This Is What Anxiety Looks Like by David A. Clark

Author:David A. Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2024-09-18T23:39:34+00:00

3. Tolerance Correction

Tierra’s low tolerance for uncertainty, high need to know, and risk aversion causes her to feel anxious and worried whenever her mind drifts toward “what if” thinking about the future—but every occasion of anxiety or worry also presented her an opportunity to build greater tolerance for uncertainty. There’s an exercise I call the four-column tolerance tool that Tierra used every time she felt anxious or worried to continue strengthening her tolerance capacity. (See http://www.newharbinger.com/53165 for the worksheet.)

The tolerance exercise starts with writing down the situation, problem, or circumstance that triggers an anxious feeling. For example, Tierra feels a wave of anxiety wash over her when she’s reminded of the opportunity for a job promotion. As she begins working with the four-column tolerance tool, every time this happens, she writes it down. Next, she writes the best outcome she hopes to achieve in that situation—like hearing that she got the job promotion soon after applying for the position. In a third column, Tierra describes how she could make herself feel more certain that the best hoped-for outcome will occur—for instance, asking fellow coworkers whether they’d heard that others are applying for the promotion and whether management was desperate to fill the position.

The final step in this intervention is the most important: Tierra considers what she could do that is opposite to the ways to seek certainty that she wrote about in the third column. This task allows her to practice accepting a level of uncertainty that a less-than-desirable outcome might occur. That is, rather than trying to lower uncertainty by working to be convinced that a desirable outcome will occur, she does the opposite, which results in an acceptance of uncertainty. For Tierra, the opposite of seeking information from coworkers is not talking about the job position at work, reminding herself that she might not get the promotion, and that she has little control over the decisions of management. This forces Tierra to face the uncertainty of her promotion application. The more she practices the opposite of seeking certainty when feeling anxious, the more tolerant she’ll become of feeling uncertain.

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