Dear Richard:

“Really struggling with uncertainty” is the title of your thread, “The uncertainty I am feeling is crushing”,  you wrote.

Uncertainty demands us to make choices of significance. Your excessive struggle with uncertainty, seems to me, is the result of your excessive fear of making the wrong choices= choices that will later prove wrong. This fear had led to you being “filled with regret and second-guessing”, exhausted and sleepless, feeling anxious, hopeless and depressed.

In your mind, making choices that will later prove wrong is too scary. You wrote: “I felt like I dodged a bullet” when you turned down an offer- your excessive fear about making that choice was comparable to  the fear when faced with a loaded gun pointing at you.

“I know.. that many other people are facing greater difficulties in life”- the difficulty you are facing is your internal excessive fear of choosing wrong, which is greater than the difficulty that an external, real-life situation requires.

“Anxiety is something I have struggled with most of my life. It has been particularly acute as of late”- the excessive fear started before recently, probably in childhood, as is most often the case.

“I am not someone who is particularly physically affectionate. When I see my parents I more or less lean in for a hug but I do not usually really hug them… about 5 years ago I was about ready to quit my doctoral program. I felt completely lost and was so anxiety and depression ridden.. My dad gave me a hug during that time and I wrapped both my arms around him and hugged him back. He actually thanked me later for giving him a ‘real’ hug for a change”-

– you normally give your parents a perfunctory hug, motivated by duty, not a “real hug”. It took a whole lot of anxiety for you to give your father a real hug, one that was motivated by your real, strong need for comfort. I am guessing that somehow (and it is not uncommon) your parents gave you the message, when you were a child, that choosing wrong leads to terrible consequences, and/ or they shamed you/ rejected you for needing comfort, and/ or they weren’t there when you needed comfort.

In regard to the excessive fear of making the wrong choices, a fear beginning in childhood, here are two possibilities as to how this can happen: (1) A parent tells the child again and again about how his/her wrong choices led to terrible consequences, going on and on about how he/she suffers for having made those choices. The child naturally feels intense empathy for the suffering parent, and his/her experience becomes the child’s own experience because of that empathy, (2) A child is excessively punished for making certain choices- choices that are not necessarily wrong- punished not necessarily physically as in a beating;  a look of intense disapproval/accusation/shaming, or comparing a child unfavorably to another- these are punishments enough for a young child, especially when they happen repeatedly.

You mentioned “Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real”- evidence perhaps that you are incapable of making the right choices, and/ or that your need for comfort is shameful?

I am bringing these things up because although what you are already doing (taking a walk outside, reading certain books, doing CBT exercises, listening to a sound machine at night, etc.) are very helpful, gaining insight into how things came about-in the long run- is necessary for healing.

anita