Holding Each Other Through Uncertainty
Chronic stress, identity, and how outrage became our common language
Lately, I’ve been paying attention not only to what people believe, but to how those beliefs are being used to navigate fear, uncertainty, and change, and what might be happening beneath the surface.
I’m watching people I care about grow sharper in their convictions, quicker to anger, more withdrawn, or more certain that they alone see the truth. Conversations feel brittle. Families feel divided. Everything feels activated.
And instead of asking, How did they get so extreme?
I keep finding myself asking, What happened to them?
Not in a dismissive way. Not in a way that excuses harm.
But in a deeply human way.
Because beliefs don’t form in a vacuum. They form inside nervous systems. Inside relationships. Inside histories. Inside moments of loss, instability, and unmet needs.
And right now, a lot of people are carrying more than they know how to hold.
And when I say “what happened to them,” I don’t always mean something dramatic.
I mean years of uncertainty.
A global pandemic. Economic instability. A constant news cycle. Social media that never turns off. A sense that the future feels less predictable than it used to. Many people are working harder while feeling less secure. Parenting feels heavier. Relationships feel strained. Trust in institutions has eroded. Even basic facts feel contested.
This kind of chronic stress doesn’t announce itself as a crisis. It settles in slowly. It lives in the body. It changes how we relate to one another. It narrows our tolerance for complexity.
When you exist in a prolonged state of uncertainty, your nervous system starts looking for relief.
For something solid.
For something that makes sense.
For something that restores a feeling of control.
And this is where beliefs begin to do more than explain the world; they begin to regulate it.
They offer certainty when everything feels unstable.
They offer identity when people feel untethered.
They offer belonging when connection feels scarce.
They offer simple answers when reality feels overwhelming.
Political movements don’t just compete over ideas.
They compete over nervous systems.
They compete over who gets to tell the story of what’s happening, and who gets to tell people who they are inside of it.
When uncertainty stretches on long enough, it doesn’t just stress people out; it begins to destabilize identity.
Who am I in this version of the world?
Where do I belong?
What values still hold?
Who can I trust?
Identity isn’t abstract. It’s grounding. It tells us where we stand. It tells us who our people are. It tells us what to defend and what to reject.
When identity feels threatened, economically, culturally, socially, spiritually, people don’t just debate ideas. They defend themselves.
And in that space, certainty becomes deeply attractive.
Certainty quiets the noise.
Certainty simplifies the chaos.
Certainty restores a feeling of control.
It says:
Here is the problem.
Here is who caused it.
Here is what must be done.
No ambiguity. No gray area. No exhausting complexity.
In a chronically stressed system, clarity feels like relief.
This is why more rigid or extreme belief systems can feel stabilizing, at least initially.
They offer:
clear in-groups and out-groups
strong moral language
a sense of purpose
immediate community
a framework that makes suffering feel meaningful
Extremism rarely recruits people by leading with cruelty.
It recruits by offering belonging.
It tells people:
You are not crazy.
You are not alone.
You are part of something bigger.
And when someone has been swimming in uncertainty for years, that kind of clarity can feel like oxygen.
The shift is often subtle. What begins as community can become conformity. What begins as conviction can harden into rigidity. What begins as certainty can become intolerance for dissent.
Not because people are stupid.
Not because they are inherently hateful.
But because certainty feels safer than ambiguity when the ground beneath you already feels unstable.
And this is where the modern information environment steps in.
I was reminded of this again last week while watching The Social Dilemma, not because it revealed anything radically new, but because it made something painfully clear:
Our emotional reactions are not incidental to the system.
They are the system.
The platforms most of us live on every day aren’t designed to foster understanding. They’re designed to maximize engagement. And nothing engages like outrage, fear, and moral certainty.
Not calm reflection.
Not nuance.
Not slow thinking.
When someone clicks on content that makes them angry or afraid, the algorithm learns.
When they linger on a video that confirms their suspicions, the algorithm adapts.
When they share something that reinforces their identity, the algorithm takes note.
Over time, people aren’t just consuming information; they’re being shaped by a feedback loop that steadily narrows what they see.
What starts as curiosity becomes pattern.
What starts as pattern becomes worldview.
What starts as worldview becomes identity.
And once beliefs become identity, disagreement no longer feels intellectual.
It feels personal.
This is how people end up living in completely different realities while using the same platforms. Each person is being fed a customized version of the world that reinforces what already feels true.
Outrage performs well.
Certainty performs well.
Tribal language performs well.
So that’s what gets amplified.
Meanwhile, thoughtful discourse doesn’t trend. Complexity doesn’t go viral. Quiet doubt doesn’t generate clicks.
Our collective nervous system is being monetized.
And our public conversation is effectively for sale to the highest bidder.
Over time, this doesn’t just polarize opinions.
It restructures reality.
When algorithms consistently reward outrage and certainty, they begin to shape how communities organize, how news is framed, and how political identities harden. What started as personal belief becomes group alignment. What started as group alignment becomes cultural sorting.
People don’t simply disagree anymore.
They live in parallel information ecosystems.
Different facts.
Different villains.
Different heroes.
Different versions of what’s even happening.
And once those realities diverge far enough, “us vs them” stops being a rhetorical device.
It becomes structural.
It shows up in media silos.
In segregated online communities.
In who we trust and who we dismiss.
In which voices are amplified and which are ignored.
The system begins to reward loyalty over curiosity.
Belonging becomes conditional.
Dissent becomes betrayal.
Complexity becomes suspect.
At that point, polarization is no longer just something people feel.
It’s something the environment actively maintains.
Not because anyone consciously designed it to destroy social cohesion — but because division performs better than understanding in an attention economy.
So what actually interrupts this cycle?
Not shouting louder.
Not posting sharper takes.
Not humiliating people into changing their minds.
Those strategies usually deepen identity defenses.
What interrupts radicalization looks quieter. Slower. Less dramatic.
It looks like:
restoring agency instead of stripping it away
creating spaces where people can be uncertain without being shamed
helping people feel seen before asking them to reconsider
rebuilding local connection
teaching media literacy early and often
encouraging curiosity over certainty
making room for complexity
It starts when people feel safe enough to soften.
Because belief systems don’t loosen through force.
They loosen through relationship.
Through nervous systems that finally feel regulated enough to tolerate nuance.
Through conversations that don’t begin with “you’re wrong,” but with “help me understand how you got here.”
This doesn’t mean excusing harm.
It doesn’t mean tolerating extremism.
It means recognizing that lasting change doesn’t come from humiliation, it comes from dignity, accountability, and connection.