Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy

Online Therapy
01273 921 355
  • Home
  • Therapy Services
    • Fees
    • How Psychotherapy Works
    • Who is it for?
    • Individual Therapy
    • Child Therapy
    • Couples Therapy
    • Marriage Counselling
    • Family Therapy
    • Group Psychotherapy
    • Corporate Counselling and Therapy Services
    • Clinical Supervision
    • FAQs
  • Types of Therapy
    • Acceptance Commitment Therapy
    • Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Body Psychotherapy
    • Clinical Psychology
    • Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
    • Compassion Focused Therapy
    • Coronavirus (Covid-19) Counselling
    • Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
    • EMDR
    • Existential Psychotherapy
    • Gestalt Psychotherapy
    • Group Analytic Psychotherapy
    • Integrative Psychotherapy
    • IPT – Interpersonal Psychotherapy
    • Online Therapy
    • Psychoanalytic Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy
    • Systemic Psychotherapy
    • Transactional Analysis
    • Trauma Psychotherapy
  • Types of Issues
    • Abuse
    • Addiction
      • Gambling addiction
      • Porn Addiction
    • Affairs
    • Anger Management
    • Anxiety
    • Bereavement Counselling
    • Coronavirus Induced Mental Health Issues
    • Cross Cultural Issues
    • Depression
    • Family Issues
    • LGBT+ Issues
    • Low Self-Esteem
    • Relationship Issues
    • Sexual Issues
    • Stress
  • Online Therapy
    • Online Anger Management Therapy
    • Online Anxiety Counselling
    • Online Bereavement Therapy
    • Online Depression Psychotherapy
    • Online Relationship Therapy
  • Our Practitioners
    • Practitioner Search
  • Work with us
  • Blog
    • Ageing
    • Attachment
    • Child Development
    • Families
    • Gender
    • Groups
    • Loss
    • Mental Health
    • Neuroscience
    • Parenting
    • Psychotherapy
    • Relationships
    • Resources
    • Sexuality
    • Sleep
    • Society
    • Spirituality
    • Work
  • Contact Us
    • Contact Us – Brighton & Hove Practice
    • Contact Us – Lewes Practice
    • Contact Us – Online Therapy
    • Privacy Policy

September 28, 2020 by BHP Leave a Comment

Why is it hard to make decisions?

‘It’s not about making the right choice. 
It’s about making a choice and making it right.’ 

J.R. Rim

Making a decision can be very difficult. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how big or small a decision is: it is the fact that one has to be made at all which engenders an anxiety that can feel crippling at times.

Why is it so difficult to make a decision?

For well-known psychoanalyst, thinker and writer, Irwin Yalom, decision making is linked to one of his ‘Four Givens’ – one of the four underlying anxieties from which all other anxieties spring. Having to make a decision, suggests Yalom, means we have to take responsibility for our own actions – something he feels we all seek to avoid. If only we can pass the decision off to someone else, we will not have to take responsibility for the outcome. Imagine – we might even have someone else to blame if the outcome fails to go as planned.

Face to Face and Online Therapy Help Available Now

Click Here to Enquire

Facebooktwitter

There are other impediments to decision making. One of the most common is inertia – our natural reluctance to change our state or position. Put bluntly, it is very difficult to make the effort to move. If you need a banal example of this inertia in action, then ask yourself why so many of us choose to stay with our utility providers, mortgage or banking firms, when we know (for certain!) that we would be far better off with a new provider? Our bias towards the status quo keeps us where we are – or, as Yalom would no doubt point out – allows us to use the ‘where we are’ as a useful excuse for us not to have to make a decision at all.

Research also shows that decisions are easier when there are fewer choices. There are many studies available that demonstrate this bias in our thinking. Shoppers, for example, will buy more when presented with fewer options. As the amount of choice grows, it would seem we become burdened with the weight of the process – and end up buying nothing at all (or maybe everything!) as a response to the sense of being overwhelmed.

Finally, we should also think about the condition of decision fatigue, a condition that can feature significantly in people who are suffering burn out in work or domestic environments.  If such a role or lifestyle demands that we make many, serial decisions, there may come a point where we just cannot face making another. You can understand this on a domestic level if you have been in the position where you have asked your friend or partner ‘What shall we have for dinner/ What shall we do at the weekend?’ only to hear the reply ‘I don’t mind: whatever you want.’ Having been in a position where you take decision after decision, sometimes even the most trivial (in this case, ‘what’s for tea?’) can feel like the last – and heaviest of straws.

So what can we do?

We do need to separate the decision-making process from the outcome. The latter is out of our control. In a world which currently seems to be driven by hindsight, it is a wonder how any decisions get made. But we should try to understand that good decisions can lead to poor outcomes.

For example: I toss a coin. I offer you a bet as follows: if the coin falls as ‘Heads’, I will pay you £10; if it falls as ‘Tails’, you pay me £1. Do you take the bet? Fairly easy decision, but imagine you lose ten bets in a row, do you still take the next bet?  Although it would seem still an excellent decision (if your aim is to increase your funds), a concern over outcome will often emerge as a major brake on the decision-making ability. It can even collude with the bias towards inertia which we carry (spoken of above), providing a useful excuse to remain risk averse and avoid the decision entirely.

If we can put outcome to one side and concentrate on the decision itself, there are a number of practical strategies we might employ to help to make up our minds. From pros and cons list-making, to identifying our highest priorities and values in the various options, to listening to the voices of third parties, or studying the experiences of others – all of which might well bring a sense of perspective to an area which seems to be drowning in the waters of confusion and distortion. Remember, though, that there will any number of unconscious forces working to prevent that decision being made, so we have to keep in mind that by thinking these things through so carefully, we don’t provide scope to put any decision off – and thus to avoid the responsibility.

It’s only a simple decision!

If only this were true. As Yalom points out, and as our own experience confirms, the matters which lie beneath ‘a simple decision’ are complex and linked to many of the fears and anxieties we all carry as a consequence of our life experience. Lists and balance sheets may help to some degree, but if we really want to understand how to make decisions more effectively – how to take responsibility for what we want – we need to reach a better understanding of ourselves.

 

Kevin Collins is a UKCP registered Psychotherapeutic Counsellor with an academic background in the field of literature and linguistics. He worked for many years in education – in schools and university. Kevin is available at our Lewes Practice.

 

Further reading by Kevin Collins –

Communication, communication, communication

Facebooktwitter

Filed Under: Mental Health, Relationships, Society Tagged With: anxiety, choice

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Find your practitioner

loader
Wordpress Meta Data and Taxonomies Filter

Locations -

  • Brighton
  • Lewes
  • Online
loader
loader
loader
loader
loader

Search for your practitioner by location

Brighton
Lewes

Therapy services +

Therapy services: 

Therapy types

Therapy types: 

Our Practitioners

  • Mark Vahrmeyer
  • Sam Jahara
  • Gerry Gilmartin
  • Dr Simon Cassar
  • Claire Barnes
  • David Work
  • Angela Rogers
  • Magdalena Whitehouse
  • Dorothea Beech
  • Paul Salvage
  • Susanna Petitpierre
  • Sharon Spindler
  • Michael Reeves
  • Kevin Collins
  • Rebecca Mead
  • Dr John Burns
  • Dr Laura Tinkl

Work with us

Find out more….

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Copyright © 2021 – Brighton And Hove Psychotherapy – Privacy Policy
6 The Drive, Hove , East Sussex, BN3 3JA.

COVID-19 (CORONAVIRUS) Important Notice

We would like to reassure all our clients that Brighton and Hove Psychotherapy is operating as normal despite the current situation.

Our working practices have fully incorporated online therapy in addition to a re-opening of our Hove and Lewes practices for face-to-face psychotherapy in accordance with Government guidelines and advice on safe practice and social distancing.