Change is good, right?
So why does change feel so wrong? A big decision becomes even bigger when you struggle with your mental health.
Anxiety usually keeps you up late hours of the night when your routine is steady, while nothing drastic is changing in your life. But anxiety will also take sleep away from you when there's a "life-changing" decision to be made.
The title itself, "life-changing decision," automatically puts intense pressure on your already stressful situation. Letting your anxiety take over your thoughts makes finalizing that decision harder than it has to be.
Dealing with anxiety along while trying to make huge life choices calls for the most unpredictable state-of-mind imaginable. When you finally feel like you've made up your mind, you can't help but feel like you're making the wrong choice. Despite going over the pros and cons while finding the pros out weight the cons, there are still 'what-ifs' lingering in the back of your head.
Coming to a conclusion also means seeking others advice to reassure what you're doing is the right thing to do. Even though you embody the idea that your choices don't need to be validated by others, you continue to ask for help. The different choices you have to make come out in every conversation you have. Word vomit, as Lindsay Lohan called it, is your new specialty.
Your whole life feels centered around the life changes you are going to make. Everything becomes a priority so sorting out the most important of them all is seemingly impossible. Once you build yourself up and feel accomplished in one area, you've missed something in another.
Every day you feel knocked down. You wear yourself down by trying to make a choice.
Dealing with anxiety while trying to live the life you've always dreamed of is defeating. After all the hard work you've labored to be where you are your anxiety makes you question if you're actually where you should be.
The truth is, you can't let the worst 'what-ifs' stop you from changing. You can't let your anxiety win.
While seeking for validity in others should work, it doesn't. Acting as if your life revolves around this one choice forces your final decision to feel like the end of the world. Exhausting yourself while trying to fix everything in your world does not allow you to enjoy being in the present.
If your anxiety is weighing on you as you try to move through your life, you will miss out on more good than harm. Trying to make a big life choice is hard. But you can't allow your anxiety to tell you that you aren't in control of your emotions and that your final decision will end up hurting you.
Walking through life expecting the worst will only bring the worst. This is exactly why once you're in a situation where your anxiety feels to be taking control, you have to be the one to put a stop to it.
You have to be the person who decides what happens in your life, not your demons.
While every day will present you with new questions, uncertainties, and emotions, you must try to limit the new thoughts coming into the picture. Because stressing yourself out on the bigger picture, the future 'what-ifs', doesn't help you make a choice right now.
Finding a way to let go of your fears surrounding the situation helps you clear your head. Crossing other important things off your 'to-do' list helps you distract yourself from the anxiety and the situation.
You will find clarity in the chaos once you realize you are the one in control of your decisions, not your anxiety.