“Better to know than not to know!”
… my grandmother used to say — and she was absolutely right.
Anxiety, in most cases, doesn’t come from overstimulation, overwork, or stress — it comes from uncertainty, from not knowing what will happen next.
I can confirm, both from personal experience and scientific evidence, that the unknown is the greatest trigger of anxiety. The mind cannot tolerate unpredictability without the assurance of an outcome. The body, in turn, can endure pain as long as it knows there’s a purpose behind it.
Science Confirms: The Brain Prefers a Predictable Threat Over an Uncertain One
A seminal study by Hsu et al. (2005) using fMRI imaging showed that uncertainty is more stressful than a known threat. Participants exhibited higher anxiety-related brain activity when they were told there was a 50% chance they might receive an electric shock than when they were told with certainty that they would receive one.
This confirms what trauma therapists have long suspected: the human system can adapt to pain, but not to unpredictability.
When the future becomes opaque, the amygdala — the brain’s fear center — remains hyperactive, flooding the body with cortisol and norepinephrine, preparing for a threat that never comes.
From the perspective of Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011), the vagus nerve regulates our state between fight/flight, freeze, and social engagement. Chronic uncertainty leaves the body stuck in a sympathetic limbo, where it’s neither acting nor resting, but simmering. Muscles remain subtly tense, breathing becomes shallow, and attention fragmented. Over time, this state turns habitual — and we call it anxiety.
Biologically speaking, the body becomes hypervigilant, activating survival mechanisms in response to the unpredictable.
My Experience: What Set Me Off Wasn’t What I Thought
Looking back, I used to blame my anxiety on long task lists, overplanning, or my inability to act.
But the deepest anxiety I’ve ever felt always came in the face of the unknown.
You know the feeling, you send a message and wait all day for a reply. They leave you on “seen,” and suddenly your mind starts spinning: What’s happening?
Or think of those moments when friends were waiting for medical test results, that mix of dread and hope, the exhausting inner storm of anticipation. Anxiety doesn’t only come from stress; it comes from living in questions that have no answers. The truth is that anxiety often correlates with a life built around big targets, perfectionist ideals, and a lack of restorative activities.
I spent a large part of my life in the countryside. My father’s parents lived in a magical area of Moldavia, where I used to spend a month each year, and in the South, I had my mother’s parents. My great-grandfather fought in both World Wars and made it as far as Stalingrad. He used to tell me stories about fighting off wolves that circled the horses, trying to tear at their bellies. They traveled in horse-drawn sleds through the snow. For them, anxiety carried a very different weight than it does for us today.
If our generation, one that has never lived through such traumatic times as our grandparents, feels anxious after waiting five minutes for a text reply from a lover, I can’t help but think of my great-grandmother, who had no certainty whether her husband would ever return from the war. She waited for years, holding on to nothing but hope and faith in God.
My godmother once waited for her lover, her future husband, for several hours in the cold, at the train station. They had promised to meet. He was doing his military service at the time; there were no smartphones back then. He had sent her a letter, which arrived on time, but he had no way of knowing that.
“Let’s meet on date X, at hour Y, on platform Z, in Buftea Station.” It was set in stone. Those words, the longing, the anxiety of waiting, they all shaped a love story that eventually materialized.
He was delayed for a few hours because of the train. If you live in Romania, you know what I mean, trains here are like a horror movie; you never really know when they’ll arrive.
Yet there is a deeper meaning to the anxiety born of unpredictability. Moments like these, as uncomfortable as they are, forge resilience. They make you stronger.
Tools to Calm an Uncertain System
Below are practices proven by both science and experience to be effective for uncertainty-triggered anxiety:
- Body-first interventions — Shaking (the ST way), vagal toning (humming, gargling), and cold exposure help recalibrate the autonomic nervous system.
- Cognitive reframing — engaging the prefrontal cortex (through narrative therapy or self-dialogue) helps integrate unpredictable events into coherent storylines.
- Sensory anchoring — mindfulness practices involving tactile or auditory focus (touching objects, listening to natural sounds) reduce amygdala activation.
- Action in micro — when the big unknown can’t be solved, doing small intentional actions (organizing a drawer, cooking a meal) signals safety to the body.
References
Hsu, M., Bhatt, M., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., & Camerer, C. F. (2005). Neural systems responding to degrees of uncertainty in human decision-making. Science, 310(5754), 1680–1683.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.