The Need to Know Everything: Anxiety’s Obsession With Certainty

As a person who struggles with high levels of anxiety, I have learned that my mind does not want peace, it wants certainty. Knowing what’s coming next. From organising my entire life in a planner to knowing who thinking what or what will happen when the situation has not even occurred yet. It’s like being on survival mode 24/7, because my brain is building maps of possibilities just to feel safe walking through the fog.

What surprises me? People still don’t truly understand what anxiety is. So let me clear it up.

According to the American Psychiatric Association (2013), anxiety is characterised by excessive worry and apprehensive expectation about a variety of events or activities, occurring more days than not for at least six months. People with anxiety often find it difficult to control these worries, and it is typically accompanied by physical and mental symptoms such as restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, and sleep disturbances. These symptoms can cause distress or impair daily functioning, and are not due to substances, medical conditions, or other mental disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Basically, you check your phone again, reread that message, look for hidden meanings, replay the tone in someone’s voice. You feel that if you can prepare for every outcome, and make theories and get evidences out of every situation, you can somehow protect yourself from pain. But the truth is, this need to know everything becomes its own kind of prison.

From a cognitive psychology perspective, this is in the brain’s intolerance of uncertainty (Carleton, 2016). Our brains are built to predict and constantly try to anticipate what will happen next (Hirsch & Mathews, 2012). The amygdala, which detects threats, becomes hyperactive in anxious people, thinking that uncertainty is danger (Etkin & Wager, 2007). Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex is the part responsible for rational thinking and emotional regulation, and it struggles to calm the high alarm system (Kim et al., 2011).

The result?

A brain that’s constantly preparing to fight, even when there is no actual conflict.

This is why anxiety feels both mental and physical. It’s not just “overthinking”, it’s the body’s biological attempt to stay safe. Your heart beats faster because your brain thinks you’re in danger. Your muscles tighten because your body is preparing to react. It’s survival mode, just misplaced (Thayer et al., 2012).

Behaviourally, this leads to constant reassurance-seeking and control-seeking behaviours: the checking, the planning, the avoidance. These are short-term relief strategies that, over time, reinforce the brain’s belief that uncertainty = threat (Sibrava & Borkovec, 2006). Every time you seek reassurance, your brain learns that “not knowing” is unsafe and the cycle continues.

Cognitive researchers call this intolerance of uncertainty (IU). Studies have shown that people with high IU are more likely to stay worried and anxious as a way to gain a sense of control (Carleton, 2016; Dugas et al., 2004). But worry does not reduce uncertainty, it just amplifies it. The brain confuses thinking about something to help the situation get better, so it keeps replaying scenarios and stories, trying to better the problems that don’t exist.

The irony is that anxiety’s obsession with control often leaves you feeling more out of control You start to analyse every interaction, looking for patterns or clues, a way to make the world feel predictable. You convince yourself that if you can just understand enough, prepare enough, or stay alert enough, maybe you won’t get hurt. Maybe you’ll finally be in control.

But anxiety doesn’t work that way. The more you chase certainty, the further it slips away. It’s a cycle. Thought, doubt, reassurance, repeat. And even when everything seems fine, your mind is still searching for what could go wrong next. There’s no dramatic moment of peace. Just quiet questions that never really end.

References:

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.).

Carleton, R. N. (2016). Into the unknown: A review and synthesis of contemporary models involving uncertainty. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 39, 30–43.

Dugas, M. J., Buhr, K., & Ladouceur, R. (2004). The role of intolerance of uncertainty in etiology and maintenance. In R. G. Heimberg et al. (Eds.), Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Advances in Research and Practice (pp. 143–163). Guilford Press.

Etkin, A., & Wager, T. D. (2007). Functional neuroimaging of anxiety: A meta-analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 164(10), 1476–1488.

Hirsch, C. R., & Mathews, A. (2012). A cognitive model of pathological worry. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 50(10), 636–646.

Kim, M. J., Loucks, R. A., Palmer, A. L., Brown, A. C., Solomon, K. M., Marchante, A. N., & Whalen, P. J. (2011). The structural and functional connectivity of the amygdala: From normal emotion to pathological anxiety. Behavioral Brain Research, 223(2), 403–410.

Sibrava, N. J., & Borkovec, T. D. (2006). The cognitive avoidance theory of worry. In Worry and its Psychological Disorders (pp. 239–256). Wiley.

Thayer, J. F., Åhs, F., Fredrikson, M., Sollers, J. J., & Wager, T. D. (2012). A meta-analysis of heart rate variability and neuroimaging studies: Implications for heart–brain interactions in anxiety. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36(2), 747–756.