Today's Topic is Dealing with Uncertainty | Live Chat with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes

Foreign. Everybody, and welcome to today's presentation. We are going to be talking about dealing with uncertainty because goodness knows, there is a lot of uncertainty about a lot of stuff going on right now. There's always uncertainty, though. So let's talk about what that really means. Unfortunately, uncertainty is a fact of life. Whether you are talking about waiting for tests from the doctor's office or waiting to hear back about whether you got a job or whether you're waiting to hear about when cruises are going to start cruising again, okay, obviously that's a pet issue of mine, but uncertainty is something that is certainly not going to go away. What is the impact? Well, generally, if you can cope with uncertainty, not a, not a lot. But for people who have difficulty dealing with uncertainty and a lot of us right now are struggling with uncertainty and, and it may start to feel overwhelming, what impact does that have on you? Well, it impacts your physical health. When you are feeling uncertain, it means that you may be worrying about what is getting ready to happen. That worry keeps your HPA axis or your threat response system kind of ramped up, which is going to impact your sleep, it's going to impact your inflammation levels, it's going to impact your blood sugar levels. There are a lot of effects. When we keep that threat response system in overdrive. It's going to impact your mood. If you are constantly worrying about what is going to happen, what, what is coming, then it preoccupies you from anything that could make you happy. And it also again, contributes to that anxiety. When that anxiety goes on for too long, eventually you may start feeling depressed. It's like, okay, this is never going to end. I can't tolerate it. And you'll start having a lot of what we call distress intolerant thoughts. It affects your thinking, believe it or not, and you know it makes sense. When you are uncertain about something, whether you're going to get a job, whether somebody's going to ask you to marry them, when you'll be able to go cruising again, whatever the issue is, a lot of times you put off making decisions because you're not sure what's going to happen. So you have a hard time thinking about any other fact, supporting or going against making, making a certain decision. And when we're anxious, it's more difficult to concentrate anxiety. That HPA axis again, remember, that is our threat response system. It's designed to help us fight or flee, is designed to help us survive. So when we're anxious, it says, okay, what you're going to focus on is, guess what? Whatever is threatening to you right now and you're going to ignore this other stuff? Well, when you're focused and you're anxious about something, say the upcoming election or getting test results back, you're focused on that, which makes it more difficult to focus on your family, your job, anything else. So concentration becomes more difficult. It affects your relationships a lot of times because when you are not sleeping well, when you're grumpy, when you are having a difficult time decision making or even kind of knowing what you want and need because you're just uncertain, it, it makes it more difficult to engage in relationships and it can impact your self esteem. A lot of times people feel frustrated at about not being able to control their uncertainty and they may start feeling frustrated and feeling guilty because they are not handling it better. So let's talk about some tips to handle this inevitable uncertainty. I use the acronym DRIFT for this, which to me kind of made sense because when we are uncertain, we kind of feel like we're in a boat adrift at sea. So drift. The first step, Excuse me, the first step in dealing with uncertainty is to decompress, which means developing some distress tolerance skills. When you're anxious and you've got that tunnel vision and your HPA axis is elevated, you're in your emotional mind. However, whatever you want to use to describe it, you're not going to be able to think clearly about the big picture. So it's important to decompress. The first thing to do, or one thing to do that's very helpful is breathe. And I know you're like, well, I am breathing. When I say breathe, I mean breathe deeply. Inhale for four, hold for four and exhale for four. Do that a few times. When you slow your breathing, you automatically trigger what's called the rest and digest reaction, which is the opposite of fight or fleet. Your heart rate's going to slow down, your breathing rate is going to slow down and you'll start to feel a little bit more relaxed. That adrenaline will kind of go away so you can think a little bit more clearly. Activities can also help you decompress. Sometimes there's. You've got to wait a while, you know, maybe a week to get those test results back. And you're thinking and you're wringing your hands and you're stressed out. Your mind is just consumed with what ifs. Okay, well we can't predict the future and you can use a lot of energy pondering what ifs. But is that a productive use of your energy? Is that really going to help you. So activities. Do things that make you happy. Do things that just plum distract you. For me, it's going out and weeding. Do I love weeding? Not exactly, but it is something that focuses my attention and then I can step back when I'm finished and I can say, okay, my garden looks nice, and then that makes me happy. But find activities that you can get involved in. Go out with a friend, go watch a movie. Do something that is going to occupy your attention and ideally help you feel a little happier. That has nothing to do with whatever you're stressed out about, with whatever you're uncertain about. And then thought stopping. And I say here, no what ifs allowed. We were talking a minute ago about how what ifs can consume us during periods of uncertainty. What if this comes, test comes back positive? What if it is, you know, a bad, you know, really bad progressed disease? There are a lot of what ifs. You can't deal with anything until you know what you're dealing with. So what ifing is exhausting. And, and a lot of times it doesn't help you in the moment. So when you start to what if? Tell yourself, you know, what now, I am not going to do that. And intentionally turn your attention to something else, whether it's singing a song or, you know, calling a friend or doing something. But stop those thoughts in their tracks and tell yourself, you know, no, I'm not gonna what if right now. I am gonna wait till I get the information in hand. So bat, if you want to look at that, acronym is an acronym for distress tolerance. There are lots of different distress tolerance acronyms, but, you know, finding skills that can help you tolerate uncertainty, tolerate the distress until you can have enough facts to decide how to resolve it is really important. Reflect on your resilience is the R in drift. You, you have gone through adversity before, you have gone through challenging times before, and you have gone through uncertainty before. So think about times when you did that in the past and obviously you survived it. Think about times when you have encountered unfortunate events, adversity, and you have gotten through it. What did you do? Remind yourself that you are a survivor, you're strong. Reflect on that resilience. Reflect on everything in your life right now that you are committed to what is important in your life that is, you know, ideally going well right now. Reflect on all of those things, because likely that will, all of those things won't all be impacted by whatever this thing is that you're uncertain about. Uncertain about. So, for example, right now, I Am very grateful and committed to my children, to my pets, to my garden, to my job. And likely none of those will be significantly impacted by some of the things that I am uncertain about at this very moment. So reflect on all of those things to help get better perspective. Yes, this thing out here is uncertain right now, and, you know, it can be overwhelming. But let's also remember all the other things that are going well. I'll give you another example. When I was pregnant with my son, I got a test back that indicated that there might be something wrong with him. And, you know, until we got those test results that I had to go have another test, and until I got those test results back that gave me the answer, I couldn't do anything. And I started what if thing, what if it's this? What if it's that? How am I going to handle this? How am I going to cope with this? And, you know, I brainstormed a few things, but ultimately, when I started what if thing, I started what if thing with the, you know, most likely scenarios. What if this happens? Okay. But then I kept doing it, and my what if started getting more and more outlandish. You know, I had gotten way out into the stratosphere with possible things that could happen, which probably only had a minute chance of happening. Which takes us to, I investigate what is actually going on, what are the facts? So I'll use my. My test again. When I took that initial test, that initial test was a screening test, and it said there might be a problem with the fetus. That's all we knew. That is all we knew. At that point, I had no knowledge, I had nothing to tell me that there was a probability that there was something wrong. I had information that there was a possibility, and it was important to differentiate between that. We've got a storm coming through now. Hurricane Delta, I think, is what they're calling it now. So let's talk about that uncertainty. We talked yesterday, I think, about the fact that since the tornado came through, when we have high winds and larger, you know, larger storms coming through, it makes me a little bit nervous. I worry that, you know, something bad's going to happen to the fence or to the animals or whatever. We live on a farm. With Hurricane Delta coming through, what are the facts? I know for a fact that by the time it gets all the way up here to Tennessee, it's going to have slowed down quite a bit. The winds are going to have. Will have died down quite a bit. The rain may still be there. So what I know is it's not going to be nearly as intense. How probable is it that we're going to have tornadoes? I don't know. You know, we don't know yet because it's still too far out. So getting myself all worked up, expecting we're going to have hours and hours of tornado warnings and, you know, bad stuff's going to happen. Doesn't do anything but activate my HPA axis. Keep me in a hyper vigilant, hyper stressed out mode for something that may not even happen at all. Investigate, find the facts, figure out exactly what you actually know. Not what you think, not what you fear, but what do you know and then how probable is it that your, you know, fears are going to happen? Focus on the present moment and what you can control in the present moment. Right now we'll stick with the, the storm. I'm just kind of moving, moving case studies throughout, but we'll focus on the storm coming through here. Well, I can't control where the storm goes. What can I control? I can make sure that we have extra water, I can make sure that when the storm is supposed to hit our area that our animals are adequately secured. And I can make sure that, you know, I have my preparations in place, but that's all I can do right now to, to address any of those things. Once I have that done, it's time to start focusing my energy on the present, on living life right now. And when that storm comes through, which won't be for a couple of days, then I can turn my energy back to, okay, what are the next steps I need to take to keep my family safe? And T stands for talk to somebody. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own heads. We get so, so caught up worrying about all of the what ifs. So obviously you missed the first part about no what ifs allowed. But we get so caught up with those what ifs and those distress intolerant thoughts that we have a hard time gaining perspective. Remember I told you when I had that test about, about my son, you know, I had what if myself into, you know, just completely unlikely possibilities, but I just kept what ifing? And it's important to talk to somebody if you have difficulty getting out of that what if mode or that distress intolerant mode when you're telling yourself, I cannot deal with this. A friend. I'm not necessarily even saying, you know, a counselor. I'm saying talk to a friend. An objective third party. My husband is very even keel and if I start getting stressed out about something, he just kind of Looks at me, he's like, you know, how likely is that to happen? You know, I hear that you're stressed out. He's really good at paraphrasing emotions. He's learned that over 20 years. But he says, I hear you're stressed out. However, how likely is it that this storm is going to knock down the fence? You know, he will take it a step further, which he's listened to too many of my classes, I think. And he says, how many storms have we had that have come through here that haven't knocked down our fence? Okay. You know, we have had a whole lot of storms with a whole lot of wind come through that didn't knock down the fence. We had three that we had issues with. And, you know, that kind of drives the probability issue home when he says, you know, look at how many times we've had storms and it hasn't been a catastrophe, and the three times we did have storms. Reflect on your resilience. How did we make it through? What did we do? How did we cope with the situation? Did it completely devastate us? And the answer is no. I mean, there was a lot of work to do, but it didn't. It didn't break us. So it's important to get perspective like that, to summarize dealing with uncertainty. Uncertainty is a fact of life, and it. It happens a lot. I won't say every day, but it happens a lot. And there are some things, like pandemics, like elections, like test results, like natural disasters, that the uncertainty may go on for a long period of time. It's not just a day or two. It may go on for weeks. And it's important to have skills to deal with that so that uncertainty, those wh. Ifs don't dominate your everyday life and start negatively impacting your physical health, your mood, overall, your relationships, and. And. And. And those sorts of things. So are there questions? I see we've got a lot of people in the chat room today. Y' all are a very quiet group. What can I answer for you about uncertainty, about mental health issues, about coping with life on life's terms? Right now, While I'm waiting, We do have that lag between when I say something and when you all hear it and when there's a response, it's almost like a minute. So I will keep talking while. While I'm waiting. I will remind you that if you like these daily live presentations where you have an opportunity to interact and ask questions, please remember to hit the subscribe button as well as to Hit the bell so you're notified and reminded. In the mornings when I go live, I try to go live every Weekday morning at 9:30am Central Standard Time or 10:30am Eastern Standard Time. If you have particular issues that you want me to cover, please feel free to email me at support all ceu.com so when you've worked yourself way up, way too much, you've gotten that HPA access going, you know, full bore. You're in full fight or flee panic mode. This is when we need to look or when you need to look at your distress tolerance skills. It's important to take steps that you can take. Take steps that work for you in order to help yourself get out of your emotional mind. Our emotions are there to tell us to do something, but we need to say, okay, you know, I feel anxious right now. What is the next step I need to do? But in, before we can do that, like I talked about earlier, that tunnel vision, you need to be able to get out of the tunnel vision, which means doing the deep breathing to trigger the rest and digest, engage in activity. Sometimes it's just for 15 minutes or so that will help you distract yourself so then you can come back to it with a clearer head where you're not, you know, completely overwhelmed. After my mom got her cancer diagnosis, I remember I felt like I had been socked in the gut. And I was devastated. And I went through what ifs and the uncertainty of, you know, whether the treatments they were using were going to work and lots of what ifs for a minute. And then I was like, okay, I need to step aside. I need to step away from this for a second so I can think more logically and clearly about what's on, going, going on. And, you know, when I would start. Throughout her treatment, you know, that was one of those things. Uncertainty lasted for six months while she was going through chemo. Is this going to work? Is this treatment working? You know, I really wanted her to have another mri and it wasn't time yet, so I was having to wait. And reminding myself that continuing to focus on the what ifs and the uncertainty was using a lot of my energy. And going back to this first slide was using a lot of my energy was negatively impacting my physical health because I was, you know, stressed out. I was having stomach problems, headaches, not sleeping well. You know, that's not good for me. It was impacting my mood because I couldn't. I felt like at that point I couldn't focus on anything else. I was so stuck in that fight or flight mode. And I was having difficulty even wanting to spend time with friends. All I wanted to do was pour through PubMed and figure out, you know, what are the other treatment options out there and try to find answers. But that wasn't hopeful, that wasn't doing any good. And it was important for me to recognize that, okay, I love my mother dearly and I hate the fact that this is happening. However, it's important for me to know what's actually going on, which was she was going through chemo, the doctors were using the best treatment that they thought would work for her and you know, nothing I could do would really change that and the probability of it working or not working, you know, just going with what the doctor said. I needed to focus on trying to be optimistic, but that was still uncertainty. What I could control in the moment was making sure to call her every day. What I could control in the moment was focusing my attention on my children. So it's, that's the long version of it's really important to, to recognize it's not easy when you are spinning out of control. When you have gotten yourself into full blown panic mode. It's not easy to re regulate. I'm not saying it's easy, but you do have to be aware, be mindful of when you start getting, when you start spiraling and make a conscious choice to say, okay, this is not going to be a useful, a productive use of my energy right now. So what skills do I have that can help me calm down? You can look at Marsha Linehan's distress tolerance skills. If you Google DBT and distress tolerance or if you look on the channel, I have some hour long videos on dealing with negative thoughts and distress tolerance skills that provide tools that you can use to help yourself try to re regulate and get in your wise mind, recognizing that you're not ignoring your feelings. You're recognizing your feelings and you're saying okay, my body is telling me, my brain is telling me that there's a threat and I need to redirect that energy, get into my wise logical mind to figure out what the best next steps are. How do you get a very literal 12 year old that everything doesn't have to be planned out? He freaks if surprises come up. Well, depending on the 12 year old. And I'm assuming you're not talking about a 12 year old who's on the autism spectrum. I'm assuming you're talking about a 12 year old who tends to be maybe like me. That is very extreme on The J aspect on the structure aspect of temperament and that it's really challenging. It's important to, again with that child, teach and model, you know, make a list of distress tolerance activities because life is going to throw you curveballs sometimes. And quite honestly, I was extraordinarily structured until my children were born. And then that kind of all flew out the window because you can't plan much when you've got an infant. But you know, it would be great if this young person could develop some skills and tools long before they are, you know, in their 20s. So sit down with them and identify things that they can do that can help them calm down, that can help them, you know, re regulate doesn't mean much to a 12 year old. So what is it that you can do? And if they can't think of anything, then definitely modeling the breathing. Just say, okay, let's breathe together, let's breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four. That way you can get into your, into your wise mind or into your logical or your thinking mind. So the first thing is to figure out how to help this young person re regulate. The next thing is when something does come up and the child becomes disregulated, okay, you got to get through it right now. But then it's important to look back, reflect on it and help the child see, you know, something unexpected happened, didn't make me happy, but I got through it. And that's where that resilience comes through. They got through it. And helping them feel confident that they can handle changes is going to be really important. Talk with the per, talk with the youth about why changes in routine or changes in structure make them so stressed out they may have a reason. A lot of times the changes for, for children, changes are anxiety provoking. They like, they like predictability and they haven't been through nearly as many experiences as we have. So when life becomes unpredictable, it starts to get very scary. Talking with the youth about, okay, what is scary about this situation and how can I help you feel safer? You know, those are some things that you can start trying with the, with the youth. Hang on having to take care of a few, A few spammers. And Edwin, that is an excellent suggestion that I may need to think about how to add to this acronym replacing negative what ifs with positive what ifs. You know, what if the test comes back completely positive, completely negative? Well, okay, I hate tests like that because positive is bad and negative is good. So whatever. But yeah, replacing your what ifs. What if this storm comes through and knocks down my fence. Well, I could get a new fence. What if it doesn't come through? You know, what am I going to do instead if I find out that it's actually going to miss us completely? Well, I can focus on that because that means I get to go hiking and I can do more yard work and those sorts of things. The other thing I named was personality. And if you look at the Myers Briggs or what, the easier one to get an overview of really quickly is the Kircy Temperament Sorter. And I believe it's K E I R S E Y. If you put that in Kirsy Temperament Sorter you will come up with Kirsty's website and it explains the dimensions of temperament. I also have. Let me see. Maybe I can figure out how to pull it up here. My channel and then go to. Judging and perceiving Understanding Temperament and relationships in Recovery. I will put a link to that right there. Oops, I don't know how I did that for you. So that's a video that I have on Judging and Perceiving, which is part of the Myers Briggs temperament that you can take a look at to, to answer those questions. As far as whether he has is on the autism spectrum, it is likely he is not. But if you want to find out more, you can talk to his pediatrician. Autism Speaks is the best location for. Finding information about what autism looks like. And again, talk to the pediatrician because remember, symptoms are on a continuum and certain symptoms being, being structured, being highly intelligent, being shy, being, you know, anything can be very regular adaptations, very regular characteristics of a person. It doesn't necessarily mean that they are, that they have a disorder of any sort. So I always like to air on the side of assuming that things are all normal. And this is just a unique characteristic of the person. And Ethan, there is speculation by some that vaccines may be related to autism, but there is no, to the best of my knowledge, there is no actual direct evidence that it does cause autism. And it's really important to differentiate cause versus correlation. Okay. AG asks a question about adults who are trying to deal with uncertainty, who have a trauma background. Well, it's important to remember that trauma strips us of a sense of safety and a sense of power and uncertainty may keep us from feeling safe or empowered. So it's important for the person with a trauma background to really look at the present moment and examine it in terms of in what ways am I safe right now and in what ways am I unsafe right now? You know, there, there could be things of unsafety. When I was talking earlier about the tornadoes, you know, it's important for me to look and say, okay, you know, right now I'm safe when the storm comes through. If there is a tornado warning, you know, staying on the second story of my house, probably not a great idea. So it's important to really look at the objective facts about what, in what ways I am safe and in what ways I am not safe right now. And a lot of times people recognize that they are safer than they may feel. So remembering to get away from emotional reasoning, focused on, on factual reasoning and what can you do to make yourself or to keep yourself safe in this moment? So that's the first thing. Safety empowerment kind of goes along with what I just said. Once people recognize what they can do to make themselves feel safer or to keep themselves safe, that's very empowering. As well as reflecting again on their resilience. Reflect, reflecting on times that they've dealt with uncertainty before and they have survived it or maybe even emerged from it and thrived, they learned something. It is a paradigm shift in the way we think. But ultimately in order to deal with uncertainty, if you've got a trauma history, regardless of what you're dealing with, people who have trauma histories and in my opinion one of the first things they need to do when they start feeling disregulated, when they start feeling distress, is to check their safety, make sure that they are safe and recognize that they are safe and check their power. What things can I control in this situation? Great question, Good to know. He about the scientist who identified some studies admitted to faking the results about autism and vaccines. It's always important if you have questions about things that are study related I, I think it's important to go straight to the horse's mouth as they say. Go to the PubMed and that's where you will find the peer reviewed journal articles, the academic articles that have been published that theoretically are accurate and will identify the likelihood of something happening. Are there any other questions? I really appreciate y' all being around today and stopping in to say hi. Please remember I do these talks every weekday morning at roughly 9:30. So tune in, come back, ask questions. I love to be able to interact with you. Have a great weekend. It.