Every day we make hundreds of decisions. Some are small, like what we will have for breakfast or dinner, but others are very important, like when we choose our profession or the person with whom we want to spend the rest of our lives. When it comes to vital steps, it is normal for us to feel a little indecisive and take longer to assess the pros and cons, but there are people who have a real fear of making decisions, they suffer from what is known as decidophobia.
What is decidophobia?
There’s a world of difference between taking the time to weigh decisions, or feeling a little stressed about the big choices in life and being so overwhelmed with anxiety that we experience enormous difficulty making decisions. Decidophobia is an irrational fear of making decisions, even the most banal ones in everyday life.
In its most extreme form, the person may experience analysis paralysis or even a panic attack at the very thought of having to decide. To avoid these unpleasant sensations, those who suffer from decidophobia avoid by all means being in situations in which they must make a decision. As a general rule, they prefer others to decide for them.
The term, coined by the philosopher Walter Kauffman in his book “Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy” published in 1973, initially referred to the philosophical implications of fear of making decisions, a problem that often leads to conformism. However, in the psychological field, decidophobia ends up considerably affecting the mental health of those who suffer from it, leading to an almost permanent state of anxiety, dissatisfaction and frustration.
The main symptoms of decidophobia
• Panic and anxiety. The person may experience extreme anxiety or a panic attack when making decisions. In that case, it is common for you to experience physical symptoms such as rapid heart rate, shortness of breath, nausea, excessive sweating, tremors, dizziness, and chest or stomach pain.
• Procrastination. The fear of making decisions leads the person to postpone that moment for as long as possible. You find it easier to live with uncertainty than to decide, so you turn procrastination into your no-coping strategy, which often not only leads you to miss out on many opportunities in life, but can also aggravate problems, which remain unresolved due to indecision.
• Underestimate instinct. The person with decidophobia, instead of paying attention to their sixth sense or letting themselves be carried away by their instincts, usually takes a more rational approach, collecting as much data as possible or asking for the opinion of others to help them make a decision. However, that strategy is usually not helpful. Often so much information only serves to make the person feel more overwhelmed and insecure as they realize that it is impossible to control all the variables that influence a decision.
• Excessive worries. When we have to make an important decision, it is normal to think about it for a while, while our ideas get clear and we weigh the different options. However, the person with decidophobia worries excessively, to the point that they lose sight of the goal: to decide. Their worries are unuseful, but often get lost in insignificant details or assume catastrophic proportions, so far from helping them choose, they throw them into confusion.
Where does the fear of making decisions come from?
Phobias are part of anxiety disorders, which means that there is a certain genetic predisposition. Therefore, a person whose parents or himself suffers from generalized anxiety is more likely to develop decidophobia. However, that does not amount to a conviction.
In fact, many phobias are learned. Perhaps it may have originated at a particularly stressful time in our lives when we had to make important decisions for others. If we had a very bad time, it is likely that we have developed a refusal to choose and prefer to avoid making decisions, even those that concern us directly.
It is also possible that we acquired this fear of making decisions in childhood, “inheriting” it from our parents or other significant figures who experienced decision anxiety, so that we made a negative connection. Perhaps the idea that making decisions generates stress has been recorded in our childish minds, so it is something that would be better to avoid.
Finally, another possibility is that we have made some bad decisions in the past that have left us scarred. If the consequences were very negative, it is likely that we have generalized thinking that “we always make wrong decisions”, so we avoid to choose for the fear of failing again.
The consequences of fear of making decisions
1. External dependency. If we are afraid to choose, we will create situations in which we let others decide for us. Initially, putting the responsibility on the shoulders of others can help us alleviate that anxiety, but in the long run it will generate a great dependency. In fact, with this attitude, it is likely that we only attract manipulative or authoritarian people into our lives since they are the only ones who are willing to interact in these conditions.
2. Conflicting relationships. When we want others to decide for us, we add pressure on our loved ones. In practice, our difficulty making decisions leaves them alone at major forks in life. Our reluctance not only adds responsibility and stress to them, it also deprives them of the emotional support we all need when faced with difficult decisions. In the long run, this will end up creating conflicts in relationships, becoming a source of arguments and a cause of distancing.
3. Personal discomfort. Decidophobia locks you in a spiral of worries. Exaggerate the consequences of small decisions, causing you to uselessly pressure yourself to take the right path. In the long run, it ends up generating high emotional tension, anguish and anxiety, which affects your mental health, preventing you from finding the serenity you need to make good decisions.
How to lose the fear of making decisions?
1. Trust your ability to make good decisions
Actually, you are not afraid to choose, but you are afraid of making the wrong decisions. We do not fear the election process but its consequences. For that reason, it can be helpful for us to search our past for those times when we made good decisions. We can even make a list. Thus we will recover a little self-confidence and reduce our fear. Another positive exercise is to examine our “bad” decisions from the past to assess, in today’s light, if they really were as bad as we thought. For example, accepting a horrible job may have allowed us to meet our partner or give us the push we needed to dare to start on our own. Few things in life are totally good or bad.
2. Reduce the complexity of decisions
One of the best ways to lose the fear of making decisions is to reduce their complexity. Big decisions paralyze us because they seem unapproachable, but they are actually made up of smaller choices. Trying to approach them from a more reduced perspective, with which we feel more comfortable and that we can manage, can help us to take those small steps necessary to make the decision.
3. Change your perspective
A simple strategy to lose the fear of making decisions is to assume a psychological distance from them. This way we will reduce the anxiety that they generate us. Therefore, we can imagine ourselves facing that dilemma as if we were another person. Often, to change skin, it is enough to ask ourselves: “What would X do?” Then we must try to see the situation from their perspective in order to take the next step.
4. Analyze both sides of the risk
The fear of making the wrong decisions usually appears when the possibilities seem risky or even frightening. That is because the only thing that we have active in our mind is the negative consequence. However, everything in life has two sides. Therefore, we must make sure that we see the opposite side of the coin. It will help us to ask ourselves questions such as: what will happen if I do not act? Perhaps inaction could be equal to or even worse than making a decision.
5. Detach from the results
Difficulty making decisions is often linked to fear of possible consequences. Therefore, we must do hard inner work to detach ourselves from them. To do this, we can ask ourselves: Which result scares us the most? Why do we fear it? What could I lose or gain? What’s the worst that could happen? What if things go my way? It is about mentally preparing ourselves for all possible scenarios trying to find opportunities even in situations that at first sight are not ideal. We must also remember that results are not the only thing that matters. If we fail, we can try again. Fortunately, most decisions are not permanent and there are ways to correct them.
6. Take mistakes as learning opportunities
The fear of making the wrong decisions is based on our tendency to avoid mistakes at all costs. However, mistakes are not simply wrong decisions but opportunities to learn or grow. When we decide and don’t get the expected results, we learn the lesson so that we can make better decisions next time. Indecision is what prevents us from growing. Decisions, appropriate or not, lead us down the path of learning. Every choice we make teaches us something.
7. Listen more to your gut
To lose the fear of making decisions, we also have to reconnect with our instinct. Many times, our unconscious has the correct answer before we have even had time to think through the options. Freud himself recommended letting ourselves be carried away by what we now know as intuitive intelligence. He said: “When we make small decisions, it is always advantageous to weigh the pros and cons. However, in vital matters, such as the choice of a partner or a profession, the decision must come from the unconscious, from a hidden place within us. In the really important decisions of life, we must let the deep needs of our nature rule.”
It’s okay to admit that making a decision is scary. But we have to go one step further. The key is to move from anxiety to curiosity. Change can be difficult. Undoubtedly, making some decisions is not easy. But if we dare with a growth mindset and a curious attitude, maybe making that next decision could be the best thing we ever do.
Sources:
Eaton, W. W. et. Al. (2018) Specific phobias. Lancet Psychiatry;5(8): 678-686.
Reilly, B. M. et. Al. (2002) Impact of a Clinical Decision Rule on Hospital Triage of Patients With Suspected Acute Cardiac Ischemia in the Emergency Department. JAMA; 288(3): 342-350.
