Decision Making Skills: Finding Clarity in Uncertain Moments
Why Does Making a Decision Feel So Hard?
Have you ever found yourself staring at two good options—go to the party or miss out, move to a new city or renew your lease, go back to school or stick with your current career—and feeling paralyzed by dread? You’re not alone. Many people describe decision making as exhausting, overwhelming, and filled with second-guessing. Instead of clarity, anxiety often shows up: What if I choose wrong? What if I regret this forever?
The truth is that anxiety doesn’t just make decisions harder; it can keep us stuck. But decision making doesn’t have to feel like an impossible test. By building practical skills—drawing from therapies like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), practicing tools like the decisional balance, and developing confidence in our ability to handle outcomes—we can make decisions with more clarity and less distress.
At Wild Hope Therapy in Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio, and through telehealth across the state, we work with clients every day on building decision making skills that align with their values and reduce anxiety. In this post, we’ll explore why decisions can feel so overwhelming and how you can strengthen your ability to choose with intention.
The Role of Anxiety in Decision Making
Anxiety thrives in uncertainty. When faced with a choice, anxious thoughts often spiral into “what ifs.” Research shows that anxiety narrows our focus on avoiding danger rather than pursuing what we want【external source: Anxiety and Decision Making, APA】.
Some ways anxiety shows up during decision making include:
Overthinking every possible scenario
Avoidance—not deciding at all, hoping the problem disappears
Seeking reassurance repeatedly from friends or family
Black-and-white thinking—imagining only perfect or disastrous outcomes
The result? We may avoid making decisions altogether or feel crushed under the weight of them.
Values as a Compass: Lessons from ACT
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) teaches that values—not fear—should guide choices. Values are not goals (which can be completed); instead, they are ongoing directions for living, like “being a loving parent,” “acting with integrity,” or “prioritizing creativity.”
When anxiety clouds decision making, returning to your values can help clarify the path. Ask yourself:
What do I value most in this area of my life?
Which option moves me closer to what matters most to me, even if it’s uncomfortable?
💡 Example: A client in Columbus once struggled with whether to take a demanding new role. Through values clarification, she realized that stability and family time mattered more than career prestige. Choosing to stay put aligned with her values, even though she worried about disappointing others.
The Decisional Balance Tool
Sometimes values alone don’t untangle complex choices. Enter the decisional balance, a structured tool often used in motivational interviewing and behavioral health. It helps you weigh the pros and cons of each option with greater clarity.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Draw a four-square grid
Top left: Pros of choosing the option
Top right: Cons of choosing the option
Bottom left: Pros of not choosing the option
Bottom right: Cons of not choosing the option
Step 2: Fill in each box honestly.
Writing it down can reduce the mental “clutter” that fuels anxiety.
Step 3: Re-read through a values lens.
Ask: Which option moves me closer to my values, even if it’s not the easiest?
This tool doesn’t magically remove uncertainty—but it helps externalize the decision process so you can see patterns instead of swimming in endless “what ifs.”
Distress Tolerance: Building the Ability to Sit With Uncertainty
Much of decision dread comes from trying to control outcomes. The reality is: no one can. What we can control is our ability to tolerate discomfort while trusting ourselves to handle what comes next.
Borrowing from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), distress tolerance skills teach us how to weather intense emotions without shutting down or avoiding. Some examples include:
TIPP skills (Temperature, Intense exercise, Paced breathing, Paired muscle relaxation) to quickly regulate the body
Self-soothing through the five senses (music, scents, movement, warmth)
Radical acceptance: reminding yourself, “This situation is hard, and it is also reality”
By practicing these skills, you learn that discomfort doesn’t mean disaster. Decisions stop feeling like cliff dives and start feeling like choices you can navigate with courage.
Confidence Over Certainty
One of the most liberating shifts in decision making is realizing you don’t need absolute certainty to move forward if you are confident that you will get through whatever stems from your decision. Confidence means trusting that no matter what happens, you can handle it.
Some ways to build this mindset:
Practice small decisions. Order without overanalyzing. Choose a route to drive without second-guessing.
Reflect on past resilience. You’ve handled difficulty before—you can handle it again.
Reframe “mistakes.” Instead of seeing a wrong decision, view it as information you didn’t have before.
By deemphasizing the possibility of a perfect choice or outcome, you free yourself to make the next right choice.
Actionable Tips for Better Decision Making
Here’s how to apply the skills we’ve covered:
Pause before reacting. Take a breath or a short walk to reset your nervous system.
Name the value. Write down what matters most in this decision.
Use a decisional balance grid. Get the pros and cons out of your head and onto paper.
Practice distress tolerance. Remind yourself that discomfort ≠ danger.
Trust your resilience. Recall times you’ve handled the unknown successfully.
Set a deadline. Avoid endless loops by deciding when you’ll decide.
Why Decision Making Feels So Heavy in Today’s World
It’s not just personal anxiety—our broader culture fuels decision fatigue. Constant access to information, comparison on social media, and societal pressures to “optimize” every choice all add weight. For women and marginalized communities, systemic inequities can make decisions even more fraught with judgment or limited options.
Therapy can help unpack these cultural layers and support you in claiming your agency. At Wild Hope Therapy in Cleveland, Columbus, and across Ohio through telehealth, we see clients who are not just making individual decisions, but navigating systemic pressures as well.
Resources for Further Learning
Association for Contextual Behavioral Science – ACT
DBT Skills Training, Linehan Institute
Choosing with Courage
Decision making will always involve some uncertainty. But by grounding yourself in values, using tools like decisional balance, building distress tolerance, and cultivating self-confidence, you can reduce the dread that so often accompanies choice.
At Wild Hope Therapy, we believe that everyone deserves to make decisions from a place of clarity, not fear. Whether in Columbus, Cleveland, or through telehealth across Ohio, our therapists can help you strengthen these skills and bring more peace to the process of choosing.
You don’t need perfect certainty to move forward. You need trust—in your values, in your resilience, and in yourself.