The secret life of the high performer is often dominated by the holy grail of certainty. When certainty rules, success will emerge as the natural birth child of a given desire. All effort, all energy is concentrated on developing and establishing certainty – inside and out. Because certainty is considered to be a fundamental and natural part of the world. You just have to learn to tame and harvest that certainty. And once you have or hold that certainty, you are on the road to achieving your heart’s desire. Being able to promise that certainty to others will also ensure further success. People will buy it as a result. Be it a burger, a car, a taxi ride, a pill, even a therapy.
However the difficulty with therapy by its very nature is it is uncertain – despite all the scientific jargon and studies which have been scaffolded to show how certain therapy can be. In ten sessions we can treat a phobia. In twenty, a PTSD. Or whatever form it might take.
People want to get from A to B. But they are stuck because of OCD. If someone says they need do X to get to B, waves a study which claims there is an 85% per cent chance that this will happen, then people will buy. Certainty is reassuring and good for business.
Whole industries are built on such principles. Whole economies, whole cultures even.
The problem, from the certainty people’s point of view, is that therapy looks messy and uncertain. There have been and continues to be an ongoing and relentless attempt to make therapy certain. Which is understandable. Do these steps and you will get to B. Master this protocol and you will be able to treat X. All reassuring for people who are lost and suffering, and reassuring for therapists who have difficulty sitting with uncertainty.
Curiously this desire for certainty mirrors one of the ways the brain itself manages its own energy use. Our brain constitutes about 2% of our body weight. Yet it consumes an astonishing 20-25% of the body’s energy resources in a steady state. When in a state of stress the brain is capable of consuming 60% or more to perform life essential tasks to ensure our survival.
In other words the brain can be an energy drain for the rest of the body. One way the brain tries to minimise its consumption is by mapping and predicting the world. In other words, creating certainty.
You are sitting in a room right now and your brain has constituted a complex map of the space and all the objects in it. Because of this map you pay little attention to the room anymore as you go about your daily life. Even when you try to, it becomes hard to notice new things or see the newness of the room. The predictive map saves your brain a lot of energy since it doesn’t need to scan and map the room every time your move around.
The brain then focuses only on detecting differences between the internal map and what is being perceived – thereby freeing up energy for the organism to do other things. Only when a sufficiently significant difference is detected between the two will the brain focus resources to update the internal map in order to apply a new course of action.
As we know however the map is not the territory. The territory can be mapped a million different ways. Unfortunately we sometimes unwittingly mistake the map for the territory itself. On the positive side of sticking to the map saves us a lot of energy. We don’t need to question everything all the time. However the downside is such a map reduces people’s capacity to apprehend and embrace new experiences, see things that are not there or even fail detect significant differences which might be life saving.
When it comes to therapy, the process is inverted. Things are no longer certain. People seek out therapy to re-establish certainty – in a quietly desperate attempt to plug an already leaking dam. They come believing they know what the problem is; sometimes with a strategy about what they need to do but are somehow unable to apply. Other times, they are just totally lost or confused, having no idea where to begin. In all cases the internal map they are using no longer works. Yet they are helpless to update it.
Undoing and redoing that internal map can be a painful and scary. What you thought to be true no longer is. The world is suddenly a jungle. That person you trusted for so long suddenly can’t be trusted anymore. Your legs won’t hold you up any longer.
One thing is certain in therapy – the person is destined at some point to experience higher levels of uncertainty. Being able to sit with uncertainty lies at the heart of the therapeutic endeavour. Paradoxically the therapy journey is about about being able to step into this turbulence in a safe way for the healing process to begin.
Uncertainty is a gift.
But it’s hard to sell uncertainty. This goes against the grain of the certainty principle.
