My Life of Checking, Hiding, and Faking

Chapter 5 How I Handled Uncertainty The uncertainty of life – uncertainty intolerance - how I hid my uncertainty intolerance – how I learned to cope with uncertainty – uncertainty to confidence Life is uncertain, and I used to find this uncertainty impossible to cope with. I had what is known as Uncertainty Intolerance, (or Intolerance of Uncertainty) although I only came across this phenomenon recently. Uncertainty Intolerance was, in my own view, what mainly drove my ‘What If’ thinking, and possibly most of my OCD. I was trying either to prepare for disasters, so that if one came it wouldn’t be too much of a shock, or trying to stave off disasters with my OCD behaviours. Basically I was trying to impose certainty on an uncertain world. I still find uncertainty difficult, but most people do. No one can be protected from the uncertainties of life, and unfortunately disasters do occasionally happen. But we can’t spend life trying to avoid them, it won’t stop the disasters from happening. How I hid my uncertainty intolerance I didn’t have to hide my uncertainty intolerance very much because it didn’t show like my other OCD behaviours. But it made me behave or not behave in a certain way, and I had to go back to faking, by making up reasons for doing or not doing things which were not real, because I couldn’t admit to the real ones. The best example of this was that I didn’t travel abroad. Apart from all the less drastic things that might go wrong – delayed or cancelled flights, lost luggage or a confused booking - it was too much for me to contemplate something more drastic happening in an unknown place where I didn’t know the language. So when people suggested I go to such-and-such a place I usually faked an interest and thanked them politely for their information, but I had no intention of acting on it. I decided that travelling abroad was something I just wouldn’t do. I was severely limiting myself through not being able to deal with the uncertainty of it. Cartoon 51 How I learned to cope with uncertainty I knew I could never reduce the chance of disaster, but I could learn to live with the concept of uncertainty more successfully. So I decided two things. 1. I needed to be able to accept a certain level of uncertainty, in the same way that I had learned to accept a certain level of anxiety. 2. I was very unconfident. Several people I knew seemed to be very confident and not bothered by life’s uncertainties. I decided to copy their confidence even if I didn’t feel confident, and look as if life’s uncertainty didn’t bother me even though it did. The effect of these changes in thinking was a game-changer. As I began to think of myself as a person who can take life in their stride, I began to feel like one. It took a year or so of practising this pretence for it to turn into genuine ability to handle uncertainty. This also led to my having a huge increase in confidence, which helped further. Confidence! I recognized that developing my confidence was crucial to overcoming my OCD as well as my uncertainty intolerance. I was confident in some areas of life but desperately unconfident in others, particularly in the workplace. As far as I could see, confident assured people didn’t generally speculate on what might go wrong, or ruminate, and they were equipped to tackle minor or major problems without overthinking them. Not being fearful seemed to me to be a lot to do with confidence. Cartoon 57 I had spent most of my feeling as if my opinions weren’t worth much, and I had felt as if I had been living life in the wings rather than having a real role to play. So, every time I approached any situation, I thought “what is the confident approach to this situation or problem? How would one of my confident friends approach it?” Pretending to be confident was very hard to do at first. I modelled myself on one or two people I knew whose confidence I admired. In the same way that I imitated people who didn’t seem bothered by uncertainty, I also imitated confident people. ‘Acting confident’ had the same effect as ‘acting uncertainty-tolerant’ – in fact the two seemed to be interchangeable. The more I imitated these characteristics, the more I started to actually adopt them and pretence became the real thing. It was remarkable how this pretence of confidence quickly became actual confidence – something no therapy had taught me! My partner was brilliantly supportive in helping me to increase my confidence. He was relentlessly but lovingly on my case – reminding me to finish my sentences instead of letting them tail off, or not to apologise for things unnecessarily, both of which were habits I had got into through feeling unconfident. He always congratulated me when he saw me overcoming one of my unconfident traits. When I started to correct these outward symptoms of self-doubt, my inward attitude changed. I was now on an upward spiral rather than the downward ones I had experienced before. Being more confident made me feel much more in control of my life, and especially my OCD. I was less afraid of it and could stand up to it much more effectively. If you would like to increase confidence it might be helpful to refer to the table below and try to change the behaviours you feel are realistic for you. If you try one or two, you might find that others will follow. Unconfident behaviours Confident behaviours Indecisive Decisive Unnecessarily reliant on others Independent Indecisive Decisive Apologetic/over-explaining Assertive Dithering/flustered Self-possessed Timid/Nervous Self-assured Walking with head down or stooping Walking upright Unsure of own opinions Courage of convictions Ruminating Looking forward Cartoon 58