Choice Overload

Choice Overload

Feeling the fear and doing it anyway is easy when our choices are limited and we’re in survival mode. Our bodies are intimately familiar with the “fight or flight” response when it comes to meeting our basic needs, so making choices to help us survive is relatively intuitive. In our “choice overload” society, however, we still feel fears and stress, but because our basic needs are met, the fears are subtler and the answers are less obvious.

In my personal life, there were times when I just needed to figure out how to survive! This made decision-making simple. I felt the fear, and I did it anyway. I needed to eat, pay bills, and sleep somewhere. So, I cleaned toilets. I changed exploding diapers. I declined any social engagement that would cost money, and every week, I got stale bread for free from the church on the corner.

Those decisions were a piece of cake in comparison to the times in my life when I was choosing between several good options ahead of me, or when I was trying figure out a new path that would make me happy and fulfilled. Thriving can be more challenging than surviving, and I believe it’s because the fears aren’t as obvious. And because the fears aren’t as obvious, the solutions and courses of action aren’t as clear.

Fear Sabotages Intuition

Decision-making can be incredibly stressful in our choice-overload society. We want to make the right choices, and yet subtle fears or negative thought patterns can sabotage our intuition. While tools like pros/cons charts can be useful, it may be more important to look within. We might discover that there’s a whacky fear (or ten) totally unrelated to our current dilemma that is making decision-making difficult. Without identifying the fear, it’s hard to “feel it and do it anyway.”

After struggling this past fall with motivation and a sense of feeling overwhelmed with options and responsibilities, I only very recently regained a sense of optimism, passion, and excitement about my career path and goals. As I reflect, there were a few very specific things that were helpful to me.

First was reading a book called “Feeling Good” by David D. Burns. This book helped me slow down my thoughts and notice the negative thought patterns, or “cognitive distortions,” that were unknowingly triggering fears within me.

Once I identified these fears, I noticed how my body was physically responding. I would become tense, and my shoulders would rise and narrow. These subtle fears and negative thought patterns were causing me to have a stress response, not unlike the obvious “fight or flight” response we all experience in survival situations.

Talking Back

Once I identified what these fears were, I journaled about them. Sometimes I even talked back to the negative thoughts – out loud, like a crazy person, of course! After repeating these action steps again and again, decision-making suddenly became significantly easier. By simply identifying the underlying fears and negative thought patterns that were causing my stress response, I could determine the course of action that was right for me. Suddenly my decisions felt much more intuitive, and my body felt much more relaxed.

So, the next time you feel your shoulders rising, your stomach turning into knots, or your pulse quickening, I encourage you to pause, reflect, and observe if you’re experiencing any of the cognitive errors below. With time and persistence, you may notice patterns of thought that are contributing to subtle fears. Once you identify these fears and talk back to them, you’ll see a return of easy, intuitive decision-making.

Cognitive Distortions:
from https://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/

1. Filtering.
We take the negative details and magnify them while filtering out all positive aspects of a situation. For instance, a person may pick out a single, unpleasant detail and dwell on it exclusively so that their vision of reality becomes darkened or distorted.

2. Polarized Thinking (or “Black and White” Thinking).
In polarized thinking, things are either “black-or-white.” We have to be perfect or we’re a failure — there is no middle ground. You place people or situations in “either/or” categories, with no shades of gray or allowing for the complexity of most people and situations. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

3. Overgeneralization.
In this cognitive distortion, we come to a general conclusion based on a single incident or a single piece of evidence. If something bad happens only once, we expect it to happen over and over again. A person may see a single, unpleasant event as part of a never-ending pattern of defeat.

4. Jumping to Conclusions.
Without individuals saying so, we know what they are feeling and why they act the way they do. In particular, we are able to determine how people are feeling toward us.
For example, a person may conclude that someone is reacting negatively toward them but doesn’t actually bother to find out if they are correct. Another example is a person may anticipate that things will turn out badly, and will feel convinced that their prediction is already an established fact.

5. Catastrophizing.
We expect disaster to strike, no matter what. This is also referred to as “magnifying or minimizing.” We hear about a problem and use what if questions (e.g., “What if tragedy strikes?” “What if it happens to me?”).
For example, a person might exaggerate the importance of insignificant events (such as their mistake, or someone else’s achievement). Or they may inappropriately shrink the magnitude of significant events until they appear tiny (for example, a person’s own desirable qualities or someone else’s imperfections).

6. Personalization.
Personalization is a distortion where a person believes that everything others do or say is some kind of direct, personal reaction to the person. We also compare ourselves to others trying to determine who is smarter, better looking, etc.
A person engaging in personalization may also see themselves as the cause of some unhealthy external event that they were not responsible for. For example, “We were late to the dinner party and caused the hostess to overcook the meal. If I had only pushed my husband to leave on time, this wouldn’t have happened.”

7. Control Fallacies.
If we feel externally controlled, we see ourselves as helpless a victim of fate. For example, “I can’t help it if the quality of the work is poor, my boss demanded I work overtime on it.” The fallacy of internal control has us assuming responsibility for the pain and happiness of everyone around us. For example, “Why aren’t you happy? Is it because of something I did?”

8. Fallacy of Fairness.
We feel resentful because we think we know what is fair, but other people won’t agree with us. As our parents tell us when we’re growing up and something doesn’t go our way, “Life isn’t always fair.” People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel badly and negative because of it. Because life isn’t “fair” — things will not always work out in your favor, even when you think they should.

9. Blaming.
We hold other people responsible for our pain, or take the other track and blame ourselves for every problem. For example, “Stop making me feel bad about myself!” Nobody can “make” us feel any particular way — only we have control over our own emotions and emotional reactions.

10. Shoulds.
We have a list of ironclad rules about how others and we should behave. People who break the rules make us angry, and we feel guilty when we violate these rules. A person may often believe they are trying to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if they have to be punished before they can do anything.
For example, “I really should exercise. I shouldn’t be so lazy.” Musts and oughtsare also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When a person directs should statements toward others, they often feel anger, frustration and resentment.

11. Emotional Reasoning.
We believe that what we feel must be true automatically. If we feel stupid and boring, then we must be stupid and boring. You assume that your unhealthy emotions reflect the way things really are — “I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

12. Fallacy of Change.
We expect that other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.

13. Global Labeling.
We generalize one or two qualities into a negative global judgment. These are extreme forms of generalizing, and are also referred to as “labeling” and “mislabeling.” Instead of describing an error in context of a specific situation, a person will attach an unhealthy label to themselves.
For example, they may say, “I’m a loser” in a situation where they failed at a specific task. When someone else’s behavior rubs a person the wrong way, they may attach an unhealthy label to him, such as “He’s a real jerk.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded. For example, instead of saying someone drops her children off at daycare every day, a person who is mislabeling might say that “she abandons her children to strangers.”

14. Always Being Right.
We are continually on trial to prove that our opinions and actions are correct. Being wrong is unthinkable and we will go to any length to demonstrate our rightness. For example, “I don’t care how badly arguing with me makes you feel, I’m going to win this argument no matter what because I’m right.” Being right often is more important than the feelings of others around a person who engages in this cognitive distortion, even loved ones.

15. Heaven’s Reward Fallacy.
We expect our sacrifice and self-denial to pay off, as if someone is keeping score. We feel bitter when the reward doesn’t come.