Never before have we lived in a world where uncertainty could be reduced so easily.
And yet, rarely have we experienced such a strong sense of insecurity.
The paradox is striking. We have access to more information than any previous generation, and yet we continue to feel deeply uncertain when facing the questions that truly matter. Am I making the right decision? Will this relationship last? Will I be a good father or mother? What if I make a mistake? What if everything changes tomorrow?
Technology has managed to solve many practical uncertainties, but it has not altered a much deeper reality: life remains uncertain.
Perhaps the problem is not that there are questions without answers, but that we have become accustomed to believing that every question should have one. We live surrounded by tools that allow us to reduce doubt in countless everyday situations, and little by little this logic has extended itself to existence as a whole. We expect to find certainty where only probabilities exist. We seek guarantees where only trust is possible. And we end up interpreting uncertainty as a flaw that must be corrected, when in reality it is one of the fundamental conditions of life.
From this perspective, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) can be understood as the most extreme expression of a tendency that, to some extent, we all share: the need to eliminate doubt in order to feel safe.
Freedom Without Community
Various sociologists have described our time as an increasingly “liquid” society. Beyond the terminology, it is difficult to deny that we live in a context where many of the structures that traditionally provided stability have lost some of their strength. Career paths are less predictable, family models are more diverse, identities are more fluid, and relationships are often more fragile.
At the same time, individual freedom has become one of the great values of our culture. We choose where to live, what profession to pursue, who to share our lives with, and what kind of lifestyle we want to create. In many ways, this is an extraordinary achievement. The ability to decide the direction of one’s own life represents one of the greatest advances of democratic societies.
However, every achievement also carries a responsibility.
The greater our ability to choose, the greater the weight of those choices becomes. Every decision means giving up other possibilities and accepting that we will never know with absolute certainty whether we have chosen the best path. Freedom always carries with it an unavoidable degree of uncertainty.
Perhaps this is why it becomes so difficult to sustain when the relationships around us become weaker.
For centuries, the extended family, the local community, religion, or neighbourhood life provided a relatively stable framework from which people could face the uncertainties of existence. These spaces did not eliminate suffering or answer every question, but they offered something equally important: the feeling that one did not have to face those questions alone.
Today, however, many people experience a different reality. Independence is valued as an ideal, while commitment can sometimes be perceived as a limitation of freedom. Relationships are often lived with a sense of impermanence. Everything appears reversible, changeable, or replaceable. And although this flexibility offers undeniable opportunities, it also carries a psychological cost.
Because uncertainty does not weigh the same when it is shared as when it is faced alone.
Perhaps one of the great paradoxes of our time is precisely this: never before have we enjoyed so much freedom to decide, and yet never before have so many people felt the burden of having to carry the weight of those decisions alone.
The Impossible Promise of Certainty
Added to this transformation of relationships is another phenomenon that is equally characteristic of our era: the constant promise that there is an answer for everything.
If we have doubts about a purchase, we consult comparisons. If we want to choose a restaurant, we look at reviews. If a symptom appears, we search for information. If we feel emotionally distressed, we hope to find a technique capable of making the discomfort disappear within minutes.
Without fully realising it, we gradually internalise a powerful idea: every uncertainty should be solvable.
The problem is not having access to information or making use of technological advances. The problem appears when we transfer the same logic to the way life itself works. We begin to believe that before making an important decision we should feel completely certain; that before entering into a relationship we should know it will never fail; that before taking action we should eliminate every possibility of making a mistake.
But life has never offered that kind of guarantee.
No application can assure us that a relationship will last forever. No expert can confirm that a decision will definitely be the right one. No method can completely eliminate the possibility of suffering, losing someone, becoming ill, or making mistakes.
Uncertainty is not an accident of existence.
It is existence itself.
And yet, we find ourselves trapped between two seemingly incompatible desires. On the one hand, we want absolute freedom to build our lives as we choose. On the other, we long for absolute security that protects us from every mistake and every loss. We want to keep all possibilities open while also feeling that none of our choices involve risk.
This tension is probably one of the defining neuroses of our time. Because the greater our freedom, the greater the uncertainty we must accept. And the more we attempt to eliminate that uncertainty, the more we end up restricting our freedom.
Ultimately, living means accepting that we will never know everything before we act. We choose a career without knowing how the job market will change in twenty years. We fall in love without any guarantee that the relationship will last forever. We have children without being able to control the future they will face. We trust other people knowing they may disappoint us.
The alternative would be not to choose, not to love, not to commit ourselves, and not to truly live.
Perhaps the question is not how to eliminate uncertainty, but how to learn to live with it without allowing it to organise our entire existence.
OCD: The Extreme Search for Certainty
It is precisely here that OCD takes on a particularly revealing meaning.
It could be said that OCD is not so much a disorder of doubt as it is a disorder of the need for certainty.
Doubt is part of the human experience. We all experience uncertainty before making important decisions. We all wonder at times whether we have done the right thing, whether we could have made a mistake, or whether there might be a better option. Doubt is not a symptom; it is a natural consequence of living in a world where we never have access to all the information.
What characterises OCD is not the presence of these doubts, but the inability to allow them to remain open. For someone experiencing this disorder, uncertainty stops being a natural condition of life and becomes a problem that must be solved immediately. It is not enough to think that the door is probably locked; there is a need to feel absolute certainty that it is. It is not enough to consider it highly unlikely that one has contaminated someone else; every possibility, no matter how small, must be eliminated. It is not enough to trust one’s feelings towards a partner; instead, there emerges a need to repeatedly check whether that love is completely genuine.
The content of obsessions can vary enormously, but the mechanism that sustains them is usually the same: the relentless pursuit of a sense of security that the mind never fully grants.
Compulsions: A Solution That Strengthens the Problem
When this need for certainty appears, the response is often almost automatic. The person engages in a compulsion: checking once again that the door is locked, washing their hands one more time, asking someone else for reassurance, mentally reviewing a conversation to make sure they did not say anything inappropriate, or avoiding certain situations out of fear that what they dread might happen.
In all these cases, something similar takes place. For a few moments, anxiety decreases and a sense of relief appears. It seems as though, finally, the mind has found the answer it was looking for. However, that relief is precisely the mechanism that keeps the problem alive.
Every time a person responds to doubt through a compulsion, the brain learns a very specific lesson: “Uncertainty was dangerous, and I was only able to calm myself because I did something to eliminate it.” Without intending to, the person reinforces the idea that doubt itself is a threat and that safety can only be achieved by completely resolving it.
The consequence is that the next doubt appears with greater intensity. And then another one. And another.
Little by little, life begins to revolve around the need to check, control, analyse, or seek reassurance. What initially seemed like a strategy to feel better gradually becomes a prison. The person spends more and more time pursuing a sense of security that is never sufficient, because the obsessive mind always finds a new exception, a new possibility, or a new “what if…?”
The paradox is as simple as it is devastating: the more we pursue certainty, the more dependent we become on it. And the more dependent we become on it, the less free we are.
Developing a New Relationship with Doubt
From the perspective of RDC-Ipitia’s therapeutic philosophy, the aim of treatment is not to prove to the patient that their obsessions are false, nor to convince them that what they fear will never happen. Nor is it about offering reassuring arguments or teaching strategies designed to eliminate doubt. If therapy were limited to providing new forms of certainty, it would ultimately reinforce the very mechanism that maintains OCD.
Therapeutic change takes place somewhere else.
It involves helping the person develop a different relationship with uncertainty. Not because doubt disappears, but because it is no longer experienced as an enemy that must be defeated.
This requires a profound shift in perspective. The question stops being, “How can I be completely certain?” and becomes a much more useful one: “How do I want to live even if I can never be completely certain?”
This change completely transforms the meaning of therapy. It is no longer about waiting until one feels calm before taking action, but about acting according to one’s values even when calmness has not yet arrived. Freedom no longer depends on the disappearance of anxiety; instead, it depends on the ability not to automatically obey the demands of fear.
Accepting uncertainty does not mean giving up or adopting a passive attitude towards life. It means recognising that some questions will never have definitive answers and that waiting for absolute guarantees before living only leads to postponing life indefinitely.
In a way, recovery consists of discovering that uncertainty is not the price we pay for living badly, but the price we pay for living fully.
Security Also Emerges Through Relationships
There is another dimension that often goes unnoticed.
Learning to live with uncertainty does not depend solely on individual work. It also depends on the relationships we are able to build.
Human beings have never faced fear exclusively through rational control. We have done so, above all, through trust. From childhood, we learn to tolerate what we do not understand because someone supports us, accompanies us, and communicates that we will be able to face whatever comes. This experience creates a form of security that is very different from absolute certainty.
Certainty attempts to control the future.
Trust allows us to live without controlling it.
Perhaps this is why a society that places autonomy above all else risks weakening one of the most important psychological resources for facing uncertainty: commitment to others.
Commitment means accepting that there are no guarantees. No one can ensure that a friendship will last forever, that a couple will never experience difficulties, or that a family will always remain united. Yet precisely because there are no guarantees, commitment becomes meaningful. We choose to stay, to care, and to build something with others, even knowing that the future is never fully written.
This form of security does not come from control, but from mutual trust. It does not eliminate uncertainty, but it makes uncertainty much more bearable.
Perhaps the problem of our time is not only that we seek too much certainty, but that we have forgotten that human beings have never been able to endure uncertainty entirely alone. We have always done so by relying on others.
Learning to Live with Questions
Perhaps we have become accustomed to thinking that a healthy mind is one that finds answers to everything. Yet human experience seems to suggest precisely the opposite.
The most psychologically flexible people are not those who never doubt. They are those who have learned to move forward while doubt is present. They do not need to completely eliminate uncertainty in order to love, work, commit themselves, or make important decisions. They have understood that absolute security is not a requirement for living, but an impossible illusion.
From this perspective, the treatment of OCD is not merely about reducing symptoms. Above all, it involves helping the person abandon an impossible battle: the attempt to control what, by its very nature, can never be fully controlled. And by doing so, it allows them to recover the freedom to direct their life towards what they truly value.
Perhaps this reflection goes beyond OCD itself and challenges us as a society. We have built a world that is extraordinarily effective at providing immediate answers, but perhaps we have invested far less effort in learning how to live with questions. We seek security in information, technology, and control, while life continues to remind us that there will always be aspects that cannot be predicted.
Perhaps true mental health does not consist of having all the answers, but of developing the serenity needed to live with those questions that can never be completely resolved. And that serenity is rarely built alone. It requires stable relationships, people with whom we can share the weight of uncertainty, and commitments that sustain us when certainty disappears.
Because, ultimately, the deepest sense of security does not come from control, but from trust. Not from knowing exactly what will happen tomorrow, but from feeling that, whatever happens, there will be bonds capable of supporting us. Perhaps this is one of the most important tasks of psychotherapy, but also one of the greatest challenges of our time: to stop pursuing an impossible certainty and learn to live, freely and alongside others, in the midst of uncertainty.
Marco De Colle
Psicólogo Col.N. 21340
Barcelona, July 2026
www.ipitia.com
