Anxiety, Uncertainty & Breaking Free

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If you’ve ever felt like your brain is running a constant “what if?” reel — what if this symptom never goes away, what if I choose the wrong practitioner, what if I waste money, what if I get my hopes up and crash again — you’re not alone. At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, we see this uncertainty + anxiety loop all the time. And here’s the tricky part: it doesn’t just feel awful… it can actively block healing.

In this episode, Chris and Filly unpack why uncertainty triggers anxiety from a neuroscience lens, how it shows up in healing endeavours (especially for high-achievers and “busy” humans), and what it actually looks like to embrace uncertainty without spiralling. They also share a real-life example from their recent four-week road trip around Australia, where uncertainty flicked on anxiety patterns in Filly — not because anything was “wrong”, but because the nervous system was doing what it’s designed to do: seek safety.

Why Uncertainty Triggers Anxiety (A Simple Neuroscience Lens)

Your brain’s number one job isn’t happiness — it’s survival. When life feels uncertain, the brain reads that as potential danger. Even if you’re not in any real threat, uncertainty can create a “prediction error” in the nervous system: your brain can’t reliably predict what’s next, so it ramps up scanning, vigilance, and worry to try to regain control.

That’s why uncertainty often comes with physical sensations: tight chest, racing thoughts, gut tension, shallow breathing, restless sleep, and that edgy “I can’t settle” feeling. In mind body medicine, these symptoms aren’t random. They’re signals of a nervous system trying to meet a core human need: certainty.

From a holistic health perspective, this matters because chronic anxiety isn’t just a mental experience — it’s a full-body state. It changes digestion, hormones, inflammation, immune function, and energy production. It can also drive burnout functional medicine patterns like overworking, over-researching, perfectionism, and people-pleasing — all attempts to create certainty through control.

How Uncertainty Shows Up in Healing Endeavours (and Why It Blocks Healing)

Healing is full of uncertainty. Even with the best practitioner, the best testing, and the best functional nutrition plan, there’s still a season of “not knowing” while your body recalibrates. That’s where many people get stuck.

Uncertainty in healing can look like:

You start a protocol and immediately question whether it’s the right one.
You feel one good day and assume it’s a fluke.
You feel one bad day and assume you’re back to square one.
You keep switching supplements, diets, or practitioners because you want a guaranteed outcome.
You over-monitor symptoms, hoping that more data will create more safety.

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, we see this as a nervous system strategy, not a personality flaw. The body is trying to protect you from disappointment, wasted effort, or feeling out of control. But the irony is: the more you chase certainty, the more anxious you become — and the more your physiology stays stuck in a stress response.

This is one reason root cause medicine matters so much. If you only treat symptoms without addressing the nervous system’s relationship with uncertainty, you can end up “doing all the right things” while still feeling like you’re not moving forward.

A Real-Life Example: When Travel Triggers Old Patterns

Filly shares how their recent four-week road trip through Australia brought uncertainty to the surface — changing plans, unfamiliar environments, unpredictable timing, and the natural messiness of being on the move. Even when the trip was exciting, the uncertainty could still flick on anxiety patterns.

This is such an important point for holistic wellness: anxiety doesn’t always mean something is wrong. Sometimes it simply means your nervous system is in unfamiliar territory. Your brain is trying to re-establish certainty, and it uses worry as a tool to do that.

If you’ve ever had anxiety spike during a holiday, a life transition, or even during a “good” change, this is why. The nervous system often prefers familiar discomfort over unfamiliar freedom — because at least the familiar is predictable.

How Embracing Uncertainty Sets You Free

Embracing uncertainty doesn’t mean you like it. It means you stop treating it as a threat.

When you can hold uncertainty without spiralling, you reclaim energy. You stop burning mental fuel on constant prediction and control. You start making decisions from values instead of fear. You also create a calmer internal environment — which supports healing naturally.

In integrative medicine and alternative medicine circles, we often talk about “regulation” as the foundation for healing. Regulation isn’t about never feeling anxious. It’s about being able to feel anxious without letting it run your life.

Embracing uncertainty is one of the fastest ways to build that capacity. It teaches your nervous system: “I can handle not knowing.” And that message is deeply healing.

Meeting the Need for Certainty in a Healthy, Resourceful Way

Here’s the part people miss: you don’t need to eliminate uncertainty. You need to meet your need for certainty in ways that don’t create more stress.

At Chris and Filly Functional Medicine, this often looks like building “anchors” — small, reliable practices that signal safety to the body even when life feels unpredictable.

Creating certainty through structure (without rigidity)

A simple morning routine. Regular meals. A consistent bedtime wind-down. A daily walk. These aren’t boring — they’re stabilising. They help your nervous system feel held.

Creating certainty through self-trust

Instead of trying to predict every outcome, you practise trusting your ability to respond. This is huge for health optimisation. It shifts the question from “What if this goes wrong?” to “If it gets hard, can I support myself through it?”

Creating certainty through supportive data (not obsessive monitoring)

Functional testing can be incredibly grounding when used wisely. It gives clarity and direction — but it’s not meant to become another way to chase control. The goal is personalised medicine, not perfection.

Creating certainty through connection

Connection is one of the fastest nervous system regulators. A calm conversation, a supportive practitioner, a safe friend — it all tells the body: “You’re not alone.” That’s preventative health in action.

Where This Fits in the Ending Body Burnout Approach

This episode gives a glimpse into the deeper work inside the Ending Body Burnout Method: not just protocols, but the brain and nervous system rewiring that helps you stop living in high alert.

Because for many people, body burnout isn’t just about being tired. It’s about being stuck in a loop of uncertainty, anxiety, and overdoing — and calling it “normal life”.

When you learn to relate to uncertainty differently, you don’t just reduce anxiety. You create the internal conditions for whole body health: steadier digestion, better sleep, more stable energy, fewer stress-triggered symptoms, and more capacity to actually enjoy your life.

A Gentle Next Step (If You’re Ready)

If this uncertainty + anxiety loop has been running your days, you don’t have to figure it out on your own. If you’d like support exploring the root causes — physical, emotional, and nervous-system based — you’re warmly invited to book a Discovery Call or connect the dots with us. No hard sell. Just a grounded chat to help you find the next right step.

And if you’re curious about a deeper dive into rewiring anxiety and body burnout, keep an eye out for the next intake of the Ending Body Burnout Method. It’s designed for people who are done with band-aid approaches and ready for real, lasting change — the kind that supports your WellnessJourney, functional nutrition, and healing from within.

Listen to the full episode.

Chris & Filipa Bellette are the Founders of multi award-winning health practice Chris & Filly Functional Medicine, which is best known for ending body burnout (for good!) in “busy” people with energy, mood and gut issues. They have worked with over 2,000+ burned-out clients in the past combined 25+ years, with their own passion for ending body burnout coming from their own personal experience of body, mind, family & business breakdown, after a prolonged period of physical and mental stress.

Filipa is an accredited Clinical Nutritionist, Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach & Trauma Therapist. She is also a Ph.D. Scholar, author & regularly featured the media, such as Forbes, Body+Soul and The Daily Telegraph. Chris is a Burnout Recovery Coach & an accredited Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) Master Practitioner, with a Bachelor of Human Movement Science. He has existed in high-performance realms of the sporting (think national athlete) & business industries and knows what it takes to get out of hustle-and-grind culture to thriving. 

They were recently awarded as the Tasmanian State Winner & National Finalist for the Telstra Best of Business Awards 2022, and Winner of the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards 2022.