Uncertainty experiments
Deliberately leave small things unchecked, and find out that not-knowing is survivable.
How it works
You cannot argue yourself into tolerating uncertainty; you build the tolerance behaviourally, the way you would build any other capacity. Start small and specific: send the email without re-reading it a fourth time, do not check the balance today, leave the message on read for an hour, pick the restaurant without reading the reviews. Predict beforehand how bad it will be and how long the discomfort will last, then record what actually happened. The gap between prediction and outcome is the treatment.
Open the toolHow good is the evidence
Moderate evidence
Reductions in intolerance of uncertainty during treatment mediate reductions in worry (Bomyea et al., 2015), and experimental manipulation of IU changes worry — so targeting it directly is mechanistically supported.
Caveat: Build a ladder. Starting with something high-stakes tends to produce a bad experience that confirms the fear rather than disconfirming it.
Where this is used
The domain modules that lean on this technique.
- Social media and comparison — Feeds, comparison, being perceived, the urge to check
- Health anxiety and body checking — Symptoms, searching, appointments, mortality
- Relationships and social standing — Being judged, conflict, whether people are annoyed with you
Related techniques
- Worry triage — Sort each worry into one you can act on today and one you cannot. They need opposite treatment.
- Worry postponement — Capture worries as they arrive, and deal with them only in a fixed daily slot.
- Decatastrophising — Realistic worst case, most likely case, and — the part people skip — how you would actually cope.
- Concreteness training — Move from "why is this happening to me" to "what exactly happened, and what is the next step".