decision-making | Brian Collinson

Vibrant Jung Thing Blog

Stress Therapy & Making Difficult Decisions

September 22nd, 2011 · difficult decisions, making difficult decisions, stress, stress therapy

Stress therapy reveals that major life transitions are often fundamentally linked with the necessity of making difficult decisions — and with intense anxiety and stress. When one is confronted with major, potentially life-changing decisions, it can seem very fateful indeed.

Relationship Choices

Stress therapy shows it’s common for crises or major life transitions to be mixed right up with the process of making difficult decisions about key relationships in our lives. Decisions about whether to stay in marriages or relationships, or possibly difficult choices about who to love are frequent. Sometimes these feelings are occasioned by major life transitions; sometimes they force us into the crisis of a major life transition.

Career Transition

It may be that a career path that has been pursued ends or starts to feel like it simply can’t or won’t work anymore. An individual must face whether to stay in the old career, or else find some new way to move forward. Often there can be intense stress in deciding what to do — or how to do it.

Changes in Philosophy, Spirituality or World View

Changes in the fundamental way a person views the world can lead toward making difficult decisions. The reverse can also be true. A change in a fundamental aspect of belief, or a spiritual crisis can be a real earthquake in a person’s life, and it may require a very individual solution, and also the right kind of help to work it through in a way that is authentic for that individual.

Patterns of Behaviour that Don’t Work Anymore

We adapt to situations in life with patterns of behaviour. For instance, the person who grows up in an incredibly chaotic house may learn to be incredibly rigorous and methodical, as a way of “getting through”. Such attitudes may serve a person incredibly well — until one day life calls for change. Transitioning to a new attitude may require skilled help through stress therapy.

A Whole New Way of Making Decisions — and Living?

At crisis points, the challenge of making a particular major decision may lead to a transformed way of making decisions, and, in fact, to a whole different outlook on life as it is worked through. Often, depth psychotherapy such as Jungian analysis can be of tremendous help in the decision process.

I wish each of you the gifts of insight and clarity in the decisions on your journey towards wholeness.