When in Doubt

What is doubt? I’ve always thought of it as one of two things:

• A lack of confidence
• A lack of belief

But when looking up the definition the other day, I found, no surprise, a much more complicated answer.

Sure there is reference to a lack of belief or a lack of confidence. But the other thing that comes up is uncertainty. Ah my favorite topic, uncertainty. That which is most uncomfortable and yet is most common. I am not surprised that doubt, an often reviled thing, is somehow closely tied with uncertainty.

Last year I read A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit and as has happened every time I’ve read her work, I came away with some awesome realizations. She wrote in this book: “Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don’t–and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.”

We would rather be anxious and nervous and assuming the worse than just acknowledge that we don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m not shitting on this tendency. It’s often not in our control. But I do find it telling. That we are so uncomfortable with the unknown that we’re more comfortable with assuming the worse.

So how does this all tie to doubt?

I struggle with self-doubt often. Apparently it’s a result of years of being gaslighted. Years that left me often unable to trust my own perceptions of situations or of the world. Knowing this, a part of me wants to urge myself to just trust my instincts. Believe my mind. Give it the benefit of the doubt.

But on the flip side of that, I’m also plagued by some serious mental distortions. I’ve written to my suspicious brain on here before. And that’s just one of my mental distortions. Being aware of these, doesn’t it make sense that I sometimes doubt my perception? After all, what we perceive is not reality but often the stories we tell ourselves to explain a set of facts. If our stories tend to be distorted, isn’t it right to approach these stories with a lack of confidence of belief?

And so all this winds down with what I’ve chosen to be my favorite definition of doubt: a deliberate suspension of judgment.

Of course, like anything else I write about here, there is a time and a place. Should you doubt yourself in a given situation? That depends, do you have a tendency to misread those situations? If yes, then doubt. Decide to make the decision later, after you gather more information, maybe from friends and other sources who are not plagued by your distortions. If, on the other hand, it is something you tend to be right about. There’s no need to doubt yourself. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt.

What I’m trying to say, I guess. Is that like most things, doubt is not always bad.