How to Get Unstuck from Decision Paralysis as a Highly Sensitive Person and Avoid Overwhelm

 By the end of this episode, you’ll discover why decision paralysis happens for HSPs and how to move through it without overwhelm, pressure, or regret.

Welcome to Stress Management for highly Sensitive People. A podcast helping HSPs avoid overwhelm. Eliminate stress and find true inner freedom. I’m your host, Todd Smith, a facilitator of the work of Byron Katie, A way to question and reduce stressful thoughts, and you guessed it. I’m a highly sensitive person myself.

In this episode, you’ll discover the three hidden reasons. Highly sensitive people struggle with decision paralysis. How to gently get unstuck using tools like the three column clarifier and calm state decision making, and five practical ways to reduce decision overwhelm before it even starts. Have you ever spent hours or days or even years agonizing over a decision running through every possible outcome and still feeling unsure?

If so, you’re not alone. As highly sensitive people, we can fall into this trap. And I know myself, I’ve done this many times. So why do we as HSPs get stuck in decision paralysis? There are gonna be several reasons for this. The first is a fear of negative outcomes. We as highly sensitive people are sensitive to negativity and things not going the way.

We would like them to. And other people’s negative emotions not getting what we want, we can fall into that because we’re so susceptible, this differential susceptibility that we often talk about with HSPs, where in good environments we do really well in tough environments. We do less well than other people do.

So we naturally have this fear of a negative outcome because the chances of us going down and not having a good experience are high. And so it’s natural for us to want to avoid that. And for that reason we tend towards perfectionism. We tend towards looking for at our decision making very carefully to try to avoid that.

Now, on the one side, this is a really good thing because it allows us to see into things to see into the future. To make critical decisions and weigh a lot of consequences very carefully, and that’s our strength as highly sensitive people. But it can also tie us in knots when we’re dealing with complex issues and we’re not really clear about.

What the right decision would be. So fear of negative outcomes is something I think everyone deals with when they’re making decisions. We wanna make the right decision. We don’t wanna make the wrong decision. And what that means is we want to have a positive outcome and not a negative outcome. And what that really means is we want to have a positive experience, like internal experience is really what we’re all.

You know what we all really care about. And so we want to have a positive experience. We don’t want to have a negative experience. So even small decisions can feel really weighty when you’ve got all this pressure almost without knowing it, of trying to make sure that it’s the best possible outcome and trying to avoid something negative.

Another reason, which is very similar to this, of why we get stuck in per decision paralysis. Is the desire to please and to avoid conflict. So there’s an outcome which we could say is negative, but then there’s the interpersonal and negative outcome. Like when somebody gets mad at us or somebody gets upset with what we did, or we get criticized as a result of making a decision.

These are things that can really get to us as HSPs and we try to avoid them and it’s fine to try to avoid them. It’s just that, notice how this makes it harder to make a decision because there’s this pressure. Better not do it wrong when you’re, when you can’t, when you’re afraid of doing it wrong.

Decision making becomes very stressful. If there’s a way to find that making the right decision and making the wrong decision are both equally okay from a broader perspective, it takes the pressure off of making decisions. This is one of the ways that we can get more comfortable with making decisions without worrying about these negative consequences as much.

But it’s a natural part of decision making, and it certainly comes into play with HSPs because of our, the way we pay attention to detail. Another reason why we get stuck in decision paralysis is that we tend to look very closely at all the details. That idea of making a list of pros and cons we’re, we do that in spades.

We can make a list of pros and cons, and then we can go deeper and find the finer versions of those pros and cons, and we can. It, in the end, it can end up being a stalemate because it’s never done. Oh, I haven’t thought about that. Oh, wait a minute. This should be a factor as well. And then you weigh them against each other.

And my goodness, this is what they say, analysis paralysis. And it happens with HSPs very easily when we’re trying to make decisions from our intellect, from our reasoning which is an important part of making decisions. But it still is it’s difficult because it’s infinite. You can just keep parsing and parsing, and it can become d very difficult to come up with a final decision.

In my experience, decisions are actually made from the heart. They’re not made from the intellect. Intellect is there to inform and to give lots of of knowledge and information, but. It’s something inside that says, yeah, I’d like to go this way, or, no, I’d like to go this way. That’s when I get in touch with that.

That’s when decisions start becoming easier. So let’s look at how to get unstuck. When you get into decision paralysis. One thing that can help is to shift the goal from trying to make the right choice, which is what we normally try to do. To trying to make an aligned choice. In other words, instead of asking what’s the best decision I can make, it’s more like what feels most true to me right now?

And this can honor where we’re at, which is maybe not as far down the road as we may want to put ourselves, but it can honor our current. Values, our current level of energy, our current sit situations and circumstances, our current level of knowledge and understanding about something. And if we are making or looking for an aligned choice, that’s a much more doable kind of thing than trying to make this absolute right choice.

And normally what happens to me is I’ll start by trying something and this is my best guess. Okay, this is my best. Choice, given where I’m at and what feels right to me, given the knowledge that I have, and then I’ll make that decision. And then with time, I may learn that there’s an even better choice and I may refine that decision and there may be even better.

And it’s a constant process of choosing. And then re, we tend to get locked into this idea that there’s one chance I have to make this decision right now. If I don’t make it the right one, now I’m stuck with that for life. Now, there may be a few decisions that is true about, but most decisions tend to be like, okay, let’s get going in the right direction, and then let’s adjust.

And then adjust and adjust. So aligning with myself where I am right now will get me at least moving, and then we can see where we go from there. Another thing that can help. If you get stuck with a decision paralysis is to create a pause for yourself without any pressure. When I’m trying to make a decision under pressure, it leads to more stress, and when my brain gets stressed or my emotions get stressed, my creativity goes down.

My ability to see clearly goes down. My, my cognitive ability fails in a way because I’m in this stress reaction. I’m pulling back. I’m under duress. So I don’t see things as clearly, I make more rash decisions and it, it’s just not conducive to looking deeply at things. So by taking a pause and backing off of the pressure and just saying, you know what, I don’t have to do this right now.

What if I take a break from this even? It’s like a five or 10 minute break or a few hours break, or if you have the luxury, a day break or a few days break. This can give you a chance to just not think about it. And what I find happens is my subconscious just keeps working on it and with without any pressure.

And when I come back to making the decision, it’s like almost like it, it comes together, it becomes clear. So time giving myself time is probably my biggest asset when it comes to making decisions. My biggest tool when I have something important to decide on, I will pose it as a question to myself like what is the, what would be a good direction to go in here?

And it’s this open-ended question, and I may brainstorm in it for a little while, and then I leave it and I will go away work on other things, go take care of my life, and then give it a day. Give it a two days, give it a three days as long as I need. Or as long as I have and then see what happens.

And I’ll come back and check on it every once in a while. Is there a decision read ready yet? Oh no, not yet. And then it’s amazing what comes out of that without the pressure and if necessary, I actually ask for more time just if it’s possible so that I can allow that to happen within myself.

Another tool that you can use to get unstuck when you’re dealing with decision paralysis is a fun little thing, A journaling tool called the three Column Clarifier. And basically in column one, you write what I’m afraid of. If I choose X, you know what I’m afraid of. If I choose X is, and you write it down.

And then column two is what I’m hoping for if I choose x and. Then you write that down and then what I know down deep, what, which is asking yourself for something outside of the box. What is the, what is my truth? What is what feels right? Getting more in touch with the feeling, not just with the intellectual values of it.

So there’s something you can play with, you can use other variations of this, but the idea is to look at your fears, write them down. Look at your desires, your hopes, write them down and look at what you know down deep and write that down, and then get that all on the page instead of just this list of pros and cons.

So now let’s turn to tips for avoiding future overwhelm when deciding on something and how to avoid this paralysis in the future, one thing that can help is to simplify low stake decisions. That means there’s a lot of clutter that can be created in our minds if we’re making little decisions about meals and clothing and scheduling all the time.

That eats up our bandwidth for making decisions about things that truly matter. So taking some of those off of our plate, either by by giving that responsibility to someone else or by putting it into a routine so that it’s just. No, I’m going to be wearing this today and I know this is the next thing I’m gonna be eating.

Like those things can free up bandwidth for other decisions that we make later. Another thing that can help to prevent decision paralysis is to create a kind of rule for yourself where it’s I make decisions in a calm state only. And the big decisions. And so that means when I’m grounded, when I’m rested, when I’m in a calm state, not when I’m anxious or overstimulated.

And this gives again, us the chance to take more time with decision making and to give ourselves the chance to let things percolate and then have answers come up from deep within us rather than pushing ourselves to some, meet some exterior. Need or some time deadline that we put on ourselves.

Another thing that can help with preventing paralysis is to limit your input from others about making a decision. We as HSPs resonate with other people and we can end up getting really understanding other people’s perspectives very easily. It can sometimes blur our own perspectives. It’s great to have one or two trusted people to consult with about something, but too much input can actually cause us to get overwhelmed.

’cause now we’re not only trying to decide, but we’re also trying to balance the feelings of everybody that we are consulting with. And we’re trying to look, all, there’s a thousand different things we’re trying to balance. The decision is getting harder rather than easier. Ultimately, like I said.

It’s me getting in touch with my own heart, is where the decision actually makes is made. And so if I can just close the doors a little bit and look inward, that is often where the clarity comes most, most predominantly from the inside. And then finally, one other thing that can help you prevent getting overwhelmed by making decisions is to try a.

Temporary. Yes. Or a provisional no. And give yourself permission to test, drive a decision with an option to change. So I’ll try this for two weeks and then reassess. This takes a lot of pressure off and it can make you feel like, oh, okay, I’m just going to actually see, instead of having to know in advance as highly sensitive people.

We are really good at knowing in advance. But, there’s no substitute for actual experience and we can’t really know everything in advance. So having this little testing period can be a great way to not only make better decisions based on experience, based on data in a way, but it also takes this pressure off and we can just try it and say, okay we’ll see.

In this episode, we looked at the three hidden reasons. Highly sensitive people struggle with decision paralysis. We saw that one of them is the fear of negative outcomes. Another is the desire to please or avoid conflict, and the third is overprocessing. Every option, just being aware of these can make a big difference because when you catch yourself getting caught in that, then you can back out a little bit.

And as always, I always love taking these kinds of situations to inner inquiry where I can actually question my. My fears and see if I can get a little wiggle room there instead of being completely driven by them. We also looked at how to gently get unstuck using tools like the three column clarifier and calm state decision making.

And it just is a matter of playing with other ways of making decisions and not just thinking I’ve gotta make the decision. But thinking about giving yourself time, think about what’s, deep down thinking about making an aligned choice instead of just making a right choice. And these can often loosen the pressure of being trying to make the perfect decision.

And then finally, we looked at five practical ways to reduce decision overwhelm before it even starts. And we saw that some of those are. Simplifying low stake decisions, everyday decisions. Take them off your plate if you can. Make it a routine or give it to someone else. Create a calm state only rule where you just make big decisions when you’re in a calm place.

Limit input from others to avoid overwhelm and try a temporary yes or a provisional no so that you don’t have to make the perfect decision from the get go. So these are just a few ideas to play with. I hope you enjoy them, and I look forward to another episode soon. In the meantime, have a great rest of your day