In short
Why people avoid uncertainty, how that preference affects decisions and parenting, and when it becomes harmful (e.g., catastrophizing, “toxic time travel,” news spirals).
Guests
No guest appears in this episode; it’s hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.
Key claims
Humans prefer known risks over unknown probabilities (Ellsberg paradox: people choose Urn A with known 50/50 red/black over Urn B with unknown mix). Amygdala/stress hormones activate more with ambiguity than clear risk. Uncertainty triggers “toxic time travel” (ruminating past mistakes or projecting worst-case futures), disconnecting from present safety. Parenting application: use curiosity and CBT-style steps—ask “Is this thought true? What proof?” and “If a wolf is at the door, what would I do?”—plus “circles of concern” (self, family, town, etc.) and grounding (“two things you can see”).
Notable examples
ordering familiar mediocre meatloaf vs trying paprikash; pandemic early days; worrying about kids near water/creeks; college drop-off control loss; small “tiny decisions” that trap you (moving in together, house fixes).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VODiscussing Uncertainty
1:52 to 2:20
Margaret and Amy discuss the theme of uncertainty in life.
“This episode was sort of inspired by Dori Clark.”
Inspired by Dori Clark
2:20 to 4:12
The hosts explore Dori Clark's insights on fear of uncertainty.
“She is a - I have literally never heard either of those words and certainly not together.”
Understanding the Ellsberg Paradox
4:12 to 7:15
Explaining the Ellsberg paradox and its implications on decision making.
“So Dori Clark said, this is explained by something called the Ellsberg paradox.”
Why We Avoid Uncertainty
7:15 to 9:21
The hosts delve into why humans have a tendency to avoid uncertainty.
“But 50-50 is not great odds and it could be 50-50 or way better or way worse and earn B.”
The Psychological Impact of Uncertainty
9:21 to 14:04
Discussion on how our brains react to uncertainty and ambiguity.
“Why do human brains try so hard to avoid uncertainty?”
Understanding the Fear of Uncertainty
17:56 to 20:39
Discuss the human tendency to avoid uncertainty and its psychological effects.
“So is it a problem that we avoid uncertainty if it is something that's deeply human to do and we all do it?”
The Impact of Anxiety on Daily Life
20:42 to 23:10
Learn how anxiety manifests in everyday situations and affects decision-making.
“We've talked about the fact that I have OCD.”
The Consequences of Small Decisions
23:11 to 25:18
Examine how minor choices can lead to significant life changes over time.
“I mean, my grandmother was one of 13 of whom I think maybe nine or 10 survived to adulthood.”
Navigating Control and Uncertainty in Parenting
25:19 to 28:02
Delve into how parents cope with the uncertainty of their children's futures.
“into places that we then find very hard to get out of.”
Navigating the Uncertainty of Parenting
28:02 to 29:43
Explore how the uncertainty of children leaving home affects parents emotionally.
“and that we mix those two things together.”
Show all 19 chapters
Parenting Challenges We Face
31:33 to 32:46
Discuss the everyday parenting dilemmas that often confuse us.
“Exactly what my kid's teacher means by chunking.”
Understanding Ambiguity and Anxiety in Kids
32:47 to 34:39
Learn how children's experiences with stress influence their tolerance for uncertainty.
“Paul Glimsher, I talked about him before.”
Coping Strategies for Anxiety and Uncertainty
34:40 to 36:42
Explore effective strategies to manage anxiety related to uncertainty, both for parents and children.
“And one of the things that having dealt with this quite a bit, I think anxiety is kind of my life's, you know, devil that I fight.”
Dealing with Fears and Uncertainties
36:43 to 39:00
Discuss how acknowledging fears can help in managing them effectively.
“Instead of ruminating and worrying about these things could happen.”
Understanding Control and Its Limits
39:01 to 41:22
Examine the concept of control in parenting and how to address concerns about uncertainty.
“And you may deal with like, we don't know if there's a wolf at the door.”
Understanding the Amygdala's Response to Stress
42:01 to 43:01
Learn how the amygdala reacts to stress and techniques to manage anxiety.
“I'm not worried that like, you know, aliens are going to come abduct me out of bed.”
Building Resilience Through Mindfulness
43:01 to 43:47
Discover how mindfulness exercises can help build resilience in uncertain times.
“And getting back to that and getting back to where you really are instead of where you might be will calm you down.”
The Importance of Certainty in Parenting
43:47 to 44:16
Explore the significance of focusing on certainty to combat anxiety.
“I am certain I can hear your voice and birds in the background that you are tapping back into certainty as an exercise against the panic of uncertainty.”
Engaging with Our Listeners
44:16 to 44:58
Hear how listeners can connect and share their ideas for future episodes.
“Oh, I really enjoyed researching this This is great.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Heidi Grant:Amy, let me tell you about a magical place that is so exactly designed to be enclosed space, year-round fun for the whole family, that I bet you already know what I'm going to say before I even say the name. Let's say it together on three. One, two, three. Great Wolf Lodge. You got it, Amy. My kids loved Great Wolf Lodge when we went. You probably already know that it has a huge indoor water park with a wave pool, Lazy River, a bunch of massive water slides. But then your pack can hit the other attractions because, wait, there's more. Great Wolf Lodge has adventure-packed attractions like MagiQuest, a live-action game kids can play throughout the lodge, plus the Northern Lights Arcade.
0:44Heidi Grant:Spent some quality time there, so your kid who loves the Lazy River and your kid who loves fantasy games will both have a great time. Great Wolf Lodge also offers great dining options and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties. All under one roof. Unpack the car once and you're settled in to have fun. And with 22 lodges across the country, you're always a short drive away from adventure. We've both had such great times at Great Wolf Lodge. So bring your pack together at a lodge near you. Learn more at greatwolf.com and strengthen the pack. I'm a victim of toxic time travel, Amy.
1:20Heidi Grant:What Fresh Hell, laughing in the face of motherhood. Here's something to be uncertain about. With Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson. What I need to do is write a 4 ,000-page list. A podcast that solves today's parenting dilemmas so you don't have to. Why do I tend to feel this tightness in my shoulders every time we talk about my brother's wedding?
1:47Heidi Grant:hello everyone and welcome to what fresh hell laughing in the face of motherhood this is margaret and this is amy today we're going to talk about why we avoid uncertainty and whether that's a problem we do when it is how about that we do what it is right right but i never want to assume you know like even when we had our guest meredith schwartz from the currently reading podcast and it's like we should all read more i'm like must wish should we yeah let's make sure that we agree on that. So I have research. Okay. Start coming hot, Amy. What do you got for me? This episode was sort of inspired by Dori Clark.
2:22She talked about this on Instagram. Do you follow Dori Clark?
2:24Heidi Grant:She is a - I have literally never heard either of those words and certainly not together. A business thinker, well-known speaker. Her lane is like, find what you're really good at talking about and I'll help you figure it out. That's sort of her lane. So it's not parenting related, but she's just a great speaker and really interesting. Has her like doctorate in theology, just an interesting person. All right. Who we think, why we think, how to think more deeply, that's her lane. So she did this Instagram reel, I'll link to it in the show notes, where she explained that our fear of being uncertain and of uncertainty itself makes us sometimes make lesser decisions.
2:59Heidi Grant:Totally makes sense to me. Cannot. This is an episode for me, by me. really for me by you technically that you choose the devil you know yes because it's the devil you know even if there are clear downsides even when you know like this isn't great i don't even love the meatloaf at this restaurant and they have a special tonight paprikash but i don't know if i like paprikash so i better order the mediocre meatloaf instead because at least i know the downsides are clear well my mother used to have a saying that always kind of rocked me but i think about it a lot, which is nobody's in a situation where they're not getting what they want.
3:37Heidi Grant:And it's like, what you want might just be what's familiar. But it doesn't mean that the situation is good for you. The fact like, you might be in an abusive relationship because it's what you want on some level. Basically, her argument was, people are in situations because there's something they need in that situation. So the solution is to figure out why you need what you need in that situation and make that change. Well, it would be like, you prefer certainty, you prefer the known option, the known option, even if the known option is your like crazy boyfriend who is a drug dealer, right, right.
4:18So Dori Clark said, this is explained by something called the Ellsberg paradox. And I like nothing more than a psychological, like, this is why we think this weird way.
4:28Heidi Grant:It's so fun. And I have never heard of the Ellsberg paradox, but I cannot wait. Me neither. Here we go. We're about to learn all about the Ellsberg paradox. So the Ellsberg paradox is Daniel Ellsberg, a psychologist, 1961, had this idea that he wanted to try to prove that we have a human tendency to prefer known risks over unknown, even when the unknown one could be better. You don't know if it's better or worse. So you pick the option you have, even if you know there are risks. Yeah. I mean, this is so much about getting stuck and being in bad situations and also just eating the meatloaf. Like it's so why there's so many different ways that this plays out.
5:12Right. It's about the fear of the unknown. So, okay. So how did he prove this? How did Daniel Ellsberg prove that we choose things with risks we understand over ones that we don't even know what the risk is? Maybe there's zero risk. Maybe it's wonderful. Door number two. I don't know. I'm going to choose door number one. So he did this by doing a study where there were two urns. I mean, it gets from the 60s. We're not calling, I would just call it a vase, right, or a container, but they called it an urn. An urn is something with a dead person in it. But yes. Yes. So go with me. There are urns.
5:45There are two urns that both each contain 100 balls. Urn A has 50 red balls and 50 black balls. Very what fresh hell branded. Love it. And urn B has red balls and black balls in it. And who knows? Could be 100 black balls. Could be 100. It could be 99 to 1. You don't know. You don't know and you can't know. And they made it clear like we're not lying to you. Like urn 1 definitely is 50 and 50 and earn B, who knows?
6:11Heidi Grant:Okay. Then they asked participants to choose which of four bets they'd like to make. They were betting 50 cents and they get a dollar. I don't know, you get a dollar. So the first bet was like, would you like to bet that you're going to draw a red ball from earn A? The second bet was, would you like to draw a black ball from earn A? Those are basically the same, right? You have a 50-50 chance. And so people chose those, of course, relatively equally. Maybe red's their favorite color, but they chose those equally. But almost everybody chose, I'm going to take the 50-50 bet that I draw red or black from urn A instead of taking any bet on urn B, even though you could say like, I'm going to bet on a black ball from urn B and the whole urn was black balls and you have a hundred percent chance of getting it right.
6:58You know, you only have a 50 % chance of getting it right on the first urn and everybody chose one of those bets instead.
7:04Heidi Grant:But that just seems very logical to me. You have no information about B and you know that you have a 50-50 chance with A. But 50-50 is not great odds and it could be 50-50 or way better or way worse and earn B. But it isn't like 50-50 odds are so terrific. No. It's just they're better than I don't know what the odds are. But not knowing that the odds are doesn't mean that they're worse, they could, in fact, be way better. They could be. It could be. But yeah, where you immediately defaulted like, yeah, I do the same thing, right? I would pick, well, I understand what I'm betting on here. So I'd pick that.
7:42So that result proved the Ellsberg paradox. And it's interpreted to prove that people dislike situations in which they can't attach probabilities to outcomes.
7:54Heidi Grant:I'm not sure I'm totally down with Ellsberg on this one, because I think that the variables are not equal there to me, but I definitely agree with his principle. You choose something where you understand what the outcomes can be over something where you don't know where the outcomes can be. And then also what probably comes into it is something that they call a deceit aversion mechanism, which is like, you're probably gonna play a trick on me. They were assured the participants in the study were like, this is the truth. 50-50 in this one, we don't know in that one. Nobody in the room knows. We just threw some balls in there.
8:25We
8:25Heidi Grant:I feel like if somebody was like, there's a 50-50 chance plane A is going to crash, but there's a 1 to 100 % chance that plane B is going to crash, and you have to get on one, I would get on plane A. It feels like the other one, they don't feel like equal choices at all. You know, they feel like, I'm not sure the experiment resonates with me, but I agree with the conclusion. And the deceit aversion mechanism is that you assume in a real world situation, that if you're not told the probability of a certain event, that 100 percent, yeah, that it's to see if you were like the plane. Right. Because literally, logically speaking, if the plane you don't know the percentage of the other plane crashing, there's 50 chances before it even gets to 50 percent.
9:08So it's better, but it feels worse because you don't know. And I think you're right. It's like, yeah, but I would pick urn A. So would I. Right. It isn't that like only dumb people pick this. Everybody picks this. And so why? Because we avoid uncertainty. Yes. Okay. So then the next question is why? Why do human brains try so hard to avoid uncertainty? Because of our amygdalas, Amy, I know that much. Mm-hmm. Panic response. It's an evolutionary advantage to go with the sure thing. Like, I know there's water that way. It's three miles away. You know, I'm a caveman. I don't know about miles, but I do know I have to walk all the way over the big hill to get to the water, but I know where the water is that way.
9:45Or we could try going this way for a change, but there might not be water. I'll be interested if we talk about this.
9:50Heidi Grant:But it also seems that different people are just wired very differently in this way that people who are like, I wonder people have jumped out of a plane without a parachute or with a parachute from 30 ,000 feet. I wonder if I could do it from 100 ,000 feet. That's a thought that will never cross my mind. But thank God there are people like that because they figure things out. I guess so. I mean, there's risk aversion. I'm very risk averse. I'm very risk averse, but risk averse is a little bit different because risk averse is, yeah, like miss me with jumping out of planes. I would never do that for fun.
10:27Right. Because the risks to it are clear, right? Right. It's not like you're asking me to put on a backpack and get in the van with you and we're going somewhere exciting and I say, I don't want to go. You know, that uncertainty aversion. Right. Risk aversion is like, I don't want to jump out of a plane because that's dangerous, which is why you want to do it because it's dangerous. Right. This is a little different. So anyway, we are wired to prioritize our survival through control, through predicting what's going to happen next. Correct. This is just who we are and nobody's a bad person for liking to know what's going to happen next.
10:59It's who we are. Yes. And as you said, our amygdalas activate when we face ambiguity, not risk, when you face ambiguity. Like, oh, what's going to happen now? Your amygdala activates and that releases stress hormones. I'm quite familiar. here. Cortisol, adrenaline. Have you heard of those things?
11:19Heidi Grant:I am quite familiar with all of these things. Do you remember back during the Iraq war, not the Iran war, but the Iraq war, which is 20 plus years ago now, Donald Rumsfeld, who was then the Secretary of Defense, talked about known unknowns and known knowns? Yes. I looked into this for another episode, and it seems like it really was his, like he made this up. It seems like everybody's like, No, this was his thing. He was talking about in war, you have your known knowns, how many soldiers you have. You have your known unknowns. We don't know how many soldiers they have. The known unknowns, we don't know whether they have a nuclear weapon and unknown unknowns are like what you really want to stay away from.
11:56And that war was a constant quadrant of that. So the uncertainty would be like the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. And what's really scary, I think, is like, I don't know how many red balls are in Urnbee. That's a known unknown. and then there's unknown unknowns like there might be like a snake in there like your brain right right activates it like jumps up to include like other potential bad outcomes that are almost
12:20Heidi Grant:certainly not in the cards well and we can definitely see our friend the biological imperative at play here which is unknown unknowns are dangerous right i mean really you think of just watching a movie and somebody's like walking over to a let's say an urn and like the music is swelling and they're about to open it up. And in the movie, either the gag is that it's filled with rubber balls or there's a honey badger in there. You just, that's right. It could be anything. So this was interesting. So neuroscientist Paul Glimcher points out that people are risk averse and that there's certainly an evolutionary advantage to being risk averse, but the average person treats an ambiguous situation as more dangerous than a risky situation.
13:08Heidi Grant:Totally makes sense. And I mean, in our current political world, we're seeing a lot of this, like the dictatorial leader who is like, I have all the answers. I can fix it. It is not broken. Everything is fine. These people are bad. You are part of the good side. I mean, that is extremely, I feel like people kind of act like, who would go with this? Everybody. This is what people deeply crave, like somebody to tell them that the unknown unknowns don't exist, that everything is a known unknown, and that they, in fact, know how to deal with all the known knowns. Is this a problem? I think when we come back, we should talk about, I mean, I think it probably is.
13:55We're going to talk about why. Sounds good. For some of us, tax season is one of the only times that we look at our finances fully. And And once it's over, well, that was terrible. And it is completely understandable not to want to think about it for another whole year. But using Monarch and being intentional with your finances in an ongoing way helps you see where your money is going and how you can put your refund to best use.
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15:02Heidi Grant:Our weekly meeting, Amy, it's now run by Monarch. Love it. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use code FRESH at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50 % off at Monarch.com, code FRESH. All my kids learned to swim when they were little. It was super important to me that they be confident and safe in the water. There was only one problem with that, taking them to swim lessons. I mean, the pools were freezing. There were always cranky adults doing laps right there. And it was definitely not, for any of us, what you would call fun.
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18:15Yeah. That our imaginations can start to run away from us. I mean, those were scary times that we've totally memory hold, probably also for good reason, right? We don't talk about it. You really didn't know what was going to happen next. And when your brain can't predict with certainty what's going to happen next, it tries to fill in the gaps, like our brains love story. And so it'll try to like create a story that makes sense. And if it has to come up with worst case scenarios to fill in what might happen next, it will certainly come up with those.
18:45Heidi Grant:Yes. And there's a psychologist named Dr. Rue Wilson, and she calls this toxic time travel. I'm a victim of toxic time travel, Amy. This is me too. When faced with uncertainty, says Dr. Wilson, many of us start to spiral by mentally replaying past mistakes or projecting into imagined futures. My mother's term for this was catastrophizing. Catastrophizing. Catastrophizing is a phrase I use all the time with my kids, my siblings, and I use it with each other, like, are we catastrophizing? And one of my closest friends, grandma would call her borrowing trouble, right? That, oh my gosh, this person fell.
19:26Heidi Grant:What if they can never walk again? Where are they going to live? They're going to have to move to a place where somebody can take care of them and we don't have the money for that. And it's like, also possible they go to the hospital for two days, they do some PT and they're fine. I mean, my husband at one point said to me, wow, you really do like to worry out all the options in advance. He just does not do that, And it just must be very calm to live in his head. Yeah, like different people have different appetites for this, but it's an attempt to create certainty. Yes. Your brain is trying to figure out every way that this could work out.
Read the full transcript
19:59And I don't know what the urn has inside, so I'm going to figure out everything that could be inside, which includes catastrophic, extreme outcomes. And you're trying to create certainty to relax yourself. But of course, the outcomes that you're coming up with are provoking further anxiety. Correct. So you become overwhelmed by like, what if there's a snake in there? And whoever said that, no, that was not something you were supposed to worry about. But now it's been introduced. And now it's Dr. Wilson says you become disconnected from the present, which ironically is where you do have certainty.
20:31Like I'm safe right now. I'm taking a deep breath. But when I'm worried about what's going to happen or I'm ruminating over what could have happened, I'm in a place where I have less certainty and feeling more anxious.
20:42Heidi Grant:Yeah. And it has actual harm. We've talked about the fact that I have OCD. I'm a little stressed right now. And I'm currently like picking at my fingers. You know, it's just a small thing. But it's like, oh, yeah, this is just me worrying about all the things that I don't have control over that might happen. So that's like a very small physical harm. But I remember talking to Tiffany Jenkins of juggling the Jenkins. And she was talking about her anxiety got so bad. like every time she was out with her kids, if there was water, you know, 200 yards away, she just could not engage with her kids because she was thinking, what if one of them runs over there and jumps in the water?
21:23Heidi Grant:And I remember at some point we were looking at a house when we were moving back east and there was a creek running through the yard and I had little, little kids. And I was like, well, but somebody could fall and hit their head and like fall in the creek. And now I pass that house all the time. And I look at this tiny trickle of water. And I just think, wow, I was insane to be worried about that small piece of water. But I didn't have the distance from it. My amygdala was like, your job is to look at this house and figure out every single way a vulnerable child could damage themselves here. Right.
21:57Find places where I'm uncertain and make them certain. Dr. Wilson also makes the point that we have access to information, a constant flow of information. And this is I definitely fall pray to this part of it. If I just check my news apps on my phone every like, you know, 15 minutes or just all the time that I'll know what's happening, I'll never be caught unawares. But of course, all I get from my phone is a steady stream of here's something to be uncertain about,
22:24Heidi Grant:you know, AI, whatever. You didn't even worry about flesh eating bacteria. If you go in a lake, put that on your list, girl, something that might happen, right? The news is at least as much. here's what could be really bad that could happen instead of here's what happened yesterday. We live in an increasingly uncertain time. So no wonder we're all feeling it. Yeah. And a time, because I pushed back a little bit on the idea of, well, we live in this very uncertain time. It is uncertain, but it is fundamentally so much more safe than the times that came before ours. And it's interesting to me that with that safety comes such increased anxiety.
23:09Heidi Grant:And I think part of it is we hold things more tightly because we have the opportunity. I mean, my grandmother was one of 13 of whom I think maybe nine or 10 survived to adulthood. It's a very different world than like my child and I are besties and we do everything together. It's just your commitment level to your safety gets high, but then the anxiety gets very high with it, I think. I'm not saying they weren't anxious about people dying because they died more often. But it's more risk, right? Like the risk was greater. Now the risk is lower, but the uncertainty is higher. And we hate uncertainty even more is what these people are arguing.
23:56So no wonder we're all like crazy about stuff that almost certainly won't happen.
24:01Heidi Grant:Well, sometimes it feels somehow that we have more free time to worry about whether or not we can keep everyone alive. Whereas back then, everyone was so busy trying to stay alive. Right. Maybe they had a little less existential dread. You didn't have to ruminate over like, what if one of them gets polio? Right. One of them has polio right now. Yeah. This isn't always like catastrophizing. There are lower stakes situations where we can apply this without realizing we're applying this. you don't realize that you're afraid of uncertainty, but you might say something like, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't bring it up.
24:34Maybe I need to get more information. Now's probably not the right time, like all those kind of things. You can do things like that to rationalize sticking with what's familiar instead of having the difficult conversation or asking the hard question or taking the risk.
24:49Heidi Grant:I was just talking to my kids about like moving in together before you get married. And I was like, to me, the downside of moving in together before you get married, is that you may not realize that you're committing to a situation that's going to be now harder to get out of. Like if I can make a phone call and say, I never want to see you again, that's very different than am I willing to hire a moving truck to get out of this situation? And I do think you have to be careful of these small decisions that lead us into places that we then find very hard to get out of. And that's just one example.
25:27Heidi Grant:I think that as a young person, I imagined life as doors. Like I'm going to pick door number one, two, or three. And it's really these tiny decisions where you're like, ah, we'll just take this house. Well, now we've lived here for five years. Well, I guess we should get this shutter fixed. Now we've sunk money into the house. Just the way that your tiny decisions lead to an overall heaviness that you have trouble getting away from. We had a guest at some point who said that her sort of like North Star is choose the bigger life, which I thought was kind of interesting. And I guess it's maybe a way to get out of this.
26:05Like, you know what? We are going to go live on a houseboat for a year. That's the bigger life instead of what's familiar and safe.
26:11Heidi Grant:What's your version of that? I had a friend years ago who said, choose action over inaction when you absolutely can't decide. And I do use that as a touchstone because I think sometimes I want to do this, but I don't know what's going to come from it. It works against this exact thing of, but I don't know what's in the other urn. And it's like, well, okay. Right. The familiar choice is more comfortable, but it might not be the best choice. I mean, you can't know. I mean, talk about like uncertainty. You can't be like, what are the ways in which this is worse than moving on a houseboat for a year?
26:48Like, it's not that you should get stuck there. But I think we don't often consider that possibility that the unknown alternative leaping into open air could lead to something that's way better.
27:00Heidi Grant:Yes, or way worse. Yeah. And I also think it's a little bit wrapped up with like inertia that You get stuck in situations because it's your every day. And we've talked about, and one of the things I feel like is my lesson from the podcast kind of recently is sit down and evaluate and ask hard questions. because I think we kind of just put blinders on to get through the day and say, are my choices, which are very day to day, are they getting in the way of a big picture choice I could be making or something that I could be doing that would make me happier than this? I think it's about sliding a piece of paper in between risk and uncertainty.
27:44Yes. You're getting cortisol and adrenaline and feeling anxious about not knowing what's going to happen next, which is different from something bad happening next, but inside it feels the same.
27:57Heidi Grant:It really does. That's right. Actual fear of actual risk is different than fear of the unknown and that we mix those two things together. Right. And we were just talking to Christina Geis for an upcoming Fresh Take about kids leaving home for college. Yes. And it's this huge thing when it's your first kid. It's exactly this. You don't know what's going to happen for them next. You can keep your kids safe. You can keep kids warm. You can make sure they eat enough carrots. Right. And then all of a sudden they're going and you're hoping they're going to have a great experience. It will probably not be 100 black balls or 100 red balls.
28:33It'll probably be somewhere in the middle, which is life. Right. But you not knowing it's so much uncertainty for you as a parent about your baby bird that I think that's why it like it just gets built up into this truly difficult time for a lot of moms.
28:47Heidi Grant:Well, it's just the control idea of like, I currently control, let's say 80 % of my kids' lives. And next year, I will control 0 % or maybe 10 % of my college kids' life. And that feels wild. And so the reaction to it is that what made this situation good was control. And so my reaction is, what I need to do is write a 4000 page list that's like, don't jump into water if you don't know what's in the bottom of it. Don't, you know, get in an Uber with a weirdo. Also remember that if you're cleaning with bleach, it will leave stains on your clothes, like the 4 million things. And the reality is none of that actually keeps me safe from the experience I don't want to have, which is being out of control of my child's life.
29:42Yeah, well said. Okay, when we get back, let's apply this to parenting. There is a way in which we can apply this to parenting our children. Yes, please.
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31:33Heidi Grant:and now things we definitely have not figured out and never will figure out from the what fresh hell podcast how the socks get left on the floor right next to the hamper like you were so close how i can spend 300 at the grocery store and still end up with the family complaining there's nothing to eat whether i'm supposed to click on the polls on the capture picture or just the streetlights. Exactly what my kid's teacher means by chunking. Roblox. Just everything about it. Why I eat my kids' leftover chicken nuggets while standing up in the kitchen even though they are disgusting. Why my kids think watching other kids opening toys on YouTube is entertaining.
32:21How my husband can rewire the entire house to put in a deluxe sound system but can't figure out how to braid a seven-year-old's hair.
32:28Heidi Grant:This has been Things We Definitely Have Not Figured Out and Never Will Figure Out. From the What Fresh Health Podcast. So because this is a parenting podcast, I figured like, okay, we have to talk about like, how does this help us parent better to understand the difference that we're afraid of uncertainty more than risk, even though risk is more dangerous than uncertainty. How does that help us parent better? So there was a study at NYU, Dr. Paul Glimsher, I talked about him before. He administered a stress inventory to participants. How stressful has your life been and when has it been stressful?
33:01Then they also had to answer questions about lotteries of varying ambiguity. So how stressful are you? And then also answer this other question here that's about like, would you ever bet on this? Wait, would you ever what? I don't have the details on it, but like lotteries, like would you bet on this? How much would you bet on that? And there's ambiguity. Got it. He wanted to see if there was a relationship between how stressed somebody has been historically throughout their life and how ambiguity averse they would be. So the higher the people reported having stress in their lives, actual stress over time, the higher their aversion to ambiguity was.
33:38Right. And so he concluded, this led us to believe that ambiguity aversion emerges as a function of the bad stuff that's happened to you over your lifetime, particularly bad stuff that happens to you in childhood. So it's like Issa's childhood for an extreme example. Yeah, it's going to make you choose the devil you know for hard-earned reasons. but applying that to hopefully your kid doesn't have a niece's childhood but even whether or not they do when a kid is suddenly very intolerant of uncertainty as they can be or ambiguity averse socially anxious i don't want to go to this party i want to do this right there's probably other stressors just like there are for us like you were saying before like i see that my anxiety symptoms come up in this way and i'm like oh it's because i'm worried about this other thing yeah that we can apply that same sort of global knowledge to our kids.
34:31Like, why are they all of a sudden not wanting to go in the school without me in the morning? It's because they're feeling stress.
34:40Heidi Grant:Yeah. And one of the things that having dealt with this quite a bit, I think anxiety is kind of my life's, you know, devil that I fight. One of the things that I have done in cognitive behavioral therapy is a lot of like, let's say out loud the worst thing that could happen. And because of like OCD and the way my mind works, I'm like, but if I say it out loud, it will happen. It just compounds the anxiety, right? That I'll make it come true if I say it out loud. But that you really do have to walk through the stages of this because it becomes the wolf at the door and the wolf is snarling and it's got bloody teeth and foam coming out and it's got really, you know, mean eyes and all of this stuff.
35:26Heidi Grant:And that the thing you actually have to do is just open the door and stare it down and be like, okay, it does have fangs. They are scary, but I have mace that I could, you know, like you have to look at it and figure out what you would do. And I think for my kids, that is a helpful exercise as well. Like, well, I would like to ask this person to the school dance. Okay, what's stopping you? Well, I'm scared. They'll say no. Okay, what would that feel like if they said no? You know, really working through like, so in a way, I'm contradicting something I said earlier that like, oh, you shouldn't catastrophize and like, think of all the worst case scenarios.
36:06Heidi Grant:But if trying not to think about the worst case scenario is increasing your anxiety as it often does for me, sometimes it is best to say, okay, what would happen if this weird bump was cancer? How would I deal with that? What are the possible prognosis? You know, just not holding the scary thought away because that to me is the metaphor that we've used of holding the beach ball under the water, that I'm using all of my energy to try to deny thinking about a scary thing. Dr. Rue Wilson talks about curiosity, and I think they actually are a little different. And that's why it works, right? Instead of ruminating and worrying about these things could happen.
36:47It's like you're picking up the beach ball and looking at it, right? Yes. What would happen then? And why am I feeling that? And it's so interesting. Why do I tend to feel this tightness in my shoulders every time we talk about my brother's wedding, whatever? Yeah. All that noticing it quiets down your brain and it takes you like one step above it. You're assessing it instead of existing within it. Yes. And you were saying to do the same thing for your kid. And I think that's exactly like I have a kid who struggles with uncertainty and can have anxious responses to it. And you can't do. Well, wait a minute.
37:22What do you mean? You've been there 10 times. You can't do that. You can't like sort of talk them out of it. No. But you can maybe be like, that's interesting. What do you think it is about this that makes you feel that way? That invites curiosity, which is distancing. And so it helps.
37:38Heidi Grant:There's another kind of set of steps that I use sometimes, which is, I'm not going to get it exactly, and I don't know who invented it. But as you go through also, is this thought true? Do I know and have proof that this thought is true. If this thought is true, what does it mean? And what is my plan for if this thought turns out to be true? And I kind of like that because sometimes it's nobody likes me at school. And you really, as we do on the podcast, actually have to start with, is this true? And is it a problem? Are you sure this is a true thought? Or, you know, my parent is going to end up hating me if I have to put them somewhere where they need more care, whatever.
38:28Heidi Grant:I'm just trying to think of examples. Is this thought true? Because we don't want to spend three days agitating ourselves over something that does not exist. So like, is there a wolf at the door, should be the first question. Am I sure? Do I have proof? Because your brain might be like, yes, there is a wolf at the door. What is the proof I have that there is a wolf at the door? oh i just looked out the window and there's a wolf okay now that we know there's a wolf how are we going to handle that situation and it seems like a good process to me because sometimes we can spend five days being like rocking in bed to be like i can't stand the fact that there's a wolf at the door and it's like spoiler alert there's no wolf there's no wolf right that's the uncertainty like there might be a wolf at the door right it feels as scary as there is a wolf with a door, right?
39:18Heidi Grant:And you may deal with like, we don't know if there's a wolf at the door. There's no window on the door. So there might or might not be like there are those situations as well. But we can talk about like why that's hard. And then we can also move on to if we really don't know, and there's a possibility that there's a wolf at the door, then let's figure out what we're going to do about it. Right. Let's be aware that that sometimes feels more dangerous than knowing for sure. Exactly. It does feel more dangerous than knowing. It does feel more dangerous, but it isn't more dangerous. And you can check and instead of like, well, I better just stay in here with the curtains closed forever because that's the W.
39:54No. It's just being aware that like the wolf at the door, and I don't know if there's a wolf at the door, but there might be, can feel equally dangerous to us and we can really get stuck there.
40:05Heidi Grant:Another exercise that I've done with my therapist is circles of concern, basically. Am I myself safe in this situation? Is my immediate family safe in this situation? Are my extended family and my loved ones safe in this situation? Is my town safe in this situation? Like, really, not to say I only care about the people who are close to me, but to identify areas of concern. And I think when the way that we consume news, which is like every day, oh, they found another weird germ somewhere that might be coming this way. And there's a war going on here. And it might interact with these other things that finding a lot of exercises that help you process information has been very, very helpful to me personally.
40:59It is true. Your amygdala will react the same. Your amygdala needs to be told, right, that the dead child you were reading about happened half a world away, that you're not a bad person for needing to remind your body that like it's not down the street. Like, I am safe. This is safe. It seems to me it's crucial to do that. And we don't always give ourselves that. That if you're not equally worried about everything that might happen in the world all the time, you're not a true citizen of the world or something.
41:27Heidi Grant:And you're not, I think the idea of control versus the reality of control is where we need to really put your like piece of paper. What is within your control and what is outside of your control? Because your ability to control world conflicts is zero, pretty much. I mean, write a congressman if you want, but you have zero control. so you have to move the control closer to yourself in order to not have constant panic because I've definitely lived at stages and like my amygdala it's got some issues Amy but it sometimes fires and I do have a physical sensation of being like chased by a bear while I am doing the dishes and And I've had to do a ton of work on like, how can we tell my amygdala that there's no bear chasing me right now, even though there's lots of stuff I'm worried about that.
42:25Heidi Grant:It's not crazy. I'm not worried that like, you know, aliens are going to come abduct me out of bed. I'm worried about things that are real, that are scary, that are difficult. But even so, right, there are these circles of concern. And then there's also the time travel thing that Dr. Rue Wilson talked about that this might be useful for your kids that if you say like, okay, we're time traveling right now, let's talk about right now, we have a certainty, like, how am I feeling right now? The whole like, can you see two things? Can you hear three things? It brings you back into the moment where you're certain that you're safe sitting there.
43:00Yes. And getting back to that and getting back to where you really are instead of where you might be will calm you down. That's resilience. How do you get better at this? You build resilience. How do you build resilience? Not by never being stressed, but by returning from a stressed state to a more calm state more quickly and capably.
43:20Heidi Grant:and it's really connecting for me, which I hadn't thought about it this way, that all these exercises that I've done and I've talked about it, I understand the wider that circle of everything I'm trying to control is you don't have any certainty, but like you need to get to the things. That's why that exercise works. What are two things you can see? I am certain I can see my driveway and a tree outside. I am certain I can hear your voice and birds in the background that you are tapping back into certainty as an exercise against the panic of uncertainty. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Yeah.
44:02So stop feeling bad that your brain doesn't like uncertainty. It doesn't. Right. And you're right. Lean into things you can be certain about to get sort of back to one. I mean, you solved it for me. Firing my therapist. It's all over. I'm healed. Stop time traveling. Great job. Oh, I really enjoyed researching this This is great. Really interesting. We love to hear from our listeners what you want to hear about on the podcast. We totally take listener suggestions all the time. There's so many ways you can reach out to us. You can leave us a comment on Spotify on this episode. You can send us an email, info at whatfreshelpodcast.com.
44:36You can hit us up on our Facebook page, on Instagram. I don't know. What other ways am I not thinking of? Yell out the window. TikTok.
44:45Heidi Grant:TikTok it to us. TikTok it to us, people. Let us know. Do a dance and tag us. I don't know. Yeah. I might be old, Amy. But no, find us everywhere. And you can link it all out from whatfreshhealthpodcast.com. Anywhere you want to find us, you can start there and find us everywhere. That rhymes, Amy. You can make it a motto. And with that, thanks for listening. We will talk to you next time. Thanks, everybody.
45:36Heidi Grant:We'll see you next time. sandwich at McDonald's. We'll check all your breakfast boxes. Prices and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any of the offer or combo meal.
From the publisher
Why do we cling to what’s familiar—even when it’s not working? In this episode we explore why humans are wired to avoid uncertainty, and how that shapes our decisions and our parenting.
We discuss the Ellsberg Paradox, which explains why we often choose “the devil we know” over potentially better—but unknown—options. Whether it’s staying in a situation that no longer serves us, avoiding difficult conversations, or overthinking every possible outcome, our brains are constantly trying to reduce uncertainty—even at a cost.
We discuss how the brain’s fear center (the amygdala) reacts more strongly to ambiguity than to actual risk, triggering stress responses like anxiety, overthinking, and catastrophizing. This helps explain why uncertainty can feel so overwhelming—even when nothing is actually wrong.
We discuss Dr. Rue Wilson's notion of “toxic time travel" and how our search for reassurance pulls us out of the present into either mentally replaying the past or imagining worst-case futures, keeping us stuck in cycles of worry.
We also explore how this shows up in parenting. Kids who resist new situations, struggle with transitions, or seem overly anxious may not be reacting to real danger—but to uncertainty itself. Understanding this can help us respond with more empathy and curiosity rather than frustration.
Finally, we share practical strategies for managing uncertainty—for ourselves and our kids:
Separating real risk from fear of the unknown
Using curiosity instead of rumination
Reality-checking anxious thoughts
Focusing on what’s within our control
Grounding ourselves in the present moment
Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:
ambiguity aversion
Tara Cousineau for Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences:
Coping with Uncertainty
Lauren Arcuri for the American Physiological Society: The Brain's Response to Uncertainty and Ambiguity
Gretchen Rubin: How to Make Tough Decisions: Choose the Bigger Life
Dorie Clark on Instagram: Your Brain Is Lying to You About Risk
What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables.
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:
https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/
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