Why you can't make decisions when you don't know what you need.
decision paralysis discussion #3
“What do you want?”
It sounds like such a simple, everyday question. What do you want for dinner? What do you want to do? What would actually help you right now?
For many people, the answers to these questions rise to the surface automatically. They have an internal compass, a steady, instinctive sense of preference, that effortlessly guides their choices.
But sometimes, the answer is sometimes an exhausting “I don’t know.”
It’s easy for the outside world to mistake this for being difficult, stubborn, or hopelessly indecisive even though you know it isn’t a lack of effort, intelligence, or motivation. Decision-making requires information, and sometimes, that information is temporarily locked away where you can’t reach it… And that’s a tough spot to find yourself in.
Most standard advice assumes that decisions start at the moment of choice. We are told to make pros and cons lists, narrow down our options, set a deadline, or just trust our gut. These strategies are not inherently wrong, but they all contain a massive blind spot. They take it for granted that you already have a clear, undisturbed relationship with yourself.
Before you can choose between Option A or Option B, you have to be able to answer a completely different set of questions:
What feels manageable to me right now?
What will cost me energy, and what will give it back?
What feels safe, and what feels completely overwhelming?
When those baseline answers are missing, standard decision-making models completely break down. We try to jump straight from the options to a final choice, skipping an invisible, critical middle stage, meaning checking in with our own internal reality. Without that information, every option can feel equally wrong, equally right, or completely impossible to compare.
Imagine trying to orient yourself when you’ve been completely disconnected from where you are actually standing. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the scenery is or how many pathways are open to you, you cannot choose a direction until you know where you are starting from. So the challenge here isn’t choosing the path. It’s finding the footing first.
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This difficulty rarely happens by accident…
As children, some of you would have received subtle and not-so-subtle messages that your internal experiences are incorrect, inconvenient, or dramatic. To survive, to keep the peace, and to be loved, you learned to pay closer attention to external expectations than to your own bodies.
While this is an incredibly effective survival strategy, it comes at a detrimental cost. After decades of hyper-focusing on everyone else to stay safe, it becomes ridiculously difficult to tune back into your own frequency.
You haven’t lost your preferences. You’ve just learned to mute them.
This disconnection is further complicated by interoception, our biological ability to notice and interpret the physical sensations inside our body. It’s how we recognise hunger, thirst, fatigue, stress, or excitement.
So, for some, this internal communication is inconsistent or delayed. You might not realise you’re hungry until you are suddenly dizzy and starving. You might not notice the creeping sensory overload until you are already crashing into a state of total shutdown.
Because so many daily decisions rely entirely on these quiet physical cues, a delay in the signal makes decision-making feel like frantic guesswork.
Add a stressed or overwhelmed nervous system into the mix, and the challenge multiplies. When we feel safe and regulated, we have access to perspective, nuance, and self-awareness. But when we are carrying the heavy weight of chronic stress or burnout, our brain naturally narrows its focus to survival. It treats even the simplest choices as a potential threat.
You haven’t become incapable. Your system is just carrying a much heavier load than anyone else can see.
This overload creates a frustrating deadlock where every single option feels like a mistake.
Stay home? That feels isolating and guilt-ridden. Go out? That feels completely exhausting. Rest? I should be productive. Try to be productive? I don’t have the capacity.
I can see why some people would see this as paralysing hesitation, however on the inside, it feels like trying to read a book in a language you don’t speak. It’s a traffic jam of competing needs like safety versus connection or productivity versus recovery, yet with no clear internal authority telling you which one should take priority.
In those moments, we try to force an answer through sheer willpower. But what if “I don’t know” is actually vital, honest, and protective information? What if it’s your system’s way of saying that you haven’t had time to process this?
Not knowing is sometimes just evidence that the information hasn’t arrived yet.
If decision-making has always felt like an uphill battle, the solution isn’t to force yourself to become more decisive. The solution is to build a gentler, more curious relationship with your own needs.
It starts with moving away from pressure and moving toward soft curiosity. Asking yourself, without judgement, what drains you, what restores you, and what capacity actually feels like in your skin.
We assume decisions begin when we are handed a menu of choices. But real choices require awareness, awareness requires access and access requires safety. It is incredibly hard to hear what you need when you have spent years disconnecting from yourself just to get through the day.
The next time you find yourself entirely stuck between options, consider the possibility that the problem isn’t the choice in front of you.
On the 14th of July at 7:30pm BST I am hosting a live webinar where we will explore decision paralysis in more depth. Hope you can join me, and if you can’t, all ticket holders will receive access to the recording.
Read about The myth of the small decision & The tragedy of the infinite menu as part of this month’s discussion around decision paralysis.
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