The Secret to Thinking Your Way Out of Anxiety

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Dionysius I was a tyrant who ruled the Sicilian city of Syracuse for 38 years in the fourth century BCE. He lived amid complete opulence, and his life lacked for no luxury then available. How happy was he? Some centuries later, the Roman writer and statesman Cicero tried to answer that question in his book Tusculan Disputations, which centered on one of Dionysius’s court flatterers, a man named Damocles.

Damocles asserted that, given all of the power, fame, wealth, and pleasure the tyrant enjoyed, no one could possibly be happier. As Cicero relates the tale, Dionysius was amused by this assertion and asked Damocles if he would like to share the royal experience and judge its happiness for himself. Damocles enthusiastically accepted, and was immediately offered a bed of gold on which to recline and be attended by servants keen to fulfill his wishes.

Then, however, as Damocles was enjoying every imaginable luxury, a shining sword was let down from the ceiling above his head, suspended by a single horse hair: the proverbial Sword of Damocles. The danger and uncertainty this presented instantly superseded all of Damocles’s enjoyment, because he could focus on nothing but the deadly blade poised to slice him in two at any moment.

The lesson was clear: Damocles understood that the truth of Dionysius’s existence was that of a pampered but hated tyrant living in perpetual fear for his safety, utterly uncertain of his future. Chastened, Damocles quietly excused himself from court and returned to a humble existence.

“There can be no happiness for one who is under constant apprehensions,” Cicero concluded. The legend of the Sword of Damocles encapsulates one of life’s great paradoxes: We all seek opportunity and abundance, but these things inevitably come with uncertainty and risk, which we hate. It seems that we must choose between the terror that comes from an adventurous high life and the boredom that attends the safety and predictability of a more modest way of being.

But is this really true? I believe that the paradox poses a false choice. If, instead, we understand how to manage uncertainty rather than trying to avoid it, we can get out from under the sword.

[Read: Philosophy could have been a lot more fun]

A friend of mine being treated for cancer had to have a blood test every three months that would indicate whether the disease was at bay or resurgent. If the latter was true, he would need to undergo an aggressive, painful treatment. The days leading up to each test were agony for him—not because he couldn’t deal with the treatment if he had to, but because the uncertainty made him miserable. Not knowing what was in store dominated his thoughts, stole his sleep, and ruined his concentration.

Although my friend’s situation was especially grave, almost all of us can relate to his discomfort with uncertainty. Scholars have found that this state of suspense, which psychologists call “intolerance of uncertainty,” is something we naturally detest. Their research shows that the feeling simultaneously paralyzes us through anxiety and makes us spend time and effort searching for predictability. Economists use a similar term, “uncertainty aversion,” and suggest that it can lead people to sour on investments, specifically if they seem risky, potentially resulting in a major sell-off, even a downturn.

The discomfort comes from the fact that uncertainty stimulates the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex-amygdala complex, signaling a possible threat and therefore a stress response. When some uncertainty cannot be adequately resolved, that can result in high glucocorticoid concentrations in the blood, leading to problems such as insomnia. Not surprisingly, this condition is especially uncomfortable for people who already register a high degree of neuroticism: Experiments have found that such people are less willing than others to wait in a state of suspense.

Although uncertainty is anything but pleasant, it has an obvious evolutionary basis: If your ancestors had systematically disregarded the condition, they would have been unlikely to survive to pass on their genes. But probably as a result, they bequeathed their uncertainty intolerance down through the generations—what scholars call the “Having Descendants Forever” hypothesis. Of course, your ancestors were thinking not about you, their descendant, suffering from elevated glucocorticoids, but about their own security.

The unpleasantness of the experience derives from the fact that we mentally place undue weight on possible undesirable outcomes because of our negativity bias. Again, this is bound to be an evolved self-protective trait, because good outcomes are nice but bad outcomes can be deadly, so paying attention to what might happen next is crucial. The work of researchers who study this bias suggests that it is not strictly rational, however, because it can lead us to inaccurately assess probabilities and even distort the truth. For example, one scholar writing in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in 2009 reported that his study’s participants rated negatively framed opinions as more credible than the same opinions framed positively.

All in all, uncertainty intolerance paired with negativity bias can easily lower your quality of life if the combination causes you to pass up opportunities because you have an inflated fear of adverse outcomes. A vestigial fear of social rejection that distorts probabilities can keep you from asking someone out on a date—in which case an aversion to the uncertainty of “no” could mean you miss out entirely on a huge upside for your love life. Similarly, an inchoate anxiety about being alone preys on the ancient part of your brain and may keep you from moving away from your hometown—although you might be much happier if you did so.

[Read: Would you give up your kidney for $50,000?]

The goal in building a better life is not to eradicate a dislike for uncertainty in favor of taking any and all risk. That would likely qualify you for a Darwin Award, which is bestowed on those who take idiotic risks that lead to their own ignominious demise. Instead, the goal is learning to manage your uncertainty aversion so that it does not manage you. The key to achieving this is to employ metacognition, enabling you to treat the uncertainty analytically, not just emotionally.

This requires you to find an external frame of reference to structure the way you see your uncertain circumstances. Structuring your thinking like this does not require a Ph.D. in statistics. It starts by simply laying out in a schematic way the uncertainty in a situation you’re facing. For instance, suppose you have a job that is very secure but leaves you bereft of passion. You look at job announcements a lot but never apply for anything because that would mean a steep learning curve, moving to a new place, and possibly risking the stability you have. In other words, changing jobs could have an uncertain outcome. But according to research on the topic, you are probably discounting the possible upside—which could be work you actually enjoy, interesting new things to learn, and generally feeling more alive.

To start making a better mental model, write two lists: one of costs, potential and actual; the other of benefits. The next step in structuring your thinking is a bigger challenge: matching plausible probabilities to each cost and benefit. What are the realistic odds that you’ll wind up temporarily unemployed? What is the likelihood that you will like a new job more? If you are struggling with this task, ask a friend to help by providing an extra bit of objectivity. A classic 1979 study on decision making showed that even when your assessments are no more than guesses, the model you create will very likely be more accurate than leaving a decision entirely in the realm of intuition and emotion (though knowing when to trust your gut is also always valuable).

Finally, with your list and calculations in hand, try to think critically about the decision. Perhaps you will decide to jump; perhaps you will decide to stay—neither one is guaranteed to be right. Either way, however, you will almost surely be less plagued with discomfort about uncertainty, because you have worked toward a decision and being at peace, as opposed to being paralyzed by anxiety. You will also have an answer to the future question Why did I decide to do that?

[Arthur C. Brooks: What John Stuart Mill knew about happiness]

I would note one more way to lift the Sword of Damocles from your life: get old. As I have written previously, people typically grow happier with age: Positive emotion rises, and negative emotion falls; conscientiousness and agreeableness also increase. One reason for this is that negativity bias declines over the years. Indeed, as researchers found in a meta-analysis of 100 studies, older people pay more attention to positive information, and remember it better, than younger people do. This is almost certainly because older people have learned through experience that, for the most part, their worst fears didn’t come true and things turned out all right.

Despite the terrifying lesson for Damocles, in Cicero’s telling, Dionysius himself never met the terrible end implied by the hanging sword. Though a despot of the worst kind, he “was not struck dead with a thunderbolt by Olympian Jupiter, nor did Aesculapius cause him to waste away and perish of some painful and lingering disease.” Rather, Dionysius died in his bed at the then-venerable age of 65. Whether, with age, he was able to escape his emotional uncertainty Cicero does not relate. But you can.