Meeting Uncertainty with Curiosity, Not Control

When the Search for Answers Is Really Anxiety in Disguise

In clinical work, we often sit with clients who are trying very hard to know what to do.

They come seeking a decision to make.
They want to know what someone else meant.
They want to know whether a relationship is safe, whether a symptom will pass, whether a feeling will overwhelm them, or whether they are making the “right” choice.

On the surface, this can look like insight-seeking.

But sometimes what appears to be a search for clarity is actually anxiety, dressed up and trying to control the outcome.

The client may say, “If I can just figure him or her out, I’ll know what to do.”

The urgent need to know can tighten the client’s field of perception, much like tunnel vision.

Worry narrows the client’s view and tightens their body.

Curiosity can help widen it.

When Knowing Once Helped

For many clients, the need to know was a survival skill that worked extremely well at the time.

Knowing helped them feel safer, and for some, this got so strong that they became hypervigilant, scanning and assessing everything around them remarkably well. The question is when this heightened vigilance starts to cost more than it protects.

When does a survival strategy, such as scanning, predicting, preparing, mistrusting, and organizing every move around others, stop serving the client and start limiting them?

This is adaptation. A deep inner wisdom is doing exactly what it was built to do.

The problem is that what once helped them survive may now be limiting their capacity to live, relate, choose, and trust themselves.

When uncertainty appears, the old strategy returns:

Figure it out.
Fix it.
Control it.
Get the answer.
Do not be caught unprepared.

We can help our clients become curious about it.

Curiosity about body sensations, feelings, and thoughts can bring this to a new embodied experience.

Curiosity Is a Pathway to Regulation and Clarity

Curiosity is an active internal stance. It supports regulation, learning, and memory by helping the client pause before an old belief becomes the only truth in the room.

Instead of immediately obeying the urgency to know, we can teach our clients to wonder:

• What is happening in me right now?

• What am I feeling in my body?

• Is this familiar?

• What would happen if I breathe into it for a moment?

• What am I afraid might happen?

• What belief is shaping how I am seeing this?

• What else might be possible?

What Curiosity Can Reveal

This approach doesn’t always lead where a client expects. Instead of an answer, they may arrive at a felt sense of being grounded, a quiet inner recognition: “I am not there anymore. I am no longer under attack. I may not know what to do, but how certain has life really been up to now?”

Plus, one of the gifts of bringing curiosity to the unsettled feelings around uncertainty is that our beliefs quietly shift toward greater truths.

A Simple Practice: The Two Hands

When a client is caught between two choices, for example: Should I stay or should I go, should I speak up or stay quiet, say yes or say no, here is a practice you can offer them right in session.

Ask them to place one option in one hand and the other option in the other. “I want to stay” in one hand, “I want to go” in the other.

Have them look at one hand first, and simply notice what comes up in the body—sensation, tension, ease, whatever is there. Then have them look at the other hand and notice what arises there.

Guide them back to whichever hand feels most comfortable, and let them stay there at their own pace, glancing over to the other hand whenever they’re ready.

Sometimes the hands slowly move toward each other. Sometimes one side softens, or both sides settle. It varies person to person—and that is the point. This is not about forcing an answer. In a way, it is like double-spotting: letting the body, rather than the mind, find its own way toward clarity.

This is the kind of shift I love exploring with fellow clinicians. What might it look like for one of your clients to meet their uncertainty with a moment of curiosity today?

Cynthia Schwartzberg, LCSW, is the founder of Cynthasis and creator of The Curious Voyage to Authenticity, a training and journey series full of tools like this one for both clinicians and the clients they serve. Learn more at cynthasis.com.