Dear Friends:
Hopefully, you have been able to see the existence of the Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) in your own lives and see the unrest and havoc this system creates. I hope that you are identifying patterns in your response to IU and are motivated to learn new tools on how to interact with uncertainty in a more healthy way. We are going to start looking very soon at the solution, but first, I want to talk about an example from a familiar Bible story about the role of IU and how it impacts our relationship with others.
The story of the Prodigal son is found in Luke 15:11-32 (for the sake of limiting words in this post, I hope you have access to read or reread this as we are talking about the story!). In a beautiful book, The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen, Nouwen writes the following:
“The parable that Rembrandt painted might well be called ‘The Parable
of the Lost Sons.’ Not only did the younger son, who left home to look
for freedom and happiness in a distant country, get lost, but the one
who stayed home also became a lost man. Exteriorly he did all the things
a good son is supposed to do, but, interiorly, he wandered away from his
father. He did his duty, worked hard every day, and fulfilled all his
obligations but became increasingly unhappy and unfree.” (p. 69)
This distinction by Nouwen of the Prodigal Sons is an insightful way to begin to see that all of us have the tendency to fall into the trap of responding to IU in different ways that will impact our satisfaction with our relationships. Let’s start with the younger son, whom most of us see as the true Prodigal in this story. I can imagine that some of his uncertainties may have been, “Is there someone or something out there in the world that could make me happier or more fulfilled than what I have here at home?” (I believe that this question is at the heart of many infidelities and divorces!) Instead of focusing on the love of his father as being enough, this younger son turns his attention to another audience and in so doing begins to respond to his family with the right side (Lack of Action) of the chart. He wanders from home and squanders his inheritance avoiding his loyalty to the family.
We don’t think of the older brother as being a Prodigal son because he is more on the left side of the chart and his activities of fulfilling his duties seem much more socially acceptable than that of the younger brother. His uncertainty may have been in trying to be in control and how much he needed to do to make people love him. In doing all the right things this son looks like he is living life well, yet he is unfulfilled. His response is different from the younger brother but both are driven by a very common human need.
If we look at what was the same in both, it was the longing and need to be accepted and to be loved. That is a human need that every one of us has. In fact, it would be interesting to look at your own particular responses (left and right side of the IU chart) and ask yourself how many of those you are doing to be accepted and loved vs. to avoid the pain of not feeling accepted or loved and therefore not rejected. What was different in the brothers was who their audience was. The younger brother did not see his father’s love as sufficient and made his friends the audience in earning love. (Interestingly, he made poor choices in these friends who left him unsatisfied in the end!) The older brother also missed the father’s love because he believed that he had earned it and yet in so doing, the older brother could not experience his intrinsic value to his father without trying to earn it. In a way, his audience was himself and this bore unhappiness and the lack of freedom to love as he’d been loved. With either brother, the outcome of their experience of love and relationship satisfaction was greatly impaired by the Intolerance of Uncertainty!
Here are some questions for you to ponder as this parable might apply to your own life as you engage in the Action or Lack of Action side of IU in your own relationships:
In what ways do I tend to try to earn love?
Who tends to be my audience?
In what ways have I tried to avoid love and thus control for pain?
How satisfying or unsatisfying have my efforts been in trying to earn love or avoid it?
Have these efforts created expectations that have left me less than satisfied?
Salvador Minuchin (a theorist in Psychology) wrote:
“There are more possibilities than you think. Let’s find a way to help you become less narrow.”
Our patterns of reaction to IU are default and patterned and healing comes as we learn to open up our eyes to other possibilities in reaction to uncertainty! In the next post we will start to unravel these new possibilities!!
Blessings to you on your journey toward healing,
Shari