Pick one - how the modern abundance of choice can harm mental health

The paralysing abundance of choice can play a large part in confusion and dysphoria that shapes our mental health. 

Whether it’s selecting a drink, a show to watch on Netflix, a sexual preference, identifying with a specific mental disorder, deciding whether or not to have another child, selecting words to write or speak when so many are available: decision-making can be terrifying. The ‘freeze’ fear-response, procrastination, and general confusion can reign supreme. 

Abundant choice naturally makes decision-making more difficult. It’s easy to become overwhelmed when faced with a decision to make, big or small. 

Not making a choice at all can feel like the easiest option. That way there is no risk of failure, no disappointment or pain, no anxiety around the uncertainty of change. Familiar often feels safe, even if it isn’t. In much the same way as stereotypical teenage indifference is comfortable, because it involves no risk. 

But this can lead to stuckness, frustration, mental pain, possibly a self image rooted in difference or neurodivergence to soften the edges of that stuckness. Possibly inactivity and depression. Possibly catatonia and psychosis.

Humans are naturally drawn to familiarity in all shapes and sizes, so change is challenging. You can’t 100% know how any new change will turn out in the end: school, education, friendship, a job, a relationship, a house. 

Change, transience and impermanence are a scary part of young life. We are floated along on the current of obligatory formal education, until we are not. Then we suddenly have more agency. 

Life asks us to make more and more choices, and adapt and commit, despite uncertainty. Life asks us to embrace uncertainty, which is scary and comes with anxiety. 

Anxiety will always exist because we can’t know the future or see inside other people’s heads. It’s ok to feel anxious and we sometimes need it as a protective mechanism. It’s less ok to allow anxiety to paralyse us into never making decisions or committing to anything, for fear of it not working out.

I think of past generations, old photos of crowds, maybe football crowds, all looking roughly similar in their flat caps and low resolution. I think of four television stations. I think of more limited food and dietary choices. 

So was paralysing choice and uniqueness and identity not an issue back then? Is it truly a modern neurosis? Or did people find it easier to commit to decisions in a narrower world, have less self regard in how they present to the world and how others might understand them? 

It’s an impossible question to assertively answer, but my hunch is no. Everything appears more magnified today. We live so much of life through screens, and comparison with other people. We fixate on our own ideas of perceived inferiority or indeed perceived superiority, which can be confusing and endlessly toxic in either direction. 

It can lead to seriously poor mental health, depression and suicide.

For better or worse, decisions have to be made and routes have to be taken. Life is fluid and involves the ability to change direction. Nothing is forever and nothing is certain. People can career-change, re-train, and pivot. 

Failure is ok and it can be a major force for learning. An unforeseen obstacle might always come along and challenge us. Consider how artificial intelligence is supposedly set to destroy everyone’s career. Nobody quite knows how it will all pan out, which can be applied broadly to life. 

Would you want to know precisely what problem is going to happen, and when?

Perhaps embrace impermanence, change, failure, and uncertainty. Perhaps embrace the act of decision-making, of concentrating on a single thing, of resisting distraction, switching off and putting away your phone, locking in and committing for a defined period. Then reviewing things at a later point. 

It’s important to grow belief in your own control and self determination because if you don’t believe you can do something, then you won’t. If you believe you might, then you have a chance.

Nothing lasts forever. Not me, not you, not these words on this screen, in this website. Click away and they’ll disappear. Then you’ll be presented with your next choice.