Ask a therapist > Anxiety > What do you do when you feel like you can’t trust yourself to make your own decisions?

What do you do when you feel like you can’t trust yourself to make your own decisions?

I find it so incredibly hard to move forward with making any decisions or doing actually that’s relevant to my life (you get what I mean? Like moving things along) because I’m so entrenched with the anxiety. Anxiety about the decision making process itself. I spend so much time just trying to calm myself down and cope and wrap my head around myself, that I can’t produce any of the action. And I sometimes fear that I destroy myself and my initiatives as collateral damage to this process.
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Asked by Tay
Anxiety
Panic
Worry
Answered
01/31/2023

Thank you for reaching out with a question regarding how you can manage your life with less anxiety. 

You say that it is crippling anxiety which is making life so difficult for you at this time.  The good news is that there is specific therapy to support healing from anxiety, called Cognitive Behavior Therapy(CBT). This alongside a counselor who really listens and hears you can promote effective healing.

One of the ways that CBT helps is by challenging your thinking around the anxious thoughts.

For example;

What is the best that can happen?

What is the worst that can happen?

What is the most likely thing to happen?

With a therapist you can explore this 'real time' around your own specific anxiety or worry.

We can look at all of the potential outcomes and sometimes even if the 'worst' thing happens it may not be as bad as you think.  We would really explore the options and help you to recognize that with time, and challenge you can start to feel less anxious and more accepting.

There are many messages given to us throughout life and some include,'be perfect', 'success is the only option'. These can be debilitating and harmful when given with pressure to get it right every time. These messages are unrealistic to believe in as a life goal. 

Yes, you can succeed but in order to succeed you need to learn from your mistakes.  Everybody makes mistakes.

I wonder why you are feeling anxious about making a mistake?

If this was your best friend what would you say to them?

Starting with challenging the smaller anxieties, then building on this will give you the tools to heal.

It sounds like you have been feeling anxious for such a long time that your amygdala is in overdrive and triggering your threat response inappropriately. Understanding how the chemistry of the brain and how that influences anxiety responses may be helpful for you alongside some brain retraining with CBT and non judgemental support.

It will take time but if you are willing to trust the process and do the work then you can heal. 

I am sending you kind thoughts and hope that you are able to connect with a therapist that you can trust and works well with you towards healing.

Kindest regards

Barbara Lorusso MBACP

(CPCAB, L4, Psychotherapist)