Anxiety And Decision Making

do you struggle with making decisions are you frustrated with yourself about your indecisiveness maybe you struggle with decisions about really big important things like a job a career marriage or maybe you struggle with decisions that are very small what do I wear today where am I going to go for lunch or maybe it's in between but wherever you are on this spectrum my guess is it is related to anxiety so so if you have anxiety and you know you have anxiety just know it's very common for people with anxiety to have trouble making decisions and if you don't think you have anxiety it might be worth considering that it is anxiety that's underneath your inability to make decisions cuz I've met a lot of people who will have like no relationship to anxiety they'll be like I'm not that anxious I just I worry about this and this and this and they have a lot of anxiety but they've never actually used that label or understood what it meant so in my 20 years as a psychotherapist I specialized in working with people with anxiety and Trauma and I learned on a very deep level why people have troubl making decisions and I also know it for myself so I'm going to share today the five things that are underneath anxiety that goes with decision making and knowing these things points to the answer the number one thing I want to talk about is that life is uncertain and I know that sometimes starting a video geared towards people who have anxiety starting that way people might be like why are you saying that that's what I'm anxious about but the truth is that life's uncertain and we all seem to have a real abhorrence of accepting that life's uncertain we both individually and societally we sort of push that away and we think that if we make the right decisions we can control the future if we make the right decision our movie is going to have a happy ending the movie of my life will have a happy ending if I make the right decision but if I don't W right and honestly accepting uncertainty can really help to relieve your anxiety it can really almost lighten things up a little bit if you're like yeah life's uncertain I don't know I can't predict what's going to happen and that can really lower the intensity with which we are focused on making the right decision and when I said earlier that our whole society likes to push away this concept of uncertainty there's a theme in the United States but also many places around the world since my audience is international I hear from many people in many different cultures our society tells us that if you make the right decision you'll be successful and happy so that indicates there is one right decision to be made and you better do it right so hang with me if that one made you feel a little bit anxious I do understand but it will make sense as I go through all of this number two is trying to control what we're powerless over definitely related to uncertainty but a slightly different Focus right so almost all anxiety is related to those things we can't control because if we have a productive worry what I would call a productive worry it is something that we can then take steps to address it some productive worry could be if I don't spend time studying for this exam I may not do well and I want to do well so I then go and spend time studying for the exam productive worry could come up if you have a job you don't really like and you're like hm this doesn't seem to be going in the right direction for me or the company I'm working for so productive worry is going to make me say hm maybe I better write up my resume and start sending it out right so those are productive steps that you can take but if you're somebody who identifies the problem comes up with the productive steps you may not have anxiety and you probably don't have as much trouble making decisions so if we take that job situation and you're worried that the company isn't going to be doing well and you put all your focus on what if the company fails and they lay everybody else off and all you do is worry about whether the company is going to succeed or not which is not within your control I'm not saying you may not have some influence right but it's not within your control if that's what you're spending your time thinking about and worrying about that's an anxiety so when we get anxious about decision making it is usually because we want that happy ending we think that we should be able to make the right choice to get that happy ending but we know there's an awful lot of things that might come into play and we won't get that happy ending and our focus is on the happy ending rather than the best choice for me right now given the information I have today this is the besto choice and I'm going to go for it and we'll see what happens which actually brings me to a point I wasn't going to make today but I'm just going to slip it in here not one of the big five but belief in yourself right belief in your own adaptability can really help with decision making accepting what you're powerless over accepting there's uncertainty in life but believing in your own capability and adaptability all right the number three three reason we have trouble making decisions and this is very common value conflicts when we have values that can be in conflict with one another and a decision is pointing to those value conflicts those are really tough decisions to make examples okay so maybe you value earning a really good living so you can support yourself and your family but you also value family time and spending time with your family and not working 100 hours a week but the job you have which is really helping on the financial side is requiring you to work 100 hours a week that's a value conflict you have two legitimate reasonable values and they're in Conflict given the situation given these circumstances another example could be you have like three colleges you want to go to right you have three Top Choice colleges you get into one of them boom your decision is made it's clear there's no conflict there but let's say you get into all three of them and you weren't sure which one of the three and maybe one of them is in an area you like better but another one is ranked a little bit higher the third one has a social scene you feel a better fit with so then your values are in conflict because geography indicates one thing your social interests indicate another and then the reputation of the school which you also care about is another value value so value conflicts are underneath almost all difficult decisions and if you think about it this way I'm not giving you like an answer that's a magic wand that's going to help you figure it out but if you think about it as being a value conflict you can then really sit down and be like okay which of these values is most important to me given all these other factors when I begin to think about things in terms of the value value conflict it usually helps me figure out am I valuing what somebody else values or am I valuing what I truly value now I'll use a very personal example for that one so my first career was in Investment Banking and I was doing very well I was good at it I was the sole support of my family and I had three kids but I had to work all the time it was also very unpredictable work I could get interrupted at any moment middle of the night weekends while on vacation all the time and in many ways I just hated it so at some point I realized that really my choice of that occupation was a reflection of the family I grew up in and the role I played I was sort of seen as the one who is going to be successful so you better be successful and this is successful our society was saying oh this is what's valued although being a woman there was a little bit bit of conflict on that which probably was supportive to me in making my choice to leave I do think sometimes leaving a job like that can be harder for guys in our society because there was sort of also some criticism of oh well if you're a mom you should be more with your kids right but in any case I realized I was living out values that were my parents and a pretty loud voice in society but they weren't really mine so it took me a long time to decide to switch careers and then that's when I switched to become a psychotherapist which I loved for many years but I really had to do that investigation of what values are being reflected in the choices and decisions I'm making and are they truly mine okay number four you might not like this one but number four is sitting on the fence comfortable for for you all right I know sitting on a fence isn't comfortable but some of us do it a long time and I am definitely guilty of this I can sometimes sit on a fence do I want to go that way do I want to go that way do this do that H will I go if I go in that direction if I get off the fence in this direction then these are the pros here's the cons H but if I go in that direction then these are the pros those are the cons which do I like you know I can just sit there on that fence for a long time and I finally had to realize like whoa maybe that is comfortable for me even though it's super uncomfortable maybe this is a discomfort that I prefer to the risk of making a wrong decision maybe it's a discomfort I prefer over making a real commitment that's going to require action and uncertainty right because if I go in that direction I don't know what's going to happen nope you don't don't know if I'll be able to be successful at that I'm successful at this I don't know will I be successful at that who knows right that brings us back to that uncertainty thing so sitting on that fence means you don't have to really accept that uncertainty you don't have to take a risk and this also ties to loss aversion which is a little more complicated than the video plan for today but we are more averse to things that we lose than what we'll gain that's just sort of part of the innate human brain and I think that contributes to our sitting on a fence we don't want to lose the option when I'm on the fence I can go that way or I can go this way and I can imagine both so when I was talking about this with someone recently they were like yeah okay I agree yeah sitting on the fence can be comfortable so maybe it's okay maybe I'll just stay there the problem is sitting on the fence which is going to bring us to point number five here here is that we are ruminating we are overanalyzing we are in analysis paralysis we are going over it and over it and over it in our heads we are probably not just being like huh this fence is okay I like it I'm going to just stay here for a bit because if you were like that then that is your decision and you're comfortable with it you can be comfortable with the decision to stay on the fence and sometimes that might make sense because sometimes the time isn't right to make a decision or to make a CH sometimes there is more information you need so if you're comfortable with it there's no problem with it but if you're watching this and you really are frustrated with your own indecision staying on that fence is occupying a huge amount of your brain power you know it's holding you back in life it could be disturbing your sleep and that repetitive rumination is very very painful and what can get you out of that situation when you are doing that with regard to a decision could be just making a decision take a chance know there's risks in life know the outcome is truly uncertain no matter which way you go trust your gut and make a decision so I want to come back to this concept that you can make a perfect decision which is a faulty concept but before I do that if you are plagued with anxiety and rumination and indecision I think the free webinar I have rewire your brain for joy and confidence will be super helpful it goes through the sort of innate qualities of the human brain that make us prone to worrying about things having an overblown fight flight freeze response right there are innate qualities in the human brain that contribute to that and then also how we are raised both through our society societal expectations as well as family expectations how they wire our brain in a certain way which then becomes habitual and it can feel like you have no power to change it so this webinar will give you the feeling and the power really to know that you can change this anyway I think you'll enjoy it so check that out but underlying all of this difficulty making a decision is really this thought that there is one perfect decision when I look back on some of the decisions I've made in my life almost all of them have led me into a direction which I really would not have anticipated I never would have anticipated ending up being a YouTuber first of all I couldn't have anticipated that too long ago because it did not exist when I started my first career or my second career but regardless that might be somewhat of a silly example but we don't know know where the road we choose will take us we can only decide what looks to be the best from this vantage point at this moment knowing ourselves deeply is very helpful knowing what we value knowing what we feel so we can bring that into the equation we can understand and read our emotions and I do have a number of videos on that I will link them here but also check out my library have a lot on anxiety on emotional intelligence really understanding the emotions and the information that those emotions are giving you which will help you make better decisions better meaning maybe faster sometimes faster and better being like the right decision knowing what I know now so as I was saying just a moment ago like a lot of the big decisions I've made led me in directions I would was not expecting and produced some really good things I would not want to be without and brought about a few other consequences that I would rather not have but that is going to happen with any decision now I know talking about the reality once again of uncertainty but the more you can feel comfortable with that the lighter you can be and the easier you can be on yourself let me know if this was helpful I'd love to read your comments ments I'd love to know what you're thinking if it was useful please hit that like button and subscribe to my channel see you next week

Channel: Barbara Heffernan

Views: 2,986

Keywords: barbara heffernan, @awakenjoy.life, anxiety and indecision, indecision and anxiety, decision making and anxiety, anxiety and decision making, anxiety tips, anxiety help, anxiety advice, how to help anxiety, making decisions, indecisive

Id: kxZBXfv6ud4

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2024