The outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the extreme cruelty of its development and the resulting socio-economic consequences are of great concern to the world.
Suddenly, we have been aware that any day we can go to bed in peace and wake up in a war in which everything goes, except human lives. This is a threat that, individually, we cannot face. Everyone, in its most literal conception, is expectant because it is unpredictable to know where we are going to get with this savage war.
Worrying is a common cognitive process that can sometimes be pathological. Scientific research indicates that more than 38% of people worry more than once a day. The worry process represents an attempt at mental problem solving on a subject whose outcome is unpredictable.
The unpredictability of the consequences of the war in Ukraine puts human beings’ tolerance for uncertainty in check. Uncertainty, worry and their disturbing consequences are, in fact, the basic ingredients of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Psychology, as a scientific discipline, has generated knowledge about something as important as uncertainty to the point of having created the Uncertainty Tolerance Scale and its relationship with cognitive processes, anxiety and depression.
It is time to deal with (not worry about) the management of uncertainty to prevent a possible anxiety disorder.
Managing uncertainty is not an easy task, but we can start by knowing the factors that intervene in it.
Information and uncertainty
The key point is knowing how to differentiate between information and uncertainty. They are two different concepts, but very related to each other. People tend to change the level of information we have about the war in Ukraine, and we can feel more secure or insecure about the level of information we have.
It is no coincidence that the war in Ukraine, in addition to being an armed conflict, is also an information war. From the western side we do not believe how Russian citizens support this barbarism. Will all of them be affected by a psychopathic personality? No. They simply have access to information that makes them feel safe.
On the other hand, the information that a large part of the Western world handles makes us feel insecure in the face of the mental turns of an individual –Vladimir Putin– whom, based on the information we have, we perceive as an isolated and disturbed being, capable of any barbarity .
feeling of vulnerability
Emotions are very important in managing uncertainty and are derived directly from the level of information desired by each one about the causes and development of the war. Risk awareness does not have so much to do with personal experiences, or even with the statistical risk of suffering a war. The feeling of risk is directly related to the unpredictability of an uncertain future.
The fear and anxiety of threats against which we do not feel safe are a great challenge for human beings. The worst is the feeling of losing control. We know that we are not in control of the war in Ukraine and that at any moment we can be victims of it. Furthermore, it is a “political risk” that is difficult to gauge in time (how long did we think it would last?) and in space (did we suspect it would go beyond Ukraine’s borders?). Therefore, it is an almost impossible event to explain with logical rules of causality. As Aristotle said, “the improbable is likely to happen.”
In this way, we can have two types of response:
Neutral response: If an individual does not have the level of knowledge they want about the Ukraine War, but does not care, they will not seek further information.
Positive, negative or mixed answer: If an individual does not have the level of knowledge they want about the war in Ukraine, but is interested in having more, they will seek more information.
The possible personal risk
We cannot separate the feeling of vulnerability from the subjective perception of personal risk. The scope and variety of the effects of war depend on several factors that combine with each other. We feel vulnerable due to macrovalues (concern about the consequences of war in a globalized world) that affect our perception of national security more. In contrast, microvalues, such as concern for our physical and material needs, affect the feeling of personal vulnerability.
We will feel more or less threatened from the knowledge of deliberate events such as war crimes, rapes, torture, looting, etc., which, through a mechanism of identification with the victims, make us feel that at any moment we can find ourselves in your situation. And the basis of the sense of danger is based on accidental events, such as a possible mental disorder of Putin or that Russia and the West do not know how to face a “and you more”, entering a symmetrical escalation of unpredictable limit.
Loss of control management
Not only the war in Ukraine generates uncertainty for us. So has the pandemic or climate change and we will have to deal with the loss of control that implies not being able to anticipate a serious danger.
These would be some strategies to alleviate the psychological effects of uncertainty:
Find the information you need or can bear. Learn to document yourself from proven and reliable sources of information. Do not forget that, in the age of information and communication technologies, the war of the story aims to do even more damage than the war on the ground. Run away from fake news.
Do not try to predict in the medium or long term. It is useless to invest mental energy in trying to prepare for the infinite future scenarios. It is more mentally sustainable to prepare for the here and now. Of course, in the midst of so much uncertainty there is something that will not change. The way of being of each one. Explore your creativity and ability to adapt to small unexpected events in everyday life and you will discover that you are more tolerant of uncertainty than you thought.
Reframe the threat positively, even if it’s not an easy task. Ask yourself what you are learning from this tragic war. Has your value system changed? What should we learn as a human species from it?
Make your plans so you can change them at any time. Uncertainty does not prevent planning. Uncertainty just requires our willingness to go off script quickly and efficiently. Flow and be flexible.
Share your uncertainty. Excessive fear paralyzes us. Check that it is not just affecting you and talk to others about how they are coping. Perhaps they will give you ideas that you had never thought of, and vice versa.
Do something and think positive. Put your grain of sand in mitigating the effects of this war and do not focus only on human cruelty because before it human solidarity is born, grows and develops. Indulge in fulfilling your altruistic needs. Give what help you can to feel that you are not unmoved by barbarism.
This article has been published in ‘
The Conversation‘.
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