Generalized anxiety disorder is a disorder of worry. People with generalized anxiety tend to worry excessively about a number of different things: family, relationships, work, school, the future, health – you name it.
Because there are so many worries, people start to try to deal with every worry, but it is hard to put out the many different fires that continue to pop up in their lives. It’s also generally not effective because it doesn’t get to the core of the disorder.
In this post, I discuss one strategy that gets to the core of generalized anxiety disorder. This strategy has been supported by science to be effective in treating symptoms of generalized anxiety.
Intolerance of uncertainty
People with generalized anxiety can be described as having a fear of the unknown. Psychologist Dr. Michel Dugas named this inherent fear of the unknown as intolerance of uncertainty. That is, people with generalized anxiety disorder tend to view uncertainty as dangerous or threatening.
Intolerance of uncertainty can be present in both big situations, like being worried about losing a job, or small situations, like being worried about not liking the food when ordering from a new restaurant.
In some cases, this intolerance of uncertainty gets so distressing that people with generalized anxiety would rather hear bad news than to sit with uncertainty. For example, they might say: “I just want to know that I failed the test rather than keep waiting in misery.”
Therefore, the key to beating generalized anxiety is through developing a resistance to uncertainty, and even possibly see uncertainty as an exciting thing. One way to do so is through behavioural experiments.
Behavioural experiments: What are they and how do we do them?
Behavioural experiments are really a fancy term for not letting our brain’s anxious prediction get in the way of giving something a try anyways. We usually follow what our brain says, like “if I do X then Y will happen. So I shouldn’t do X” In behavioural experiments, we give X a try anyways and just see if our brain was true. Here, we are being curious scientists and testing our brain’s hypothesis.
Some examples of behavioural experiments:
Worry: “I won’t like the food if I order from a new restaurant”
Experiment: Let’s order anyways and see what happens
Worry: “My friend will say no if I ask them to hang out”
Experiment: Let’s ask the friend out anyways
Worry: “I won’t be able to study as effectively if I go to a new café”
Experiment: “Let’s go to the café anyways”
As you can see, behavioural experiment is a big term, but the idea is very simple. The main point of a behavioural experiment is 1) to test whether our anxious prediction is always true and 2) even if it is true, can we cope with it?
It doesn’t matter whether we prove our anxious prediction wrong (though this can be nice). Rather, the most important piece is to showcase to ourselves that we can handle uncertainty and that we are more resilient than we think.
Home practice
Over the next week, I encourage you to do one experiment a day – big or small – and jot down whether the outcome was positive, negative, or neutral. And if it was negative, to write down how you coped with the outcome.
Although behavioural experiments might seem silly, they have an incredibly powerful impact on the way we interact with the world.
Best wishes,
P
Simply mental health 