It is true that we are a compendium of our past experiences, our future projects and our present. We cannot forget about the past or stop thinking about the future, but we agree that we should give priority to our present. Here and now. However, more and more people go to the psychologist for a due to fear of the future, that fear that blocks and paralyzes and that precisely prevents you from reaching that future because it anchors you to the past. Do you know how to cope with uncertainty? we give you the keys.
Fear of the future and its terrible consequences
There is a saying that says “the bad known is better than the good to know” that has become a vital attitude. It is about fear of the future, a problem that prevents you, among other things, from and building the future you want. Fear of the future is both a cause and a consequence of anxiety, it is an anticipation of what is going to happen in the form of bad omens and it is also a low tolerance for uncertainty.
You don’t know what’s going to happen. If you are going to get that job, if your partner loves you or does not love you, if you are going to pass that exam, if you will fulfill your dreams, if you will solve your financial problems… You don’t really know. You do not know what is going to happen in the future because that moment has not yet arrived. And while you worry about what hasn’t happened yet, what’s happening right now slips out of your hands.
It is not a reproach. Fear of the future is inevitable when you have an anxiety disorder and you have to seek soon as possible. Because if not, that fear of the future will fill your present with worries, doubts, indecision, anguish, blockage, discomfort, incapacity, an authentic vital paralysis. You have to face fear, that is clear, but when it is already installed in our minds we need help to overcome it.
It is an increasingly frequent problem. You need security, certainties; peace of mind, that the plans go well, that there is no room for the unforeseen. You need to have everything under control, know what will happen in the future, and know that it will go well for you, that you will not suffer or that everything will be fine. You need vital guarantees and the truth is that they do not exist. Wanting to have everything under control is the most direct path to suffering from a serious anxiety disorder, so it will be better to let go. But wait, you don’t need to let go of the reins of your life, just let go of what is not in your hand.
Anticipatory anxiety
Do you always put yourself in the worst? Maybe you think it’s better to put yourself in the worst so you’re ready for when it comes. But what this attitude does is favor the worst, self-fulfilling prophecies that are always negative and at the same time prevent the best from happening…anxiety is the product of that fear of the future.
Those predictions you make where things always go wrong can come true. Or not. Anticipatory anxiety is the one that tells you that your partner is going to leave you, that you are going to be fired from your job, or that the doctor is going to diagnose you with a serious illness. The same one that tells you that something is going to happen to your children or that if you take a false step, everything will fall apart. It is the same that makes you spend your days in a kind of vital precariousness in which everything is dangerous and you run the risk of a major failure.
Anticipatory anxiety comes hand in hand with anxiety and significant emotional discomfort. Sadness, anguish, bitterness, anger, resentment. If you allow it to continue to dominate your life, fear of the future will paralyze you to the point where you cannot make decisions for fear of the consequences. And one cannot live without deciding, one cannot live inactivity just in case. Just in case what?
Since you are making predictions for the future, why don’t you make them positive? And since you’re playing with self-fulfilling prophecies, why don’t you do them with a happy ending? Nor is it that you have to live with an exaggerated and unrealistic dose, but with a more positive perspective of the future and the present.
How to deal with uncertainty and accept it?
All this fear of the future or anticipatory anxiety problems comes from a low tolerance for uncertainty. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but neither you nor anyone else. You may have problems in the future, you may have them now. And those problems might not exist if you weren’t paralyzed by fear of the future. If you didn’t have that urgent need to have everything control, planned and organized, that everything goes according to plan. You don’t like to suffer, you don’t like things to go wrong, and you don’t like not knowing what will happen.
But you can consider something to deal with that in the face of uncertainty. You can change the point of view because uncertainty is precisely the place where things happen. The bad sometimes, but also the good. If you don’t make friends with uncertainty, nothing will happen to you and vital stasis is the first step to unhappiness and frustration.
We suggest you stop seeing uncertainty as a hell of doubts and indecision, as a sinister place full of dangers, as a dark place. Uncertainty is a place where you don’t know what will happen, it’s true. But there is also its magic, because anything can happen, anything can happen. Why isn’t all this that uncertainty offers you good?
Live in the present to overcome fear of the future
Accepting uncertainty as part of life is a very useful trick to overcome that fear of the future and be able to keep moving forward. But what is really useful and effective is learning to live in the present. Yes, here we have to reach the mandatory step of Mindfulness.
If you think that Mindfulness is a passing fad, forget it because it is here to stay. In reality, it is not that it is a new technique, but an ancient one and its benefits have already been scientifically proven. And what is Mindfulness? Well, a kind of brain training to be more aware of the present moment.
