Clients may come to us with many example of uncertainty. Organisational restructuring, redundancies, career pivot to name a few.
Our brain does not like uncertainty and it triggers our threat response. It activates our fight of flight response in the limbic system, which in turn deactivates our pre-frontal cortex (PFC). This is why uncertainty can make us feel overwhelmed and anxious, as when our PFC is switched off, we can’t think clearly. Hence the metaphorical expressions such as, “I can’t see the wood for the trees” or “I feel like a rabbit caught in the headlights”.
Some people find uncertainty harder than others, which leads to an Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU). They have “an underlying fear of the unknown” (Carleton, 2012) and a tendency to react negatively on an emotional, cognitive, and behavioural level to uncertain situations and events (Dugas, Buhr, & Ladouceur, 2004)
They perceive situations as threatening rather than safe.
In coaching sessions we can help our clients in a number of ways, depending on their situation and level of uncertainty. For example, for someone who is low in IU, emotional labelling can be enough to calm down the limbic system. However, for someone who is high in IU, we might want to explore Limiting Beliefs with them. Here are some other suggestions to curiously explore with your clients;
- Normalising – Using psycho-education, by sharing the neuroscience with your clients, can help them see it’s normal to feel anxious during uncertainty. Others feel it too.
- Sitting with it – Explore with them what it might be like for them to sit with the uncertainty. Acknowledge it’s there and to sit with rather than fight against it.
- Notice what they are thinking – Is it thinking versus going down a worry spiral, ruminating or catastrophising.
- Identify what’s within their control – take action on what they can and see what they can let go of.
- Encourage Psychological flexibility – being rigid in process and outcomes can increase the anxiety, versus learning how to be more flexible in thought. What might it be to have an 80% desired outcome versus aiming for 100%. What might that look and feel like?
- Speak to people – Connection is one of the basic human needs and essential for survival. What support do they need want?
- Explore Limiting Beliefs – What is the belief that is least helpful to you right now? List 4 reasons or pieces of evidence that this belief might not be true? What new belief might you like to have instead? How would the situation look now with this new belief?
