The Stomach Ache of Uncertainty
A gentle reminder: anxiety often asks us to solve what has not happened yet. This piece offers a way back to what is here now.
Not knowing what the test result will say.
Not knowing how the conversation will go.
Not knowing whether the call will come back.
Not knowing what the decision will be.
Not knowing how things will unfold in your family, your work, your body, your relationships, or the wider world.
There is a lot of this right now.
I see it in the therapy room, and I imagine many people can feel it in their day-to-day lives too. Anxiety is showing up in very personal places, family stress, jobs, friendships, finances, health concerns, as well as in the larger atmosphere around us. Many people are moving through their communities carrying a heightened sense of tension: into schools, grocery stores, workplaces, parks, trails, conversations, and even the places where they usually go to feel restored.
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Underneath so much of it is one especially difficult ingredient: uncertainty.
That is the nugget of the stomachache.
Anxiety Lives in the Future
When I talk with clients about anxiety, I often describe it as an experience of what is to come.
Anxiety lives in the future.
It pulls us toward what might happen next, what could go wrong, what has not been resolved, and what we cannot know yet. We want to figure it out. We want certainty. We want to know where we stand.
But often, in the moment anxiety rises, we are simply not there yet.
We are waiting for more information. A return phone call. A medical update. A tax return. A text back. A conversation. A decision. An opinion. A result. A response from someone we care about.
So we wait.
And while we wait, our minds may spin, but our bodies often struggle even more.
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The Body Does Not Love Uncertainty
Anxiety is not just a thought problem. It is also a body problem.
Our breathing may get shallow. Our chest may tighten. Our stomachs may churn. Our nervous system may become more activated. Our emotional brain may start scanning for danger, urgency, or clues. When that happens, the steadier, more reflective part of us can go a little offline, which is part of why 'just calm down' is rarely helpful advice.
This is one reason I spend time with clients helping them notice anxiety not only in the story they are telling themselves, but in the body that is carrying it.
What is happening in your chest? What is happening in your stomach?
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What happens to your breathing? What happens in your thoughts when you do not know yet?
Awareness matters, because once we begin to notice activation, we can begin to work with it.
A Practice of Coming Back
One way I help clients do this is through sensory grounding.
Sometimes I invite a client to describe what they see in the room as if I am not there. Sometimes, in a virtual session, I am literally not there in the room with them. The point is to observe what is present and describe it without adding a personal qualifier or story.
So instead of saying, 'That blue vase I like,' I might encourage them to stay with description:
- Is the blue light or dark?
- Warm or cool?
- Glossy or matte?
- Muted or bright?
- Is the object tall, rounded, square, worn, or soft-edged?
What I really like about this practice is that it gives the active mind something to do.
Anxiety often creates mental and nervous energy that has nowhere to go. It starts reaching into the future, trying to predict, solve, rehearse, or prevent. Sensory grounding offers that mind another job: notice, describe, get curious.
And that thinking is both thoughtful and low-stakes.
It is not about getting it right.
It is not a test.
It is about becoming curious.
And curiosity can be a very gentle shift for the nervous system. It softens urgency. It slows the rush to conclusion. It asks the mind to engage in noticing rather than forecasting.
The mustard yellow wall. A picture window with a budding tree outside. The low din of traffic a street away. The soft, ribbed texture of the scarf in my hand, with its frayed ends. The coolness of the breath that touches my nose when I breathe in.
This does not erase real problems. It does not magically resolve uncertainty. But it helps bring us back into the only moment we can actually work with: this one.
Try This: A Two-Minute Sensory Grounding Practice
- Start by rating your distress or agitation from 1 to 100. Do not overthink it. Just choose a number that fits this moment.
- Then look around and describe what is here, without adding opinions or stories. Try to focus on descriptive words.
- Notice five things you can see. Describe color, light, shape, texture, shadow, size, or movement.
- Notice four things you can feel: the chair under your legs, the floor under your feet, the air on your skin, the coolness of your breath at the tip of your nose.
- Notice three things you can hear: a fan, birds, a car passing, the refrigerator humming, a distant voice.
- Notice two things you can smell or taste: coffee, mint, soap, or even 'nothing noticeable right now.'
- Then take one slow breath and ask yourself: What number am I at now?
- The goal is not perfection. The goal is to gently hook the mind onto what is here and let curiosity do a bit of steadying work. Even a small shift matters.
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Measuring the Shift
I will often ask clients to rate their agitation or discomfort from 1 to 100 before and after a sensory grounding exercise.
On that scale, 0, 20 might mean blissed out, deeply calm, or peacefully asleep. 100 would be severe distress, the kind of state that likely needs immediate intervention. Most people are somewhere in the 30s to 70s.
The goal is not necessarily to go from a 72 to a 12. The goal is to notice that movement is possible.
Maybe the number shifts from 68 to 61. Maybe from 54 to 47. Maybe from 41 to 38.
That matters.
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It reminds us that even when life feels uncontrollable, we are not entirely without influence. We may not be able to change the future in that moment, but we can sometimes shift our experience of the present. We can help the body settle by a few degrees. We can do something.
And that is powerful.
We Cannot Control the Future, But We Can Return to Now
I think one of the quietest and hardest truths about anxiety is this: sometimes we suffer not only because we do not know, but because we believe that if we cannot fix the future, then we are helpless in the present.
But that is not true.
We may not be able to make the phone ring. We may not be able to hurry the lab result. We may not be able to guarantee how the conversation, diagnosis, election, decision, or relationship will go.
But we can breathe. We can orient. We can notice. We can describe. We can become curious. We can lower the temperature in the nervous system, even a little.
And sometimes that small shift is enough to remind the body: Right now, in this moment, I am here.
I also appreciate Jeff Warren’s work on equanimity, the practice of staying with what is here without immediately fighting with it. Not liking it necessarily. Not approving of it. Not pretending it is easy. But learning to be with the moment as it is: the hard, the good, the irritating, the unfinished.
Equanimity is not passivity. It is not giving up. It is not saying, 'This doesn’t matter.' It is the practice of saying: 'This is what is here right now, and I can stay with it.'
That is so much of the work with anxiety: not solving the future before it arrives, not demanding certainty from an uncertain world, and not shaming ourselves for having a human nervous system. But slowly building the capacity to be with the wait, to notice activation, to come back, and then come back again.
Because sometimes the most compassionate question is not, 'How do I make this uncertainty disappear?' Sometimes it is simply:
What helps me be here now?
A breath. A sound. A texture. A color. A moment of curiosity.
For educational purposes only and not a substitute for individualized medical or mental health care.
With warmth,
Audrianna Joy
