Lose Your Fears: Part II, Fear of Uncertainty

In Part I of this series on Losing Our Fears, I introduced the concept of eliminating 3 fears from our lives in order be more productive and happier human beings. As I alluded to in the first post, these conclusions have been drawn primarily from my personal experiences in medicine in addition to readings by others within the healthcare field, but by no means are this applicable to only burned-out physicians.

Now with our understanding that it is okay to let go of perfection and relieve some of our fears of failure, what often comes to light is a second, more sinister fear: the fear of uncertainty. So while many of us can begin to lose some attachment to the outcome and reframe our understanding of success and failure, we can easily succumb to the fear of unknowing- will my treatment plan lead to the improvements in quality of life and happiness outlined from my questioning of hopes, goals and dreams with the patient? The bitter reality, despite all of our best intentions and balancing informative shared decision making with paternalistic clinical directing, is that we really cannot be sure that any of our efforts will result in the desired outcomes. Here is where most of us fall back into the failure paradigm and see that if we are not certain to succeed or if we are not entirely certain that we are capable of performing a task without the risk of failure, we will be most likely NOT pursue these endeavors. And thinking back to the ideas presented in the Learning and Praise Series: if we only acknowledge and reward successful outcomes, and we are uncertain that we can achieve this successful outcome, than we will almost assuredly find some other goal to pursue or even worse, cheat to get there. In order to be fully free of the fear of failure, one must also be free of the fear of uncertainty. The two fears are intertwined and if we do not have a willingness to address each fear simultaneously, we will continuously operate with both a fear of uncertainty and a fear of failure.

We can never have all the answers, medicine is so complex that it is a joke to think any one man, let alone any one master computer can be capable of absolute precision when diagnosing and treating the individual. What often keeps MD’s up at night is not the fear of a patient dying, but the fear of will my treatment work, will my patient live another month, are the drugs I’m prescribing actually working? It is the the fear of uncertainty that confines us to operate inside of a box, never stepping out to see a different perspective, adopt a new lifestyle change or begin a meaningful friendship. The sooner one can realize that yes, we do not always have the answers but more importantly, in certain situations- we may not ever have the means to find a definitive answer. Most people cannot fathom living in a world of ambiguity, everything must be yes or no, black or white or resolve in a final outcome. If we spent less time worrying about what we don’t know, and more time engaged in the creative process of realizing that we do not have the answers to a question, then our mental energy can suddenly be diverted into an entirely new field of contemplation. Mindfully attuning to this perceived lack of knowledge, we can search out data and supporting evidence to bring more definitive light to our initial question. Most assuredly this journey to a solution may be difficult and in the end may not even lead to a definitive answer, but engaging in this process will inherently make us more resilient to face our fears of uncertainty and failure. And yes, this mindful engagement will likely be awkward and disturbing to your routine of operating within the box of knowns and guaranteed successes, but guess what, it is within this box of guaranteed successes where we can find and eliminate our final fear: the fear of being uncomfortable.