A message sent, a double check blue and, suddenly, silence. In that period of time, which can last minutes or days, the stomach shrinks. The immediate reaction for many is instinctive: unlock the screen of the smartphoneimmersing yourself in social media, sending looping messages seeking solace. We have turned our devices into an “emotional pacifier” to calm the anxiety of “not knowing.”
In an era where hyperconnection promises us instant answers, science and psychology issue a clear warning: our inability to tolerate uncertainty is making us increasingly fragile.
The brain in the face of chaos. To understand what happens to us, we have to look at our biology. As psychologist Regina López Riego explainsour brain is evolutionarily designed to look for patterns and make sense of everything around us. “This was key to our survival as a species: identifying threats and anticipating dangers,” he says. However, in today’s world, that need for certainty translates into constant suffering.
The problem is that we live in a universe governed by entropy. From the team of Nalu Psychology remember thatbased on chaos theory and thermodynamics, systems tend toward disorder. “The future is uncertain and, one way or another, we deal with it as best we can,” they explain. When changes threaten, fear takes center stage, alerting us to possible danger.
To mitigate that fear, we resort to a patch: control. However, it is a trap. The brain processes the symptoms of anxiety in the same way that it relates to uncertainty, releasing large amounts of norepinephrine that affect our nervous system. The more we try to tie down the future, the more discomfort we generate.
The trap of overthinking. When the mind has no data, it invents it. The psychologist Marta Valle In his blog he explains that overthinking not as a lack of intelligence, but as a failed protection mechanism born of fear of error and low tolerance for uncertainty. It manifests itself in two ways: ruminating on the past or worrying in anticipation about the future. “You think that if you think about it enough, you will avoid a problem,” he details, but the end result is paralysis, insomnia and disconnection from the present.
Experts from Harvard Mental Health Services (CAMHS) They have a name for this phenomenon: “toxic time travel.” Dr. Rue Wilson, a psychologist at this institution, describes how we try to feel in control by imagining different outcomes. “We get stuck ruminating, overwhelmed by ‘what ifs,’ and disconnected from the present, which is where we really have the most certainty.”
Feed a bigger monster. This loop ends in what psychologist Laura Marín defines as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)where concern is constant and fueled by overestimating the risks.
Marín illustrates this with a clear example: two women, Alicia and Brenda, undergo a medical test. While Alicia asks whatever is necessary and continues with her daily life, Brenda compulsively searches for information on the Internet and needs her partner to continually reassure her. It is the so-called “reinsurance search”. Checking emails, postponing decisions or constantly asking for opinions are strategies that give false relief in the short term, but in the long run make us unable to tolerate the slightest doubt.
The cell phone as an escape route. The need to escape from uncertainty has found in smartphones your best ally, but at a high cost for mental health. Rigorous research supports this claim. In a couple of published studies in the scientific journal Science Direct (led by Jon D. Elhai and colleagues in 2017), it was demonstrated through systematic reviews that the severity of depression and anxiety are strongly linked to problematic mobile phone use.
One of the most revealing findings of Elhai’s research differentiates between “social” use of the phone (messaging, networks) and “process” use (consumption of news, entertainment, scroll passive). The study found that anxiety is much more related to process use than social use. That is, people with anxiety use the non-social functions of their devices as an avoidance mechanism (such as doomscrolling or addictive consumption of news) to avoid facing stress, this “use of process” being the direct bridge to mobile addiction.
In fact, Dr. Leigh W. Jerome warns precisely about this habit. In the face of global chaos, doomscrolling It does not prepare us for the future, but “can cause headaches, muscle tension, high blood pressure, and difficulty sleeping.” Leon Garber, mental health counselor, adds a vital reflection on compulsive doubt avoidance: “Avoidance, in and of itself, is not negative (…) but imagine how many missed opportunities for growth or connection, over time, add up to a lost relationship.” Garber points out that even therapy has a limit if the patient is only seeking definitive answers. “We have to learn to live with uncertainty. Fundamentally, we have to learn to live,” he says.
The trap of the hyperconnected world. The desire for certainties not only affects the individual, but shapes our society. An analysis published in The Conversation reminds us thatAccording to Maslow’s pyramid, security is a primary need. However, the obsession with eliminating all risks has a dark side.
“There are desires that should not be fulfilled and that of radical security is a desire that can never and should never be satisfied,” the article underlines. Trying to control everything, whether through algorithms, surveillance cameras or the transfer of freedoms, strips us of our humanity and leads us to voluntary servitude. Instead of delegating control to technology to avoid panic, experts advocate a “pedagogy of responsibility”, appealing to the values of Kant and Rousseau, where we assume that zero risk does not exist.
How to inhabit the void. Since uncertainty is inevitable, the solution is not to find all the answers, but to change our relationship with the questions. According to institutions such as Harvard CAMHS and diverse psychology professionalsthere are four keys to navigate the uncontrollable:
- Focus on what you control: challenge the illusion of absolute certainty. If you lose your job, you can’t control when you’ll be hired, but you can control how many resumes you send. Real action kills rumination.
- Train tolerance: Psychologist Laura Marín advises exposing yourself to doubt to break the anxious loop. Limiting checking email to twice a day or making simple decisions without asking for other people’s opinions. At first it is uncomfortable, but the anxiety ends up subsiding.
- Use the body as an anchor: To get out of the spiral of thoughts we must validate the emotion (“it is normal to feel anxious”) and use the parasympathetic system to our advantage. Taking a conscious walk paying attention to real physical stimuli brings us back to the present.
- Breathe and observe: “box breathing” (inhale on 4 counts, hold on 4, exhale on 6). As a complement, the psychologist Regina López Riego proposes active acceptance: visualize uncertainty as “a floating cloud” or thoughts as “leaves on a river.” Observe them, let them pass and do not judge them.
The freedom of not knowing. In the end, accepting the uncertain is not resigning or living without a safety net. It is understanding that our mind is not a crystal ball and that using screens as anesthesia only weakens our resilience.
Living with balance in 2026 requires an act of rebellion: putting down the phone and embracing the silence between the question and the answer. We can’t prepare for every possible scenario because life is too random. True strength is not in having the map of what is to come, but in the confidence that we will know how to walk the terrain, whatever it may be.
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