I can become really overwhelmed when I make a decision because I feel like every choice leads to a whole series of events that can unfold and possibly topple down on me if I don’t do everything perfectly–kind of like a machine that has a domino effect or a complex chain reaction. This happened to me not long ago when I had to decide to move to a new city in the middle of a school year, even though my school would remain in another city, while at the same time receiving a surprising job offer that required me to make a pretty quick decision. Everything I had to decide on would affect how my life will look like for at least the upcoming months if not years, and all the fears of these two decisions just kept running in my head non-stop: will I be able to balance out school and work together? Will living far from school while having to work part of the week be practically impossible to do? Will I have to delay my classes for another semester? Will I regret missing out on more time to study at ease and keep up my grades, or miss out on a job opportunity that I might not get again? I honestly felt that I couldn’t handle making both of these big decisions at once, like I didn’t have the tools or the mental power to do it on my own. It just felt that every little thing I would decide on will now be stacked on top of these other big decisions which made me feel even more scared to make a decision at all. I was so afraid that it would result in collapse–either I would collapse from having to deal with the consequences of my decisions or that life itself would collapse around me based on the choices I made–and there’s nothing more paralyzing than the fear that everything will come apart.