. (2014). Media’s role in broadcasting acute stress following the Boston Marathon bombings. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(1), 93–98. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1316265110

McEwen, B. S., & Morrison, J. H. (2013). The brain on stress: Vulnerability and plasticity of the prefrontal cortex over the life course. Neuron, 79(1), 16–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2013.06.028

Mishel, M. H. (1988). Uncertainty in illness. Image: The Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 20(4), 225–232. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1547-5069.1988.tb00082.x

Ozbay, F., Johnson, D. C., Dimoulas, E., Morgan, C. A., Charney, D., & Southwick, S. (2007). Social support and resilience to stress. Psychiatry, 4(5), 35–40.

Southwick, S. M., & Charney, D. S. (2018). Resilience: The science of mastering life’s greatest challenges (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

(remember: most public libraries in the USA offer access to academic papers; however, if yours does not, then Google these papers to see where they are listed, how you can learn more about them, and how you can find similar papers to learn more about conflict management and conflict resolution in the workplace)