AMBIVALENCE & INDECISIVENESS
The word decision comes from the Latin decidere: meaning "to cut off." To decide is to sever one possibility from another, to choose a path and let the others fall away. Sometimes, that act of cutting feels impossible. The psyche resists the violence of choosing.
Ambivalence is not confusion; it's the experience of two equally charged truths pulling in opposite directions
Ambivalence is not necessarily confusion; it's the experience of two equally charged truths pulling in opposite directions. The psyche hesitates when both choices feel like a kind of loss. In nature, when an animal faces two competing instincts of equal force, to fight or to flee, it often performs a displacement activity: grooming, pecking at the ground, or circling aimlessly. It's a way of managing unbearable tension by doing something unrelated.
Humans are no different. We scroll, clean, overanalyze, commit to nothing. The energy that could move us toward choice disperses sideways.For those seeking therapy for indecision in NYC, this paralysis can feel relentless. You may find yourself endlessly researching, seeking one more opinion, waiting for certainty that never arrives. Even small choices carry unexpected weight, as if each decision threatens something you can't name.
In therapy, we stay with that tension rather than rushing to resolve it. We can play those scenarios out together, give language to what's pulling in opposite directions, and listen for what each part of you is trying to preserve. Sometimes talking itself isn't enough — you can think through it a hundred times and still not know. It lives in the body, in feeling, in fantasy. We might notice what happens inside you as you imagine each outcome: the quickening, the dread, the relief that follows.
Over time, ambivalence doesn't always resolve; it softens, or it rearranges you. The work is as much about deciding as it is about understanding what's at stake.
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