Do you freeze when you have to make a choice?

For many years I had a particular difficulty around making choices.

I'd go to a shop full of enthusiasm to buy myself a dress, for example. I was fine for the first ten minutes, but I'd quickly get overwhelmed at the point of making a choice.

I attributed it to my childhood experiences of shopping with my grandmother, where she said I could choose whatever I wanted, but when it came to buying it, she told me: "Well, that flimsy thing you want won't last a month. I can buy it for you, but when it disintegrates, I won't be able to replace it. But this thing," (usually sturdy but ugly in my eyes) "will last you the whole season." With time, I stopped choosing. Why bother? I let her decide.

It was annoying to freeze on every shopping expedition, but I learnt to work around it. In recent years, my partner has been doing all my food shopping, and as for clothes, it was like shopping with a child. He'd find items that suited me, I'd try them on, he'd give the nod, I'd pay, we'd leave. Usually straight to a coffee shop, because I'd be so exhausted.

As I said, it had been a bit of a nuisance, but I was mostly in avoidance around making choices. It's easier to say "I hate shopping" and look away.

But then recently I had to make an important choice about my children's schooling. It wasn't something I was willing to look away from.

So I did a constellation on my difficulty around choices.

What presented itself was an impossible choice.

You see, I was brought up by my grandmother as her own child. I called her "mama," and my biological mother was introduced to me as my "sister." But deep down I still knew she was my mother.

So I had been living in a situation where, at some level, I had to choose between the mother who birthed me and the mother who raised me. And I didn't want to take sides. I refused to choose.

This pattern impaired my decision-making. It also created a deep split in me. My grandmother symbolised safety and stability, whereas my mother was free and wild. In my life, I often swung from one extreme to the other, although on the whole my sensible side dominated.

My constellation taught me that in reality I didn't have to choose at all. I could have had both my grandmother and my mother. It was my grandmother's insecurity and her desire to have me for herself that created this impossible bind, one that had a massive impact on the quality of my life.

Once the truth revealed itself, making a decision about my children's school was a no-brainer.

Behind every challenge you face, there is a deeper story. You've probably learnt to work around it. But it does impair your decision-making in ways you may not yet have connected.

If this story resonates, come and join my Practitioner Training, where we go deep into the stories behind your story and heal them at the root.

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