Why You Can't Sleep When Your Job Feels Uncertain

It usually begins the same way - lying in bed, contract deadline looming, mind racing.

You're seven months into a twelve-month contract. Five months left to prove yourself, to secure your future, to know whether you'll still have a job come spring. And night after night, as you try to fall asleep, your mind starts running through scenarios.

What if they don't renew? What if I need to start job hunting? What if I can't find something as good? What if...

The worrying feels necessary. Like if you just think through enough possibilities, you'll be ready for whatever happens. Like you're doing something productive, even if it's 11 PM and you're exhausted.

But here's what's strange: despite all that mental rehearsal, despite thinking through every angle night after night, you're not any more prepared. You haven't found solutions. The worrying hasn't reduced the uncertainty about whether your contract will be renewed.

It's just left you exhausted.

What Everyone Thinks Is Keeping You Awake

When you can't sleep because you're worried about your job, it seems obvious what the problem is: the job situation itself. The fixed-term contract. The uncertainty about renewal. The lack of control over the decision.

Most people experiencing this would think the same thing. If I just knew whether they'd keep me on, I'd feel so much better. The not-knowing is killing me.

And that makes perfect sense, right? Uncertain situations create anxiety. Remove the uncertainty, remove the anxiety. Simple cause and effect.

Except there's a problem with that explanation.

Why That Explanation Doesn't Fit

Think about the other uncertainties in your work life. The project you're leading-the one that's building your confidence. There's uncertainty there too, isn't there? Unknowns about whether stakeholders will approve your approach. Questions about whether the technical pieces will come together. Variables outside your control.

But you don't lie awake at night worrying about that project.

With the project, you focus on what you can control-your preparation, your communication with the team-and you accept what you can't. The uncertainty exists, but you just... let it be there while you do your work.

With the contract renewal, though, you're doing something completely different. You're fighting the uncertainty. Trying to think your way out of it. Cycling through scenarios at night, searching for an answer that doesn't exist yet.

Same brain. Same person. Two very different responses to uncertainty.

What's actually different?

What's Really Disrupting Your Sleep

Here's what research on anxiety disorders reveals: it's not whether a situation is actually uncertain that creates anxiety. It's your perceived control over the worrying process that makes the difference.

The job situation and the project both involve uncertainty. But the real difference isn't in the external situations-it's in your relationship to the uncertainty itself.

What you're experiencing is called intolerance of uncertainty.

It's not the uncertainty about your contract that's the problem. It's that you can't tolerate not knowing. And that intolerance is what's driving the nighttime worry spiral, the exhaustion, the sleep difficulties.

Studies examining what differentiates people with generalized anxiety from people without it found something surprising: it's not about whether their worries are realistic or likely. It's about their perception of control over the worry itself.

Think about what that means. You handle project uncertainty effectively not because that uncertainty is somehow "better" or more controllable, but because you've accepted that you can't control the outcome. You've made peace with not knowing.

With the contract uncertainty, you haven't. You're trying to achieve certainty through worry, which is impossible, so your mind just keeps going.

Three decades of research indicates that intolerance of uncertainty plays a role in maintaining mental health conditions, with the relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and worry being especially strong. It's not just about your job anxiety-it's a core mechanism that may be operating underneath different anxiety presentations in your life.

Remember how you made progress with your social anxiety? That was about learning to tolerate the uncertainty of how people would respond to you. This is the same mechanism showing up in a different domain.

Why Worry Makes Everything Worse

But here's where things get really interesting-and counterintuitive.

Your brain is telling you that worry is productive. That it's helping you prepare for bad outcomes. That if you just think through enough scenarios, you'll find a solution or at least be ready for whatever happens.

Research on generalized anxiety disorder reveals a paradox: worry feels protective and helpful, but it's actually maintaining your anxiety by creating an illusion of control.

Think about what you told yourself: "I guess it feels like I'm preparing myself. Like if I think through all the bad scenarios, I'll be ready for them."

It may seem paradoxical that people would engage in chronic worry, which reliably creates negative emotions. But studies show that people with anxiety disorders unconsciously use worry to maintain a sustained negative emotional state. Why would anyone do that?

Because negative emotions feel less threatening when you're already braced for them.

It's like tensing up right before impact. Your mind keeps you in a worried, braced state because that feels safer than being relaxed and potentially being caught off-guard by bad news. The worry creates a predictable negative state that your brain prefers to the risk of an unexpected emotional shift.

But here's the problem: while worry creates the feeling of doing something productive, it doesn't actually give you control over whether your contract gets renewed. It's not producing solutions. It's not reducing the uncertainty. It's just keeping you stuck in a cycle of cognitive arousal that prevents sleep and increases anxiety.

Research on anxiety treatment has found that attempts to suppress thoughts or control the worry process produce paradoxical effects-thought rebound, increased anxiety, worse outcomes. The more you try to manage uncertainty through worry, the worse it gets.

You discovered this yourself: "Despite all that worrying about the contract, no concrete solutions emerged, only exhaustion."

The worry isn't helping. It's the problem.

What Happens When You Try to Fall Asleep

Now we can answer the question in the title: Why can't you sleep when your job feels uncertain?

It's not the job situation itself keeping you awake. It's the pre-sleep worry cycle.

Research on insomnia identifies pre-sleep cognitive arousal-worry, rumination, racing thoughts-as the most significant factor in persistent sleep disturbance. Studies show that maladaptive cognitions including performance anxiety, worry about consequences, and unhelpful beliefs play a critical role in maintaining chronic insomnia.

Here's the mechanism: When you lie down to sleep, instead of allowing your mind to wind down, you start the worry process. Your brain interprets this as a signal that there's a threat that needs addressing. This triggers cognitive and physiological arousal. The arousal makes sleep impossible. The inability to sleep creates more worry ("Now I won't be able to function tomorrow"), which creates more arousal.

The cycle perpetuates itself.

And here's the crucial insight: your anxiety at bedtime isn't being caused by new information about your contract. Nothing has changed between dinner and bedtime about the renewal decision. The worry cycle itself is the maintaining mechanism.

The research is clear on this: the relationship between stress and sleep quality is mediated by rumination and worry. It's not the stressful situation directly disrupting sleep-it's the cognitive activity about the stressful situation.

You're not lying awake because you're seven months into a twelve-month contract. You're lying awake because at bedtime, you're trying to resolve uncertainty through worry, which activates your nervous system, which makes sleep physiologically impossible.

Why the Usual Fixes Don't Work

Now you can see why the typical approaches to anxiety haven't resolved this:

Trying to eliminate the uncertainty: Impossible. You can't control whether they renew your contract. The uncertainty is real and will remain until they make a decision.

Trying to figure out the answer through worry: Also impossible. No amount of mental rehearsal will tell you what decision they'll make. You're trying to achieve certainty in a situation where certainty doesn't exist yet.

Trying to control the worry itself: Paradoxically makes it worse. Research shows that suppression and control attempts produce thought rebound effects.

Seeking reassurance or certainty: Feeds the intolerance of uncertainty, making you less able to tolerate ambiguous situations over time.

You were trying to solve the wrong problem. You were trying to eliminate uncertainty, when the actual problem is your difficulty tolerating it.

How to Actually Sleep Tonight

The question isn't "How do I eliminate this uncertainty?" The question is: "Can I let this be uncertain right now?"

Research on psychological treatments for anxiety reveals that interventions directly targeting intolerance of uncertainty show large effect sizes in reducing both the intolerance and the resulting anxiety symptoms. Meta-analyses found that treatment effects on intolerance of uncertainty accounted for 36% of the variance in symptom improvement.

What works isn't trying to achieve certainty. It's building your capacity to tolerate uncertainty.

You already know how to do this.

With your social anxiety, you learned to sit with the discomfort of not knowing how people would respond to you. You practiced exposure-putting yourself in situations where you didn't have control or certainty about social outcomes. Your difficulty scores dropped from 75-80% to 40% across multiple goals.

This is the same skill applied to a different domain.

Here's what the practice looks like:

When the worry cycle starts at bedtime:

1. Notice it: "There's the worry starting."

2. Name what's happening: "This is uncertainty, and I'm trying to control it through worry."

3. Ask the new question: "Can I let this be uncertain right now?"

4. Ground yourself: Use the sensory grounding techniques that worked for your social anxiety. Feel the pillow. Notice your breathing. Let the uncertainty exist while you direct your attention to physical sensation.

You're not trying to stop the worry. You're not trying to eliminate the uncertainty. You're practicing tolerating not knowing.

During the day, distinguish productive action from unproductive worry:

Productive actions (within your control):

- Leading your project well to build your track record
- Updating your CV
- Using university career coaching
- Making connections at work
- Building friendships
- Developing skills

Unproductive worry (not within your control):

- Mentally rehearsing scenarios about the renewal decision
- Trying to predict what they'll decide
- Analyzing every interaction for signs
- Lying awake cycling through "what if" questions

Every time you catch yourself in unproductive worry, you have a choice: keep trying to control the uncontrollable, or redirect to productive action.

Research on job insecurity shows that while perceived job insecurity significantly affects psychological well-being and increases stress, individuals can buffer these effects through focusing on factors within their control, maintaining work-life balance, and building resilience.

You can't control the renewal decision. But you can control:

- How you spend your mental energy
- What actions you take to build your career regardless of this decision
- Your relationship to uncertainty itself
- Your sleep hygiene and bedtime practices

What This Reveals About All Your Anxiety

Here's what this reveals about your anxiety more broadly:

Your social anxiety improved significantly-scores dropping from 35 to 19, difficulty ratings cut nearly in half. You learned to be present in social situations, to sit with discomfort without escaping, to build confidence through exposure.

But now job-related anxiety has increased.

What if these aren't separate problems?

What if both your social anxiety and your job anxiety stem from the same core issue: difficulty tolerating uncertainty?

- Social situations involved uncertainty about how people would respond to you
- Job situations involve uncertainty about whether you'll have employment security

Different domains. Same underlying mechanism.

Research increasingly recognizes intolerance of uncertainty as a transdiagnostic mechanism-a common factor that operates across different anxiety presentations. It's not that you have social anxiety and job anxiety as separate issues. You have difficulty tolerating uncertainty, which shows up in whatever domain of your life involves the most ambiguity at a given time.

You successfully reduced your social anxiety by learning to tolerate uncertainty in social domains. Now you have the opportunity to apply that same skill to career uncertainty.

And once you develop broader tolerance for uncertainty? You're building a capacity that will serve you across every domain of life that involves ambiguity, risk, or unknowns.

Which is to say: every domain that matters.

How to Build Lasting Change

Studies on cognitive-behavioral interventions for uncertainty intolerance show that longer treatment duration and direct focus on uncertainty tolerance (not just general anxiety management) produces the greatest improvements.

The practices that work:

Behavioral exposure to uncertainty: Deliberately staying in situations where you don't have certainty or control, practicing tolerance

Reevaluation of worry's usefulness: Recognizing that worry creates an illusion of control without providing actual control

Distinguishing productive action from cognitive avoidance: Focusing on what you can influence while accepting what you can't

Building tolerance gradually: Starting with smaller uncertainties and building capacity over time

You've already demonstrated you can do this work. You reduced your social anxiety through exposure and sitting with discomfort. You have the skills.

Now it's about recognizing that the nighttime worry about your contract is the same pattern-trying to control uncertainty-and applying what you already know works: exposure, tolerance, grounding, acceptance.

The job situation may or may not work out the way you hope. That's genuinely uncertain.

But your ability to sleep, to take productive action, to build connections and develop your career, to live fully despite uncertainty-that's not uncertain at all.

That's entirely within your control.

And it starts tonight, when the worry cycle begins, with one simple question:

Can I let this be uncertain right now?