5 Tips for Decision-Making Anxiety Inspired by ‘Alice in Wonderland’

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It's estimated that the average adult makes around 35,000 decisions each day—over a whopping 12 million decisions per year. Thankfully, the majority of these decisions are believed to be subconscious, saving us from neurological overload. But the rest of those decisions require conscious effort, which many may find depleting and anxiety-producing.

Understanding how you make decisions may reveal clues to better managing your anxiety. Whether your anxiety is situational or chronic, consider these Alice in Wonderland-inspired tips before you trip down another anxiety-provoking rabbit hole.

Step One: Acknowledge Your Distorted Reality

The etymology of the word decide practically oozes anxiety. From the Latin word decider, our modern use combines two ancient words: de, meaning “off,” and caedere, meaning “to cut, strike, or kill.” Yikes! It’s no wonder that deciding on something strikes fear into us like the Queen of Hearts.

Like visiting Wonderland, decision-making anxiety distorts our reality, so recognizing when we’re “in it” helps us to better orient ourselves. We can identify this anxiety through obvious changes in physiology, including elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, and changes in appetite, just to name a few. Equally indicative but often harder to recognize are the mental manifestations of anxiety, among them insomnia, memory loss, and brain fog. If stress is chronic or anxiety is triggered by a major life event, grief can further exacerbate anxiety by impeding rational thinking, clouding judgment, and hindering decision-making abilities. Recognizing your decision-making anxiety is key, but navigating out of decision-making anxiety requires an ironic next step: You must decide to do so.

Step Two: Get Curious

Though neuroscience is only beginning to study decision-making, social scientists have been researching the topic for decades. While insights continue to emerge, the General Decision-Making Style framework introduced by Susanne G. Scott and Reginald A. Bruce in 1995 remains widely accepted. As you ponder the five styles identified, adopt your inner Alice and try contemplating your behavior with a sense of curiosity.

• Rational: Individuals with this style are methodical and analytical, typically gathering and weighing all available information before making a decision. They consider potential risks and consequences and follow logical steps in thought to arrive at a well-supported conclusion.

• Intuitive: People with this style rely heavily on gut feelings and hunches, trusting their instincts. They may make quick decisions based on a “feeling.”

• Dependent: Reliant on advice or approval from others, those with a dependent style value the opinions of those they trust and feel more comfortable delegating or collaborating on a decision.

• Avoidant: People with this style tend to procrastinate or delay decisions as long as possible. Rooted in fear of making the wrong choice, they may reject responsibility or fail to decide altogether.

• Spontaneous: Impulsive and carefree, individuals with this style make decisions quickly and without cause, reason, or contemplation.

Perhaps you delay making decisions, stuck in the mental quicksand of analysis paralysis. Or maybe you avoid deciding altogether, telling yourself you’ll get to it later. (Spoiler alert: Not deciding is a decision.) You may solicit opinions, flip a coin, or trust your gut. Regardless of your tendencies, a closer look is needed.

Step Three: Get Curiouser

If you tend toward a rational style, congratulations! You’re probably able to manage decision-making anxiety fairly well (and I’m happy for you, really).

For the rest of us, considering the consequences of our primary style can help us navigate our way out of decision-making anxiety. For example, if you are dependent or avoidant, these styles can impede self-efficacy and inhibit self-trust. As a result, worry simmers over the lifespan of the decision, fostering more self-doubt, compounding existing anxiety, and ultimately perpetuating the cycle.

Though the seemingly effortless and confident style of intuitive and spontaneous deciders may appear attractive, they also induce anxiety, just in a different way. Unlike their crowd-sourcing or decision-delayed counterparts, intuitive and spontaneous deciders act impulsively. Sure, they bypass the simmer, but that doesn’t mean they don’t experience anxiety. That’s because by deciding from an information deficit, and without considering options or consequences, intuitive and spontaneous deciders experience their anxiety later. It’s during post-decision rumination that the consequences of their swift decisions manifest. Quick like their decision, anxiety often combusts at once and with the intensity of a fully-formed inferno.

Like characteristics of your personality, styles aren’t exclusive, so you may identify with more than one. For example, you may make professional decisions rationally but are avoidant of relationship-related decisions. Styles may also present as a combination (e.g. primarily intuitive with a splash of avoidant).

If you’re unsure how you align, notice when you experience decision-making anxiety. If it is more noticeable before you decide, your style is likely dependent or avoidant, whereas anxiety that blooms most intensely after a decision indicates intuitive or spontaneous styles.

Step Four: Make Sense Out of the Nonsensical

Learning about ourselves can be as frustrating as it is beneficial. This may be especially obvious when struggling to manage decision-making anxiety.

To help lessen the madness, try writing about it. Research by psychologist James W. Pennebaker suggests that free-form writing for just minutes a day for several consecutive days can yield tremendous health benefits, including improved memory, enhanced critical thinking, greater creativity, and strengthened verbal acuity. But even more, Pennebaker’s research shows that expressive writing is an effective tool for managing stress and anxiety.

How to practice free-form writing: Focus on a decision you recently made (or a decision that currently requires your attention) and examine the feelings that come up. Without judgment, allow yourself to freely write about the decision for 15-20 minutes. Explore the decision from various angles, writing honestly. Continue this exercise for four or five consecutive days and then review your writings. Often, this process of reflection uncovers deeper meanings to our decision-making anxiety and reveals patterns previously obscured.

Step Five: Wake Up

While there is no one cure for anxiety, bringing awareness to your environment and focus to your experience can help ease the angst. With guidance and patience (and, perhaps, help from a trusted therapist), changing your decision-making style is possible. Popular therapeutic modalities like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) have proven to be effective in transforming negative thought patterns and healing emotional distress, respectively. Over time, consistent practice can strengthen self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-trust.

The next time you’re threatened with another rabbit hole of decision-making anxiety, pause to name what you’re experiencing. After acknowledging what you are experiencing, get curious about your decision-making style, and then get curiouser about the consequences. Doing so will prepare you to then leverage the timeless tool of expressive writing more fully. Finally, set an intention to bend reality on your terms. With time and trusted guidance, you can move toward a rational, anxiety-reducing decision style, and maybe even leave such rabbit holes feeling like a distant dream.

Learn how to use alchemy to transform anxiety into healing.