Why “almost sure” never feels like enough.
5 Minute Read
There is a moment when it stops feeling optional.
You don’t just want to figure it out––it feels like you have to.
You’ve been here before, and you know how it’s going to feel if you don’t find resolution.
Irresponsible
Wrong
Things might turn out bad
Racing thoughts
Oddness in the body
Sweating
Heart rate rising
For many, intrusive thoughts don’t just bring discomfort—they bring a kind of intensity.
A sense that you need to resolve them before you can move forward.
Not because you want to stay stuck but, because it doesn’t feel safe to let go.
Barry noticed this shift over time.
At first, he was just thinking things through, but eventually it started to feel different.
“I can’t just ignore this.”
“I need to be sure.”
“What if I move on from this thought and things go sideways?”
Once that belief and intensity arrived, it became much harder for him to step away from that.
Anxiety Gives You a Hidden Rule
This is the engine, underneath it all, an unspoken rule: “I shouldn’t move on until I am certain.”
It doesn’t always sound that clear, but it definitely alters how you respond.
And if you don’t obey the rule, “something bad” may occur.
The rules you build to reinforce the certainty become a sort of de-risking strategy.
A way of saying you did everything you could and then some.
You have a rule: ‘I have to be certain.”
For Barry, the words “maybe” and “what if” made things quite difficult.
He sensed risk.
He felt things were unresolved.
He felt unsafe.
So his mind urged him to analyze until he arrived at something more solid, something that felt final.
The Good Life
Barry had normal hopes for everyday life.
He wanted the thing that most others wanted: a good life.
He knew there would be hard days, and suffering was unavoidable.
But overall, a good life seemed attainable.
But when something began to threaten that seemingly attainable good life, he felt shaken.
The fearful thought, if ever it became true, would destroy his good life.
So, like any normal human he began trying to find certainty and reassurance so he would be able to avoid the thing he was thinking about from occurring.
One more neutralizing thought.
One more check.
One more time through the ritual.
But for Barry, it never quite held.
Even when he felt close - the standard shifted.
He began thinking:
“What if I missed something?”
“What if I didn’t think it through enough?”
And suddenly, what felt certain a moment ago no longer felt solid.
The issue really isn’t that you haven’t reached certainty.
Rather, it’s that you have made certainty the one and only condition you believe must be met before you can move forward.
And your mind can keep raising the standard for certainty indefinitely.
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Something Under the Surface
Let’s go back to the thing that you feel like you need to be certain about.
Usually it’s related to something significant to you.
Usually, it has something to do with your values.
Sometimes related to your belief systems.
Something you look to to give your life meaning or identity.
In other words, one thing Barry began to realize is that the intrusive thoughts and fears surrounded something else.
He needed to have certainty––yes.
But why?
For Barry, as for many others, the need for certainty surrounded something else he viewed as essential to life.
Something that you have to have in order for your life to matter or have meaning or value.
Something that, if you lost it, you wouldn’t be able to go on.
For secular thinkers, this might fall under the category of core values. If you are a Christian, you might use a term like idol of the heart.
Either way, it’s something you believe you have to have for your life to be okay.
The Heart of the Issue
So, why do you feel like you have to be certain everything is okay in order to move forward?
As we said a moment ago, it’s often because you believe you have to have certainty because it’s a way to find safety or relief.
At another level, certainty feels like a must because something you believe you have to have is being threatened.
The things you believe you have to have to be okay may often be good things:
Family
Health
Security
Safety
Job
Honor
Reputation in good standing
And many others
But you have turned good things into God things and said to yourself, religious or not, ‘I have to have this for my life to be okay.
So the thinking becomes, ‘These intrusive thoughts need to be dealt with because if they came true, I would lose this essential thing.
Understand this, certainty in life is not actually required to live the life God has designed you to live.
But trying to attain it has come to feel like the only way to be safe.
To be okay.
Hope For Today
There is another way forward. You don’t have to stay stuck.
You don’t have to conquer it all in a day.
You might think, ‘I took years getting into this mess, and it will take years to get out of it.’ Not so.
If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.
Your inability to reach certainty doesn’t mean you’re failing.
There is more going on beneath the surface.
You may just be trying to meet a requirement that was never meant to be met.
Understand, certainty isn’t just something you want––it’s something you’ve come to feel like you have to have.
And as long as you believe it’s something you have to have, you will not feel okay.
If you’d like to keep reading, you can find more here → Articles
And if talking it through would help you, you’re always welcome to reach out and schedule a one-on-one meeting to walk through this together.
