Survey Says: Your Doubts are not Entirely in Your Head

When I wrote Wrangling the Doubt Monster a few years ago, I set out to explore the psychological drivers that had led me—and countless others—to question core capacities, competence, and just plain raw talent.

I wanted to figure out why self-doubt had been my constant companion my entire life, even when I managed to rack up conventional successes along the way.

And I wanted to normalize conversations with others around this vulnerable topic.

But looking beyond all that, I grew interested in broadening the topic a bit to uncover other provocations that make people doubtful in general—and discover the seeds of those doubts—beyond the all-too-familiar array of doubts experienced by creatives.

I tapped some experts (human and AI) to create a Doubt Decoder Survey that identified 37 categories of doubt covering an array of topics, from finances to politics to friendships.

Here are core findings from 60 completed surveys using a five-point scale (not an unimpeachable statistical pool, but enough to draw some inferences).

Three Distinct Doubt Monsters

The survey reveals three “monster buckets” where we seem to park most of our doubts, these days:

1. The Systemic Monster. Skepticism about the media (as a source of truth) emerges as the most pervasive form of doubt, with a majority of respondents questioning the reliability of information sources.

2. The Existential Monster. People are questioning their career paths and life goals: Are they on the right path? Is their work meaningful? There’s a rising tide of uncertainty around how we live our lives—and if we’ve made the “right” choices.

3. The Practical Monster. People are stressed out over time-management, as in, there’s never enough time to get stuff done; we question if we’re using our time effectively; and we generally don’t feel we have a handle on meeting productivity goals and expectations in such a fast-paced culture.

The survey also reveals area where we are not especially doubtful, meaning, areas of life where we have a high degree of confidence. For instance, despite all the nonsense around health-care pronouncements emanating from Washington, D.C., most respondents don’t see the need to second-guess medical advice—or established scientific facts.

This is encouraging! Common sense lives!

In addition, almost no one who took the survey doubts the validity of climate change.

And the survey got at a moral component as well, with respondents reporting that their daily actions align with their core values. (So even if they’re terrible at, say, managing deadlines, they still have a strong moral compass.)

What’s it all Mean?

At first, I thought I could defend a meaningful distinction between the types of doubt that reflect big, external cultural impacts on the one hand (e.g., media or career skepticism) and the largely interior, psychological state of self-doubt that creatives routinely suffer.

I thought, in particular, that I could make a case for the interior forms of self-doubt being significantly more beyond our control than the exterior forms.

But I believe this is a distinction without a difference.

Everyone has the latent capacity to manage how they respond to a wide range of events—even if the “event” is an interior psychological storm.

We may need to turn to others for help; we may need to adopt practices, such as meditation, that strength our capacity to cope.

But how we choose to respond to any stimuli is the closest we come to controlling anything in this life.

If the survey reveals anything, it’s confirmation that humans are doubting creatures and always have been. It’s an inescapable component of our reasoning faculties.

I guess I’m relieved to know that self-doubt is a pretty universal phenomenon that affects everybody, not just self-tortured creatives.

My new novel TENT CITY, is getting some amazing early reviews!

Bernstein’s thrillingly perceptive story asks “Where does individual and collective responsibility start and end?” and imagines for us what happens when we don’t have answers. Captivating and horrifying, TENT CITY is everything a novel should be.

–Amy Goldmacher, Terms & Conditions

If you haven’t read WRANGLING THE DOUBT MONSTER: FIGHTING FEARS, FINDING INSPIRATION, you’re missing out on a book that writers tell me they keep on their bedside table! For real!