Decision paralysis after chronically living in fear

[Wilderhearts]

TW: mention of physical violence and intimidation.  Relevant paragraph noted so you can skip it.

I've had to make a lot of big decisions at work the past couple months.  Even more little ones. Constantly.  Huge gaps in senior level leadership on our team, so I'm mucking my way through things way beyond my experience level.  In the midst of a lockdown, when I'm experiencing a lot of disconnection and isolation, and am still in a relatively  new job.

I'm paralyzed over a lot of the decisions I make - I really struggle as if every course of action is just a pathway to disaster.  I can't ever just make a decision and go with it without overthinking, and I fear it's making me slow and ineffective at work.

It clicked why, the other day.  I was so often caught in truly dangerous situations, where uNPDf created what seemed like (and I still believe were) life and death situations.  Action or inaction could have really dismal consequences.  there was just no winning.

TW for this next paragraph (no graphic details).
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I think this goes back to one of the the most terrifying conflicts my sister and uNPDf ever had narcissistic abusive rages our uNPDf ever had.  I'll skip the details but, sitting in the next room listening, things suddenly went dead silent and I thought my sister might be dead.  I had been planning on stabbing my father if he got violent and it seemed like it was suddenly too late.  No one was actually hurt and he suddenly calmed (but was still his narcissist self, of course).
TW over
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I've mentioned this once to one therapist - we got to how to forgive myself for not physically intervening ( I was also like...12 and 70lb thinking I'd take on a 180lb man).  We didn't get into how this wired my brain to believe that every decision is a bad decision and will lead to destruction and failure.  I think between this, my other post, and another post I could write, I have my next 3-4 sessions planned.  Jeez louise.

[IRedW77]

I've always had tons of difficulty with decisions. Often the less significant the decision, the more I struggle with it.

I can spend 10 minutes in the drink isle in a convenience store agonizing over which type of soda to buy.

I often seek external validation for decisions that I'm already relatively sure of, or should be able to make on my own. 

I check and recheck facts and details before I make final commitments to a choice. Did I read that right? Is that the right number?

Horrible things happen if I get pressed into an instant decision. If I've figured out what I want to order in a restaurant and the waitress tells me they're out of that I panic. I'll vacillate between my 2nd and 3rd choice and suddenly finalize on my 6th choice and spend the entire meal regretting it.

If there are too many variables in a decision I get easily overwhelmed.

I don't think I ever had to make any life or death decisions, but I was definitely second guessed relentlessly as a kid.

I read an interesting post on another site about one explanation for this.

I know that personally I'm very emotionally repressed as a learned defense mechanism. Maybe you are too?

The thrust of this post was that when we make decisions we should be using the logical part of our brain in tandem with the emotional part of our brain.

People that make purely emotional decisions often get themselves in trouble.

Conversely, people that don't have good access to the emotional part of their brain get stuck in logic loops. We spool through endless outcomes and permutations, but there isn't enough to differentiate them.

This would work, or that could work equally well. If this happens then that will probably happen, but then this won't, etc. What's missing is the emotional context that is supposed to be a deciding factor.

For the simplest example I'll take the drink aisle. I'm spinning up the logical part of my brain into overdrive, but it's not built to handle this kind of problem.

Logically they're all pretty much equivalent. 20 ounces of carbonated sweetened liquid. They have different specific flavorings, and maybe I can say X drink historically pairs well with Y food that I'm about to eat. That makes for an educated guess, but not a satisfying answer. 

What I actually need to know is which one will make me FEEL the most satisfied?

I can't reach a satisfactory feeling for any of them because I'm not able to readily access the part of my brain that feels things. Instead I just keep heating up my logic circuits and ramping up my anxiety. This only makes my emotional brain retreat further into protection mode.

I end up making empty decisions that I'll perpetually second guess and regret because the logic brain never did actually get that final piece of emotional data that it needed.

What you said kind of boils down to something similar. The emotional stain of all those dismal outcomes is just baked into every decision for you. You can get at emotions, but only bad ones. If everything is equally bad it's exactly the same trap. No whiff of positive emotion to tie to any outcome that could differentiate it makes them all equally bad.

That's also probably self-reinforcing. If every decision you make leaves you feeling bad, then you just learn that deciding feels bad. Feeling bad makes the rest of your brain want to lock out the emotional center that could actually help it.

Maybe it's all nonsense, but it seems substantial at this late hour

[Wilderhearts]

What you said kind of boils down to something similar. The emotional stain of all those dismal outcomes is just baked into every decision for you. You can get at emotions, but only bad ones. If everything is equally bad it's exactly the same trap. No whiff of positive emotion to tie to any outcome that could differentiate it makes them all equally bad.

That's also probably self-reinforcing. If every decision you make leaves you feeling bad, then you just learn that deciding feels bad. Feeling bad makes the rest of your brain want to lock out the emotional center that could actually help it.

I think you hit the nail on the head - this is exactly why I get stuck in the logical loop.  There are seldom positive emotions attached to decision making for me, and it's a positive (i.e., self-reinforcing) cycle.

When things go well, I don't feel satisfaction, pride, success, or optimism.  It doesn't enhance my confidence.  I almost see it as a "near miss" and "didn't we get lucky that wasn't a disaster."  All I feel is relief.  I have a hard time taking any credit for positive outcomes of my decisions.  I think this comes from having a PD parent who's behaviour was so chaotic.

It's not so much that I can't access my "emotional data," as you put it, as it is that I've accumulated no positive emotional data.

Thank you so much for sharing your own experiences and insight.  I'm thinking now that I need to consciously note what decisions I made, and the variables that my decisions interacted with to create positive outcomes.

[IRedW77]

Yes! I think you're dead on with that.

I never feel the sense of accomplishment of any of my accomplishments. When I finish and accomplish something I just start feeling guilty that I'm not doing something else and accomplishing enough.

That kind of leaves me with two modes, doing and avoiding.

I think making some external records to refer to is a good idea.

Another idea I have based on personal experience is to create some sort of memorial to the good decision or accomplishment or whatever it is.

This may be harder with the less tangible job related decisions, but maybe a list or chart or something posted prominently on a wall or on a computer desktop where you have to look at it every day could work.

My personal example is the work that I've done on my house. If someone asks me about it I'll tell them what I've done, but I'll unavoidably tell them what's left to do as well. If I think about it myself I only ever focus on all the things that are left to do still.

I've actually done a lot of work with my T on this as far as taking one thing at a time. My tendency is to look at absolutely everything that has to be done all at once and then just shut down. Like I could clean the kitchen, but instead I think of every room in the entire house and everything involved in cleaning all of it. That's quickly overwhelming. It either leads to a shut down or decision paralysis about where to start. Just taking one thing at a time and tuning out the rest has been good for me.

But anyway, my example. I'm going to minimize my efforts on anything. I never give myself enough or even any credit for the things I've done.

With my house I'll sometimes go into a room I've worked on, or the front of the house that I've completely repaired and just stand there. I just stand there and stare at what I've done and think about the days and days and days that I worked on it and it will actually feel good. I can stand there and just look around for 10 minutes without doing anything else.

If what I've done is staring me directly in the face it's hard to minimize it. It's all I'm looking at and I can't pretend it isn't there or that I didn't do all that work myself.

Sometimes I will spot a flaw that frustrated my perfectionism when I was doing the work, but over time I find that I forget where those spots are.

I guess if that positivity and success isn't inside you then put yourself inside of it. Fill your senses so that your brain can't trick you into worthlessness.

[1footouttadefog]

I can relate to the idea of entering a logic loop especially when feeling under pressure.

As part of coming Out of the FOG I have become more comfortable with identifying situations where its okay for me to redraw the dead lines, to releive the pressure.  Doing so I'm in places where its appropriate to do so makes it less hard to deal at the other times as well.

My pdh used to intentionally create these times and the pressure as was his family.  Everything was manipulated to seem like a critical important decision, so leslarning to push back on the abuse in life has made it easier to relate to dealing  with other aspects of life, when stressed, I treat life/the world like its a psychopathic narc sometimes. Silly maybe but it helps me identify the emotions being triggered by various situations that are causing the mental shut down and inability to make decisions.

As to releaving pressure with the restaurant example, I might respond like this, ...thats okay, but I will need a few minutes to look the menu over again, Ill take a pinot grigio and a side salad and some ice water in the meantime, thanks.

In the store, I might buy both a water and a soda or two sodas, I can have the other one later.  I dont get one too often so I allow myself to indulge, where before it was a critical choice with guilt and weirdness surrounding it.  Part of my weekly grocery store ritual is getting a water and a soda and drinking half the water then popping the soda open.  I drink the soda mostly while cooking when I get home after a 30 min drive while listening to a podcast in peace.  My pdh will often ask do you want me to come, I respond, no because I want to listen to my show.

It must seem bizzare to be plaved in such a tough decision making role at a new job while working in isolation.  Like some surreal si fi where you wake up in a new reality or matrix.  Its perectly understandable that its difficult and I am not l sure I would manage well at all, especially without face to face feedback. Just wow, you are stronger than you think.
 

[Wilderhearts]

I agree completely with everything you said, Red.  Doing or avoiding, always feeling guilty that I'm not doing something else.

I do actually keep a track record of moments when I felt proud of myself, but it usually has to do with some kind of external validation.  I could totally make more of a practice of validating myself.

I want to build a house too...now even more.  Good on your for accomplishing it and enjoying it for yourself!  I have some things that I've made, so maybe I'll look at them and be proud of that.

I am having to reassess my standards at work - I've been told I commit to good quality work, but sometimes it means to much time and effort.  There's definitely a culture of manufactured urgency at my work - everyone needs to stay under a pressure cooker to get as much done as possible.  It's not how I choose to live, so I'm always battling that culture.

"I treat life/the world like its a psychopathic narc sometimes."  HA - do I ever know what you mean.  Sometimes I feel like I have my own disordered perspective on the world where it's as unsafe as all the pwPDs I've had to survive.

Stronger than I think, and good news/bad news is that even more critical people (who were holding things up with me after the supervisor left) have departed.  I'm the only one left on my team.  We're at a critical breaking point, so thankfully we've convened a meeting with higher level leadership to pivot our (my) focus.  I'm so exhausted I've actually stopped worrying about it!

[Jolie40]

Wilderhearts
decision making is difficult for me, also

one time we had a coupon for photo session for child
of course, they take extra pics to try to sell more
at session end, they put up pics & we had to choose quickly between pic 1 & 2, over & over

suddenly I had to walk away & let husband make rest of pic decisions
my brain literally shut down

[Boat Babe]

Decision making, like so much else, is inextricably in linked to our feelings. I saw part of a documentary in which a woman who had had brain damage found her decision making capabilities totally wiped out. The woman was fine in many ways, speaking coherently of her problem and her life. The brain damage had somehow disconnected decision making from feelings, leaving her utterly incapable of choosing between two different bags of potatoes in a supermarket. 

So our poor, traumatised brains are surely going to struggle, perhaps with too much feeling, to make decisions.  This makes the case for self care and healing that bit more urgent.

We all need to put our oxygen masks on first. Then we can start to be well and be a force for good in this world.

[Call Me Cordelia]

What you said kind of boils down to something similar. The emotional stain of all those dismal outcomes is just baked into every decision for you. You can get at emotions, but only bad ones. If everything is equally bad it's exactly the same trap. No whiff of positive emotion to tie to any outcome that could differentiate it makes them all equally bad.

That's also probably self-reinforcing. If every decision you make leaves you feeling bad, then you just learn that deciding feels bad. Feeling bad makes the rest of your brain want to lock out the emotional center that could actually help it.

I think you hit the nail on the head - this is exactly why I get stuck in the logical loop.  There are seldom positive emotions attached to decision making for me, and it's a positive (i.e., self-reinforcing) cycle.

When things go well, I don't feel satisfaction, pride, success, or optimism.  It doesn't enhance my confidence.  I almost see it as a "near miss" and "didn't we get lucky that wasn't a disaster."  All I feel is relief.  I have a hard time taking any credit for positive outcomes of my decisions.  I think this comes from having a PD parent who's behaviour was so chaotic.

It's not so much that I can't access my "emotional data," as you put it, as it is that I've accumulated no positive emotional data.

Thank you so much for sharing your own experiences and insight.  I'm thinking now that I need to consciously note what decisions I made, and the variables that my decisions interacted with to create positive outcomes.

Yes, I feel the same way most of the time! There have been a few decisions that have worked out well, and I am making progress, but for much of my life the best feeling I had was, "Well that wasn't a TOTAL disaster." Even with things that objectively were a success. I made the dean's list. Thank goodness I didn't fail and can show my face at home over Christmas break. That sort of thing. Or overall success had a couple of aspects that could have gone better and that's what I focus on. Because that's exactly what I learned from my parents. The best I could expect from them was neutral, and I'd internalized that self-regard. Life with PDs is more like a game of Tetris, where you don't ever win, it just gets worse and worse and you fight it off until you inevitably succumb or quit.

I'm feeling the decision making paralysis right now big time. We have a lot of decisions to make with regard to our children's education and it all feels so monumental.

[Hopeful Spine]

When things go well, I don't feel satisfaction, pride, success, or optimism.  It doesn't enhance my confidence.  I almost see it as a "near miss" and "didn't we get lucky that wasn't a disaster."  All I feel is relief.  I have a hard time taking any credit for positive outcomes of my decisions.  I think this comes from having a PD parent who's behaviour was so chaotic.
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I so identify with this.  All I feel is relief when the decision has been made and I learn if I've done well or not.  It is the smaller things I have more difficulty with.  Picking out shoes, paint colors, restaurant.  If I'm in the drivers seat and I need to get from point A to B and there are two options - I stress.  I want to do the "right" thing.  Much like the example of the soda decision - I often have regret after making my choice.

As a person working in a creative field - if I'm not feeling emotionally "strong" I cannot create.  Even though I have plenty of supplies, plenty of ideas, I procrastinate and talk myself out of moving forward.  Nothing gets done.  I don't want to mess up a piece of paper.  I don't want to waste time if I don't KNOW that a painted room is going to look great.  I want to be able to wear those shoes forever so I MUST pick the right thing.  Obviously these though processes are holding me back.

My parents were very frugal people and you HAD to make the right choice.  You'd be wearing that winter coat for at least 3 years.  But you had to make the smartest choice within the financial parameters.  You can't purchase the coat you really LOVE.  Too expensive.  You could pick the multicolor coat that you like - it's in the budget and would match a lot of your clothes but you NEED to be able to wear it to school, after school activities, church, formal events.  Are you wanting to wear the quirky coat when trying to look cool in a new place with your friends?  For some reason you mom seems to think this coat is a stupid move.  There are some more basic coats but they look like mom coats.  Not cool for school or the bus.  So you have to pick from maybe the burgundy coat, the brown coat, the red coat.  And NONE of them are what you want to wear every day of every winter for the next 3 years.  So you do your best.  And suddenly, instead of being excited to get a new coat, you feel incredibly stressed and wonder why all your friends have a couple coats in their closet and they just get to pick the one that works for that day. 

And it was like that with most everything.  I tend to look at the fun and fabulous and purchase the basic and classic.  I have less guilt that way.  If I am looking for a dress for an joyful event and I have to pick between a sensible dress that serves the purpose and looks okay or the super fun dress that looks amazing on me - I pick the one that will work for the event as well as maybe a job interview or a funeral.

I'm glad I stumbled across your post.  There is some good support here.  I'm going to start buying two sodas.  I'm going to purchase a back up paid of shoes.  I'm going to cut myself some slack and remind myself that I CAN do whatever I want.

[SparkStillLit]

I think this is the thing I do where I hear updh's voice in my head.
I jumped out of the frying pan (FOO) and into the fire (marriage to a PD). I didn't understand that it wasn't "just how things are". I was raised not to make decisions. I frequently went in the face of that, but it came at great cost. GCBro is extremely passive and still doesn't really "make decisions".
Now I hear all these catastrophic warnings and dire predictions in my head (how updh operates) when I do for myself. I have been getting better at, and it's kind of fun to, scream at them to shut up. It's kind of cathartic, because I can NEVER scream at updh. I mean, that's just not appropriate anyway. These dumb catastrophies NEVER happen, and if something does run amiss, it's easily dealt with.
I'm not a stupid woman, and I do have resources.

[Wolf]

TW: mention of physical violence and intimidation.  Relevant paragraph noted so you can skip it.

I've had to make a lot of big decisions at work the past couple months.  Even more little ones. Constantly.  Huge gaps in senior level leadership on our team, so I'm mucking my way through things way beyond my experience level.  In the midst of a lockdown, when I'm experiencing a lot of disconnection and isolation, and am still in a relatively  new job.

I'm paralyzed over a lot of the decisions I make - I really struggle as if every course of action is just a pathway to disaster.  I can't ever just make a decision and go with it without overthinking, and I fear it's making me slow and ineffective at work.

It clicked why, the other day.  I was so often caught in truly dangerous situations, where uNPDf created what seemed like (and I still believe were) life and death situations.  Action or inaction could have really dismal consequences.  there was just no winning.

TW for this next paragraph (no graphic details).
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I think this goes back to one of the the most terrifying conflicts my sister and uNPDf ever had narcissistic abusive rages our uNPDf ever had.  I'll skip the details but, sitting in the next room listening, things suddenly went dead silent and I thought my sister might be dead.  I had been planning on stabbing my father if he got violent and it seemed like it was suddenly too late.  No one was actually hurt and he suddenly calmed (but was still his narcissist self, of course).
TW over
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I've mentioned this once to one therapist - we got to how to forgive myself for not physically intervening ( I was also like...12 and 70lb thinking I'd take on a 180lb man).  We didn't get into how this wired my brain to believe that every decision is a bad decision and will lead to destruction and failure.  I think between this, my other post, and another post I could write, I have my next 3-4 sessions planned.  Jeez louise.

I have the exact same problem with indecisiveness and extreme overthinking which is likely caused by my upbringing as well. I'm not sure how to fix it. When I get drunk, it goes away completely and becomes the opposite extreme of not thinking at all and becoming really impulsive.

[BeautifulCrazy]

We have a new mantra around our house that helps with this.

I never fail. I learn, or I win.

[Wilderhearts]

Yes, I feel the same way most of the time! There have been a few decisions that have worked out well, and I am making progress, but for much of my life the best feeling I had was, "Well that wasn't a TOTAL disaster." Even with things that objectively were a success. I made the dean's list. Thank goodness I didn't fail ....Life with PDs is more like a game of Tetris, where you don't ever win, it just gets worse and worse and you fight it off until you inevitably succumb or quit.

I think this is the product of living in a constant double-bind.  There is never any winning - they'll find a "reason" and a way to punish you anyways.  I'm trying to pull myself out of that pattern a little and recognize the things I did differently, or that potentially contributed to something going well.  Of course, just like you said, Cordelia, I'm focused on the things that could have gone better.  Maybe an exercise better done with the support of my T.

Hopeful Spine, I see the ways our PD'd parents constantly undermined our intuition - especially when it came to things that could give us joy.  I think I'm generally OK when it comes to decisions that primarily affect me, although having lived with a pwOCPD, I unfortunately hear her criticisms about the most irrelevant household things, even though it's been 4 years without her around.  My T has been getting me to tune into my gut instincts a little more.  I'm still having trouble trusting it when it comes to work, but picking out different colours of sheets I can tell myself "it doesn't really matter," and know it's true, so that I can act on it even if it still makes me anxious.  Like Sparks mentioned, catastrophizing is a way that pwPDs undermine our intuition to maintain control.

Yes, BC, exactly.  Knowing it mentally and accepting it are still two different things for me.