Depression and Decisions, why is it so hard?

Decision making difficulty and Depression.. this is the road I am walking right now. 

Impulsive, that is how I would have described myself in a previous life. I didn’t struggle with making a decision. I trusted my gut and often it turned out to be in my best interest. I jumped in feet first and trusted that I would land safely. I also really enjoyed life, it was full of adventure and laughter.

33 months ago, my life changed. I didn’t know it was changing back then but what followed were months of deep depression, the kind that keeps you in bed and a Zombie-like state when you aren’t in bed. Then I got medicated. I regained some of my life back and I pretended I was getting back to normal. That isn’t how MDD works though.

Looking back, I made some really bad decisions during that time. They aren’t necessarily decisions I regret but they weren’t good decisions for me, or my family. I made decisions while learning how to survive the storm I was in. Those decisions caused me a lot of pain. I almost didn’t survive them, almost.

According to a study published in 2010 (you can read the full study here), 2 important points were made, the first being that if depressed people use good strategies for making decisions, they will likely have a better outcome.

That the “difficulties of depressed individuals with decision-making were largely the result of their failure to use effective decision-making techniques.”

But also that-  “Anticipatory regret likely serves as a warning mechanism, protecting a decision-maker from bad decisions and prompting them to reevaluate possible alternatives. Inappropriate or excessive regret can thereby impair future decision-making.

Given the common tendency of people to experience more regret for active, rather than passive, choices, anticipatory regret may bias a person toward inaction. People may believe, irrationally, that by accepting a default choice passively they are avoiding making a decision and thereby minimizing their responsibility for the outcomes of that choice.”

 

Last week in my therapy session, we discovered this new symptom or effect of my MDD. My inability to make important decisions. I'm at a crossroads, and I have to eventually decide on something that I barely even want to think about now. Currently, I’m accepting the default. I know it isn’t exactly good for me to do so but I'm afraid of making the wrong choice. I’m afraid of the pain it could cause regardless of the choice I make.  I’m hoping someone else will decide for me so I don’t have to feel regret about the choice.

There is an additional byproduct of this discovery that I’m only recognizing as I research more into this subject of decision making.

I have been hoping that my therapist was wrong, that I don’t actually have MDD but that I’m just going through a really difficult time in my life; I will one day be normal again. I’m having a bit of an identity crisis, or maybe a little imposter syndrome. I have high functioning MDD; so, I was holding out hope that because I function so well in the world, or at least I look like I do, that maybe, just maybe, it was all a big mistake. I bought into it, hook, line, and sink’er! But alas, such is not the case. I am facing again and with more evidence, that I have MDD and I will never return to that carefree person I once was.