OCD and Indecisiveness: How to Stop Overthinking Every Choice

The OCD and Anxiety Podcast by Robert James Coaching. Music.

Hello and welcome to the OCD and Anxiety Podcast where we explore how to have a more positive relationship with anxiety disorders taking back control so that you can start living the life you choose and not the one chosen by your fears. Music. Hello and welcome to episode 481 i hope that you're doing very well today and if you are struggling with ocd or anxiety and you would like to get some support with that well you can get a free discovery call with me.

To get that you can head over to my website robertjamescoaching.com and you can book in directly there for that free discovery call. In today's episode I'm going to be talking about indecisiveness and OCD and this is obviously a very big part of OCD, making decisions. Perfectionism is something that can come in when we try to make decisions.

Not knowing if the decision that we make is the right one or not can really kind of lead you to feeling very confused, anxious, all sorts of difficult emotions which you know are very typical in OCD. So today I'm going to talk about some examples of this in my own life and give you some tips for how you can deal with indecisiveness in OCD. If you find a podcast helpful please do consider leaving us a review.

It really does help the podcast whether that's on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, it would be great if you could leave us a review.

So many thanks guys. I really hope that you enjoy. If you have any questions at all, do please let me know and off we go. In any moment of decision, the best thing that you can do is the right thing. The next best thing is the wrong thing. And the worst thing that you can do is nothing. And that's by Theodore Roosevelt. OCD often makes decision making difficult because we fear uncertainty. Even simple choices can become overwhelming at times.

Avoiding decisions, however, just reinforces the anxiety, creating a cycle that's very tough to break. One practical strategy is setting time limits. When facing a decision, give yourself a specific time frame, perhaps five minutes for small choices and an hour or a day for bigger ones. Commit to acting once the time is up. Your brain begins to learn that you can cope with uncertainty, reducing anxiety over time.

One way in which indecisiveness has impacted me in OCD is actually related to relationship OCD. When I was dating, I was really struggling with this. Of course, I wanted to find somebody that I could be happy with. To have a long-term relationship with, but I was finding that incredibly difficult. You know, no matter what I did, I was second-guessing at every relationship. I was questioning, is this really somebody that I want to be with?

And of course, there was this huge pressure there because you do want to make that decision correctly. You want to find somebody that you're going to be happy with. You don't want to end up in the wrong relationship. But of course, I was so anxious about this and I was ruminating about it so much that it was clouding my judgment. It was making it very difficult for me to kind of find the right person.

One of the issues that I was experiencing here is because I was demanding so much perfection to make sure, you know, that I was making the 100% right decision. You know, I would keep on kind of getting into a relationship, but not really giving it a proper go. You know, I wouldn't fully commit to it. I wouldn't decide to say, right, I'm really in this relationship and I'm going to really try to give it a go. I would perhaps walk away from it because there was so much anxiety about staying.

But by doing that, I was never really learning how to make that decision to commit to something to find out if that relationship was actually the right one for me you know fortunately that that did change and now with my fiance you know I did commit to to that relationship I did feel very uncertain about that at the time but you know over over time I did begin to realize that you know if I commit and make this decision that. I can actually find out if this relationship is right for me.

If I'm always sat on the fence, if I don't commit, if I don't make a decision. Then I can never actually find out if it is the right relationship or not. And I'm so happy that I did that today because actually over time I began to realize this is the relationship that I want to be in. And it's not perfect. There are ups and downs. There are difficult things sometimes. There are challenges. But ultimately it's where I want to be.

I wanted to share a testimonial from someone who has worked with me in coaching. If you're looking for support with OCD, it can be helpful to hear from others who have been through the process. Here's what they had to say. I found Rob through his podcast and could not recommend coaching sessions with him enough. I have been to several therapists, each with different approaches, but none are nearly as effective as Rob's.

Rob is compassionate and understanding and his focus on acceptance and commitment therapy, ACT, is extremely valuable. The mind can be challenging to navigate sometimes. Rob has an excellent understanding of the anxious and OCD brain and is able to explain how to get on with enjoying your life despite these challenges. Thank you Rob for helping me and others. The work that you do is so valuable.

I'm really grateful for those kind words and if you're looking for structured support with OCD I offer a free discovery call where we can chat about your challenges and see how coaching might help. You can book that over at robertjamescoaching.com the link is in the show notes.

Another issue with making decisions and OCD is perfectionism and this is when you know we we demand that we make the absolutely perfect decision and i see this a lot actually in in coaching i think when people are trying to kind of come across the right way to deal with ocd or they're learning about new techniques they want to make sure that they're choosing the absolutely perfect thing for for them whether that's acceptance commitment therapy or meditation or or erp

they want to make sure that whatever they're choosing it's 100% the right thing for them and they also want to make sure that they're doing it in exactly the right way and unfortunately that can become an obsession in itself where we're demanding absolute perfection about the thing that we're going to employ to try to help us with the OCD but again you know we're kind of not fully committing to making a decision. Ultimately, you know, there are different techniques out there.

The only thing that we can really do is to try the different techniques out. You know, to commit to them and see if they work for us. Ultimately, there is no perfect thing out there. There's always going to be positive things about decisions and negative things about decisions. But the only way we're going to find out if they work for us is actually making a kind of commitment to them. It's also important to resist reassurance-seeking behaviours as they tend to

reinforce indecision. If you can, with less important decisions, practice making a decision on your own without seeking that reassurance.

And this is actually a form of exposure because you're learning to tolerate the uncertainty by not seeking someone else's approval of your decision. Finally, remember that whatever decision you make, ultimately you will have to find a way to make that decision work for you. Try to let go of the idea of making the right or wrong decision. It might be better instead to just focus on making that decision and then making sure that that decision actually works for you.

Decisiveness doesn't mean knowing the perfect choice every time. It means confidently taking action despite uncertainty being there in the background.

If you're struggling with OCD and decision making, feel free to reach out for a free discovery call with me by heading over to robertjamescoaching.com thanks for tuning in i really hope that you found it helpful please do subscribe to the podcast it really does help and if you would like to leave us a review that would be amazing many thanks and i will see you next time.

And now just a quick reminder of my disclaimer any information that you view on my website Instagram page Facebook group or anywhere else online or any information that you listen to on the podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for actual medical or mental health advice from a doctor psychologist or any other medical or mental health professional. Music.