The Therapy Edit - On decision making

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

In this solo episode of The Therapy Edit Anna offers listeners three simple tips to help them to handle the responsibility and never ending nature of decision making.Enjoy the listen, we really hope it helps. 

Hello and welcome to the Therapy Edit podcast with me, psychotherapist Anna Martha. I'll be bringing you weekly 10 minute episodes to encourage and support your emotional well-being. Hi everyone. Welcome to today's guest. It's not a guest episode actually. It's just me. I'm doing some guest episodes today. I'm recording, I think, five today. So I've got my herbal tea and I'm going to chat with you for 10 minutes. about decision making. This is off the back of an email I received from someone in our community. And the question was this. I am a poor decision maker and find deciding on anything, whether it's significant or totally insignificant, very difficult and stressful. And on reflection, I've realized it's related to wanting to make the right best decision out of the options to

avoid regret or a poor or not ideal decision. I'm a perfectionist. I'm a perfectionist. And although I realize life and myself are not perfect, I get anxious and frustrated when I have to decide on something. And it's driving me down in my life and motherhood. Are you able to share any thoughts or tips to ease this pressure on decision making? Yes, I am. I am too a fellow perfectionist. That is my natural way. And I know that so many of you listening will relate to that. And when I say my natural way, that's because that's often my first. reaction and response to things is to want to do everything well all the time and my kind of my second learnt response therefore is to try and ease the pressure to accept good enough over

perfect to lower the bar and to not kind of lean into that perfectionist people pleasing way and it's been absolutely life changing but it is still often a bit of an internal battle for me and And yeah, for this person, too, who really recognises how perfectionism comes into play with decision making. I wonder if you're someone that just feels a bit stifled when you're faced with a big or a small decision, whether the desire to get it right just feels like it clouds your own judgment and maybe silences that little gut, that little gut instinct that you have inside of you. maybe it gets overlooked. Maybe you just Google like a wild thing wanting to find the right bit

of advice to tell you where to go and what to do. And I think this is also really entangled with anxiety, isn't it? That fear of bad things happening as a result of the decisions that we make. So I've got some tips for you, just three steps, three little steps, three little tips to support you in any decisions you might be making or have to make really soon. And I think we just face them all the time. And that's also really helpful to know is that you have made so far today so many decisions and you haven't even realised that you've done it on what you've had for breakfast on how you've responded to any stresses or any kid challenges to what you are wearing right now. So actually we are far better at making decisions than we tend to think because we're literally

making them all the time. So I think hold that in mind. as you listen to these tips, because we can often really put ourselves down and focus on the times when we feel a bit stuck when actually you have made some pretty great decisions to get to this point in your life right now. It's all decision making, all decision making. We all know of the decisions that we would quite like to go back and make differently, but I've got some words for that too. So three steps to you, decision making. Number one, this is the challenge. Remove the pressure to get it right. I think we all know about the concept of sliding doors and the butterfly effect, that the idea that every little decision that you make

sets off a series of other decisions and that we are basically a product of all the decisions that we have made in our lives so far big and small. And this can feel completely overwhelming when we look at decisions in light of that, it can add so much pressure on ourselves. But as you face the next decision you have to make that feels like, yeah, a really intentional one. I just want you to think of removing some of that pressure to get it right. Some of the best things that have happened in your life have actually been a result of maybe not making such a good decision. Maybe some of the greatest learnings you've made in your life have also been because of the same. you know, we do the best we can with what we know. And sometimes we purposefully choose

not to do the best we can. We can choose to make a bad decision and then we have to live in the repercussions of that. But generally, we're doing the best we can with what we know. So cut yourself some slack. When we apply that kind of perfectionistic, black and white thinking to decisions, we can feel really fearful about them. That's so understandable, isn't it? everything in that light has a right and a wrong, but I encourage you next time you feel that pressure, stop for a moment. Breathe. That breathing literally tells your nervous system that it isn't life or death here. Because if that panic and that anxiety is kicking in, then that's going to be clouding that clarity. Ask yourself, what do you feel is right? What's its best? What's it best

with you. Even if on paper, that decision doesn't look like a good one. Sometimes the things that don't look right are actually the things that feel right. I've said no to things that on paper look absolutely incredible and it seems ridiculous that I should have said no to that job or that wrong. I've said yes to things that again on paper just look like it just isn't a wise choice but when we ask ourselves what feels right what sits best with us sometimes that might be the way and I encourage you if you have a lot of anxiety then then try and find ways to address that I've got loads of different ways to address that I've got a book called mind over mother which is all about anxiety there are loads of podcast episodes if you scroll down to help you with anxiety

because anxiety and overthinking can really distort this intuition that we're we're looking for because what we're doing is we're viewing our situation through that lens of fear. And also perfectionism is a good one to address, finding that middle ground, finding a little bit more comfort and ease in the grays and in the not right and the not wrongs, but the, you know, that's an okay decision. And that's where we live our lives a lot of the time. So if you recognise the anxiety and overthinking and perfectionism and people pleasing a dictating some of your decisions, then I really encourage you to find some tools and techniques

to address those. And then step two, again, is just to ask yourself this question. It's one of my favourite questions because, and I share this with my coaching clients and lots of different resources, is to ask yourself, what would you do if no one knew? What would you do? If no one knew, what decision would you make if there was no one to judge you? If you weren't. clouded by people pleasing or a fear of what other people think. And sometimes this just gets to the core. And it reminds us that we only have what we know. We only have what feels right.

We only have the sum of our knowledge. Yes, we've got Google, but so often that actually takes us away from ourselves. So tune into that gut instinct and ask yourself, what would I do if nobody knew? remove all that haze, that cloud of questioning that comes from that fear of what other people might think and that fear of getting it wrong. And then the third step is to make that decision and know that there is no such thing, whilst it may feel like it, there is no such thing as a bad or wrong decision in high sight. It doesn't mean that making one kind of slightly, yeah, decision that later on we might regret

means that everything is lost. So often there is so much to learn. Some of our best learnings in life have come from dodgy decisions. And if you didn't quite make the right decision, how can you learn from it? Ask yourself, is it your fault? I remember I held so much guilt around not knowing that my son had silent reflux in his early months. I didn't know. So much guilt that I hadn't made the right decision in pushing for care for him from the GP. But actually, how is that my fault. I made decisions based on what I knew and what I was being told. How are we meant to know what we did not know? So again, that reminder to cut yourself some slap often. The decisions that we make, they truly are a bit of a stab in the dark. And that is okay. We're growing as we go.

So it's a bigon. I know. But remove the pressure to get it right. Address people pleasing and anxiety and overthinking if they are playing a part in it. Tune in to your gut instinct. Turn to that before you turn to Google. Turn to a trusted source, a friend or family member, someone who has a little bit more experience in that area under their belt perhaps. Because perhaps you'll find the answer there. And if not, maybe you've got some support because of those conversations in light of the outcome. so that you've got someone to turn to. So there we go. Some little thoughts on how to make a decision. And I hope that that helps next time you're faced with one. Take care.

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