鈥淭HE only certainty is that nothing is certain鈥�, wrote Pliny the Elder with classical authority in his Natural History. Later, more waggish sources added death and taxes to the list, but the passage of time has done little to diminish the original sentiment. Indeed, modern life seems to have elevated gnawing insecurity to an art form.
Whether it is awaiting a diagnosis or the result of an interview, trying to get pregnant or completing on a house sale, few of us haven鈥檛 felt that sense of limbo: of a fate in the balance, determined by forces outside our control. The UK has even been experimenting with making it a form of national psychosis with its failure to decide on its future relationship with the European Union.
Good, then, that psychologists are beginning to gain insights into the effects of a state of limbo on our mental well-being, and how to combat them. It seems that our ability to contend with uncertainty in our lives has got worse in recent decades. Our 鈥渋ntolerance of uncertainty鈥� falls somewhere on a sliding scale, with those who are least able to cope at highest risk of developing anxiety disorders.
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Those insights give us new ways to protect ourselves: old but good ones, such as mindfulness and distraction techniques, and also new ones, such as identifying the subconscious safety behaviours we use against uncertainty, which probably make things worse.
The good news is that the research shows that going through periods of huge uncertainty, like Brexit, might actually make people more resilient to the smaller things. That is supported by the recent , which claims that the people of the UK are actually getting happier.
None of which should encourage us to seek out limbo when our fate lies in our hands. Paralysing concern about our planet鈥檚 uncertain future has recently gained a name: eco-anxiety. Protest movements such as Extinction Rebellion are at least countering this resigned apathy (see 鈥淭he agony of not knowing: How to cope with the world鈥檚 uncertainty鈥�). Certain uncertainties are best met with action.
