The Illusion of Certainty: Why You’re More Wrong Under Stress

Ep 143.  Certainty is one of the most appealing ideas in human psychology. It promises clarity, predictability, control, and confidence in outcomes. We are drawn to certainty because it feels safe—it reduces ambiguity and gives us the illusion that we can fully understand and control what comes next.

But certainty, especially under stress, can become a dangerous illusion.

When we are under pressure, fear, or sudden stress, the brain rapidly interprets incoming information to determine safety or threat. In these moments, emotions can amplify perception. What we feel can quickly become what we believe—and what we believe can feel absolutely certain, even when it is not accurate.

This is where the myth of certainty emerges.

Under stress, we are more likely to over-trust our interpretations, assume we are correct, and act on incomplete or distorted information. The nervous system prioritizes speed over accuracy, which means our conclusions may be fast—but not always reliable.

In reality, life operates on a spectrum of probability, uncertainty, and possibility, not absolute certainty.

Yet many people respond to uncertainty in one of two ways:

• Overconfidence — believing they are certain when they are not
• Over-preparation — attempting to eliminate all uncertainty before taking action

This second pattern can lead to what might be called “preparation paralysis”—a state where fear of the unknown prevents forward movement. The mind exaggerates risk, amplifies worst-case scenarios, and creates a hyperbolic sense of danger that keeps us from acting.

The result: hesitation, avoidance, and missed opportunity.

This is where self-regulation skills become essential.

Self-regulation allows us to remain centered, grounded, and rational—even in uncertain or high-pressure situations. By regulating the body through breath, awareness, and physiological control, we create space between stimulus and response. This space allows for clearer thinking, better decision-making, and more accurate interpretation of reality.

Instead of reacting to fear, we begin to respond with clarity.

Instead of seeking certainty, we learn to operate effectively within uncertainty.

And that is where true confidence is built.

Not in knowing everything—but in trusting our ability to navigate what we do not know.

Certainty may feel powerful.
 But adaptability is what makes us effective.

Train your awareness. Regulate your state. Act with clarity.

Take care. Walk well.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome back, folks, to episode 143 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in health psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adjunct professor to local community college. And what we're going to be discussing today is the myth of certainty and the trap of uncertainty and also what we would call preper paralysis. Now, we can prepare ourselves for things, but we can also get stuck in preparation when we overthink. And sometimes they call this uh analysis paralysis, and to a degree it is, but part of it is planning and strategizing and kind of providing yourself a safety net before you go in, and nothing wrong with that idea, but can also kind of derail us from our best attempts at trying to get going and making not only action but productivity happen whenever we can make the most progress, so to speak. So from this point, we're going to discuss once again the myth of certainty. To kick off the discussion on certainty and the myth of certainty, we have to kind of identify what it is that certainty does for us within the realm of self-regulation skills that have to do with not only self-protection, but also managing and mitigating not only stress but anxiety and things that I would be perceiving in my environment as dangerous by either ramping us up in the sense that we become uh more sympathetic in tone and we're able to do more fight-flight, or we're parasympathetic and that we need to learn how to chill and friend and befriend within the the social scheme, so to speak. But when we talk about the idea of certainty, certainty gives us a sense of comfort when we're moving, when we reach for something and we're certain that it's there, we kind of half expect and don't even have to look at it, and we kind of know that it's there already. So there is a comfort level that comes with that, but also certainty whenever we're doing something new, when we're trying to advance something in our career, our job, or gain a new skill or learn something new, or maybe go into an unknown space or area. If we're walking around in a forest or a place I've never been, or even a town that I've never been to, we tend to walk a little more cautiously, a little more carefully, because we don't have that sense of certainty. And for some, that uncertain quality can be very paralyzing. It can actually prevent you from going out and adventuring and trying new things or excitedly looking to see, well, I don't know what's there, but let's go find out. And there's nothing wrong with a little adventuring curiosity. But uh depending on the paradigm situation, it can be at work, it can be at home, it could be by yourself in your own home, thinking of things to the point wherever you'll keep yourself from doing what it is that you're doing, knowing full well that it's probably not the most rational thing to have that level of apprehension. But at the same time, the outcome at the end of the day is that maybe you haven't lived as much and enjoyed as much because you have needed and believed into the sense of having to have a perfect certainty, which does not exist. That's the myth of certainty, mind you, and also the certainty that we start moving towards based on how we think whenever we're hype or aroused or angry and upset, that our emotions become the evidence provided. And evidence rarely occurs whenever we're out doing adventure or eureka and let's find new stuff and do new things. Actually, evidence comes as a result of the process of walking and doing and going out and exploring, so to speak. You don't start with evidence first in many cases, unless you're doing some sort of um science wherever you're running stats and you look at evidence that's provided from someone else and you kind of get an idea. But even when you start doing your version of uh whatever study you might be doing that might be a rehash of someone else's, you're starting not only without evidence, but you're actually kind of knowing what you expect to find based on similar steps, but it's not exact nor is it absolute and perfect. There's no perfect overlay or transfer. And the reason I'm talking to certainty as far as a point being a useful tool versus it being something that keeps us from uh accomplishing more is that self-regulation has to do with getting rid of those things or overcoming those things that prevent us from doing what we need or want to do in a moment, environmental, external, internal, can can change based on the stressors going back and forth from inside to outside, outside to in, so to speak. But whenever we're wanting certainty, we start having a thought process based in belief. One that has to have evidence or that requires that we see evidence, we tell ourselves that we have to have that first when maybe we're looking at things inaccurately. Sometimes we jump to certainties in the sense of assumptions that we're supposed to get evidence first, when maybe evidence only arises from the process of walking. So I'm trying to get as clear as I can on the point of certainty because often certainty is a lie. That's something that we can't count on if we're trying to become better at what we're going to do. Sometimes we have to go out on a limb, and that takes a little courage, and that's okay. Not everything that we're gonna go out on a limb uh with to gain said skill, let's say ballet stick fighting in my case, or even learning how to read or ride a bike like little kiddos do, or learning how to crawl and walk, uh, have any evidence before, but rather just a desire to try to figure out what's going on. And that sometimes is enough of a driver, not always. And when it comes to self-regulation, to address certainties, in my running man book that's going to be out soon, I speak about this in particular and the fact that our body and our perceptions will take environmental cues and accept them not only as evidence, but depend on how high the emotional intensity and load is at that moment, especially if it's a shock, we tend to take things as they are at face value, what they look like. Once again, the cutout of at the beer garden where you have the the Dallas Cowboy sheer leader that's life-size and glossy and all dressed and looks pretty believable. But when you get up close, you realize, well, it's just this uh one-dimensional thing, that's not the real person. And uh very often, even though that looks like evidence, it it appears as such, but is not. And this is the myth of evidence once again applied to when we're highly stressed or afraid. But what happens when we're doing something professional where I want to do something, or maybe I have to speak in front of people? This myth of evidence once again gets uh turned on its head, so to speak, in the sense that we think that because we're expecting certain things and we tell ourselves a narrative and we have these emotions and fear about it, that somehow that has become true. We don't even need evidence on the outside to drive us to believe or not believe. We have generated it ourselves, and that kind of limits us from wanting even take the step forward. So self-regulation and dealing with the symptomology of stress, the elevated heart rate, wherever we have a sense of sympathetic tone going up, where we have that pressured sense, our breathing changes wherever we feel or start acting more correctly as we're feeling like we're having environmental threat on the outside, our body then starts acting a certain way, and our our mind is shifting in the sense that it's believing what we're feeling one, but also remember that the blood flow goes away from the front part of our brain. So our best reasoning at a higher heart rate is not the best reasoning that we have at a lower heart rate when our assumption of safety is met. So once again, uh there's nothing wrong with having certainty. But certainty is an absolute when you get to a certain point, and whenever our our higher level thinking gets limited by lack of blood flow, carrying blood sugar to do what we call our thinking, our thought process, our rationale's not working when we're over 140 to 160 beats per minute. So then certainty becomes more absolute, but also much more compelling and believable because we don't have the reasoning or the rationale to be able to defend against that compelling potential. So it's very hypnotic in that sense. So now that I've beat that horse to a powder to death poor thing, uh, we're gonna talk about what it is that I can gain as a result of taking action. We talked about the preparedness paralysis. Most people don't call it that. Some call it analysis paralysis. That's part of it, but the preparedness part, often knowing going in that we're going into a challenge, there's nothing wrong with that. Um the Boy Scouts, of course, you know, are always prepared. And uh then in the military, you always prepare, but how do you get prepared? But you check, you double check, you triple check, then you have your buddy check and you check again. Whenever it comes to running the risk of life and limb, those kind of things may seem extraneous and extreme to somebody that's living a regular civilian life, but when life's on the line, it's not enough sometimes. And mistakes still can happen. So having those double checks and triple checks are a a lattice work of extra safety if you can. But when we start doing this and we're not in a life or limb threatening situation, we're moving into something that could change our lives over time, but there's no evidence one way or the other. If we do something, yes, I see that. If I don't do something, well, no, I don't see that. And either way, there isn't evidence for the for or the or against, but sometimes we get stuck in this process of what if. And what if is a good thing whenever you're training drills against martial arts, everybody hates them, but also you love them in the sense that you see all kinds of things that otherwise you're probably not gonna run into on a day-to-day basis. And part of it is helpful in that you get prepared in that sense, but you can't prepare for every contingent, you can't be ready for every possibility, just can't do that. And there's nothing wrong with that. That that's okay. Now, the important thing is that when we get stuck in the preparedness paradigm, you may start getting the backpack that you need to go climbing. Maybe, okay, and next month I'll order the next the boots. And July is the goal because that's when we're gonna go uh climb the mountain as friends and uh go hiking around and God knows what else. And uh have to get a tent, got to get that water filter just in case we run out of water. You're gonna drive up there, but you need to carry something that's not going to be ergonomically unsound. You want something that is, oh, I don't know, along the lines of uh a first aid kit just in case somebody falls down and breaks a nail or something. And I'm not making light, but we start thinking in these possibilities and contingencies, and we can fill a house with all the possibilities. If you look at some of these survival channels, for instance, and we're not digressing but making a point, is that many will, from their experience and their capacity, show you little things that you can do just in case if the poop hits the fan and you have nothing else and you don't have a flint and seal, they show you how you can create uh fire using friction or finding flint. Or if you carry something, always make sure you have this little tool so that way if you must make fire, you have nothing else, don't lose this. And uh it's a very narrowed view, but it's also one that's very specific that's teaching people how to survive. Absolutely love those channels. They're they're really amazing. But it starts showing you what problem solving and having a sense of grace and comfort in a plum in uh a stressful situation, or what could be stressful to some, or one wherever you know that stress is just around the corner. If you're not careful, you could fall, rock slide, this sort of thing, or hurt yourself, nobody there, and if you have no radio communication, so it can get really ugly fast, but smaller contingencies like being able to stay alive and start a fire that allows you to migrate the next day because you didn't freeze the night before. Well, your survivability went up because you can make fire and you were able to make a camp or a shelter or whatever. But the idea is like this that we don't have certainties in the truest, most absolute sense. Even though we may be dealing with the problem, there are certain things that are surprising things that pop up. In uh Dr. Glenn Morris's book, Path Notes of an American Ninja Master, uh, here the past April 4th was the anniversary of his passing in 2006, and we lost a a great man, a psychologist, a social psychologist, but also a martial artist and philosopher of of the greatest depth, and uh he actually indicated one thing that the ninjas uh use as an adage to train, and one is that constants never surprise. Now, this is not that there's absolute certainty, but there are things that occur in our environment that are uncertain, but there are certain things that you can count on. You can stack your deck in that direction. Know where the certainties are, know where the constants are, but recognize the fact that even in all the chaos there are things that don't change or expected or will occur. And sometimes you can build a plan about that, around that very knowledge and understanding. So can you prepare? Yes, to a point. Can you overprepare? You can prepare to the point where you don't do anything at all and therefore become prepper paralyzed, so to speak, or even analysis can be the problem where if you're overthinking things that you don't do anything because you so think it to the degree that you now lose the opportunity of being outdoors and going climbing, and you're never going to be perfectly prepared, but you can be largely prepared for the most highly important contingent things, and you start building your plan from there. What do you need most? What do you need least, what's extraneous, and then go. It's one of those things. But what keeps us from going when it's time to go? Sometimes it's me. Sometimes it's myself. Sometimes it's my own fear, and the fears that other people have instilled in us, like whenever we're growing up. Um the term is pretty popular whenever you hear the sins of the father visited upon the son, it's an old biblical term. But sometimes it's not just the sins what dad or mom did wrong as children or growing up, but rather they want to teach children to keep them from hurting in the way they did, which comes from the best place in the heart of a parent or somebody that teaches you. And sometimes it's their fear that comes out first, more so than the teaching of the knowledge of how to avoid said problem. And we often lose that in translation, so to speak. So definitely some patience and grace required when teaching that sort of thing. But what does that have to do with self-regulation? When somebody has to teach you how to self-regulate, they generally will model. Often when somebody instructs in in a harsher sense, they teach you not to do things and you develop a problem with more so if I do this, I get hurt, versus learning how to control it because something could come about that's unpleasant, wherever it becomes more a thinking process. Now, I did mention that whenever we are trying to become certain about things, often we have an arousal level issue. That means heart rate's gone up, maybe I'm in a stressful state, things are happening too fast, and I might feel a little anxious and panicky about things. I might feel afraid, I might feel like I gotta get out of here, I can't handle this, or my mental bandwidth is eaten up, it's too much information, and everything is not just noise, but seems chaotic, and I I feel not only distant, but disconnected. And for sure, communication isn't happening in the sense where it's mindful, me speaking and asking questions, but rather the environment is communicating at me, to me, and involuntarily I am responding to it by the stress response that I have, and therefore I'm making decisions based on what things look like, and this is where certainty arises in the myth of certainty being correct. Not all certainty is accurate. Some certainty arises as a result of our arousal, and therefore we take it and believe it to be somehow accurate and want to act on it because it looks the way it seems, but it doesn't necessarily meet criteria for being accurate or true. But we don't have at that point in time our best reasoning to make that decision to determine can I weigh this? Can I discern, is it really just looking like it's real or is it real? So once again, the myth of uncertainty can be very problematic whenever we most need to make a very serious decision. So just some thoughts relative to that is that readiness, or we can never be ready enough. Readiness isn't something that you begin a path or or journey with, or you start doing and learn you when you learn a new skill, you're not ready. All you can do is begin and try. Now, readiness is a qualification. You become qualified by the path that that that you take and the steps you take on that path. But readiness is also one of those counterterms that we use whenever it's like I'm not ready enough, so therefore I shouldn't try just yet. I have to loop into certainty and preparedness. So it's one of the trick terms that can get us stuck in that loop to where uncertainty and preparedness and analysis start arising because I'm in a safe zone where I can think all about it, but I'm not doing anything. I may not be doing about it, and therefore I'm stuck analyzing. And that limits our capacity in any one moment because we're doing it from a stress-borne state. That means we can't see every possibility. Our possibilities become limited. Just like our vision starts to narrow whenever you start running an elevating heart rate. It doesn't have to be threat. It can be r running around playing tag with your kiddo friends and your vision hours, and you have to turn over and look over your shoulder because you need to be seeing straightforward and clearly in the direction you're running, not where you've been. You should be out running what's behind you. So our physiology con physiology uh supports that. But the important thing is that our mind narrows, our mind and a capacity to think about things narrow because I'm not supposed to be thinking really high-level thoughts and reasoning when I'm running and trying to make safe and not be the baloney sandwich, because there's a bear behind me and it likes baloney and it's trying to eat me. So there is there's a problem that uh comes along with this state. So whenever we're trying to be certain about things, it's because we're seeking safety, we're seeking security. We're seeking to go back to that state of homeostasis that says my assumption of safety is met. I'm not the baloney sandwich at this moment, I'm actually friend again, befriending. We're sitting around the fire, BSing with our buddies and friends and the rest of our tribe and family, and no one is trying to threaten me, and we're just kind of hanging out and and playing games and talking and whatnot. And that is a wonderful place to be. But what if you are a force of one? What if it's just you? What if it's just you out against the world? Notice how I stated that against, made it sound like we're disconnected, or somehow it's only me. Like it's this solipsistic, and this is how we think about ourselves. Uh, it's just me, the world revolves around me, and some really buy into this, especially with uh gamifying our world, the way things have become, especially with electronics and the way we use them. There is a myth to that as well, where somehow we're devoid or devoced divorced from everything and everyone else uh in our world and our environment, and we act on it somehow like this outside force acting on something that is inert and therefore, you know, I'm making my brand on this world or an impact in the world. And we do, we do in the conceptual sense, but not really in the physiological uh let or rather physics sense, wherever your uh body acting on another body and therefore set it in motion, even though we kind of use these metaphors to make sense of what we do. Uh the idea is this that we can tend to isolate ourselves in our mind and believe that we are that. Once again, we're seeking evidence based on our feelings to support what it is we're thinking. And this is where we see a lot of folks really get stuck when the emotions are or or the moods are really disordered to where they believe what they feel to the point that they become catatonic. They go so deep into themselves that the bodies don't move, they they don't even uh take care of themselves, such as you know, doing basic things like bathing or eating. Not so much that they forget, but they've gotten so far into themselves that many will describe that as being uh a sense of being terrified by what's going on and not wanting to reach out, and the basic self is in there. And uh it's a survival mechanism and it is an extremity of freeze response that has to do with the world is too much, and I'm not able to deal with it, and therefore they're going to the cave of the self, so to speak. But uh yeah, it can get that far at the most extreme. So some things to think about in addition to what we've talked about today about the myth of certainty. There's also a level of uncertainty with anything that we do, but uncertainty is not an absolute sense of failure. It is not a guarantee of lack or breaking or something's wrong. Uncertainty means you're not sure. But it also indicates that evidence needed, but evidence is not something that we get first. We get evidence as we go, just as we get qualified on our journey, we get evidence as we go and we learn. We also, by our perception as we move into our environment, we don't have to believe in it, we just kind of do. We perceive things based on our senses. Not only that, based on that, we adapt and adjust based on the information coming in. So we're doing this already. The idea is not to overthink it. Or believe somehow that I'm out of sorts or that it's broken or somehow there's too much stress because it can be that um in extreme cases, but in your day-to-day it doesn't have to be that because that could prevent you from becoming the fullest human being that it is that you want to become. If you think about what you do, especially if you're doing something that serves people, that helps other people, there are people watching. Not the sense of you should be paranoid, but rather people see you. And it's not that you become the center of their vision, that's that solace solipsistic mythology that everyone has you in the center of the lives. Everyone's living their life. You happen to be a detail in the life, but sometimes those details are noted. And often many people will take their cues from what it is that we do, especially if they're wanting to get, I don't know, the feeling of, hey, if they can do it, I can do it. Nothing wrong with that. And there's nothing wrong with them maybe emulating the success that you're having or the success that you want to have because you're striving, even though you're not an extraordinary human being uh with superpowers and whatnot, even though you are extraordinary because you're unique, and I think that's a lovely thing. But also what we have to really think about is that we sometimes don't know the impact that we have in someone's life. We don't know the role that we play in someone's world, even if it's just in a mild passing. I've had people come to me years later and say, Hey, uh before I was Dr. Dominguez, when I was just Armando or Armando, remember when you told me this? It's like I don't remember that conversation. Sometimes we become the evidence that people need to see outside of themselves to get going on their own journey. And I think that's a wonderful thing too, because I have no less than taken my cues from other people that were doing things that were not only interesting, but they inspired me to seek and do and question and ask the questions that other people didn't ask. And to do the deconstruction is well, when does this work? When doesn't it work? And even though that can be frustrating to some, to me it's like enlightening. It's so illuminating to see where things work and to realize that not things are perfectly absolutely useful in all senses, and and that's kind of exciting, meaning there's room for more in a sense. Often we have to realize too that the path that we take is about risk. And we do take risk, and nothing wrong with risk. Riz isn't risk isn't an absolute loss potential, it's a potential for gain as well. And we see it in that light that allows us to see certainty as the direction we want to go, not the myth of certainty that we proceed action with to keep us from doing things, but rather moving in the direction of that. And if certainty is part of our goal, knowing that if I take these steps, and the steps that I'm taking, every one of them moves me in the direction of that mountain that I'm trying to climb, then I am in alignment, my actions in alignment, and I'm moving more towards certainty. Will it ever be perfectly certain? Probably not, but that's okay. But I can be largely certain in the direction I'm going, and the actions that I'm taking take me in the direction I'm going that I'm probably gonna wind up there, which means that there's a whole lot of unknowns going on that will be answered as a result of me just taking those steps and moving forward in the direction of where I want to get to, where I want to go. And there's nothing wrong with that. When it becomes wrong, it's when we start believing that taking risk is dangerous to ourselves, and it's really not dangerous to us as in the individual, depending on what you're doing, of course, that's qualifiable. But rather it's dangerous to our ego and our ego attachment to those things that have to do with certainty and safety, and how polished we are maybe something that gets in the way when we're trying to look so good that every little thing that moves is no longer in my control, and therefore I get upset because it makes me look bad, then I probably need to re-look at what my priorities are and fix those because we gain what it is that is value as a human being, um, not just to other people, but to ourselves when we allow ourselves to achieve and accomplish and enjoy not only the process, but the resting of those things that I want from life, that I want to become, that I want to share with people, that I want to see, well, I just want to know if I can do this. And those are wonderful things to do, and I encourage you to do those things. Now, largely covered certainty, the myth of certainty and uncertainty, and moving towards certainty, almost like a loop there where it can be a useful tool for us. And the ideas are this, whenever it comes to self-regulation, much of what we understand is certainty can change based on our physiological state and our capacity to think in the moment. That's really the take-home message about all of this, is that depending on how things are, we can start either fearing certainty or embracing what certainty can be. And they're both useful to us in that they can tell us where we're at and what we're doing. But ultimately learning how to regulate self, the physiological state that precedes what we call sometimes personality. I'm always anxious, I'm always stressed, when in actuality those are stress-borne states, not actual personality, that if you experience chronically enough, that we start thinking that's us when it's really not. That's just us under stress. And we realize that that gives us a whole lot of room to understand that our environment is going to provide good stress, you stress, and also distress, extreme stress, that's not always good. But if we learn how to navigate this by becoming skillful at regulation of self, of the stress response, and realizing it's not always all in my head, but rather it's in my physiology before it gets to my mind that starts thinking in a way that resembles what my state is. Wow, I really gained something then. So I just want to say thanks for spending this uh lovely Sunday morning with me, Easter morning, and I wanted to send this out because I like to serve people. But uh I'd also like to tell you about two little things. One is that uh one of my books, a children's book on uh what it is called the the inner self or the or the inner child, um is going to be coming out, and it's under the title Poco Chico, it's gonna be available on uh Kindle for download. I'm hoping to get it on print and demand as well sometime this week. And uh my other book, The Running Man, that actually parallels what this podcast is, will be coming out within probably the next month and uh will also be uploaded and hopefully we'll be able to get audiobook for that as well. But it's going to be basically the largest amount of skills and what it looks like in the moment and how to self-regulate in the moment, and I'm really excited about that. So for now, I want to tell you thank you for listening and do take care. And if you have any feedback you'd like to send me, send it to the email at running man get skills project at Gmail. They'd love to hear from you. Take care and walk well.