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I’ve Always Struggled to Make Decisions. It Took Twelve Years to Understand Why
Decision fatigue or childhood trauma?
A number of years ago I sat in a therapist’s office — the first of many therapists I would come to see over the course of that decade, and beyond. It was the third of six sessions I was required to attend as prescribed in the treatment plan attached to the diagnosis of Complex-PTSD I had recently received.
The therapist was an older woman who I mostly liked and while I felt the first two sessions hadn’t been all that beneficial, they did consist of her getting me to lie back in a comfortable recliner as she tucked a throw rug over me and offered steaming cups of tea which, as someone never properly mothered, was enough to make me want to go back every week for the rest of my life.
If I were honest, I don’t recall much from those sessions. There was no life-changing epiphanies; I’m not sure we really even touched on the years of childhood trauma I had started to unravel. But at that time, I had some decisions to make, and I was struggling. Not just struggling to make them, but even to articulate the why of the struggle. Like Esther Greenwood from Sylvia Plath’s book, The Bell Jar, I felt confused, conflicted and indecisive:
“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig…
