Anxiety and the Need to Know

Episode 108 · May 7, 2026

Fear and anxiety

The Truth Hurts · Episode 108 · audio in Hebrew

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The conversation

You check and you check again, you plan out every scenario, you try to know in advance how things are going to turn out, and you still don't feel any calmer. According to Gili, that is no accident: the bigger the need to know, the bigger the anxiety, because anxiety is really a troubled relationship with certainty. The solution she offers isn't the intuitive one. Don't run from the thing that frightens you. Do it again and again, until your own confidence beats the fear.

The truth

  • If everything were certain in advance there would be no free choice, and that is exactly why life can never be completely safe. Our real responsibility is "response ability": the ability to respond, not the power to control the outcome.

  • She finds total certainty boring. She compares it to a linear world where 1+1=2, as opposed to a world where anything is possible. The right direction is both at once: want things, dream, plan, and still leave room for surprises.

  • Life has no built-in meaning. There is only the meaning we give it. Children play without asking what it's for, and that is exactly the model worth copying.

  • The most precise definition of anxiety is a troubled relationship with certainty: the more you want to know, the more the anxiety grows.

  • Overworking, overthinking and even overgiving are a desperate attempt to engineer a certainty that doesn't actually exist, and all that effort only raises the pressure instead of easing it.

  • Avoiding the thing that frightens you only teaches your brain that it really is dangerous, and a cycle forms that feeds itself. The only way out is to do it again and again until your confidence outweighs the fear.

Questions and answers

Why do I need to know exactly what is going to happen before my anxiety will settle down even a little?

Gili defines anxiety as a troubled relationship with certainty: the more obsessively a person thinks they have to know what will happen, the more anxious they become. The chase after certainty is what creates the anxiety, not the other way around.

Why do I have to know what's going to happen before I can relax? Is there any cure for this at all?

The only cure for anxiety is to do the very thing you are anxious about, again and again, not once and not twice, until you trust yourself more than you fear the unknown. Gili says that avoidance makes the anxiety bigger and creates a closed loop, so the answer is to face the fear rather than avoid it.

Why does avoiding social situations leave me feeling like that proves they really are dangerous?

The brain's language is behavior, not words. When someone avoids social events because of anxiety, the brain concludes from that behavior that those events really are dangerous. Otherwise the person would not be avoiding them. So the brain goes on protecting them with thoughts, feelings and anxiety, and a cycle forms that keeps the avoidance in place.

Why do we have to know what's going to happen before we can relax?

The root of anxiety is usually a gap between a person's inner truth and the life they are actually living on the outside. For example, when someone hides who they really are because they are afraid of being rejected by the people around them, or suppresses what they truly want. Gili says it can also come from trauma that was never worked through, and that the anxiety itself is only the branch, not the root.

What should I do the moment I feel the anxiety starting to rise, so that it doesn't take me over?

When anxiety comes up, give it a neutral name instead of jumping to catastrophic thoughts, and treat it like a simple physical event, the way you would treat a leg cramp. Release your jaw and your shoulders, slow your breathing down and move slowly, so that you signal to your body that there is no real danger, instead of fighting the anxiety and making it stronger.

Gili's original episode description

The closest definition anyone can give for anxiety is a troubled relationship with certainty. The more obsessively we think that we have to know, the more anxious we become. Look at the pattern:

Everything we do to excess comes from fear. And what do most of us fear? Uncertainty. So we think that if we do more, we'll be able to engineer the outside world, and we do everything we can to make sure that everything is fine. Whether that's making sure everyone likes me and nobody rejects me, or obsessive planning so that, heaven forbid, nothing takes us by surprise. The catch is that the harder you try and the more you do, the less calm you feel. Just the opposite! You raise the anxiety! Which means that the chase after certainty is what ends up causing our anxiety.

Our inability to tolerate uncertainty makes us try to take control back through overthinking and overdoing, attempts to create a feeling of certainty that of course never arrives. What they actually do is signal to the brain: there's danger, stay alert, we aren't safe. The only cure for anxiety is to do the thing you're anxious about. Not once, not twice, not three times, but again and again, until you trust yourself more than you fear the unknown. Anxiety leads to avoidance, and avoidance makes the anxiety bigger. It's a loop, and it runs on the equation that comfort equals safety, meaning that the system reads discomfort as danger, which of course isn't true. Talking to your mind won't help. It doesn't understand words, it understands behavior, and so the goal is to feel the fear and act anyway! Again and again! Until your brain catches up with your courage!

Not one of us experiences objective reality. We experience reality through our nervous system. Reality I can't change. My nervous system I can.

The goal is for your nervous system to be able to carry the discomfort, to get your nervous system used to feeling safe in the unknown. Success isn't having certainty and then feeling fine. Success is knowing that even in the situations where I have no idea what's going to happen, I'm going to be okay.

Get this into that beautiful head of yours: it's exactly when nothing is certain that everything is also possible. For the good!