How Making Decisions Can Cause Grief

You've mapped out the pros and cons and assigned values and weight to each factor, yet you still can't decide. Neither choice feels like the right one. You know the decision may not be perfect, but you want it to feel right.

When we make a choice, especially a difficult one, there is a loss, no matter which decision we make. Grieving is painful, and some of us avoid it to our own detriment. I call this the "Trade-off Dilemma."

In my psychotherapy practice as well as in my personal life I've encountered how difficult it is for people to make big decisions:

• Do I quit my job?

Recently, I counseled Peter, a middle-aged man trying to decide whether to leave a high-powered position to move out of state to a job with a smaller salary but closer to his family. He and I talked about what he would lose with each of the choices. Then I asked him, "Which loss can you handle grieving?" This was an "ah-ha" moment for him.

Bereavement theory recognizes five stages in the process. The questions and statements Peter asked and made follow each stage.

• Denial, disbelief and numbness ("Why now? Why me?")

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced these stages in 1969 in her book "On Death and Dying." We now recognize that the stages are not contiguous and often repeat. Grief over death of a loved one has more intensity than the losses that I'm writing about today; however, the process of making a difficult decision can look very similar.

The symptoms of grief, among others, can be crying spells, trouble sleeping and lack of productivity. I've also observed irritability. These feelings and behaviors can occur simultaneously. They can also disappear and return. I have also noticed that when there is a recent loss, an unresolved loss or a pending one, the symptoms increase. Decision making can be further impaired.

Here are some ideas to help you through the decision-making, process:

• Acknowledge that the decision will bring pain. Ask yourself if you have the resources -- both internal and external -- to deal with it.

Once a decision is made and the feelings are under control, there can be a honeymoon period, the elation of having decided. Then weeks, months or even years after the change, there can be second thoughts. The reality of what's been given up takes over. The trade off begins to feel powerful. The concept "buyer's remorse" comes to mind. This is a natural part of the process, but re-thinking the decision can be a way of avoiding the feelings of loss. Thoughts such as, "If I had stayed, I wouldn't have to deal with..." may be a return to the bargaining phase or may be distracting you from anger or sadness. It's natural to have a recurrence of the symptoms we experienced during the decision-making process. Acknowledging and accepting our feelings and allowing them to run their course can help us overcome them and reach acceptance. Then we can more fully enjoy the benefits of the new choice.

For more than 20 years, Susan Morales, M.S.W. has explored human behavior through her work as a psychotherapist, and as a student/practitioner of meditation. In addition to using meditation as a device to help clients with issues of anxiety and depression, she offers classes and retreats to women in substance abuse recovery. She developed Be Who You Love Meditation as a method to teach people how to find greater depth of satisfaction in their lives. She blogs on meditation for annarbor.com and Red Room, and was on the editorial board for The Voice of Social Workers: Poets and Writers, a journal recently published by the Michigan chapter of NASW.