163. Stop Bypassing Your Emotions: Why Uncertainty Might Be the Best Thing for Your Creativity

We spend so much of our lives trying to eliminate uncertainty. We want the right answer, the perfect decision, and reassurance that we're on the right path. But what if uncertainty isn't something to avoid? What if it's actually one of the most important ingredients for creativity, growth, and living a meaningful life?

In this episode, Dr. Amy Backos explores why self-doubt is not a flaw to overcome but information to work with. Drawing from psychology, art therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), she explains why the discomfort of not knowing is often the doorway to discovering what truly matters.

The episode also takes a thoughtful look at artificial intelligence and the growing tendency to use AI for emotional reassurance. While AI can be an incredibly useful tool, relying on it to bypass difficult emotions may prevent us from developing the emotional resilience and self-awareness that meaningful change requires.

If you've ever found yourself frozen by uncertainty, second-guessing your decisions, or asking, "What's the right choice?" this conversation will help you relate to self-doubt in a completely different way.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why uncertainty is a normal and necessary part of growth
• The difference between healthy self-doubt and becoming stuck
• How creativity develops through curiosity rather than certainty
• Why looking for validation can keep you from discovering your own values
• The hidden risks of using AI as a source of emotional reassurance
• What "cognitive surrender" means and why independent thinking matters
• Three practical strategies for working with uncertainty instead of avoiding it
• How identifying your values leads to clearer, more confident decisions
• Why committed action matters more than having perfect confidence

Three Steps for Working with Self-Doubt

1. Name what you're feeling instead of judging it.
2. Clarify the values that matter most to you.
3. Choose one committed action that moves you toward those values, even if uncertainty remains.

Memorable Quote

"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's path."

— Joseph Campbell

Mentioned in this episode

• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
• Carl Jung and the midlife transition
• Joseph Campbell's A Hero with a Thousand Faces
• Art therapy as a tool for discovering values and meaning
• Creativity, psychological flexibility, and living intentionally

Call to Action

If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear what uncertainty you're learning to embrace. Connect with me on Instagram @DrAmyBackos or visit ModernCreativeWoman.com to learn more about my programs for women who want to build a creative, meaningful life grounded in their values.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend who's navigating a season of uncertainty.

Transcript

"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's path." This quote is from Joseph Campbell from the book A hero with a Thousand Faces. And if you are feeling a little distracted or uncertain or even confused, I want to convince you that that is an absolutely okay and ideal place to be, especially when you're considering what's most important to you and making meaning in your life. I'm Doctor Amy Bakos. I am the hostess of the Modern Creative Women podcast. I'm an art therapist. I'm a registered and board certified art therapist. I'm a licensed psychologist. And I am so excited to be here bringing you the art and science of creativity. So let's get into this. Let's get this started. When I'm working with women in art therapy in the year long packages that I offer, we spend a lot of time in the beginning with the woman feeling uncertain, confused. Unable to kind of point in the direction she wants to go. And a lot of women come to work with me because that's how they feel, and it takes a little bit of time to unpack what that is. And I want to tell everyone that there is nothing wrong with being in a spot of uncertainty, self-doubt, and even like a hesitancy to take action. When you feel this uncertainty kind of pressing on you. The time when women need to take action and get some support is when the uncertainty and the self-doubt is causing them to slow down and not take action on what's important to them. Sort of that circling in self-doubt and not making any decision or not getting more information or not consulting causes this experience of uncertainty to feel worse and manifest into behavior that we don't want, such as procrastination, freezing up. Living same old, same old. When we're designed to live a life that's full and rich and vibrant and changing all the time, we are living beings and we grow and change. And that's normal, natural and how it should be. So I want to talk today quite a bit about why we need to embrace this kind of discomfort. You've no doubt heard in different ways that we have to be willing to tolerate uncertainty. We have to make a choice, not knowing exactly how it will turn out. And that's the only way forward in our personal lives, in our businesses, in our communities, in advocating for social justice. We take a step and we're not exactly sure where it's going to lead. You might say yes to a date. You might speak up about what's important to you. You might give something a try in your business, but the outcomes are not like foretold. There's no way to have certainty in what we're doing is going to lead to a certain result. And that's an incredibly good thing. Have you ever asked yourself what is the quote unquote right answer here, or what is the right choice in this situation? We all have because we're trying to make sense of what we want, what we desire, and take effective action. However, because we cannot have certainty in all of these things, we can't predict how the other person will respond to us at work or at home. We can't predict how we will respond once we achieve a goal. It feels different starting out at the bottom of a ladder, at a business and climbing the corporate ladder. Then you get to the top and many people have a terrible feeling of, wait a minute, why did I do this? The question of who moved my cheese? I was moving towards something and now that I'm here, I don't think I even want it. And that certainly happened to me. I worked all the way up to a full tenured professor at a university, and I realized that I was pursuing my dream, but I was pursuing also someone else's dream. It was in service of the university, and I believe in the mission, and I still teach there. I believe in what's happening in art therapy professionally. However, I wanted to do more art therapy, not write more reports, and I realized that by accomplishing my goal, I ended up doing things that were less exciting to me than I thought they would be. It's a normal trajectory. It's also developmentally appropriate. As people approach 50, we shift from looking outside of us to looking inside of us. And Carl Jung called it the midlife transition. And those kinds of transitions don't just have to happen around 50. It's, um, available for you to shift and change at any point in your life, but the making meaning of what's most important to you. That's where the magic happens. There's a phrase I haven't heard in a very long time, but when I was a kid it was quite an insult. It was to be a yes man. And if you're a yes man, you just agree with what the teacher says, what your friends say. In the professional world, it's a politician or a business person hiring someone who will just always say yes. They'll say, I have this idea and that yes man will say, oh, that's a great idea. And they start to move in this certain direction and they yes man says, yes, yes, keep going. And you can see where this ends up without honest feedback. Without critical feedback, we will go in sometimes really weird directions. And so we have to bounce our ideas off of other people. We have to put our ideas on paper or, you know, by writing words or by making art that an idea isn't fully formed. We have to consider how does it align with our values? How does it match what matters most to us in our lives? And art is one of the most powerful ways, certainly to figure that out. But the consequence of employing a yes man is we don't get good advice at all. We just get validation for what we're already thinking, and we'll get further and further out on a limb without having taken a good look at some of our ideas. Here's where uncertainty meets yes man. And guess what? It exists for us today. It exists right at your fingertips in AI. And more and more people are turning to AI to help them get over or bypass the discomfort and uncertainty and self-doubt of life. And they're consulting their yes man on ChatGPT or clod. And what they're getting is validation for their perspective. And they are receiving feedback that tells them that, oh, you're so smart. Yes. What a good idea. Of course you should feel that way. That makes perfect sense. There's a couple things wrong with this. If you have a disagreement with your partner, and then you go on to your AI program and discuss it with AI, what you're doing is making a triangle and you're introducing this third experience or like person, um, or set of ideas that makes a triangle between you and your partner. In the past, a triangle might be going and distracting yourself with friends and talking about your partner, or moving a child into that position so the parents can focus just on the child. A triangle could be made with substances, alcohol, and drugs as a way to triangulate and get away from the emotional experience of intimacy with your partner. People go have affairs. People do all kinds of things to avoid intimacy and discomfort, of having to have a conversation with someone. So now there is AI, which is not only a triangle, it is a yes man. It's creating a situation where perhaps you can work it out, get more validation of your point and why you're right. Meanwhile, your partner doesn't have that conversation. They you're returning with new ideas from a computer and you've completely bypassed the discomfort. Why is it discomfort? It is uncomfortable when you have a disagreement with someone, and it's uncomfortable because you care about them. And you want to understand what that means specifically because you want to do something different next time. But asking ChatGPT will not give you that human emotional connection with your partner. Instead, it's giving you the yes man answer. It might give you some things you could try, might have actual suggestions for you. But you're working independently away from your partner is not fostering intimacy. It's such the paradox to retreat to your computer instead of turning towards your partner to be more engaged. The same holds true with businesses. Many people are going on to their AI program and having conversations about business now. It can be incredibly helpful. It's very useful in lots of things. However, when we use it to bypass that discomfort or self-doubt or uncertainty, we're missing a critical component to building our businesses. Having self-doubt is normal. Being able to process that doubt and take action is how we learn. There is a new, uh, kind of terrible side effect called cognitive surrender that using a lot of AI, our brains are surrendering. So instead of using it as a helpful tool, we're using it to think for us and then our brain is getting atrophied. The research also shows that it is not an immediate rebound if we discontinue using AI. It's not like our brain will immediately rebound, and that's terrifying. Therapy is the exact opposite of what AI is. I have never been a guest man. In therapy, I confront, I interrupt, I point people in the direction that they are maybe avoiding looking in. I guide people to take action in a way that's meaningful to them. Of course, part of being in therapy is being validated and being respected for your dignity and sacredness as a human being. I do that, but I never tell people that they are on the right path and they should continue. When that's not my job. My job is to help people tolerate uncertainty and figure out how to work within the world where things are not certain. And teach people how to use self-doubt as information and not as, you know, a thought that means they should stop. It's just information that means we're considering things. So I have three strategies that really can help you embrace uncertainty and use self-doubt for what it's intended to. It's intended to help you think, to perhaps research something. Gather more information. Self-doubt is useful and helpful, but not when the volume is turned all the way up on it and we become frozen. So the first step is always identifying what you're feeling in the moment. You may need to pull out a list of feeling words and figure it out. It requires a little bit of patience to understand how you're feeling. I do not let the women I work with say they're good or fine or okay. Those mean practically nothing. I want people to figure out what they're feeling in a way that gives them language, and that putting language to feeling is extremely helpful. I asked people to draw how they're feeling. What color would it be? How big is that feeling? What texture does it have to describe it in the full, visceral way that captures the emotion? So now we have a name. We have a visceral sense of what it might look like. And then where does it reside in the body? How is it moving in the body, or is it sitting still? This initial experience is essential, so if you're feeling doubtful or scared or uncertain, try that experiment. Name the feeling. Describe it with lines and shapes and colors on a piece of paper and locate it in your body. The second step is identifying your values, and this is a whole process that I do in my year long program with women and in individual therapy. It's really about what matters most to you and distilling it down to the most important elements. Priority is a singular word. We didn't make it plural priorities until probably a few decades ago. It used to be priority was one thing. I have a priority. We can't have 15 priorities. So figuring out how to deal with conflicting values, we figure out what's the priority. And I do that through a lot of writing. Of course, art making, being out in the world and figuring out what matters most. And the third step to figuring out how to use self-doubt and uncertainty is to consider your actions. Now, committed actions are the actions that are in line with your values that move you closer to your values. They are unrelated to just thinking a whole bunch. They are really about what feels right. What gets you closer to what's important? So if you decide you put health as your number one priority, you can use that to decide your actions. So if you are invited out with a friend, but it's going to conflict with your exercise that day. Now you can consider some options. You want to see your friends. They're important. You also want to exercise, so then you can make choices. You recognize that there is a conflict. Health is number one. You can invite your friends on a hike with you. You could see your friends a little bit later after you workout. There's lots of ways to deal with conflicting values. It's just recognizing that conflicting values are normal and they will happen all the time. And so we always want to consider how our actions get us closer to what matters most. I want to leave you with the idea that self-doubt is not wrong or bad, or something to be gotten rid of. It's merely a feeling that's giving you information. And it might be because the thing you're trying to do is really important to you, and you feel doubtful because it matters that you take action on it. Conflict in your values is perfectly normal. We all have a schedule conflict or a priority conflict. Most days we will come across a conflict. Nothing's gone wrong, but we need the tools to deal with those kinds of interruptions where one thing is important, but so is the other. And I also want to remind you that trying to skip over self-doubt, uncertainty, not knowing is bypassing a really critical step in living a meaningful life. And so looking to get certainty like you will get from your yes man AI will not help you grow spiritually, emotionally, interpersonally. It will give you a false feeling that is not helping you with dealing with self-doubt, handing over your decisions. And your values to a piece of machinery will never get you where you want to go. So back to that quote from Joseph Campbell. If the path before you is clear on your clod or ChatGPT, you're probably on someone else's path. And guess what? Guaranteed that AI is someone else's path. It is not what you're creating for yourself. Let me know what you think. Let me know how you will continue to engage in ways that help you understand yourself, and take your one chance in the moment of feeling your feelings and taking committed action on your values. Let me know how you're doing that and I would love to hear from you. You can message me here in the show notes. You can find me on Instagram at Doctor Amy Backhoes. And you can also get some more information at Modern Creative Woman. Have a wonderful rest of your day and I look forward to speaking with you again in the next episode.