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Making decisions

Sassenach

I am rubbish at making decisions. I used to put it down to being a Libra, but I now realise it is due to a lack of confidence and autism playing it's part. When faced with making a decision or making changes, my head considers every little thing that could go wrong, and every person that could be affected. I don't seem to consider any positives unless they're pointed out to me. I am often too exhausted at the end of all the catastrophising to make the decision and have to do it another time. This includes booking trips away, making appointments, ordering something online, changing the garden, etc etc. I am fed up tying myself in knots! This has got worse since I got older, (although I was pretty bad when younger too) yet I am in a better living environment than I have ever been in, so maybe the uncertainty of the pandemic plays a part in this now. Does anyone else struggle like this? 

  • I'm the same. I think it's partly the opposition to change. If I'm making a decision then I'm changing something in some small way, such as what I'll be doing on a particular day. A decision like what clothes to buy or even what to order in a restaurant is stressful for me, and I always feel like I've made the wrong choice afterwards. I tend to focus on the negatives, and often end up making no decision because doing nothing feels safer.

    This has never mattered too much because most of the time I'm happy to let other people decide things for me and I go along with it. But right now I'm making one of the biggest decisions of my life when it comes to moving house - not only deciding which house to buy, which is a huge amount of money and has so many factors to consider for my future happiness for decades to come, but I'm also having to decide which town or city to move to.

    I've spent weeks catastrophising and imagining how much I will regret making one decision over another. Ultimately I find myself wishing it was out of my hands, as if I was a child and some adult would come along to sort it all out for me. But that's so ridiculous! I have a chance to do the right thing for me, but I'm afraid of making the wrong decision. I should be happy to be in charge of my own life but I hate it.

    I really can't handle making a decision of this scale and I just want it to be over.

  • Making decisions causes me lot of anxiety and panic. I spend forever overthinking it which then overwhelms me and leaves exhausted. Don't know what it is I just incapable of making a perfectly seemingly simple decision. It's like if the phone rings I spend so long trying to decide whether to answer it or not that it's stopped before I make the decision. I find that it overwhelms because I always get left with the what if I made the wrong decision and then I spend ages feeling bad for making the wrong decision. So stressful and tiring.

  • Part of this could be what is known as the "Paradox of choice", which is the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice

    I suffer from this, where I can I try to reduce the complexity of a situation as a workaround.

  • Yes me too. Definitely catastrophise. Having looked at all aspects the final decision is hard. If it is things at home that need doing want them done, but avoid commiting as long as possible. Then since the pandemic worry about the risks of someone coming. Then need to know how long they will be. When someone is coming I get more worked up the longer I wait. Recently had a gas check. First time it got cancelled at the end of the day but by this time I was relieved.

    Also hate it if a day is planned with nothing out of the ordinary and someone changes that last minute.

  • in reply to Selena

    That is me too. The stress is awful isn't it. 

  • Your not alone. I overthink everything when it comes to making decisions and I'll usually try to avoid situations where I've got to make decisions. Making decisions causes me a lot of distress and unwanted anxiety and when I do make a decision I always get left with the feelings and thoughts that I made the wrong decision and it's somehow going to negatively effect me or others. It's exhausting and draining. I find it very stressful and try to never make decisions.

  • Yeah, this is 100% me. Overthinking every little detail and all the things that could go wrong. When I try to not overthink and make gut feel decisions it has gone wrong in the past and put me off so I have a tendency towards being really cautious. At work I have to make lots of decisions so my the end of the day I have complete decision fatigue and will avoid making them at all costs. NT wife is the same so we're useless come 5 o'clock!

    I'm similar with hobbies too - when I'm looking to start a new project I'll try to plan everything as I hate getting to the end and thinking I shoul dhave made something bigger/smaller/added in some other detail. As a result most of my ideas never get past the planning stage!