Not Knowing Is Worse Than Knowing

What waiting without knowing does to your body and mind

Have you ever had to wait for something important? A visa, a job offer, a grade, an approval, a diagnosis, a registration? If you’re human, most likely yes. And if you’re not waiting for something right now, try to remember what it felt like. How frustrating it was. How consuming. Sometimes even more than frustrating, sometimes it’s physically sickening. Literally sickening.

Right now, that’s exactly how I feel. 😠

And I know I’m not alone. I’m thinking of people in particular as I write this, people who have it even harder than me. People waiting for visas, stuck where they are for weeks, months, sometimes years. My present situation is small in comparison. And yet my body doesn’t seem to know that.

Application date + 4 weeks

I’ve been waiting for the approval of my registration as a counsellor. Four weeks now. And I’m mad.

I’m mad because the association doesn’t publish how long the process takes on their website. I’m mad because a few of my classmates have already received theirs, including one who applied after me and received hers in less than two weeks. How is that fair? How difficult is it to process applications in order?

I emailed them to ask if they had received mine, and they replied telling me to contact them if I hadn’t heard back within six weeks. Six weeks?! My classmate got hers in less than two weeks, and you’re telling me I might have to wait six weeks or more? And I’m supposed to stay calm, be patient, and just trust that it will arrive?

So much easier to say than to do.

Meanwhile, I can’t do anything. I can’t create directory listings to get new clients. I can’t access free supervision. I can’t promote my services. I’m just… stuck. Some days I feel like I’ve processed some of the anger and I feel okay. Other days are much worse, like the day another classmate told me her registration had been accepted, or like right now, still sitting here for four weeks.

What about me? When do I get to move forward?

I’m checking my emails constantly. Every time I open my inbox, there’s a small spike of hope followed by a small collapse. Over and over again.

Why waiting without knowing is so hard. It’s not just in your head

Here’s something I find both validating and fascinating: the reason waiting without information feels so unbearable is actually rooted in how our brains are wired.

Our nervous system is designed to scan for threats and then act. Fight, flight, freeze. The problem with waiting is that there’s nothing to act on. No enemy to fight, no door to run through, no problem to solve. Just… uncertainty. And our brain genuinely doesn’t know what to do with that.

Research shows that uncertainty activates the same stress response as an actual threat, sometimes even more intensely. In one study, people who knew they would receive an electric shock were less stressed than people who didn’t know if they would receive one. Not knowing is genuinely harder on the nervous system than knowing something bad is coming. At least with bad news, you can grieve, adapt, and move forward. With uncertainty, your brain stays on high alert indefinitely, burning energy, waiting for a signal that never comes.

There’s also the powerlessness piece. When we have no control over an outcome and no information about the timeline, we lose our sense of agency, our ability to influence our own life. And that feeling of helplessness is one of the most psychologically painful experiences a human can have. It’s not weakness. It’s biology.

In my case, what made it hard was knowing that my classmates had received their registrations, sometimes faster than me. That added a layer of injustice on top of the uncertainty. And injustice, it turns out, is one of my core belief. I’ll come back to that.

This is also why I avoid unnecessary paperwork and government processes whenever I can. Every time I have to deal with bureaucracy, it adds a layer of stress that sits in my body. What would help? Simply knowing how long things take. And if it takes longer than expected, tell us why. Even the Skytrain tells you how long until the next train. Even a pedestrian crossing counts down the seconds. Surely it’s not impossible to keep people in the loop.

I checked my emails two times while writing the above, by the way.

The cycle keeps going. Frustration builds, I breathe through it, it eases slightly, then something triggers it again. Like a pressure cooker that empties and fills again, over and over. It goes from frustration to something closer to depression, and then back to frustration again. And so on.

Application date + 6 weeks

It’s now been six weeks and I’m still waiting. So I emailed the association again.

Today was a bad day. A really bad day. I could feel the weight of it in my chest and all the way down to the top of my belly, that particular kind of fear that sits in your body like a stone. I lay down on my bed for a while. I cried, which helped release some of the pressure. I talked to my new supervisor, which also helped in the moment. But the pressure built back quickly.

The association emailed me back late afternoon to say they had nudged the team processing my application. I was told I could reach out again in another week if I still hadn’t heard. That partly helped, at least I knew I didn’t have to wait another six weeks. But part of me expected the worst and assumed it could take another six weeks anyway.

And then, I checked my emails one more time.

There it was. The acceptance email. After all this time.

I felt this big ball of pressure just… disintegrate. Vanish. It wasn’t happiness just yet. It was relief. And underneath the relief, a kind of sadness, recognizing just how much tension my body had been holding for weeks. After dinner I went for a walk and released a lot of it, exhaling hard, shaking my body the way animals do after a trauma. It actually helps.

And then I shared the news with a few friends. Because good news you can’t share with anyone isn’t even half the victory.

What I’m taking away from this, as a person, and as a counsellor

Almost 24 hours later, I’m starting to feel something like freedom again. But there’s still a kind of scar, a lingering tenderness in my chest and belly where all that tension lived for so long.

What do I take from this experience, beyond the obvious relief?

First, even when a situation looks small from the outside, the suffering it causes can be enormous. This is not proportional math. A registration approval is not a terminal diagnosis. And yet my nervous system treated it like a genuine threat for four weeks. That’s not dramatic, that’s just how the nervous system works. It doesn’t distinguish between a real danger and a perceived one. As a counsellor, I want to remember this. I never want to minimize what a client is going through just because the situation looks manageable from where I’m standing.

Second, the suffering is often amplified by what the situation triggers underneath. In my case, I truly believe that if I hadn’t known my classmates received their registrations faster, my reaction would have been much less intense. The wait would have been frustrating, but the injustice is what sent it into a different level. And justice is a deep core value of mine. When it’s violated, something in me reacts very strongly.

So I’ll ask you the same question I’m asking myself: what belief or core value does your waiting situation touch? Because that might be exactly where the intensity is coming from.

If you’re in this right now, waiting without knowing, stuck without control, checking your emails compulsively, I feel you. I really do. It’s a hard place to be, and it’s so easy for people on the outside to say “just be patient.”

Be kind to yourself in the meantime. Talk to someone. Shake it out of your body if you can. Breathe long exhales especially. And know that the intensity of what you’re feeling isn’t a sign that something is wrong with you.

It’s a sign that you’re human. 💛 But easier said than done. I hear you.

🌱 If you’re struggling with your mental and emotional health, you’re not alone. I’m offering counselling sessions as an RTCc, and I’d be honoured to support you on your path. Reach out anytime 🙂 Contact me

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