Video is in Chapter 28 Post

31.

Dr. Vincente Garbuglio - The Fragile Phoenix

Chapter 7

Audentis Fortuna iuvat : Fortune Favors the Bold

O Fortuna! What if I asked you to tell me the most common fear in the world? You might think of flying, swimming in deep water, or even spiders! Those are all good choices, but there’s a larger fear we’re overlooking, a universal fear shared by every human being on Earth.

We’re all afraid to take a chance.

This chapter is about the big choices people make, and the big chances they take when they make them. We’re going to talk a little about trauma, aversion to risk, and tools for making sound decisions, even when you don’t feel completely sound yourself.

To start with, let’s talk about risk. Every single patient I work with has a deep desire to make a major change in their life. If not, they would not be my patient. By the time they see me, nearly all patients have been stewing on this desire for months, or even years. Most of them feel like cowards because they have wanted something for so long but have not been able to make meaningful strides in that direction.

This is completely normal!

Every single person agonizes over big decisions. Things like buying a house, changing jobs, proposing marriage; no one faces these without some sleepless nights. It’s totally normal to be afraid of big changes, you are not a coward! However, if you continually put off a big decision, it can loom larger and larger in your mind until it seems impossible to deal with. You can get into a situation where all outcomes seem negative, and you can feel too paralyzed by dread to make any decision at all. This situation can take a tremendous toll, and avoiding it is one of our main goals in therapy.

To avoid analysis paralysis, we need to first examine the situation. If you’ve been agonizing over a choice for more than a month and can’t make up your mind, it’s likely you aren’t seeing the situation clearly. When I talk with patients who are stuck in this situation, I often find that past trauma is influencing their perception and making it impossible for them to accurately gauge the risks of a situation.

Trauma is a complete game-changer. You probably don’t remember all the times you pet a dog and faced no outcome worse being slobbered on, but you will never forget the one that bit you. For the rest of your life, you will always hesitate before petting a strange dog. You had a negative experience and you learned a valuable lesson from it.

However, you didn’t only learn a lesson. In this example you suffered a violent and unexpected attack that violated your core assumptions about the world. Exposure to death, severe injury, or sexual violence is a traumatic event, even if these things were only threatened and didn’t actually occur. Trauma can have a powerful and lasting effect on the mind. You might have a hard time concentrating, become forgetful, have nightmares or suffer from intrusive thoughts. The response differs greatly from individual to individual, as does the recovery time. For severe experiences, it’s not uncommon to take months or even years to recover.

One of the most common responses while you’re still processing trauma is avoidance. In the case of the dog who attacked you, staying away from it is a good idea! But you may also find yourself avoiding the place where the attack occurred, or uncomfortable around other dogs. When you see a dog approaching you might step to the other side of the sidewalk to avoid it, or even cross the street. This is a totally natural reaction, but it’s not necessarily logical or desirable.

Domesticated dogs are the most friendly creatures on the earth. (I make no apologies to cat people, you are simply wrong.) Your interaction with a dog is far more likely to be positive than any other animal you can encounter, including your fellow humans. Yet there are many, many people who are pathologically afraid of dogs because of childhood trauma. This is a bigger disadvantage than many people realize. Someone who has a strong fear of dogs is unable to enjoy events where they are present. Each encounter with a dog is a stressful experience for them. They can’t do work that involves dogs or be in a relationship with someone who owns one.

This is not a chapter about dogs, I promise you! What we want to think about is how past trauma can affect your judgement.

Everyone has been bitten in one way or another, and all of us carry that pain with us everywhere we go. We get used to it. We cross the street to get away from a teacup poodle and don’t stop to think about why. We put up a wall and don’t let ourselves fall for someone so we can’t have our hearts broken again. We stay in a job we hate, because we remember spending weeks on the job search feeling worthless and afraid. If unresolved trauma is guiding your life, you are a prisoner of your past. It’s our goal in therapy to help you escape this cycle. We want to deeply examine your actions and motivations and get a little better at gauging actual risk versus perceived danger.

With the small exception of the people I treat for a gambling disorder, the vast majority of my patients did not take too many risks and fail. Nearly all of them came to me because they were too afraid to take a risk in the first place. Often they want to feel like I’m giving them permission to take a chance on something they desperately want. In some cases they are outright looking for someone to tell them what to do. I never grant that permission, and certainly I never tell people what to do. It’s not my role, and it’s not the role of your friends, your parents, or anyone else. This is your life! You will be the one who lives with the outcome of these decisions every day, and that’s why it’s so important to focus on what you really want and move towards it, even when it’s scary.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re trying to take that plunge:

1. Don’t ask yourself “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”

Whatever you come up with certainly be worse than any likely outcome! Ask yourself “What’s the best thing that can happen?” People are far more conservative and realistic when imagining positive outcomes. Next, ask yourself what steps you can take to make that desired outcome more likely. Even if you can only think of tiny little steps, you’ve begun moving on the path to the outcome you want.

2. Get advice without asking for it.

Good advice can be extremely helpful, but the trick is that very few people can give it, especially when it’s asked for. The person offering you advice may be even more compromised by their traumas than you are! I’ve dealt with countless patients who were led astray by bad advice from people who had an ulterior motive, especially in the case of parents. Sometimes it’s simply would-be advisors who were simply ill informed (also especially in the case of parents!). Yet you can’t ignore the benefits of experience.

One thing I have found effective is to only seek advice from people who have been in that situation, and who have been able to find a positive outcome. Rather than asking them what YOU should do, ask them what THEY did. How they felt, what they learned, and what they would have done differently.

Instead of asking your father “Should I propose to this girl?” ask him what was on his mind when he decided to propose to your mother. Even if they recognize that this is you asking for advice, the framework of the way you’ve structured your request will still cause the other person to more deeply examine their motivations as they attempt to describe how they felt.

3. If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice!

The consequences of indecision are often far greater than the consequences of any decision you can make. Putting off a decision on a job you hate will definitely take a toll on you mentally, which results in reduced performance, which often leads to losing that job anyway. Marriage is a subject worthy of an entire book, but nearly always when someone is agonizing over a decision, their partner has already made up their mind one way or the other, and the delay only serves to drain the magic out of the relationship.

Your time in this world is not unlimited. There will be many, many decisions and many of them will not work out well. These decisions are the foundation upon which you will build everything that comes after.

Take our young man from the previous point, let’s imagine that he followed his father’s advice, decided to go for it and proposed. Unfortunately, his intended was not on the same page. She couldn’t see them working out long term and refused the proposal, ending their relationship. That hypothetical young man will certainly be crushed. He will feel sadness, anger, even despair. But, he will still be a young man, with ample time to try again. Later in his life he will look back and realize that the woman who rejected him has actually done him a tremendous favor. She will have saved them both from years of struggling to make something work when it’s just not right.

Our young man can take a good hard look at what caused this relationship to founder, and make adjustments so that he’s better prepared for the next one. Because there is always another relationship, always another job. There’s always another chance, if you have the courage to take it.