Why Panic Makes You Worse at Decisions — The Science Behind It

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Hi, I'm SuperKate. Welcome to Connecting with Super Kate for women who have too many job titles, too many commitments, but are still determined to enjoy their lives anyway. A few years ago, we decided to move to a new state. I've moved close to 20 times in my adult life, several of those across the country. Packing up my life and moving is not something new to me, but yet I always make it overwhelming. We found out we were moving a month before the actual move date. I started doing what I normally do, packing the books first, because packing books is the most satisfying kind of packing. I get to use all of my Tetris skills to max out every box. But as the weeks passed, fewer and fewer things got packed. I rented a truck I thought would be big enough and hired people to pack it. And in most of my past moves, I'd had people waiting at the new place to help unload. So instead of hiring help for that part, I tried to organize the few people I knew in the area to show up instead. As the move date got closer, I was completely burned out. And I wasn't acknowledging how the choice to make the move was actually making me feel. I just kept taking on more of the responsibility myself. I never asked my partner for help because why would I? I could handle something this big. I've done it before. But all those tiny decisions, which box is best for this? What else can I fit in here? Where does this go? Every single one of those was depleting every last shred of mental energy I had. My nervous system was in absolute chaos. My shoulders, my neck, my back were all tense. I couldn't focus on anything. And I just kept telling myself, I'm fine, everything will work out. I'm fine. It's fine. I'll be fine. This was the part of the pandemic when everyone was moving and trucks were impossible to come by. So even though I had reserved a truck weeks in advance, when I went to pick it up, they didn't have it. This sent me into a new level of panic because we had a leave date that couldn't be rescheduled. I then found out the people I was counting on to help unload the truck were no longer available. My partner said we should just hire help. But at this point, I was really shutting down and I was locked into not spending more money, locked into doing it the way I had already decided I was going to do it. Looking back on that stretch of time, I just see a mess of nerves and a puddle of exhaustion. I was so determined to do it one specific way that I genuinely couldn't see any other way might help me. In the end, I hired people to unload the truck. Honestly, it was the second best decision I made about that entire move. And when they showed up, I felt nothing but relief. And here's what I didn't understand at the time. When we're in a heightened nervous system response, fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, something specific happens in the brain. The amygdala, which is in charge of that fight or flight response, starts pulling resources away from the hippocampus, which handles long-term memory and creative problem solving. And the longer we stay in that heightened state, the stronger the amygdala's grip gets. And the more the hippocampus shrinks, which means the longer your nervous system stays unregulated, the worse your memory gets, and the less creatively you're able to problem solve. In that moment, I had lost the capacity to see asking for help as an option at all. A lot of people talk about this as a leftover piece of evolution back when we were being chased by predators. Imagine you're an antelope on the plains and you spot a lion heading your way. Of course you run. Every part of you is going to focus on getting away. But your brain isn't focused on the best way to get away. You might not notice that the direction you're running leads to a dead end. You might miss the idea that ducking into a group of other prey would throw the lion off entirely. You're focused on getting away, not the strategy of it, just getting the fuck away. Now, that's an extreme version of what most of us face day to day. But that evolutionary wiring is still fully online. Our nervous systems often react to a deadline we haven't prepared for, an emergency or a truck reservation falling through, as if we're being chased by a lion. And when that happens, we are far less likely to land on the best decision for that moment. We're just trying to get away. I want to acknowledge there are real situations when you don't have time to deliberate. You have to choose a direction and go. And there are moments in life where it feels like only one option is possible because that's the option that feels safest. There's also the opposite version when there are so many options, you can't choose any of them. And that's the same lion just wearing a different costume. You're so focused on meeting one outcome through one specific path that you freeze or you flee from the decision entirely. With a regulated nervous system, you get to see a situation with actual clarity, how you feel about it, uh, what the real pros and cons are. You learn when you're spending too much time trying to land on the perfect decision versus just deciding and adjusting course later if you need to. I wish I had known that during the move. I wish I could have seen even for a moment that hiring help wasn't a failure and that I was really dysregulated. Looking back now, I can see exactly what would have changed everything. If I had set aside regular amounts of time to pack early, if I had let some of those boxes be imperfectly packed instead of needing every single one to be optimized, I would have saved myself from some overwhelm and decision fatigue. And if I had actually talked to my partner about how overwhelmed I was, instead of one of my top skills, which you may know what I'm talking about, just pushing through and pretending I was fine, I could have chosen help instead of being forced into it once I'd already run out of time and options. That's the difference. Choosing support is regulated, and defaulting to it in a crisis can be damage control. This is so much of what I help my clients with now by understanding what's happening in their bodies, like why the decisions keep getting harder, why asking for help feels impossible, why everything narrows down to just getting through. And when we begin to understand how that feels in our bodies, then we build the structures and the strategies ahead of time so they don't end up white knuckling their way through moments like I did with that truck. Emergencies happen, but most of what felt like an emergency that day wasn't actually one. It was a month of unmade small decisions catching up to me all at once. So, what are some smaller steps you can take right now, especially when it comes to taking care of your body, that would alleviate what could feel like an emergency in the future? I want to thank you for being here for this episode. If you enjoyed it, it would be amazing if you shared it with someone who needs this connection, or share it on socials and tag me. You can also head to my website and explore the other ways we can work together. And as always, I am grateful to connect with you.