Become more determined

The study, which involved 4000 students and took place in 19 countries around the world, helped to find out why some people avoid making decisions and moving forward. It turns out that unlike others, they do not think that being active and decisive is a good thing. However, this approach is characteristic of people of a certain warehouse – neurotics who are (chronically) prone to negative emotional experiences: sadness, anxiety, irritability and insecurity. As a rule, in a situation of stress, they prefer to do nothing, which often leads to the most undesirable (for them) consequences.

In the course of research, psychologists have tried to find out what leads neurotics to action or inaction. They studied how depression and anxiety are related to the reluctance to make any decisions in advance and whether a person (especially in a state of inaction) considers the social consequences of his action. “The negative attitude of neurotic personalities to active actions is primarily associated with anxiety,” the authors of the study conclude. “At the same time, it is collectivists, not individualists, who, as a rule, dare to act.”

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So if your friend is an indecisive neurotic, most likely, all is not lost if social harmony, friends and family are important to him. That is why all those who want to learn how not to fall out of life due to seemingly insurmountable obstacles (which, most likely, after a while will turn out to be quite ordinary life stages), can be wished good luck. If one day they manage (perhaps after working with a therapist) to learn to appreciate the action itself, they can overcome the tendency to freeze in difficult moments of life and avoid the undesirable consequences of their own inaction.

For more information, see J. Diorio “Neurotics Don’t Just Avoid Action: They Dislike it” on the website of the University of Pennsylvania (USA) upenn.edu