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You have checked your phone four times since you sat down. Nothing. You knew there would be nothing. You checked anyway.
Maybe it is a test result. Maybe it is a job, a visa, an exam mark, a call from someone you love. Whatever it is, it has not come, and nobody can tell you when it will. Your stomach is tight. Food tastes like nothing. You wake at 3 a.m. and your mind starts up before your eyes are open.
And under all of it sits one tired thought: why is waiting so hard? Other people seem to manage it. Why can’t I just get on with my day?
Here is the short answer. Your body is not being weak. It is doing what bodies do when they are kept in the dark.
Why Is Waiting So Hard? The Usual Answer Is Wrong
The usual answer is that you are impatient. You want it too much. Relax, people say. Think about something else.
That advice puts the trouble in the wrong place. The hard part of waiting is not that you are impatient. It is that you do not know.
In 2016, researchers at University College London tested this in a simple way. Forty-five people played a computer game. They turned over rocks on a screen and guessed if a snake was hiding under each one. When there was a snake, they got a mildly painful electric shock on the hand. All the while, the team tracked their stress: how tense they said they felt, how much they sweated, how wide their pupils grew. (The study was published in Nature Communications.)
You would expect the worst stress when a shock was certain. It was not. People were most stressed when the odds were fifty-fifty, when they truly could not tell what was coming. When they knew for sure a shock was on its way, their stress was lower.
That is your week in one line. A body can find bad news it is sure of easier to carry than no news at all.
One fair warning. That study measured short bursts of stress in a lab, and the researchers said plainly that long-running stress may not work the same way. But the pattern fits what a long wait feels like. One way to picture it: your body is trying to get ready, and it does not know what to get ready for. So it stays half-ready for everything, all day and half the night. That costs something. You feel the cost in your stomach, your sleep and your patience with the people around you.
If you want to see how much you are carrying right now, this free stress level check takes a couple of minutes.
And if the wait has moved into your nights, and your mind will not slow down when the lights go off, this free guide walks through why that happens and the five-step order that helps.
You Are Not Bad at Waiting
If not knowing is the real weight, then the heavy feeling is not a flaw in you. It is the price of an open question. Anyone holding that question would be paying it.
A second study makes this even plainer. Psychologist Kate Sweeny and her team at the University of California, Riverside, followed 230 law graduates through the four months it took to get the result of their licensing exam. They checked in with them every two weeks. (It was published in the journal Emotion in 2016.)
Two things came out of it. First, the things people did to feel calmer mostly did not work. Some even seemed to backfire. Second, the people who had a rough wait, full of worry and going over it again and again, did better once the news came. They handled bad news more usefully. They enjoyed good news more. The ones who sailed through the wait did not get that.
So here is the shift. You have been asking, “How do I stop feeling like this?” You have been failing, and blaming yourself for failing. But calm was never really on offer. Two hundred and thirty people tried for it and mostly could not get there either.
The better thing to ask is, “How do I carry this without letting it take over everything else?” That one has answers.
That idea is older than any lab. It turns up in Proverbs, of all places: “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). The Hebrew word behind “deferred” means dragged out, pulled long. And the line gives no order. It does not tell anyone to be more patient. It only says what a long wait does to a person, the way you might say that rain makes the ground wet. You do not need a religious frame for that to be true. It is just an honest thing someone noticed a very long time ago.
What Helps While You Wait for News
None of these will make the wait feel good. They make it lighter to carry, and they cost nothing.
Stop grading yourself on calm. You are tired partly from the wait and partly from fighting how you feel about the wait. Drop the second fight. When the tight feeling comes, say it plainly: “I am waiting on something big, and this is what that feels like.” You are not falling apart. You are holding an open question, and it is heavy.
Shrink the unknown to its true size. In your head, the open question spreads over your whole life. On paper it is usually one thing. Write down what you do not know, in one line. Then write what you do know, which is nearly everything else. If you can, ask the office, the clinic or the person when you should expect to hear. For most of us, “sometime” is harder to carry than “by Friday,” even when Friday is far away.
Plan for both answers, once. Worry is your mind trying to get ready. So let it finish the job. Write two short lines: “If it is yes, the first thing I will do is…” and “If it is no, the first thing I will do is…” Then put the paper away. When the worry starts up again at night, you can tell it the truth: that work is already done. And if the answer does turn out to be no, here is how to deal with disappointment without hoping less.
Do something that takes your whole mind. Sweeny’s team also found that law graduates who spent more of the wait absorbed in something reported less worry and felt better. (That study came out in 2019.) Researchers call that state flow. It comes from a task that is just hard enough to need all of you. Cook something that takes care. Mend something. Play football with the children. Do a puzzle, learn a song, dig the garden. Be honest about what to expect, though. When the team tested this in a lab with a game, it lifted people’s mood but did not shrink their worry. It is a rest from the wait, not a cure for it. Scrolling on your phone rarely works, because the thing you are waiting for lives in the same phone.
Check at set times, not all day. Every time you check and find nothing, you open the whole thing up again. Pick two or three times a day to look, and keep to them. Between those times, the phone can sit face down or in another room. If a call might come at any moment, turn the ringer up loud so you can trust it and stop looking. And if the wait has got into your sleep, this free Why Can’t I Sleep? check can help you see what is keeping you up.
One more thing. If you feel very unwell, with chest pain, trouble breathing, or days of not eating or sleeping, do not put it all down to the wait. See a health worker if you can reach one.
The Wait Is Not Your Whole Life
The answer will come when it comes. You cannot pull it closer by watching for it. What you can decide is how much of this week belongs to the wait.
So here is something to try tonight. Name one thing in your life that is not waiting on anything. A person. A meal. A job that needs doing. A song you love. Give that one thing an hour of your whole attention. The open question will still be there when you get back. But you will have lived an hour of your real life while it was open. That is how a long wait gets carried: one hour at a time.
What would you do with tomorrow if you knew you could carry the wait?
Why Waiting Is So Hard: Common Questions Answered
Why is waiting so hard?
Waiting is hard mainly because of uncertainty, not impatience. A 2016 University College London study of 45 people found that stress was highest when the chance of a painful electric shock was 50 percent, and lower when the shock was certain. A body that does not know what is coming stays on alert, and that is tiring. Feeling worn down by a long wait is a normal reaction, not a personal weakness.
Why does waiting for news make me feel physically sick?
Waiting for uncertain news can bring a tight stomach, poor sleep, low appetite and tiredness, because the body treats not knowing as a form of stress. In lab research, physical stress signs such as sweating and widened pupils rose as uncertainty rose. These feelings are common during a long wait. Strong or lasting symptoms, such as chest pain or trouble breathing, should be checked by a health worker rather than blamed on the wait.
Is not knowing really worse than bad news?
It can be. In a 2016 study published in Nature Communications, people were more stressed when a painful shock was uncertain than when it was certain. Psychologist Kate Sweeny and her co-authors, who study waiting, have written that waiting for uncertain news is at times even more distressing than facing bad news. The lab study measured short-term stress, so it does not prove the same is true of every long wait.
How do I cope with waiting for important news?
Start by dropping the goal of feeling calm. A study of 230 law graduates found that their coping strategies did not reduce distress during a four-month wait for exam results. More useful steps are to write down exactly what is unknown, ask when to expect an answer, plan a first step for both a yes and a no, spend time on tasks that take full attention, and check for news at set times instead of all day.
Does worrying while waiting do any good?
It may. In a 2016 study in the journal Emotion, law graduates who had an anxious wait for their exam results responded more productively to bad news and more joyfully to good news than those who suffered little during the wait. That does not mean anyone should try to worry more. It means worry during a wait is not a failure, and it may help a person get ready for either answer.
Your Turn
What are you waiting on right now, and what has helped you get through the days? I would like to hear it in the comments. Someone else in the middle of a long wait may need to read it.
And if the nights are the hardest part of your wait, this free guide is for you.
Share This
“Turns out not knowing is harder on the body than bad news you’re sure of. So no, I’m not bad at waiting. I’m just waiting.”
“Waiting on a result this week. Best thing I read: stop trying to feel calm. Plan for yes, plan for no, put the paper away, and go live an hour of your real life.”
“If you’re waiting on news right now: the heavy feeling isn’t weakness. It’s the price of an open question. Anyone holding it would feel it.”
