Curing Decision Paralysis

Finding clarity, resourcing trust, and nervous system regulation as your web weaving source

The other week, a sister I was training as a tattoo apprentice in Austin asked me how I trusted going all the way there to work with her and facilitate tattoo ceremonies in Austin.

I told her that I trusted my body, and in my body, it was a yes.

This apprentice was scheduled to come to work with me in LA this summer but got sick right before she was meant to fly out and had to cancel. While last-minute cancellations can sometimes feel disruptive, I felt relieved when I received her email. Something in my body told me it was incorrect to do the training in LA for several reasons that would make more sense later. Instead, I got the opportunity to experience much magic, abundance, and sweetness in Austin, including a sweet space to facilitate ceremonies, a beautiful place to stay, a speaking event to share my book/deck, beautiful client connections, finding my oracle deck for sale in a random shop I popped into, sweet sister bonding, midwifing an apprentice to birth her way of weaving ceremonial tattooing/her unique healing medicine and artistry, and even a home for my beloved Loretta cat.

When I trust my body and let my yeses be clear, easy, and effortless, magic, abundance, and synchronicity always flow. When I don’t…well…I get caught in karmic webs that are not mine to get caught in, and this causes unnecessary suffering.

Learning to trust my body to guide my decisions has been a process and a well-tended relationship I do my best to prioritize. This has required much more attention and intention while traveling to many places recently, but it’s also been a great practice.

When I am in my own energy and in environments that match my energy, it’s very easy to trust myself and my decisions are clear, quick, and easy. But when I feel anxiety, fear, strong emotions, or the dysregulation of others, I can, at times, step outside my own web and into the web of another to try to regulate their energy, which disconnects me from my own.

An example of this would be saying yes to a marriage proposal when my body was a no. I had just gotten off a long flight back to California from New York after two weeks of back-to-back work and filming. It was late, and I was tired, ungrounded, bloated from travel, and frustratingly distracted by my partner’s pacing energy and anxiety, not yet realizing he was gathering the courage to propose. It was easy for me to merge with him in the moment because I already felt less rooted and regulated from a day of travel. But because I merged with the activation of his nervous system, I could no longer feel my body and what the most aligned choice for me would be. And we all know how that ended. The photo he took of me right after said it all. It wasn’t the beaming and delighted photo you’d imagine, showing off my ring, love, and happiness. It was of a woman dissociated, disconnected from her voice and choice, forcing a smile with her hand stiff by her face.

You see, the nervous system determines trust. Trust in ourselves, in others, in life, and the divine. When we are centered and safe in our own web, which we could say is also the web of our nervous systems, we are rooted in our own bodies and inner authorities. But as soon as we step outside of ourselves and our bodies into the web/nervous system of another, we can get caught in sticky threads that we did not weave. From here, it can be tricky to know what is ours or not, or what is for us and what is not for us. And in this space, we may become plagued with decision paralysis.

Decision paralysis comes up frequently in my work with clients. Even when the next right action is so clear and direct, even when all the signs, messages, and synchronicity have been delivered, the choice still cannot be made if the body doesn’t trust or feel safe in the mystery. And in order to feel safe in the mystery, you have to be in relationship with the nature of your own inner mystery (your intuition/body’s wisdom).

When this relationship is broken by trauma or abuse, or when you prioritize other relationships first, you may spin out, weighing your choices and going back and forth for ages, never able to make the clear and empowered choice deep down you know is yours to make.

All this comes down to feeling safe and grounded in the body. We learn nervous system regulation from our caretakers, primarily from the mothers who gave birth to us and our primary caretakers in infancy and very early childhood. Unfortunately, modernity hasn’t made it easy for the average child to grow up in a healthy household with healthy forms of co-regulation or teachings of cultivating healthy roots in our bodies. Life for most is inherently traumatic and stressful, and safety and peace are seldom modeled in those we grow up around. While some households can be very unsafe or violent, your more common dysregulation is not always the parent’s fault but the patterns of stress, trauma, scarcity, and abuse that are passed down from generation to generation that live in the body.

This is why it is so important to heal our nervous systems, especially if we choose to have children, to teach and model safety, truth, a healthy sense of self, and being in our own authority and bodies for the life we are stewarding. We cannot heal these patterns and cycles of suffering passed down and weave our own webs until we are centered in them, aka rooted in our bodies' wise authority and nature. This is key to creating the life we desire to live.

We cannot make clear and empowered choices for our future if our nervous systems still hold onto the fear and lack of safety from the past.

We cannot expand our capacity for living, receiving, loving, and holding more if we are too dysregulated and disconnected from our bodies to feel safe living fully.

We simply cannot weave our webs if we are running around trying to find a secure corner to put them up in the first place.

Only when we are dysregulated or disassociated from the body can access points open for the voices and will of others outside of us to enter. These voices and motivations can be other people who may not have our best interest or may be coming from a place of fear, like old familiar, cultural, or relational conditioning. They can also come from stuck ancestors and other fear-based entities that will keep us stuck and disconnected from empowered choice. But when we address the fear in our bodies, strengthen our own will, and disconnect from the choices, voices, and will that are not of our highest truth, we can make choices centered in the middle of the web, liberating our desires, destiny, and trust in ourselves and life.

HOW TO CURE DECISION PARALYSIS