Sometimes when the world feels a bit too much, even the simplest decision feels like a massive effort and we can become stuck in inertia.
Just a quiet, persistent stuckness. You sit there, aware of options, aware of time passing, and you are somehow unable to move.
Sylvia Plath captured this perfectly in her novel The Bell Jar:
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which one of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
The decision-making process resembles a courtroom trial. We gather evidence. We build arguments. We try to predict outcomes. We defend our reasoning. That process engages the brain’s default mode network (DMN), the system involved in self-referential thinking, imagining the future, and replaying the past. It constructs narratives about who we are and what our choices mean.
But when our DMN is overactive, it fuels rumination (“What if I choose wrong?”), identity pressure (“What does this say about me?”) and catastrophising (“What if it ruins everything?”). You’re no longer choosing between options. You’re trying to secure a perfect future and protect your entire sense of self. That’s an impossible task.
Your brain is a predictive tool designed to keep you out of danger. If your decision “feels” risky, your brain will do everything it can to protect you, including persuading you not to take that trip, submit that CV or try out for the team.
So, you stall.
In therapy, this often shows up. People don’t just struggle with “bad decisions”; they struggle with avoided decisions. Avoidance has consequences just as real as action. Avoidance, resistance, and not making a decision are, in themselves, decisions. It’s a decision to stay where you are, miss opportunities, and let time, or someone else, make the decision for you.
Maybe it helps to approach it differently. Instead of “I need to make the right decision”, it becomes “I’m just going to choose”. A or B. Left or right, it doesn’t matter. When you shift from deciding to choosing, you move activity out of the overthinking-heavy DMN and into more action-oriented brain networks. You stop simulating life and start living it.
The belief that there is a single perfect choice and that your task is to find it often leads to paralysis. The pressure to “get it right” is often unnecessary. If it doesn’t work out, choose something different. The point is that you have moved forward, perhaps deepened your insight, and learned something. Prioritise action over certainty, then evaluate, then adjust if necessary. Expect discomfort with uncertainty; it won’t disappear, but it will become more manageable as you flex those decision-making muscles. This allows your brain to start learning: I don’t need to solve everything in advance.
So, if you’re sitting under your own version of that fig tree, staring at possibilities that feel too important to risk, don’t decide. Just choose.
And have the goddam fig!
Leave a Reply