How Anxiety Lives in the Body and Affects Decision-Making

Anxiety can make decisions feel overwhelming. A Los Angeles anxiety therapist explains how anxiety lives in the body and why choices feel so hard.

“Why Does Deciding Feel So Hard?”

There are moments you can think back to when you had to make a decision, and you’re immediately hit with a head rush connected to overthinking different outcomes. Then, almost like an impulse, you ask others for their opinion—and all of a sudden, everything feels okay again. The overwhelming feeling goes away, at least for a moment.

But it doesn’t come without effort. When you try to make a decision on your own, it can feel like a sense of frozenness that stops you in your tracks. Maybe it shows up as a wall of thoughts filled with what ifs.

As an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA, I see how deeply anxiety lives in the body and how that directly impacts decision-making for many adults. The second-guessing comes from a deep desire to make the “right” or “correct” decision. There’s so much care and importance attached to it that it can quickly turn into pressure—pressure that can make the body feel immobilized.

Anxiety lives in our thoughts, actions, and feelings—but most importantly, it lives in the body.

Anxiety Is a Body Response, Not Just a Thought Pattern

It can feel like you’re going crazy when a rush of thoughts comes in uncontrollably and at high speed—almost like someone turned up the thermostat on anxious thinking. In those moments, the world outside of what you’re going through can feel nonexistent. Time doesn’t feel real anymore. Eating a meal suddenly doesn’t matter. The chores you meant to get done get pushed to the next day.

I’ve been there in losing hours of my day because anxiety was telling my body that a decision was more important than eating. I couldn’t move forward with my day until a choice was made. And on my own, it often wasn’t going to happen. So I would reach out to others or avoid making the decision altogether.

Everything seems to stop when anxiety decides to take over the body, especially when making a decision becomes the thing it fixates on.

If you’ve already developed insight into your anxiety but still feel stuck, I explore why understanding alone often isn’t enough in more depth here.

You might find yourself wondering why anxiety does this, and how inconvenient it feels when you already have so much on your plate.

What I’ve learned through years of specializing in anxiety treatment—and what I teach my clients—is that when anxiety senses something bad might happen, it goes into overdrive. Overthinking ramps up quickly and can turn into spirals that feel hard to get out of. And if you slow down enough to notice, you’ll likely find your own cues that anxiety has taken over the body: a clenched jaw, faster breathing, a racing heart, increased tension, or knots in the stomach.

What Anxiety Does in the Moment of Decision

When we try to understand anxiety logically, we can spend a lot of time talking about thought patterns—deciphering them, understanding them, and learning how to reframe them in order to move forward with decisions. While this can be helpful, it often keeps us focused on the mind alone. The deeper understanding comes from noticing what anxiety is doing in the body.

I’ve come to find that clients—especially first-generation, BIPOC, and Queer clients—are able to hold onto healing for longer when their understanding of their body is strengthened. And that understanding often begins by noticing what anxiety does in the exact moment they’re caught in a decision.

In earlier sections, I described a few ways the body can respond when faced with a decision: over-fixation on getting to an answer, coming to a complete stop, or avoiding taking steps altogether. These responses closely mirror how the body reacts to uncertainty—because that’s ultimately what a decision represents. These patterns are often referred to as the fight, flight, or freeze responses.

This can look like pressure to make the “right” or “correct” decision, avoidance or procrastination, or a state where the mind feels blank—almost like a shutdown.

Why Overthinking Becomes the Default

So where did overthinking become such a common coping mechanism for many people who seek therapy for anxiety in Los Angeles, CA?

For many first-generation, BIPOC, and Queer clients, overthinking became a way to stay safe. Not thinking a decision through in every possible way meant something could be missed—and unpredictability or chaos might follow. When you grow up in environments where there is pressure around what’s considered “acceptable” behavior, which emotions are allowed, and what success is supposed to look like, the cost of making a mistake can feel high.

Sometimes that cost shows up as shame, guilt, or regret—feelings that many in these communities know all too well. Of course you’d want to avoid making the “wrong” decision, especially in the eyes of others.

So while overthinking is a safety strategy, it can also create a sense of doing something. Productivity and problem-solving can bring temporary ease for adults who struggle with anxiety, particularly those who are high-functioning. The problem arises when getting to a solution feels overwhelming—when it takes up your entire day, interferes with your ability to care for yourself, and no option feels right.

And then you’re back at square one, feeling unsure of what to do next, trying to find a way to bring ease to a body that feels lost and confused.

When No Option Feels Right

Being at a crossroads with a decision can make the body feel as though no choice is the safe one. This response is unconscious and automatic. And often, there is more context beneath it—if you slow down enough to listen to what the body is trying to communicate.

At times, the body is responding to a familiar feeling from earlier in life, whether from childhood or young adulthood. Even more recent negative experiences can linger in the body, especially if you’re used to pushing through emotions and find it difficult to sit with them.

When anxiety steps in to protect you and the body reacts, it’s often communicating something like: “I remember this feeling. The last time I made a choice, something negative happened. I didn’t feel safe. I wanted it to stop.”

And that’s often where the response gets stuck. You didn’t feel safe, and you don’t want to feel that discomfort again—especially if you haven’t learned how to cope with it. You may not yet know how to reassure yourself that you’re safe now, or even what safety is supposed to feel like, despite past experiences.

Building Safety Before Choice

A big part of the work I do with adults who struggle with anxiety around decision-making is helping them understand their hesitations and worries when faced with choices. Alongside that, we explore what has led them to not feel safe making decisions in the first place.

This work is about helping clients recognize when their body can begin to relax, and when it feels safe enough to not spiral into worry and to make decisions from a grounded place.

Processing in this way helps clients step away from the pressure of getting it right or the sense of finality that decisions can carry. Instead, we move into a rhythm of curiosity, compassion, and empathy. The urgency and all-or-nothing feeling begins to soften.

This work often starts with small choices; paying attention to what shows up in the body, not just in thoughts. It’s something we practice in sessions, with the goal of carrying it into daily life. Learning to notice sensations, name discomfort, understand where it’s coming from, and gently regulate the nervous system back toward safety.

How Anxiety Therapy Supports This Work

Working with a therapist who specializes in anxiety treatment creates space for real change—change that focuses on awareness, understanding, naming, and embodying the shifts you want to make. Many clients who work with me struggle with self-doubt and people-pleasing patterns that carry into their daily decision-making.

In our work together, we focus not only on building a trusting therapeutic relationship, but also on helping you identify what you need in order to feel safe and trust yourself as you move through life’s transitions.

I support adults—especially first-generation, BIPOC, and Queer adults—who experience a sense of frozenness when faced with decisions due to fear of making the wrong choice. Much of our work involves gently identifying emotional patterns rooted in early attachment experiences. Along the way, we practice ways to manage anxiety, explore new ways of relating that feel authentic and sustainable, and begin to loosen old beliefs that no longer serve you.

Throughout this process, we move at your pace. I’m there with you in the thick of the emotions, creating space for safety, self-compassion, and trust to grow.

You’re Not Bad at Decisions

Experiencing moments of indecisiveness can be deeply frustrating, especially when time seems to slip away while you’re stuck in the cycle. It’s important to validate that this is hard, and that it makes sense. Growing up in environments where the cost of making a mistake felt high can create a level of pressure that’s difficult to cope with, let alone sit with.

That pressure and overthinking once served a purpose. They helped you navigate situations where safety or approval mattered. But they don’t have to define how you move through adulthood.

You don’t need to carry this pressure alone or let it get in the way of the growth you’ve been longing for. As an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA, I support adults—especially first-generation, BIPOC, and Queer adults—who are ready to stop holding everything on their own and want a more compassionate relationship with themselves and with others.

You deserve support that honors who you are, where you come from, and who you’re becoming.

Whenever you’re ready, I’m here.

Schedule a Free Consultation at (323) 493-6644 or Book Here.

Ligia Orellana, LMFT (#122659)

I’m an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, California, certified in LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy and Somatic Attachment Therapy. I help first-generation BIPOC and Queer adults who feel the pressure to hold it all together move through self-doubt, anxiety, and relationship struggles. My work creates space for deeper connection and self-trust through emotional safety and cultural understanding.

Learn more about my work with relationship stress, people-pleasing and self-doubt, and online therapy, or visit my About page to learn more.