The Mother Wound and the Inability to Make Decisions

‘Once I was sitting in a close friend’s apartment texting a boy about meeting up later that night. He was so clearly keeping his options open, not even remotely interested in me as a person. I kept saying to my friend, I wonder when he’ll text so I know what I’m doing tonight. She looked bemused at this prospect: What do you actually want to do? I had no answer and we sat in silence. I had no earthly idea what I wanted to do. It’s not something I ever thought about.’ ~ Lucia Osborne-Crowley, I Choose Elena1

A number of years ago I sat in a therapist’s office — the first of many therapists I would come to see over the course of that decade, and beyond. It was the third of six sessions I was required to attend as prescribed in the treatment plan attached to the diagnosis of Complex-PTSD I had recently received.

The therapist was an older woman who I mostly liked and while I felt the first two sessions hadn’t been all that beneficial, they did consist of her getting me to lie back in a comfortable recliner as she tucked a throw rug over me and offered steaming cups of tea which, as someone never properly mothered, was enough to make me want to go back every week for the rest of my life.

If I were honest, I don’t recall much from those sessions. There was no life-changing epiphanies—I’m not sure we really even touched on the years of childhood trauma I had started to unravel. But at that time, I had some decisions to make, and I was struggling. Not just struggling to make them, but even to articulate the why of the struggle. Like Esther Greenwood from Sylvia Plath’s book, The Bell Jar, I felt confused, conflicted and indecisive:

‘I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.’2

It wasn’t just the big things—the life-altering choices I faced. It was everything. I was consumed by indecision in the most neurotic of ways but found it difficult to explain to the therapist. The best I could come up with was an anonymous quote I had found on the internet, which I read to her during that session:

‘I have an issue right now. There are a clusterfuck of ideas, options, angles and directions attached to solving this issue and I’m stuck in it all. I scan all the options, weighing them all up, and the net result, after everything has been considered, is… nothing. Imagine you have 234,746,853 strings attached to your person, each being pulled outward in different directions. The result? You don’t move. Nothing. When this happens, I stop thinking. I can’t logically process anything. I descend into this numb-but-frantic space where — and this is the worst bit — I attract even worse clusterfuckness and nothingness.’

From this, she discussed decision fatigue and the paradox of choice in our society. That because we have so much choice we find ourselves having to make too many decisions, eventually winding up too tired with making decisions to decide anything. And I understood, to some extent, the truth of this in my life. Yet it wasn’t the only truth. For me, I knew there was something deeper attached. I just didn’t know where or how to uncover it.

There was never a time in my childhood where decisions were thought out with care, or in a rational manner. Decisions made by my mother were made spontaneously; recklessly. They were made around new men, new relationships, relationships that ended, evictions, poverty. They were made in the midst of alcoholism, abuse, trauma and mental breakdowns. They were made out of fear, out of anger, out of depression, out of escape. They were made by a narcissistic parent whose wants, needs and desires were placed first even when the repercussions to her children were neglect, abuse and trauma.

The feeling that comes with existing inside this kind of chaos and dysfunction is one of being unanchored — a small child alone on an enormous ocean, tossed in all directions at the whim of every wave, knowing there is nobody there to pull you to shore.

There is a moment not long ago where I am lying on the floor next to my bed, knees curled to my chest, staring at a black smudge on the wall wondering what it is and how long it has been there for. A suitcase is open on my bed; empty. It has been there for hours. I have been there for hours, paralysed with indecision over what to pack for four days away. I have to travel through too many different states, I have too many different events, there are too many different weather forecasts to consider and I am too overwhelmed and despite this being such a trivial issue, in my mind it is the most significant and consequential thing I have ever had to decide.

As I lay there, contemplating the black smudge, it occurs to me this is not a normal response to packing. It also occurs to me this is not an isolated event, but something I have experienced often. I have always found myself paralysed by choice, avoiding choice, ignoring choice, descending into this numb-but-frantic space where I attract even worse clusterfuckness and nothingness whenever I have to make a choice. In that moment I find myself asking: what is actually wrong with me? Knowing, like most things in my life, it must be connected to my upbringing, to my mother, to childhood trauma. Yet being unable to find the link that connects all these messed up fragments together.

Sometimes we can spend years of our lives searching for an understanding or explanation of something profoundly important never to find it, while other times the answer will inadvertently appear on our computer screen whilst Googling something entirely unrelated. Or so I learned this week when, deep in research of another chapter of this book, a link to a YouTube clip appeared on my search results: Do You Have Problems Making Decisions? — Childhood Trauma.3

For the next thirty minutes, I listened as Patrick Teahan, Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker and childhood trauma specialist, spoke of the connection between childhood trauma and decision paralysis. It was revelational—the epiphany I had been looking for. Suddenly, it all made sense. I made sense. Because finally, I understood: for survivors of childhood trauma, it isn’t about the decision, it’s about what is on the other side of the decision.

Because what is on the other side of the decision — any decision— is an unknown. What is on the other side of the decision cannot be predicted, and therefore controlled. And one of the biggest fears of survivors of childhood trauma is the fear of not being in control. So, when faced with a decision, survivors of childhood trauma become neurotic and hyper-vigilant over what choice to make.

Still ruled by our anxious inner child, we analyse, examine, research and dissect every possible outcome in an attempt to remain in control—to remain one step ahead of danger, disaster and the inevitable repercussions that come from wrong decisions. Repercussions we have seen first-hand. Repercussions we suffered the consequences of in our childhood years when reckless decisions were made by our caregivers that caused irreversible damage to our lives.

Further to this, when we consider this in light of the Mother Wound—that the Mother Wound isn’t always the result of overt trauma or abuse, but often stems from the internalised pain of being a daughter who felt she had to earn love by being good, quiet, or right—we begin to see how it lays the groundwork for decision paralysis. How this wound often manifests as a chronic fear of disappointing others, a belief that love is conditional based on perfection, the presence of a harsh inner critic (often echoing the mother's voice), eroded trust in our own intuition, and behaviours rooted in risk-aversion and people-pleasing.

The result of this is we find ourselves unable to make decisions—terrified we will make a decision that will lead to more suffering. We exist in a state of decision paralysis that seems irrational and out of context to most but which aligns with the narrative that was hard-wired into our belief system during our developmental years: wrong decisions lead to suffering—not making a decision is what will keep us safe.

And it is because of this belief we become stuck — in jobs, places, relationships and lives that leave us unhappy and unfulfilled, believing it is still safer for us to stay with the known than the unknown. Believing a moment of risk to be more unendurable than a lifetime of misery.

Last year, I read Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s memoir, I Choose Elena. In this book, she writes,

‘As a traumatised child, you become accustomed to having to protect yourself, which means having a razor-sharp awareness of everything around you. You have to be able to sense danger from a mile away. You become hyper-vigilant. Once you experience this fight, flight, freeze response, particularly in a truly life-threatening situation, it lives on in your body and resurfaces again and again in everyday life. Scientists call this a false positive bias: once you learn how perilous the world can be, you will interpret every single moment of ambiguity as danger.’4

I think of this now in the context of my struggle to make decisions — how I have always carried this false positive bias: the belief that any unknown will result in a damaging, destructive or dangerous outcome. How this has influenced many of the decisions I have made — more so, been too afraid to make.

As I have thought more upon the connection between the Mother Wound, childhood trauma, and decision paralysis, I have continued to come back to something Teahan says in his video. He says that decisions are often about trading something uncomfortable for a new experience that is also going to be uncomfortable. That no decision is comfortable. But worse than the feeling of discomfort, is the feeling of being stuck. And what we need is our inner adult to step in and tolerate the unknown so we can begin to make decisions that propel us forward in life.

As my own children move from their teenage to young adult years and begin to make important life decisions, I remind them that no decision is permanent. And it’s funny, because I have said this to them for as long as I can remember. That they can change their mind at any point. That no decision is wrong, or a mistake, but only ever a learning experience.

And yet the freedom to be wrong is not something I have ever been able to give myself. I have continued to be too afraid of the unknown; of what is on the other side of the decision. Too afraid I will be unable to control an outcome of which I can’t predict.

I think of this now—the way every decision we make is a surrender to the unknown; a loosening of the control we have gripped in our hands. How healing decision paralysis is learning to tolerate wrongness without shame: that reclaiming the right to be wrong is, in many ways, reclaiming the right to be human.

It has taken me years to understand my fear around making decisions. And a lifetime of experiencing fear with each decision I have had to make. Yet with this new understanding comes freedom. A releasing of control. A reaching toward surrender. A gentle unfurling of each finger; open hands stretching toward a horizon that exists beyond what I can see.

Next week: Chapter Twenty ~ Critical Inner Voice: Why Am I So Hard on Myself?

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