Indecisiveness

IIndecisiveness Therapy | Psychologist in Maastricht | English & Greek

When making even small decisions starts to feel unexpectedly difficult

Making decisions is a normal part of everyday life. Some choices are straightforward, while others naturally require time, reflection, and consideration. Indecisiveness becomes more difficult when you find yourself repeatedly questioning your choices, struggling to trust your judgement, or feeling that you need to be completely certain before you can decide.

You may spend a long time weighing different possibilities, asking other people what they think, researching every option, or imagining everything that could go wrong. Even after making a decision, you may continue wondering whether you chose correctly and feel tempted to reconsider it.

Sometimes the difficulty comes from wanting to make the “right” choice. You may worry about making a mistake, disappointing someone, regretting your decision later, or choosing an option that closes the door to something better. When there is no way to know the outcome in advance, the uncertainty itself can become difficult to tolerate.

Indecisiveness can also be connected with perfectionism, anxiety, low self-confidence, fear of failure, or a strong need for reassurance. Therapy can provide a space to understand what makes decisions feel so difficult for you and gradually develop greater trust in your own ability to choose, adapt, and cope with imperfect outcomes.

Does this sound familiar?

You may find yourself spending far longer than you would like on decisions that other people seem to make relatively easily. Choosing what to buy, where to go, what to study, which opportunity to pursue, or even what to eat can become an unexpectedly complicated process because you can see so many possible outcomes.

Perhaps you research everything before deciding. You compare options, read reviews, ask friends or family, search for more information, and keep looking for something that will finally make the answer obvious. But instead of becoming more certain, you sometimes end up feeling even more confused because every option has advantages and disadvantages.

You may also find yourself asking other people what they think before trusting your own judgement. Their opinion might provide temporary reassurance, but once you are alone with the decision again, the uncertainty can return. Even after choosing, you may wonder whether you should have listened to someone else or whether another option would have been better.

Sometimes you avoid making the decision altogether. You may postpone responding to an email, applying for something, ending a relationship, choosing between career options, or committing to a plan because making a choice feels more uncomfortable than remaining undecided.

And when you finally do decide, you may continue revisiting it mentally. You might think about what would have happened if you had chosen differently, look for signs that you made the wrong choice, or worry that you will regret it later.

Understanding indecisiveness

Indecisiveness is not necessarily about not knowing what you want. Sometimes you actually have a preference but struggle to trust it because you are worried about making the wrong choice.

A decision can become particularly difficult when you believe that there is a perfect option that you need to find. Instead of asking which choice is good enough for your circumstances and priorities, you may feel that you need to identify the objectively best decision before you can move forward.

The problem is that many important decisions do not have a guaranteed right answer. You can gather information, consider your options, and think carefully about what matters to you, but you cannot completely eliminate uncertainty.

When certainty becomes a requirement for action, you can end up waiting indefinitely.

This can also explain why more information does not always solve the problem. Research can be useful when you genuinely need information, but if the underlying difficulty is an inability to tolerate uncertainty, another comparison, another opinion, or another hour of thinking may only provide temporary relief.

Eventually, the question becomes less about “Which option is definitely correct?” and more about “Can I make a reasonable decision without knowing exactly how everything will turn out?”

When decisions become connected with fear

Indecisiveness can sometimes be driven by what you believe a wrong decision would mean.

Perhaps making the wrong choice would mean that you are irresponsible, incapable, or not intelligent enough. You may worry that other people will judge you, that you will disappoint someone, or that you will have to live with the consequences forever.

For some people, the fear is about failure. If you choose the wrong career, relationship, university, or opportunity, you may worry that you will have wasted your time or fallen behind.

For others, the difficulty is more connected with disappointing people. You may know what you want but hesitate because your choice might upset someone else.

There can also be a strong desire to avoid regret. You may imagine yourself looking back and thinking that you should have chosen differently, and the possibility of experiencing that regret makes committing to any option feel risky.

When decisions carry this much emotional weight, it makes sense that you would want to be completely certain before making them. The difficulty is that certainty is often impossible.

Learning to make room for uncertainty can therefore be an important part of developing greater confidence in your decisions.

How indecisiveness can affect your life

Indecisiveness can take up a surprising amount of mental energy. A decision that could theoretically take a few minutes may occupy your thoughts for hours, days, or sometimes much longer.

At work or university, you may delay responding, struggle to prioritise tasks, avoid taking initiative, or spend excessive time checking whether your approach is the correct one. You may also avoid opportunities because committing to one direction means giving up another possibility.

In relationships, indecisiveness can make it difficult to communicate what you want or make decisions about the future. You may repeatedly question whether a relationship is right for you, even when you have already identified important things that matter to you.

It can also affect everyday wellbeing. Constantly analysing choices can make it difficult to be present because part of your attention remains focused on whether you are making the right decision.

Sometimes the biggest consequence is not that you make bad decisions. It is that you spend so much time trying to make the perfect decision that you have less opportunity to actually live with the decisions you make.

How we can work with indecisiveness in therapy

Our work would begin by understanding what happens when you have to make a decision. We might explore which types of decisions are particularly difficult, what thoughts arise, what you fear might happen if you choose incorrectly, and what you tend to do to reduce the uncertainty.

We can also look at whether indecisiveness is connected with perfectionism, anxiety, fear of failure, low self-esteem, people-pleasing, or a need for reassurance. Different patterns can look similar on the surface but require different approaches.

Depending on your needs, we may draw from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and Schema Therapy.

CBT can help us examine patterns such as catastrophising, all-or-nothing thinking, excessive responsibility, overestimating the consequences of mistakes, or repeatedly seeking reassurance. We can also distinguish between useful problem-solving and repetitive thinking that is no longer helping you reach a decision.
ACT can be particularly useful when the difficulty comes from wanting certainty before taking action. We can explore what matters to you, make decisions based on your values, and develop greater willingness to move forward even when you cannot guarantee the outcome.
Schema Therapy can help when indecisiveness is connected with deeper patterns around failure, dependence, approval-seeking, unrelenting standards, or a lack of confidence in your own judgement. We can explore where these patterns may have developed and why trusting yourself may feel more difficult than it appears from the outside.

The goal is not to make you impulsive or stop you from thinking carefully. It is to help you distinguish between thoughtful decision-making and being stuck in the search for certainty, so that you can make choices with greater confidence and move forward without endlessly revisiting them.

Taking the First Step

You may have become accustomed to asking other people what they think, researching every possibility, or waiting until you feel completely certain before making a decision.

Perhaps you are tired of how much mental space decisions take up. You may wish you could simply choose something and trust yourself enough to see what happens.

You don't need to become someone who never doubts themselves. Doubt is a normal part of making important choices. The aim is to develop enough trust in your own judgement that uncertainty does not automatically mean you need more information, more reassurance, or more time.

Therapy can provide a space to understand why decisions feel so loaded for you and to develop a more flexible relationship with uncertainty, mistakes, and regret.

Ultimately, confidence in decision-making does not necessarily mean knowing that you have made the right choice. It can mean knowing that you can make a reasonable choice, learn from what happens, and cope if things do not turn out exactly as you hoped.

If you'd like to explore whether working together could be a good fit, you can arrange a short introductory call.

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