anxiety;
daily dullness;
obsessive thoughts;
nightmare stress
When I had to choose between places to study for university I felt mentally and physically stuck for months. It was a period of a lot of back-&-forth thoughts, and I found myself ping-ponging between all the options I had open, where I’m able to finally choose one thing but after a while I jump back to the other thing again, and this goes on over and over in loops. My boyfriend and the rest of my family, too, were dragged into the whole ping-ponging game, moving along with me with every decision made or “re-made.” It even got to the point where I finally did make the decision of what school and what city to move to, and I had “officially” updated everyone, but then a few days went by and my brain re-sparked the fearful thoughts again and I regretted what I decided on, so I went backwards to the starting point all over again. Usually when I’m feeling unstable or unsure of a decision I have to make, like in this case, it feels as if my life is turning grey and the people around me can feel it on me as well. It feels like my head is always busy, non-stop, like the game of ping-pong continues on autopilot in the back of my mind and its heavy effects spread to other aspects of my life. Sometimes, the decision anxiety creeps into my dreams and I can’t escape it, when all I want is to just run away and not make any decision at all. So, what I found that ended up helping me the most was going around asking close friends and family (mainly the people who know me best) to assist me in making the decision, where they aimed me to a specific option and I went with what they said, choosing it without looking back, because I trust others more than myself when having to choose something.