How to Make the Right Choice When You Aren’t Certain

[00:00:00] Rachel: What do you do when you’re faced with a big decision? Do you draw up a pros and cons list, chat it through with a friend, or flip a coin and hope for the best?

[00:00:08] Rachel: As healthcare professionals, we make tough decisions all the time about patients. But when it comes to decisions about relationships, our practices, our careers, fear of making the wrong choice can just leave us paralyzed. And sometimes not making a choice is just as bad as making the wrong one.

[00:00:26] Rachel: So this week, I’m really pleased to welcome back, Dr. Claire Plumbly onto the podcast to talk about the biases that go into decision-making, how to handle uncertainty and how, not only are you not a frog, you’re also not a potato.

[00:00:42] Rachel: If you’re in a high stress, high stakes, still blank medicine, and you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, burning out or getting out are not your only options. I’m Dr. Rachel Morris, and welcome to You Are Not a Frog

[00:00:59] Claire: I’m Dr. Claire Plumbly. I’m a clinical psychologist and director of Good Therapy Limited. Um, we offer online therapy and therapy in Taunton Somerset. And I’m also author of a new book that came out in the UK in July, and it’s called Burnout. How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You.

[00:01:19] Rachel: Welcome back to the podcast, Claire. It’s really good to have you back. So Claire is an, is an old timer we’ve had you. A few times now. And I just wanna say I love the title of that book, How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You. That just for me describes what, what most people are. And I think I heard someone on another podcast describe a lot of people as a walking anxiety disorder with, with an organized walking anxiety disorder as and most, most professionals at the moment.

[00:01:47] Rachel: So, um, yeah, and I think a lot of us are overwhelmed by our nervous systems actually. Um, a lot of circulating cortisol, adrenaline, and just like that frog and boiling water, it’s just become the norm. And we don’t notice it. We don’t notice how triggered we get so easily. We don’t notice that we are just on such high alerts. So I think your book has come at a really important time and I really encourage people to, to get it and really there’s so much gold in there.

[00:02:17] Rachel: And we were talking recently, ’cause Claire and I are in a a, a mastermind together, which is really, really supportive and really helpful. And I’ve been quite overwhelmed recently and luckily I, I’m off next week. I’ve got a week final leave I’m really looking forward to. And I was saying about how. How I did feel stressed and how I had a few quite big decisions to make and I was finding it really difficult. And Claire pipes up, well of course you are, with all that circulated cortisol. I was like, okay, you need to tell me more about this.

[00:02:45] Rachel: So, you know, ’cause surely decisions should be quite easy to make ’cause you just like look at them logically and make them, but I guess that’s not what you’ve found particularly with clients and all that sort of stuff. So why is it so challenging for us?

[00:02:58] Claire: Yeah, good question. And I think you’re right. I think we do tend to dismiss our struggles over decision making, and we tend to look at everybody else and think they’re, they just make the decisions and we don’t know how much they’ve struggled in the background, so I just thought might be helpful to go through the psychology of decision making that tends to make it hard for humans any generally, even when we’re not stressed. ‘Cause it’s already quite tricky. Obviously we’ve got different levels of decision making. We’ve got what to have for tea and we’ve got, you know, what to do with my business, um, next kind of level of decisions or whether to stay in my job or not and that kind of thing. But generally there are some type types of biases that we fall into.

[00:03:34] Claire: One is, um, the status quo bias. So this is the idea that, let’s stick with the familiar ’cause it’s familiar and we know where all the kind of dangers are. So if you think, uh, this often comes back to, you know, our ancestors and what they were living in and evolution in terms of this kind of wanting to know, you know, the dangers are coming from over that horizon there, and I know if I’ve kind of got this set up behind me, I’m safe. So we like familiar and you often hear people say, well, better the devil. I know, and so we wanna kind of stay with familiar. Many decisions involve us having to think outside of that. So this is one.

[00:04:10] Claire: There’s another bias called anchoring bias, which is similar. It’s kind of, we wanna stick to a similar starting point. So we can make a decision maybe, but it looks very similar to what we’ve already got. And so it’s kind of a like difficulty with creative thought and like completely reinventing the, the wheel and what this might involve.

[00:04:26] Rachel: Would it be like if, if I was creating a training session on a different subject, completely new thing, I’d probably just make it look a bit like the old one, ’cause that’s what I’ve always done?

[00:04:34] Claire: Exactly, yes. Yeah, it’s quite hard for us to kind of start completely afresh with a fresh idea. Um, and this is why, you know, talking, having conversations with other people can get these fluidity and creative thoughts going.

[00:04:46] Claire: There’s also hindsight bias, which might not be so much involved with the decision making you’ve got now. Um, essentially hindsight based, when we look at previous decisions we’ve made and we judge the outcome based on what we now know to be true, as though we had that information then, so we can judge ourselves negatively. And that can impact on the decision making we are making now, in that we can fear that that’s basically what’s gonna happen, that we’ll regret the decisions. So those are some of the kind of biases.

[00:05:11] Claire: There’s also quite often decision making is made because more of a fear of loss than a possibility of potential gain. You know, so that kind of fomo for example, might push us into going out for and doing something, you know, because everyone else is doing it, ’cause we are fearing loss rather than the decision kind of focused on but if I do this, I’ll get this. Um, we have that bias towards noticing loss and fearing that.

[00:05:35] Claire: The other two reasons that I, uh, think decision making is hard is when we are, we’ve had a lot of decisions and we get decision fatigue. So, you know, if you are running a business like you are and also running a family and different. Cogs within that, all involving different decisions, you’re probably making a lot of decisions each day.

[00:05:56] Claire: And I remember someone talking to me, I can’t remember what it was though, to think of it like a big bucket and you’re dipping into your bucket every time you make a decision, a little bit like willpower. It kind of comes from the same bucket. And so as you get to the end of the day, your bucket’s empty. And so, you know, it can take just a tiny little like decision, like what to have for dinner that just completely tips you into, nah, I can’t, I can’t do this anymore.

[00:06:17] Rachel: Yeah, my goodness. Like that exact thing happened to me the other day. I, I got home. It’s like, just the thought of having to decide what to kick was like, oh, I literally overwhelming having made lots of big decisions throughout the day. And I think, yeah, for doctors, they’re deciding these really big decisions and then people, well, how come I can’t even decide where to go on holiday? What’s wrong? What’s wrong with me?

[00:06:36] Claire: Yeah. And link, link to that is, uh, you know, with the holiday example, I know I get this is choice overload. You know, so if we have lots of choices, there’s a sweet spot with choice. I talk about choice quite a bit in my book. ‘Cause choice does create a sense of safety if you have some choice. But often in our current environment, um, we have access to the internet, we have access to a crazy amount of choice.

[00:06:57] Claire: And I, I talk, talk in the book about this interesting study with jam, I dunno if you remember reading it. But essentially this shop in California, um, took two displays of jam. They put 24 different jams on one display and six on another, and they just observed shopper behavior. And what they found was shoppers were attracted to the 24, and they spent a lot more time looking at that, almost double the amount of time that the shoppers spent looking at the six. But they couldn’t make decisions, so only 3% bought a jam from that display, whereas 30% chose one from the other display of six. So we are pulled towards choice and we think we want it, but it inhibits actual action.

[00:07:37] Rachel: I totally get that. Particularly, I was trying to buy some clothes online the other day and I was like, oh, there’s just so many different things. I actually prefer the website so they have three things, like, yeah, okay, that will do.

[00:07:49] Claire: it’s like restaurants, isn’t it as well? When you go to a restaurant and there’s like 10 items versus a re like restaurant menu where it’s got everything, uh, available.

[00:07:57] Rachel: Yeah. And you, you also want someone to have sort of curated that choice for you? I, I hate, I think that’s one of the problems with holidays is you can just Google anything. And, and there’s so many different, you’ve no idea if there are any good or not. Whereas that’s what, you know, if someone’s actually already curated it, so these are the three top things we recommend in this country, like, okay. I can, I can go with that. Because often you don’t, you don’t know what you don’t know.

[00:08:19] Rachel: And so someone else curating a bit, I did hear on a podcast once when it came to choice, you should like logically decide, logically pull things down to like five options and then just go with your gut feel and your, and your emotions.

[00:08:34] Rachel: That that was a, that was an interesting thing for me. ‘Cause I was like, yeah, okay, so you can logic it out. But at the end of the day, emotions get quite involved with this stuff, doesn’t it?

[00:08:43] Claire: Yeah, and I think that’s, that’s one of the tips I’m moving. I was gonna move into. Because I think we do need to think about the difference between when we are making rational decisions with our cool, calm, rational parts of the brain, online versus limbic system decisions, which is, you know, the brain structures involved with regulating emotions. Positive and negative, you know, you know, excitement as well as fear and anxiety.

[00:09:08] Claire: And, you know, some of the decisions I’ve made, sometimes I’ve thought I was just in the heat of the moment, maybe excited and I need to slow it all down. And you know, when someone invites you to where there’s an opportunity, this is another common conversation on our masterminds call. How was, how was it phrased? An opportunity is not an obligation.

[00:09:27] Rachel: an opportunity is an obligation wearing a mask, or an obligation in DIS in disguise, it’s like, oh, yes.

[00:09:33] Claire: But, like, it often doesn’t feel like an obligation. For me, it kind of feels like, I, I wanna be involved. This is like new stuff and, and what possibilities lie here and it feels hopeful and, and I’m attracted to that novelty, and humans are attracted to novelty. Um, but yeah, so I just know now not to say yes quickly, even though the urgency is in my body because the limbic system does that. It’s, it’s an energized, sympathetic response.

[00:09:58] Rachel: So all those biases and things are really limbic responses. So I guess the, the status quo, you know, that’s, that’s wanting more certainty, anchoring, you know, all of this hindsight bias. We’re feeling bad if we’ve made something, a wrong decision in the past, we beat ourselves up about it. So those are all made from a position of fear and stress and, and limbic activation, the, the amygdala?

[00:10:23] Claire: Yes. So, the way we think switches, depending on which mode we’re in. When we are in our green, parasympathetic rest and digest mode, we have access to clearer rational thinking, we can access all the memories really well, you know, that have, have gone on. Um, and we can access creative thoughts and the ability to kind of think abstractly about the future as well is housed in this part of the brain, the frontal lobes.

[00:10:49] Claire: When we have incoming demands and everything’s weighing on us, and we switch into more of a threat based place of, um, sympathetic mode, yeah, our amygdala’s much more in the driving seat, making the decisions.

[00:11:03] Claire: And so this is where, like I say, trying to slow it down is important or sleeping on it, you know, because once we come out of that, we can normally see just how biased or rigid our thoughts have become, quite black and white or ca catastrophic even sometimes are all or nothing. These are all the kind of, um, examples that.

[00:11:20] Claire: I think it does help to have a sense of what these are called. ‘Cause if you can label them, you can then say, oh, well that, that was me doing that anchoring bias or hindsight bias. So there’s a lot of relief there when you’re working in, in therapy. And this is, um, this comes from CBT therapy. If you just look up CBT biases, you’ll get lists of them on the internet.

[00:11:40] Rachel: I think that’s definitely been useful to me. Yeah, the labeling stuff, it makes you think, well, it’s not just me that’s doing it. Okay. It’s got a label. It must mean lots of people doing it. But the fact it is a bias and nobody wants to think that they’re biased. I mean, what’s the most common bias do you reckon?

[00:11:54] Claire: I think rigidity in thinking, definitely. I do feel like people become very rigid. Um, and it’s quite hard to see beyond that, that there could be more to it. Um, and catastrophic thinking is very common. You know, this idea that my decision making will end up very problematic.

[00:12:13] Claire: Um, and then a difficulty with seeing how you, your future self will cope with that, not trusting that, you know, future self probably has all the skills that current self has and when problems arise, we’ll deal with that.

[00:12:25] Claire: So yeah, what It’s kinda wanting it all mapped out and knowing all the answers and not feeling like capable. Um, there’s definitely things I talk about a lot in therapy. I think

[00:12:32] Rachel: But the problem is you can never ever have it all ma, mapped out, you know, no matter how impressive you are or good at planning, nobody ever knows exactly what the result of a, of a decision’s gonna be. So. How, how do we ever start to even make decisions? Surely we would all just be held back and, and, and, and kept in this sort of uncertainty, well, let’s just stick with the status quo. Let’s stick with the easy stuff. But some people do manage to make decisions.

[00:12:56] Claire: Well, that this is where you, uh, would think about increasing your tolerance of uncertainty. And you can maybe do little experiments. In therapy, you might kind of work, work out with someone that might be what’s going on. And you would then practice making small decisions. For example, you know, going a different route home or leaving dec decisions, this is for people who have every decision sewn up all the time, but never deviate from it. So there’s no flexibility of diversity in their life.

[00:13:24] Claire: And that can be one way of coping, except that obviously that can also have negative consequences, which are unpleasant for people because they feel very rigid. Um, but you might increase your to, tolerance in that way.

[00:13:35] Claire: And yeah, I think practicing making decisions and getting support around you so that you don’t feel on your own, in the decision making process. This comes up a lot in our talks, doesn’t it? The need for connection. Um, the idea that people see it as a failure or a weakness to ask for people’s points of view, but it helps massively, doesn’t it, to get fresh perspectives.

[00:13:58] Claire: Uh, even the my mastermind call the other day, we were talking about some of our difficult decisions. We were all kind of talking it out and I remember I was apologizing for finding it hard to find the words. And I remember you saying, I know, but this is the process. And I said, I think that’s part of working it out, isn’t it? Finding the words in front of someone, um, and they can help you shape it and point out things to consider, and point out any loss orientation and help you reframe it as well. What are the gains be?

[00:14:28] Rachel: So this loss orientation seems to be really quite important, actually. And yeah, when I think about important decisions I’ve made, like whether to, you know, let, let a member of staff go, or whether to employ a member of staff, because there’s always a, a, you know, a loss, but it, you always go to what could go wrong, yeah? What could, what could I lose?

[00:14:46] Rachel: And also it is pretty true. That’s the problem. You know, when, when doctors are making decisions, like things could go wrong and people could make a complaint and stuff. So. It, it’s one thing saying, well, you know, that loss may never happen, and what if the good stuff happens, but what if actually that loss may well, may well happen?

[00:15:04] Claire: Yeah. So we are not trying to avoid all losses because that’s impossible and you would never do anything. So it’s to, it’s tolerating the possibility that could happen, and also recentering on how you would handle it.

[00:15:15] Claire: So, so there is a technique in therapy that we use in EMDR therapy, eye movement, desensitization reprocessing where we go through something a, it might be a decision or just something maybe you, you’re fearful of and picturing it at every point. And then when you get to an obstacle, we literally just work on, I can handle it, and so then picturing how I will handle it. And if I’m in therapy with someone, you know, and they’re struggling, and then I can help them work out how they might handle it.

[00:15:44] Claire: But that’s a technique that someone listening to this could do. They could just close their eyes and imagine, okay, if this happens, getting to a safe place after a decision, for example, when you get home and have your cup of tea or whatever it is, and at each point where there’s something tricky or a friction, I can handle it and just notice how would I handle it.

[00:16:01] Rachel: So like predicting in the future, but actually saying, predicting well into the future, I said I and I will handle it. And this is. How I would handle it, and it’s not going to be the end of the world, as opposed to it’s gonna be a disaster. It’s gonna be awful.

[00:16:14] Claire: Because you might think, oh, well I, okay, I talked to this person, or I might say this, or, you know, I might do, and those things are available to us. But because often we’re so fearful of looking at what the loss could be, we don’t even begin to allow ourselves to imagine that we could handle it.

[00:16:29] Claire: So this can be a bit challenging, but I think it pays off really well for people once they do it. It’s quite a simple technique in a way, but it goes opposite to what we often do.

[00:16:38] Rachel: We fear the loss. We predict what might happen if it goes well, and then we predict what happens if it goes wrong. But we never predict what happens if it goes wrong and we handle it. So that’s, that’s, that’s that extra missing part, isn’t it?

[00:16:50] Rachel: And you mentioned to me earlier when we were just chatting about people’s history of decision making, which can then lead to perfectionistic tendencies, I was interested in that ’cause I think a lot of our listeners do have a small perfectionist streak or a very large perfectionist streak. So you know, how do you work with someone then?

[00:17:07] Claire: Yeah, I mean, decision making is one of those things that actually can be a red flag for perfectionism. ’cause I think a lot of people who are perfectionists don’t really realize. But then if you kind of delve into, well how, how long does it take you to make a decision? They’re like, well, you know, ages or, I find it really hard to start something ’cause I dunno how it’s gonna play out, then this can be a bit of a kinda like, ah, okay, what’s going on here?

[00:17:26] Claire: And so if you trace back your backstory and just explore what would happen as a kid when I was making a decision or I made mistakes? ‘Cause usually mistakes. Kind of revolve around some sort of decision making, don’t they? How was that handled by the people whose opinions I, I cared about, attachment figures, teachers, or, you know, kids in the playground we looked up to?

[00:17:48] Claire: And if you were ridiculed or humiliated or, you know, just judged or put down, then decision making carries an extra level of fear, and that can be triggered whenever you are facing a decision. And I, I’ve even worked with people who, for whom, you know, decisions of in the here and now can feel like life and death. Even though logically they can see that this decision isn’t life or death, their physiology is reacting as though they will completely be an outcast or, you know, a failure and, and therefore their whole survival might, you know, be impacted on, which sounds very intense, but it, it can get to that level for people who had very traumatic upbringings and that decision making, let’s say abuse or that level of consequence.

[00:18:28] Rachel: So what, what do you do then? Because I think. Possibly a lot of us have got that, that history. And even if it wasn’t as a child, when you are working in clinical environments and you have made a wrong decision and then you get a complaint or you might be sued or you know, there’s very high stakes or, or you know, or someone’s patient’s been harmed because of a wrong medical decision you’ve made and, and these are real risks, how do we then avoid becoming perfectionist will be absolutely terrified for the future?

[00:19:00] Claire: It’s really hard and I think those are the, some of the hardest places to be in as humans trying to make these decisions. So I mean, I just always come back to, to compassion. So, you know, just trying to remember that this is really, really hard and you are human, and it’s human to find this kind of level of decision making really difficult and that’s okay. And that some of this decision making, yeah, might, might be particularly hard because of your past, you know?

[00:19:29] Claire: Having that and labeling that I think is really useful. Some of this might be old stuff. But some of this is also, anybody in this situation would find this hard. And coming back to, you know, if you can, some of these decisions, I know people, um, who listen to this will be making very quickfire decisions in very high energy, like octane kind of environments, won’t they? Um, really don’t have the luxury to, to, to pause. But even if it’s just a brief ten second pause to kind of go, I’ve got, I’ve, I, I can handle this, this is hard, I’m just gonna make a good enough decision. And, you know, you will be making a good enough decision based on your experience and knowledge, what’s available to you,

[00:20:08] Claire: I, I do trust that most people in those environments are, do, are doing that, but if you can slow yourself down and get people around you who are there to support you as well, that all, all massively helps.

[00:20:19] Rachel: One thing I’ve noticed in myself is when I, I’m in that stress zone, when, when I’m overwhelmed, when there’s lots of stuff happening, you feel that you’ve got to make decisions really, really quickly and you’ve just gotta keep going.

[00:20:29] Rachel: And I’ve learned that one of the signs that I’m backed into the corner, I’m in my, my red zone, you call it the, the sympathetic zone, is that my brain will be telling me, you have got to answer this email immediately, or you must speak to that person immediately, you’ve got to make that decision now.

[00:20:47] Rachel: And. Uh, when I have done that, it’s never gone well. And so for me, when I feel a sense of urgency about a decision that’s, I’ve learn to recognize that that’s probably the time when I should be stepping back and pausing before I do anything. But I’ve learned that the hard way, unfortunately.

[00:21:03] Claire: I think most people have had an experience like that, haven’t they? And I’ve certainly replied to an email wanting to get it, you know, resolved as quickly as possible and then gone back and read it. ’cause that’s the other thing you do then is it reread it multiple times and then go, I actually haven’t read that email properly because I was switched into my sympathetic go mode so quickly, and that’s what happens is, you know, it’s really hard.

[00:21:26] Claire: So slowing everything down to the point where you’re not responding. And I, you know, if it’s a, say, an email or something that I can talk about at home, I might say to my husband, I’ve had this email, it’s made me really upset or cross. So I’m, I’m telling you that I’m not gonna respond to it for 24 hours. I’m committing to this decision. ’cause every bone in your body wants it fixed. We, we wanna get it resolved so that we are not feeling in danger anymore.

[00:21:49] Rachel: You do feel so differently when you come to it at a late, at a later day. It is quite uncanny. And I think even clinical decisions, you know, we always say nothing is urgent apart from CPR. I mean, if someone’s collapsed in front of you, yes you have to resuscitate, but most clinical decisions can wait a couple of minutes, even, to to talk to someone or to to sense check stuff.

[00:22:11] Rachel: And I think a lot of the time we feel the urgency is ’cause we are just desperate to get it fixed because it feels uncomfortable rather than it genuinely is an urgent problem. Most, you know, a lot of things could wait even till like the end of a surgery. Obviously you, you know, something’s really tricky, you really can’t think straight. Yeah, leave it, have a cup of tea, get to it and, and another time where I think sometimes, and I’d be interested in your thoughts on this, Claire, just having that break and letting your default mode network come in and, and, and, and connect and often you solve that issue quite much better or there’s a, there’s a solution that’s just come to you that just wasn’t there at the beginning, ’cause you, your brain has been working on in the background. Is that what happened?

[00:22:51] Claire: Yeah. Um, ’cause I mentioned that in the book, the default mode network and um, that is exactly, that is when we allow the mind to wander, we switch into a different level of what, so have you seen the, um, pictures of the MRI scans of brains that are in this. Yeah, so they, this was discovered by accident that actually they, they asked people in, in these MRI scanners to kind of think of nothing, ’cause they’re trying to get a baseline and then suddenly the brain’s lit up everywhere.

[00:23:17] Claire: And so it’s really important, accessing lots of different functionality. But when we are stressed, it’s, it looks very different picture. Uh, there’s only kind of the, the, the bits of the brain that are linked to stress mode and responding quickly for survival, so yeah, I agree.

[00:23:34] Claire: I think I find, and a lot of people do as well, and the research shows it helps. That movement can help with this as well. So if you’re kind of moving forward, the walking or going for a jog, but without consuming more content. You might think you need more content to find the answer. But for a lot of people, if you just then allow your mind to wonder, you might move, transition over the course of a walk from feeling like really pent up ruminative thoughts to it become a bit more free flowing as you carry on. Do you notice that kind of transition down the gears into that free flow thought or

[00:24:03] Rachel: Totally. Plus, I always solutions to issues always come to me in the shower. Bizarrely, like I’ve done a tennis lesson or done a yoga class and I’m in the shower and I’m, and something I wasn’t even thinking about, I’ll suddenly know what to do. It’s really uncanny how that happens, and that’s why, uh, this is, you know, I, I bang on at people about having coffee breaks at work. A, because you can, how can you connect with other people unless you are actually, you know, in their presence and, and all connecting on an informal thing, but B ’cause unless you have those breaks, your brain doesn’t get the chance to, to do that. And it’s so important.

[00:24:40] Claire: I agree. And I don’t think, yeah, it’s easy to forget the value of that when there seem to be demands coming at every angle.

[00:24:48] Rachel: So there’s something about taking that pause as long as you can to help your system settle down to get from red, red to green, to your parasympathetic. What’s the amber zone then?

[00:24:59] Claire: Well, actually I didn’t wanna correct you, but yeah.

[00:25:01] Rachel: Yeah.

[00:25:02] Claire: quite that. That’s right.

[00:25:03] Claire: So we’re drawing a polyvagal theory, and parasympathetic, actually has two branches, the ventral vagal and the dorsal vagal. Ventral vagal is the rest and digest green mode when we’re calm. Dorsal vagal is the red shutdown mode, or immobilized, amber is the sympathetic.

[00:25:20] Claire: So what should happen is we would spend most of our time in green. Um, ideally, ’cause that’s where our digestion, our body functions at. Its optimal. We are thinking clearly making decisions, problem solving. And then if a demand comes in or a stressor, we switch into sympathetic where everything revs up a gear, all our organs get a little shot of adrenaline or cortisol to energize us into the fight or flight, and obviously modern day, that might be pinging off the email quickly or kind of, you know, racing thoughts and that kind of thing, trying to get through.

[00:25:50] Claire: But if our attempts in fight or flight are blocked or solutions don’t come after a while, eventually, we can slip into this shutdown and in the animal kingdom that looks like the flop. And in humans that’s more about kind of dissociation, feeling cut off or numb. It’s kind of the last line of defense if we are kind of immobile, so the energy drains away at this point and we feel very heavy. This is what I explain in quite a bit of detail, what, what’s going on and why you don’t have access to certain functionality in these different modes and why it’s so hard to use the tools at that point, that might usually help us, like the cognitive decision making tools, you know, the pros and cons, that can all just go out the window at that point. ’cause we don’t have access to our frontal lobes where it’s housed.

[00:26:33] Rachel: So when I’m talking about red zone, I’m probably more talking about the amber zone, the fight or flight.

[00:26:38] Claire: Yeah.

[00:26:38] Rachel: Because red is the quite extreme.

[00:26:40] Claire: It’s much more shut down. Yeah. And I think in burnout, people oscillate between amber and red. Start to get more stuck in red, but they’ve certainly not got fluidity up and down those gears, you know, between the two. And they maybe don’t get much of a look in at all, you know of green.

[00:26:55] Rachel: So it is possible to make decisions in amber, but they’re not gonna be so helpful. But red is almost impossible to make anything but very black and white.

[00:27:04] Claire: Yeah, it’s very many people describe feeling quite hopeless and trapped. You know, if you think, do you know the, the learned helplessness stuff? Uh, there’s a box in my book where I remind people it’s, um, a a study in the sixties, um, that showed, you know, what happened if you put dogs in a shuttle box and gave them electric shocks.

[00:27:23] Claire: Um, so the dogs who had the ability to press a lever, to stop the electric shock, they did fared much better than the dogs who had no ability, they’d be shocked and they couldn’t do anything to stop the shocks. And what they learned the was that the dogs who had no ability to change what was happening to them later on, then were given access to ability to jump over and escape, um, into a part of the box where there was no electric shock, just lay down and gave up, and they didn’t make those attempts to make any movements.

[00:27:52] Claire: So this learned helplessness paradigm seems to be what can happen when we are trapped, and that obviously has a massive impact on decision making. We don’t even see the possibilities that might be available to us.

[00:28:03] Claire: And particularly also in depression. When you know when you are, you might have someone as a therapist, it might be a client or a doctor it might be a client or even friends who seem to be making decisions that just don’t make sense to you, that aren’t helping their situation, it might be that this is what’s going on, this learned helplessness, that they’re not able to kind of access what else is possible or make the moves that they need to do to, to start doing that.

[00:28:30] Claire: Um, and they found with these dogs that really they had to show the dogs, lift them up and put them multiple times before they started to get the idea of what they needed to do to then help themselves.

[00:28:39] Rachel: Oh wow. So how do we metaphorically lift up ourselves or our, our colleagues when we can see them like stuck in their box?

[00:28:47] Claire: Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it?

[00:28:48] Rachel: What I don’t want to do is say, oh, the answer to everything is coaching and therapy. But I do think coaching can be quite helpful because having someone else, like, tell you what they see is going on, sometimes just unlock stuff. And for me, I often feel quite helpless until I’ve identified what the actual problem is, because sometimes it’s just like, everything just seems so overwhelming, and then if I realize, oh, and you, you’re trying to solve this and this and it’s not working, and then you say, oh, well that’s not what the actual problem, the actual problem is this, oh God. Well now I can solve it ’cause I know what the problem is.

[00:29:19] Rachel: But that’s quite, it’s quite hard, I think, on your own, to work out what the problem is. So even if it’s just a conversation with a, a friend who knows you well, not a, I did a podcast on about useless friends. It’s really important to have useless friends, not because I think sometimes at work conversations with colleagues, no matter how wonderful your colleagues are, they have a ven vested interest in keeping the department staffed and keeping things going.

[00:29:46] Rachel: So sometimes they might not, and this is not conscious, but they might not really have a vested interest in identifying the real problem if it’s something that might impact them if you try and sort it out, if you see what I mean. So I think you need someone who’s who doesn’t have a vested interest in if you do or you don’t, just to talk it through with you. And I found that that’s been. Helpful.

[00:30:07] Rachel: Or journaling can be helpful. ’cause when you start to write stuff out, you can start to see it, can’t you? So that’s what I would go to.

[00:30:13] Claire: No, I agree. And, and you know, humans aren’t dogs. We have that capacity to think these things through and I understanding what it is, finding the words and hanging it and hanging them off, like from talking.

[00:30:25] Claire: The talking also has an extra benefit in that someone is bearing witness to what you’ve been through. And quite often the learned helplessness comes from a time when you were very stuck and there weren’t any other options. So having someone go on and go, that was, that was really bad, that’s not good.

[00:30:41] Claire: Um, because often I find in therapy a lot of people don’t realize how bad it’s been and they are undermining themselves for and going inwards, like, I’m failing everyone else copes. And actually, you know, quite a lot of therapy is like, well this, this, this and happened, that is a lot, that, anyone in that situation would be feeling really bad and really trapped and really low. So that bearing witness is really helpful. I think.

[00:31:06] Claire: Some people on the listening side of that aren’t good at that and sitting and hearing that. So you need to find the friend who is a listener. But yeah. And also then they can maybe point out and it is remembering well that maybe there’s, the context has changed, maybe that was then, and this is now especially, you know, if you’ve got access to more resources, that might be impossible and there might not be much change, or there might be some, but it just hard for you to get to that answer on your own so that conversation points it out, doesn’t it? Problem solving conversations can be helpful. There’s a place for those.

[00:31:35] Rachel: But I think that. Validation of what you’re going through is really important. I, in my therapy, one of the most helpful things is when I say something that I maybe brushed under the carpet or thought, well, that, that’s not significant. I mean, that happens to everyone, my therapist’s like, oh my goodness, that no wonder. I’m like, oh, oh, it is significant. It just, okay. It’s okay to feel bad about that. It’s okay. And that in itself is just so releasing and so freeing. ’cause then you stop the Why can’t I cope? What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I make all this ridiculous stuff we tell ourselves.

[00:32:08] Rachel: One of the things I like doing to myself is, well, of course you’re finding that difficult, no wonder that you know that, that self-compassion that you talked about. Just say, yeah, look what your face. Look what you are. Look what you’re up against. And what you do about it?

[00:32:22] Claire: Yeah, I think, I found some of the most helpful trainings I’ve been on as a therapist, a psychologist, was when, you know, somebody was leading a compassionate type of therapy and they’re weaving that in and saying, therapy is really hard. You are dealing with human distress. This is, you know, a very hard job and, um, you remember one that stuck in my head, it was Paul Gilbert, who’s the compassion, um, expert, said, well, you, and remember, you are not a potato. I was like, I’m not a potato. He’s nailed this.

[00:32:56] Rachel: This is, this is gonna be a soundbite from this, this podcast, you realize. Words of wisdom from Dr. Claire Plumbly. you are not a potato, as in a human, right?

[00:33:05] Claire: Yeah. And this is really hard stuff you’re, you are working on and, um.

[00:33:11] Rachel: I think there is that as well. I think particularly with quite high functioning people in high stress roles, there’s that ought, ought to thing as well. So with the decisions, there’s that thing that you want to do and that thing you think you ought to do. So how do we get over that?

[00:33:26] Claire: Well, I think. That’s a good, again, differentiation that you can try and make. Like, what, what would fit with my values? What, how would this make a difference to me in an ongoing way? And maybe just jot that down as a question, you know. And then like, what do I feel that everyone’s expecting me to do? And maybe then you are, you could weigh out the pros and cons or talk that through with somebody.

[00:33:50] Claire: And remembering that if you choose the option that is aligned with your values rather than what you feel you ought to be doing, and just to label the aughts and shoulds are another thinking bias, sorry, that’s really important actually, you can label that as a thinking bias..

[00:34:03] Claire: But yeah, so if you decide I am gonna stick to my guns, I’m gonna go with what I know is important to me. Here you are basically talking in boundary territory now, I’m gonna have to set a boundary. This me saying no to this or making this decision will involve me using some scripts around boundaries. And then I will get pushback probably in the form of something where somebody’s responding in inadvertently or deliberately making me feel more guilty. You know, but you’re the right person for this, really hoping you’d do this. All of these things can feel flattering, but create guilt and um, anxiety. So just expect those emotions to come along for the ride. If you set a boundary, they’re gonna appear, and that doesn’t mean you’re making the wrong decision. Don’t use that as your barometer to make, to decide if that was the right decision or not.

[00:34:46] Rachel: Yeah, that’s interesting. I, I’m sure that is a massive issue with decisions and people making decisions as they use other people’s reactions as their barometer, as is that right or not? And sometimes I find in my own life, my nearest and dearest are entirely the wrong people to, to, to check my decisions out on. ‘Cause of course, you want them to agree with you, you want ’em to support you, but. Even they can’t sit from your point of view, or they might sit from what they think you need. And do it out of like a misplaced, misplaced sense of, um, you know, love or whatever.

[00:35:19] Rachel: My, my mother, who’s totally wonderful, she’ll, she will be listening to this podcast, but she is, she’ll often go to. Won’t that be more pressure on you darling? You know, won’t that make you more busy? Have you got time? Can you really do it? And that is entirely, entirely coming from caring, but sometimes not so helpful because there might, you know, there might be something I need to shift around and actually maybe I need to drop something else, not that thing that’s going to be really energizing for me.

[00:35:45] Rachel: And we do that ’cause most of us are people pleasers, let’s face it. I mean, that’s in, when I say. Well, okay. You rolled your eyes. Let me check.

[00:35:51] Claire: No, no, no. I agree that we, yes, we are trained early on to seek external validation, aren’t we? You know, and that starts from, you know, the stickers you get at school and constant kind of praise. And it makes it really hard to go inwards for the internal validation and not to wait for someone to go well done.

[00:36:10] Claire: I found that really hard actually, when I transitioned from being a trainee psychologist to being in the world of work. Because I was so used to taking all my reports to be countersigned and I was kind of always waiting for them to say, and that was a really well written report, Claire, and then nobody was doing that.

[00:36:25] Claire: I was sending letters and reports out with no one checking and no one giving me. And I was like, this is rubbish. And of course that’s taking training now I just send a report off and I, you know, don’t care what they think. It’s what I think. But that takes time and practice.

[00:36:37] Rachel: Yeah. And, and of course the, the, the belonging, that’s an amygdala thing, isn’t it? You know, we feel a threat if we don’t get, if, if someone, actually, there’s one thing about getting validation for our, for our decisions, but if someone actively doesn’t like it, that again, is very stressful, but, oh, if they don’t like it, I might upset them, they might kick me out the tribe, that’s a massive threat. So maybe some type, maybe we should just like not seek validation at all for our decisions.

[00:37:01] Claire: Yeah, I think it’s really hard, isn’t it? It is hard to stop that completely or try and surround yourself with people. Like, for example, on our mastermind, you know, when we are making decisions, we kind of know logically we can’t please everybody all of the time. And yet we often bring, when we’ve had a very disgruntled person and upset, because it’s so helpful to hear everything around it that we can’t see, so yeah, finding your right tribe to support you might be helpful, but trying to make sure not every decision is based on what other people will think.

[00:37:30] Rachel: And different drives of different decisions, right?

[00:37:32] Claire: Yes,

[00:37:33] Rachel: What, what else would you suggest? Like really practically, if someone is finding it difficult to make decisions, I know you’ve got some like really good techniques that you can suggest for people.

[00:37:41] Claire: Yes. I mean, we’ve talked about calming, trying to, to, to pause before making decision and using that time to calm, techniques like breathing, things like that, going for the walks. Not consuming content.

[00:37:54] Claire: The decision making grids that we use in therapy as part of CBT is to draw on your piece of paper, um, a grid with four spaces, and do the pros and cons of if you do this thing. And then the pros and cons, if you don’t do this thing, or whatever the decision is.

[00:38:12] Claire: So it’s kind of like pros and cons, but you’re just kind of making sure you do pro pros and cons of all the different variations of the decision. And often people don’t intuitively do that ’cause they think, well that’ll be the same but just opposite. But actually it’s not. Different things will come out.

[00:38:24] Rachel: So you’ll get stuff that’s a prayer if you do, and a prayer if you don’t,

[00:38:26] Claire: yep.

[00:38:27] Rachel: and a con if you do, but a prayer if you don’t.

[00:38:30] Claire: Right. So say, say you are making a decision where I’m gonna hire this person in, this, a new person, in this new role, do the pros and cons of hiring that new into that new role and pros and cons of not hiring to that new role, because it’s different stuff that will come up even though feels like it’s gonna be just the opposite. We, we seem to tap into something more, maybe about the, the loss orientation, the goal kind of benefits come up. So there’s that.

[00:38:54] Claire: And then, yeah, something that can be helpful, especially for a big decision, you know, like moving house or, um, I dunno, leaving your job or something is to act as if, so act as if you’ve made the decision in one direction and spend a whole day, minimum might even be two days, as though that decision has been made, and just see how it feels to sit with it on. It’s like putting on a, you know, a new coat and seeing what does this feel good.

[00:39:17] Claire: And then, you know, take a couple of days off and then do the same again with the alternative decision. And again, just see how it feels. And then evaluate it. Like what was, yeah, what was the feeling? Like, what came up for me? What problems and what feelings inside and, yeah. If you, that can be good as well. If you are a couple or a few of you trying to make a decision, to everyone, act as if for a little while and see what comes up. Uh, ’cause those are, those would be big decisions that would involve lots of other people, wouldn’t they? So it’s a bit meaningless to do on your own, you, you know, recruit other people.

[00:39:49] Claire: I think decisions because they’re stressful can really cause a lot of distress in systems and people can then, even if you’re on the same team, can feel like you’re not on the same team. And so it can bring everyone together and have better conversations then around, you know, more aligned about, well this, this, you know, you’re getting into each other’s world a little bit more. This meant this for me, I’d have to walk this distance from my new house for school, and that was a bit upsetting. And then other people kinda, yeah, I think it just helps, you know, with viewpoints and.

[00:40:18] Rachel: A long time ago actually, we had this proper decision. We almost moved to America because my husband got got a job there. And, and so we decided and he, he said he was gonna take it. And so for a whole day I was telling people I was moving to America and it. It felt really odd and it felt weird and I didn’t feel very excited. And then actually, interestingly, he phoned me up halfway through the day and said, actually, this feels really wrong. And so we changed the decision. It was the best decision we ever made to cha to change the decision, um, ’cause of, of how things played out with the company in the future. Um, my goodness.

[00:40:54] Rachel: But that was, that, that’s really interesting, you know, going suddenly flipping and the relief of like, oh, we’re not going. And the relief I was, okay. So that, and we’d agonized over the decision beforehand, should we, but it wasn’t until we’d actually made it that we knew that that was the wrong thing and we, we,

[00:41:07] Claire: So you kind of almost inadvertently did it, didn’t you? Yes. And that’s what I mean. The relief is a bit of an indicator, isn’t it? What’s what is right or wrong?

[00:41:15] Rachel: Yeah. But the idea that you can change your mind, and I think that’s a really important thing, I think is Adam Grant, who’s written a lot about being able to change your mind recently and you know, all the leadership stuff I’m reading now is like a good leader is able to change course, to change paths, to go, this isn’t working, we need, we need to change.

[00:41:35] Claire: It’s not a failure. We often feel like, I’ve made my bed, now I’ve gotta go and sleep in it. And it’s an interesting idea, isn’t it, that it’s a sign of failure because of that one decision. But let’s model, let’s model that. Like changing our

[00:41:48] Rachel: You’ve got new information. You, you are acting as, therefore you’ve made that decision. You’ve now got information. Like, just really simple. Even with career, when I’ve done, you know, various different jobs and roles, I worked in that role for a bit and I thought, actually I don’t like this role, I don’t like what I’m doing. I stopped it. Um, was that a failure? No,

[00:42:06] Claire: But you take all those transferable skills and knowledge then for the next decision, which, so it is kind of, you’re gradually building. It’s, it’s that kind of like how to fail stuff, isn’t it? Because even though I don’t think decisions that you change your mind are, are failure, um, that is kind of what,

[00:42:21] Rachel: It can feel like it. It’s a relationship. Say as a relationship that doesn’t work out or a job that doesn’t work out, you just know. Yeah, people can see it as a failure and it

[00:42:29] Claire: It feels like sunk costs you can’t get back. But actually, I think reframing it as these will come in useful, I’ve definitely found, you know, that in my business when I’ve, yeah, I don’t know what I’m doing. Um, I, I’m a psychologist, not a business woman, and so I’ve had to learn as I go and sometimes I’ve made decisions thought, oh, okay, and then when I’ve pivoted. As my coach would say, um, I’ve learned so much and I’ve taken those skills, and often I’ve thought, oh yeah. And I didn’t realize how much I was gonna need those until later down the line.

[00:42:56] Rachel: Yeah. We’re always learning and actually the, I mean, the definition of madness isn’t it, is carrying on doing the same thing that’s not working or so, or something like, something like that. I think maybe it just takes a lot of the stress out, the decisions if we realize that we could change it. It doesn’t work out or we don’t like it, or it just, if, if stuff comes to light that then shows it’s not the right thing, totally fine.

[00:43:16] Claire: So use that wording then, if someone’s listening to this can take anything from this conversation, it’s like, I’m gonna reframe it as, I’m gonna try this.’ Cause it takes the pressure off. See it as an experiment.

[00:43:27] Rachel: We do that in our medical practice as well. You know, let’s try this medication and see if it works. Like it’s not a failure. If it doesn’t work, it’s like, okay, that, that didn’t work. Let’s try this one, or whatever. So maybe you need to apply that a bit more. So, Claire, your three top tips for decision making.

[00:43:41] Claire: Oh gosh.

[00:43:41] Rachel: everything and half the book and everything into this, into three top tips.

[00:43:45] Claire: I’m not, I’m not sure this is top two is another thought that’s just come to me. So I’ll chop it in here. Why not? Um, is, is to remember that your decisions for you are right for you. And just because a decision is right for someone else doesn’t mean that that’s gonna be the same for you. ‘Cause I think that that’s an important point. ‘Cause I think we can often use other people as a benchmark for what will suit us. And that’s not quite right. We’ve got different values and pressures, so.

[00:44:05] Claire: Well, I know I keep coming back to it, but trying to just not make decisions from a stressed place, trying to create enough pacing and time, ’cause we kind of need time to think through decisions. And we, we make better, clearer decisions. And then remembering that stuff, I think around I can handle it. I think that can really help. It’s quite practical tool as well. Like, you know, anyone listening to this who’s got a decision, you know, you could just spend five minutes after this podcast, just close your eyes, just picture yourself moving through that decision and I can handle it and how will you handle it and jot those down if it helps to remember.

[00:44:39] Rachel: Thank you. Oh, what I’ve taken from this. I think the acting as if, love that. That’s really helpful. And I think changing your mind is actually a sign of wisdom. It’s not a sign of. I dunno, failure or weakness, it’s a sign of sign of wisdom and um, I think this, it’s just a self-compassion in all of this. Like, recognize, of course this is hard, of course this is hard. There’s so many variables and stuff like that. And just give ourselves a break and don’t expect ourselves to be right all the time or right, right, or even get away from the right and wrong language, right? Is this work? Does it not work? What do we think? I think all that will really, really, really help.

[00:45:15] Rachel: I think the one thing is just recognize when you are in that, get it right, the amber zone, your fight flight or free zone, because nothing good really ever comes of being there, and do everything you can to try and get into the, the green one where you can actually make rational decisions.

[00:45:30] Rachel: So there’s so much in that and, and you know, I would really encourage people to get your book and read it ’cause there’s, you talk about this and lots more. Um, will you come back on soon? ‘Cause we’ve got several other topics I’d like to pick your brains on.

[00:45:42] Claire: I do enjoy these conversations. I’d love to. Yeah.

[00:45:44] Rachel: Wonderful. Thank you so much. If people wanna find out more about you, where did they go?

[00:45:48] Claire: So you can visit my website, drclaireplumbly.com. Um, my book’s available on Audible, Spotify as well for anyone who enjoys, you know, podcasts and consumes content, um, that way. And I’m on socials, I’m on LinkedIn and um, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

[00:46:05] Rachel: Brilliant. So look up Dr. Claire Plumbly and we will talk to you again soon. Thank you so much.

[00:46:10] Claire: Thanks.

[00:46:10] Rachel: Thanks for listening. Don’t forget, we provide a self-coaching CPD workbook for every episode. You can sign up for it via the link in the show notes, and if this episode was helpful, then please share it with a friend. Get in touch with any comments or suggestions at hello@unnotterfrog.com. I love to hear from you. And finally, if you are enjoying the podcast, please rate it and leave a review wherever you are listening. It really helps. Bye for now.