When Knowing You’re Okay Isn’t Enough: Understanding Anxiety and the Need for Certainty

On Anxiety, Uncertainty, and Reassurance

In this month’s featured piece, Dr. Melissa Miranda explores why anxiety can be so difficult to reason with, what happens when problem-solving turns into reassurance seeking or overthinking, and how we can learn to tolerate uncertainty without letting anxiety make every decision for us.

“I know that logically, but I still feel like something is wrong.”

This is one of the most common things I hear from clients struggling with anxiety, and understanding why that happens can be incredibly validating.

Our brains have systems designed to detect and respond to potential danger. The amygdala is heavily involved in our threat response, while areas of the prefrontal cortex help with reasoning, perspective-taking, and decision-making. When our threat system is highly activated, simply giving ourselves more facts or trying to “logic” our way out of anxiety often isn’t enough. The anxious brain isn’t necessarily asking, “What is most rational?” It is often asking, “Can you guarantee that I’m safe?”

This is where the difference between solving a problem and trying to achieve certainty becomes important. If there is a problem we can reasonably solve, thinking is useful. But when there is no new information to gather and we continue checking, Googling, asking others, replaying conversations, or running through every possible scenario, we may no longer be problem-solving. We may be trying to make an uncomfortable feeling go away.

And usually, it works temporarily. We check and feel better. Someone reassures us and we feel relieved. But when the anxiety returns, our brain remembers what helped and asks us to do it again. Over time, this can unintentionally teach the brain, “When I feel uncertain, I need to do something to make sure I’m okay.”

Breaking that cycle means learning that we do not have to respond to every thought our brain produces. Progress can look surprisingly small: checking once instead of four times, noticing “I’m having an anxious thought” rather than immediately investigating it, or waiting a little longer before asking for reassurance. These moments help create distance between having a thought and acting on it.

Distress tolerance is also a skill. Often, we are trying to escape not only uncertainty, but the uncomfortable emotions and physical sensations that come with it. We can instead practice naming what is happening: “I feel anxious right now.” “I feel responsible.” “I feel uncertain, and my body really wants me to fix this.”

Sometimes, when more thinking isn’t helping, the answer is less thinking and more action. Breathe. Move your body. Take a walk. Notice what is happening physically. Eat if you haven’t eaten. Rest if you’re exhausted. Practice mindfulness. Engage with something happening in the world around you. A colleague once described this as learning to “get out of your head and into your body.” Overthinking pulls us further into an internal loop when what we may actually need is to reconnect with our bodies, the present moment, and the world around us.

For parents, partners, friends, and other support people, reassurance can be tricky because it comes from such a caring place. Before repeatedly reassuring someone, it can be helpful to ask, “Am I helping this person tolerate their anxiety, or am I helping them get rid of it right now?” It can also be worth noticing our own discomfort. Sometimes we rush to reassure another person because watching them feel anxious makes us anxious, too. Supporting someone through uncertainty may mean grounding ourselves enough to communicate, “I know this feels really uncomfortable, and I believe you can handle not knowing right now.”

Ultimately, acceptance is one of the most important starting points. There are things in life we simply cannot know with complete certainty. Often, the things that make us most anxious are distressing precisely because we care about them. Anxiety tends to attach itself to meaningful things like our relationships, health, family, performance, identity, or future.

Instead of only asking, “How do I make this anxiety go away?” I often encourage clients to ask, “What does this anxiety tell me matters to me?”

Then the work becomes learning to live according to that value rather than according to the anxiety surrounding it. The goal is not to care less or eliminate uncertainty, but to continue moving toward what matters to us without letting anxiety decide how we respond. We may not be able to choose whether uncertainty shows up, but we can become much more intentional about what we do when it does.

By Dr. Melissa Miranda, Psy.D.