How Uncertainty Can Make Anxiety Feel Worse

Most of us think of anxiety as something that appears because we’re frightened, worried or expecting something bad to happen. That obviously can be true, but I think anxiety can sometimes be connected to something much less obvious: there is something unresolved, uncertain or missing, and your mind hasn’t yet worked out what is going to happen about it.

It could be something small. You’re waiting for something you need, you haven’t sorted out what you’re eating later, you don’t know how you’re getting somewhere or there’s a practical problem sitting in the background without an answer. You may not even be consciously thinking about it every minute, yet once it is resolved you suddenly feel different.

That change can be confusing because nothing dramatic happened. The rest of your life is still exactly where it was, but one uncertainty disappeared and some of the anxiety seemed to disappear with it. I think those moments are worth noticing because they can tell us something about what our mind was actually dealing with.

When anxiety appears, we naturally ask, “Why am I anxious?” Sometimes that question helps, but it can also be so broad that you struggle to answer it.

Anxiety and Uncertainty Are Closely Connected

Anxiety often involves the future. Something might happen, something might go wrong, you might not cope, you don’t know what somebody is thinking or you aren’t sure how a situation is going to turn out. The important part is often that the answer isn’t available yet.

That’s one reason uncertainty can be so uncomfortable. Your mind has information about what is happening now, but it is also constantly trying to anticipate what happens next. When there isn’t enough information to do that confidently, the gap can become somewhere for worry to appear.

This can be obvious with something like waiting for medical results or finding out whether you got a job, but the same basic experience can appear around much smaller things. You might be waiting for somebody to reply to a message, wondering whether you have enough money for something later or thinking about a problem you know needs dealing with but haven’t yet decided how.

The size of the uncertainty isn’t always the same as the size of the reaction.

Sometimes Your Mind Is Waiting for an Answer

I sometimes think of unresolved things as having a loose end attached to them. I don’t mean that as a clinical term, but it describes the experience quite well. Something hasn’t reached an answer yet, so part of your attention keeps returning to it.

Imagine you know you need food later but haven’t decided what you’re having, there isn’t much in the house and you don’t particularly feel like going out. It sounds trivial compared with the bigger problems people can have, yet there is still an unresolved question sitting there: what am I doing about food later?

Once you order something or get what you need, the question has an answer. You don’t need to keep considering it anymore, and sometimes the change in how you feel can be much greater than you would expect from something so ordinary.

That doesn’t mean the food cured your anxiety. It may simply mean one of the things contributing to your current state stopped needing an answer.

Relief Can Tell You Something About the Anxiety

I think sudden relief is interesting because we usually pay attention to anxiety when it arrives, but not always when it leaves.

You can feel anxious for an hour, something changes and ten minutes later you realise you’re much calmer. Instead of only enjoying that relief, it can be useful to notice what happened immediately beforehand.

Did you receive some information you were waiting for? Did you make a decision? Did something you were worried you wouldn’t have become available? Did you finish a task that had been sitting in your mind? Did somebody give you an answer?

Those moments can give you clues about what had been contributing to the anxiety.

You might notice things such as:

• Anxiety reducing once a decision has been made.
• Feeling calmer after receiving information you were waiting for.
• Relief when something practical has finally been sorted.
• Less worry once there is a plan, even if the problem itself still exists.
• Anxiety increasing when something normally available suddenly isn’t.
• Feeling unsettled when an important part of your day remains uncertain.

None of these automatically explains all of your anxiety, but they can help you understand one part of it.

Sometimes What Feels Missing Is Very Ordinary

When I say something feels “missing”, I don’t necessarily mean a deep emotional absence or something meaningful that is missing from your life. Sometimes it is literally something your mind expected to be there and it currently isn’t.

Perhaps you normally know how you’re getting home and today you don’t. You usually have money put aside for a bill and this month you haven’t. You normally speak to somebody at a certain time and they haven’t replied. You were expecting a delivery and it hasn’t arrived.

Each one creates a little uncertainty around what happens next. If you’re already anxious, stressed or mentally overloaded, another unresolved thing can sometimes feel much bigger than it normally would.

Once the answer appears, some of that pressure may drop because your mind no longer needs to keep checking the problem.

Familiar Things Can Also Give Us a Sense of Certainty

There’s another side to this because humans become used to routines, objects, behaviours and people being available in predictable ways.

When something we normally rely on suddenly isn’t there, we may notice the absence much more strongly than we normally notice its presence. You don’t think much about having enough petrol until the warning light comes on. You don’t spend all day appreciating that your internet works until it stops working five minutes before you need it.

The same thing can happen with habits. Someone who regularly uses nicotine may feel anxious when they run out, although in that case dependence and withdrawal can also be part of the reaction, so it isn’t simply uncertainty. What is still interesting is the way the mind recognises that something expected is unavailable and immediately starts thinking about how and when it will be restored.

We often notice the missing thing more intensely than the thing that was quietly available all along.

Anxiety Can Be About Not Knowing What Happens Next

This becomes more obvious when the uncertainty is larger.

You might hate your job but not know what else you could do. The anxiety may not only be about the job itself, it may also involve not knowing where your working life is going. Once you get another job, some of that anxiety can reduce because there is finally a direction.

The same could happen with money. You might be anxious because your finances are difficult, but part of the anxiety comes from not knowing how you’re going to deal with them. Once you have a realistic plan, the money problem might still exist, yet the experience can feel different because there is now something to work with.

That distinction matters. Sometimes what brings relief isn’t getting everything you wanted, it’s moving from “I don’t know what happens now” to “I know what I’m going to do next”.

Social Anxiety Can Contain a Lot of Uncertainty

Social anxiety is another place where this becomes particularly noticeable because social situations contain an enormous amount of information we can’t completely know.

What do they think of me? Did that sound stupid? Are they going to reply? Did I upset them? What will happen when I arrive? Who will be there? How am I supposed to behave?

There may be no immediate answer to any of those questions, which leaves plenty of room for your mind to start supplying possibilities of its own.

Someone might feel extremely anxious before an event and then settle shortly after arriving because many of the unknowns have disappeared. They can see who is there, what the room looks like, where they are going to sit and what is actually happening. The event itself may not have changed, but it is no longer mostly imaginary.

Sometimes reality is easier for the mind to deal with than waiting for reality to arrive.

Generalised Anxiety Can Keep Finding New Uncertainties

Generalised anxiety can be more difficult because worry isn’t necessarily attached to one clear problem. It can move between work, health, money, family, responsibilities and things that may never happen.

One uncertainty gets answered and another one appears.

That can create a strange experience when something does make you feel better. You notice the anxiety has dropped, then immediately start wondering why it dropped. You check yourself, analyse the change and start thinking about whether the anxiety is going to return.

Before long, the relief itself has become another uncertain thing to think about.

I think this is one of the difficulties of becoming very familiar with anxiety. You can become so used to monitoring how you feel that feeling unexpectedly calm can almost seem suspicious. Instead of simply experiencing the quieter state, your mind starts looking for an explanation.

Self-awareness is useful here, but there is a difference between noticing a change and interrogating it.

Not Every Uncertainty Needs to Be Solved

There is an important limit to this idea because trying to remove every uncertainty from your life would probably make anxiety worse rather than better.

You cannot know exactly what everybody thinks of you, guarantee what your career will look like in five years, predict every health problem or make sure nothing unexpected ever happens. Life contains uncertainty whether we like it or not.

If anxiety teaches you that you can only feel safe once every question has an answer, you can end up constantly seeking reassurance, checking things or trying to control situations that cannot realistically be controlled.

The useful distinction is between an uncertainty you can sensibly do something about and one you may need to learn to live alongside.

If you haven’t paid an important bill, dealing with it is useful. If you’re waiting for somebody to reply and you’ve already sent the message, checking your phone every thirty seconds doesn’t create the answer any faster.

Understanding the difference can save a lot of unnecessary mental work.

Ask What Still Feels Unresolved

When anxiety appears, we naturally ask, “Why am I anxious?” Sometimes that question helps, but it can also be so broad that you struggle to answer it.

Another question might be more useful: what currently feels unresolved?

Is there something you’re waiting for? Something you need that isn’t available yet? A decision you haven’t made? A conversation you know needs to happen? Something practical you keep putting off? An area of your future that currently feels completely unclear?

You might find nothing obvious, and that’s fine. Anxiety doesn’t always arrive with a simple explanation, and anxiety disorders certainly aren’t caused by one missing item or unresolved task.

The question simply gives you another way of looking at what your mind may be responding to.

What You Haven’t Got Can Become Louder Than What You Have

I think there’s something else interesting about all of this. Our attention can become very focused on what is absent.

If one thing feels missing, uncertain or unresolved, it can become louder than ten things that are already fine. You may have somewhere to live, people who care about you, food, work and a reasonable plan for the week, yet one unanswered problem can dominate your thoughts because that is the part your mind still doesn’t know what to do with.

This doesn’t mean you should tell yourself to be grateful and ignore whatever is worrying you. That usually doesn’t help. It means recognising that attention naturally becomes drawn towards the thing that still appears to need an answer.

Sometimes becoming aware of that helps you put the anxiety into context. There may genuinely be something that needs dealing with, but it may not mean your entire life is uncertain.

A Plan Can Sometimes Reduce Anxiety Before the Problem Is Gone

One of the clearest things I’ve noticed about uncertainty is that the problem doesn’t always need to disappear before we feel some relief. Sometimes having a realistic plan is enough to change the experience.

You can still owe the money, but now you know how you’re going to repay it. You can still dislike your job, but now you’ve started looking at alternatives. The difficult conversation hasn’t happened yet, but you know when you’re going to have it and what you want to say.

The future is still uncertain, although it is no longer completely directionless.

That can matter because anxiety often wants an answer to what happens next. You may not be able to give yourself certainty, but sometimes you can give yourself a next step.

Notice What Changes When the Anxiety Changes

I think we can learn quite a lot from paying attention to the moments when anxiety becomes quieter.

Not obsessively, and not by analysing every tiny change in your mood. Simply notice the bigger patterns.

If you repeatedly feel calmer when you have a plan, uncertainty may be an important part of how your anxiety works. If waiting for answers affects you strongly, that’s useful to know. If practical things sitting unfinished in the background seem to increase your anxiety, dealing with them earlier may make your days easier.

You may also discover that sometimes nothing external changed at all. You ate, rested, spoke to somebody, became distracted or simply moved into a different mental state, which is another reminder that anxiety is influenced by more than one thing.

The point isn’t to find a single explanation for every anxious feeling. It’s to understand more about the conditions in which your own anxiety becomes louder or quieter.

Sometimes there really is something missing, unanswered or unresolved. Becoming aware of that doesn’t guarantee the anxiety disappears, but it may help you understand why your mind keeps returning to it and whether there is anything useful you can actually do.

FAQ

Can Uncertainty Make Anxiety Worse?

Yes. Uncertainty can be difficult because your mind doesn’t have a clear answer about what is going to happen next. People differ in how strongly they respond to uncertainty, but it can contribute to worry and anxiety, particularly when the situation feels important or difficult to control.

Why Do I Sometimes Feel Better as Soon as Something Is Sorted?

Resolving something can remove one source of uncertainty or mental demand. The problem may have been taking up more attention than you realised, so once there is an answer or a plan, you may notice a fairly quick change in how you feel.

Can Small Unresolved Things Really Affect Anxiety?

They can, especially when you’re already stressed or anxious. A small practical problem may not be important on its own, but several unanswered or unfinished things can give your mind more to keep track of.

Why Does Anxiety Sometimes Move to Something Else?

Anxiety, particularly generalised anxiety, can involve worry across several areas of life. Resolving one concern doesn’t necessarily remove the tendency to worry, which means attention can sometimes move towards another uncertainty.

Can Social Anxiety Be Related to Uncertainty?

It can. Social situations often involve uncertainty about how other people will respond, what they think, what will happen and how you will come across. For some people, that uncertainty contributes to the anxiety they experience before or during social situations.

Should I Try to Remove All Uncertainty From My Life?

No. Some uncertainty can be resolved practically, while some is simply part of life. Constantly trying to obtain complete certainty can lead to more checking, reassurance-seeking and worry. It can be more useful to recognise what you can realistically act on and what you cannot know yet.

What Should I Ask Myself When I Feel Anxious?

One useful question is, “What currently feels unresolved?” You can look for something you’re waiting for, a decision you haven’t made, something practical that needs attention or an area of life that currently feels uncertain. There may not always be an obvious answer, but the question can sometimes reveal what your attention keeps returning to.