2008

Decision-making can be fraught with difficulties. This article discusses how those difficulties centre on the premise that all decisions and the decision making style we develop, involve relational issues that begin in early childhood. The difference between I want and I should is that ‘I should’ is an internalization of an outside force. So the struggle becomes what I want and what someone else might want. In this way it makes sense when someone agonizes over a seemingly simple decision such as what shirt to put on in the morning. The consequences to any decision can be negative to oneself or others in our lives.

The various styles of decision making reflect how we live our lives and the coping strategies we have developed. We can continue unconsciously re-enacting early coping strategies that may not be working for us now and do not support us towards a fulfilling life.  In the case of decision-making these can include; having to get things ‘right’, wanting guarantees about outcome, leaving the decisions to other people, impulsively making decisions when it can not be avoided any longer, trying to please everyone, or gathering of endless information before making a decision. These ways of making decisions (or not) contain fears. Decisions are brutal on some level because they reject as well as embrace options. So fear of disappointing others, fear of taking responsibility, or not wanting to experience the loss of the options we do not choose, can immobilize us when we are considering decisions.  Within these fears lay the memories of experiences that have informed this style of decision-making. Therapy provides the space to explore your decisions on many levels and one client’s experience who I will call Tony illustrates some of these processes.

Tony came to me at a time when he had initiated a discussion with his wife about separating. At that time they were still living in their house together and he knew that he could not continue feeling the way he did. For over 20 years of marriage he had questions about being there. He reported many times how it all looked good on paper and it was very pleasant to be in his marriage, him and his wife were great friends and they had never fought, they really worked well together. So what was not good? He felt no passion for her, and on examination never really had. He didn’t desire to be around her other than in a family sense where they had lots of great times with their children and friends. He had been drawn to her because her family was so different from his where everyone got along and he wanted that.  His own family he described as chaotic and crazy and he resisted any in-depth exploration of these experiences. As time went on it became apparent that he had become very skilled at controlling unpleasant feelings, a skill that kept him sane in his family growing up but did not serve him in living passionately. I believe he had given up his passion very early probably when he was an infant.

The beginnings of our life force can be seen in an infants expression of aggression. The first signs occur when we can kick, grab and bite. It is our sense of aliveness. When parents react with anger to these natural signs of life we can imagine how terrifying this can feel to an infant who quickly learns to suppress any form of his own aggression (life force). Being so intimately connected to the mother any anger between parents is experienced towards oneself. For an infant self is mother. It is evident from what Tony could remember of his family home that it was an atmosphere of hostility and abuse between the parents. It never became clear what abuse he had experienced directly from them. During a session when Tony did talk about experiences that he could remember, it was evident that he had been well practiced in removing himself and observing rather than participating in life. He described the world he saw in such a way that I imagined a scared boy observing his parents abuse and developing a keen analysis to figure out how to keep everyone calm. I also experienced his contempt and shame regarding his parent’s behaviour that I believe was reflected in a fear of his own aggression. How he had lived his life points to these experiences.

He had been avoiding conflict and hostility both in others and within himself. He had developed a way of controlling those around him by making everything ‘pleasant’ when around him and resisting in depth discussions into uncomfortable subjects, I found it easy to go along with this and came to understand how his wife would have colluded with this way of interacting (he reported that they had never fought). He stayed living in the family home for the first 3-4 months I knew him and then finally moved into his own place but still not giving his wife a clear decision about the relationship being over. For the next five months we sat in this limbo of ambivalence together as he examined both sides.

He would start off most sessions with how he wanted answers from me and how he could so easily go back as there wasn’t anything unpleasant in living with his wife. Both of these statements were expressions of how he wanted to leave but did not want the responsibility of causing anyone harm, if he could he would no longer be married and live separate lives with everyone carrying on as if nothing had happened. His fantasy would be that he would visit and join in family things but have his own life. It was as if he wanted his own life but for no one to notice. This impossibility reflected his internal split between a fear of being noticed and a desire for passion in his life. At this point he was not living his own life, his new place barely had furniture despite the fact that he had the means. The fear of being noticed had won out for most of his life. As Tony focused on the pain of others he also avoided any loss and grief that he experienced.

In having one’s ‘own life’ we inevitably have to deal with times that we can not give others what they want and have to deal with their reactions of disappointment, and vice versa. For Tony the fear of other’s reactions brings up early (and largely unconscious) experiences of his parents hostility and abuse. He did not believe he could survive. When an infant has to cut off their life force because of their caregiver’s anger and hostility, we can assume that it is a survival reaction. It is no wonder that Tony was terrified of anyone being upset with him. He needed to experience as an adult that he could survive other’s ‘aggression’ and they could survive his. He finally told his wife that he wanted to end the marriage and shortly after this left therapy. His struggle to live his life fully and passionately has just begun. Understanding his struggle around this decision brought into awareness his life patterns that developed out of his early experiences.

In having  to face the consequence of our decisions we encounter the characteristics of how we live our lives to avoid re-enactment of past pain. In our decisions in life we inevitably encounter others and the dynamics of our relationships. Decision-making is a rich source of therapeutic material that can access the ways in which our past is interfering with our lives now.