Walter Kaufmann, Princeton University philosopher coined the term decidophobia in his 1973 book “Without Guilt and Justice” in which he wrote about the phenomenon at length. The cause of decidophobia is usually a bad experience with decision making in the childhood, or to be ruled by a dominating person from childhood. Such a person suffers low self esteem and prefers maintaining status quo of whatever the dominating or strong person says or does. Decidophobia makes a person dependable on others for even making small decisions in life.

We make an average 35,000 conscious decisions a day as adults, and children make approximately 3,000 decisions a day! These figures are based on multiple sources on the Internet. Some of our decisions are impulsive and some are logical. So you see we make decisions practically each moment in a day. Some are quick, some are simple, and some are difficult, each decision, no matter big or small, can affect our life in long run. But, it’s important to make decision based on our own instinct. If we depend on someone else’s notion to made decisions of our life, some day the dependency costs us hell of a lot.

Making choices and decisions are an important element of life. Based on our decisions life unfolds, with its twists and turns. Some decisions might be correct and some wrong, some might start a new chapter and some might just stop things. Some decisions bring fascination in life and some baffle us to no end. From childhood to adulthood a person masters the art of decision making. Some people can just dive into life and do what is necessary with eagerness and excitement while others get paralyzed at the thought of having to step up to anything that might require taking action. Whether we like it or not, we need to take umpteen decisions in life….some good, some bad and some ugly. Our instincts are based on our mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing.

But, we see lot people in our lives that depend for small, small decisions on somebody else. Indeed, some people are so dependent on others because they feel that their lives are out of their control. The dependency can be for anybody; it can be a sibling, children, parent, spouse, friend, a boss, a neighbour, it can be anybody. But, these dependent people feel lost, confused while taking vital decisions. And, the worst part is a person gets lost, demoralised when the person on whom he/she depends, goes away from life. I have seen this very closely: these two sisters were very close to each other, the younger sister who is single, was completely dependent on her elder sister in all of her decision making, for even the smallest of decisions. Small decisions such as which colour dress to buy, what cost, from whereat to buy; what to cook, how much to cook; which doctor to visit in case of ailment, whether to go to doctor or to take home remedy; where to invest her salary, how much to spend, how much to save …….the list is big. Recently, when the elder sister passed away, this younger sister felt a big void in life, so much so that she started feeling hallucinated about her sister’s presence.

To be your own person you undoubtedly require independence of thought, feeling, and actions. You must think, feel, and act without terribly relying on others to give you directions in your life. Though as humans we are social animals, and we cannot live in vacuum, one thing is crystal clear that we eat, educate, and earn a living for ourselves. So, being independent does not mean that you live outside cultural, social, and legal boundaries; social conformity is essential, but not at the cost of independent thinking, independent decision making.

Often we get tempted to depend on a person or people in our relationships. But the key is to not become vulnerable; we must learn to play our role with clarity. Too much of dependability only weakens our daily decision making without somebody’s advice and support. We get habituated to leaning on others easily.

Dependable people need others to assume responsibility for many major areas of life. They have difficulty to disagree and to contradict with others out of fear. They get used to other’s dictating their life.

Dependent people fear exposure; they become shy, and hate confrontation of any sort. They literally live in a shell. They don’t like meeting and mixing with others, and overall have weaknesses of public display. Slowly, such people avoid failure by evading of taking any initiative. They limit their interactions to such an extent that they run away from any interactions where they need making some decisions. They feel anxious or distressed when alone or when thinking about being alone. These weak people often expect the worst. They do not feel capable of living their own lives without others.

For them, facing problems becomes overwhelming. Dependent people wholeheartedly believe in Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The concept was coined and named after Capt. Edward A. Murphy; an engineer working on Air Force Project MX981, (a project) designed to see how much sudden deceleration (reduction in speed rate) a person can stand in a crash. It is we who keep using the adage when things go out of control.

Weak people make themselves responsible when bad things happen. Because, they don’t trust themselves, they don’t respect themselves therefore, they feel guilty for mistakes.  Even if the conclusion is unreasonable, they take the blame for all wrongdoing, event, and circumstances. This they do because they feel responsible for fulfilling the expectations of others. In dependency, the dependent person adopts the expectations of the other person as their own. So when the dependent person fails, they fail to meet not only the expectations of the other person but also their own. Each failure strengthens the dependent person’s destructive judgment of self.

Dependent people have a high need for validation and approval from others. They crave for validation badly; such a person naively creates or defends personal boundaries. The only real boundary a dependent person has is to be within the boundary of a desired relationship. Apart from that, all other personal boundaries are fluid and flexible in order to maintain the desired relationship. An eagerness to negotiate personal boundaries for a relationship creates helplessness.

There are the cunning and crafty people out there who only exploit this type of vulnerability. They are all-too-willing to find out how much a dependent person can be exploited. Some rich people leave a big fortune for their children behind them, who have never taken decisions of their own; such people get exploited after their parents exit the world. They inherit family fortune and then they get exploited by wicked people around them.

If you or some near and dear is suffering from decidophobia, get rid of it as immediate as possible. If required take professional help without hesitation.

In our life, we often feel intimidated by others. Many people make us nervous. This covers a whole gamut of personalities ranging from some rich and famous, higher ups at work, love interests, some highly qualified people, politicians, people we don’t know at parties, popular people from society, our professors, some renowned professionals and celebrities. It’s very natural to feel intimidated occasionally. It pushes us to become better person. It happens often due to our imaginative gap we see between people we look up to and self. Some such people can bring up feelings we harbor about ourselves that we are not good enough, striking enough, interesting enough, intelligent enough or many more deficiencies.

Have you ever thought that many people must be getting intimidated by you? Your behavior, your mannerism might be misunderstood by many. Shyness is misunderstood as aloofness all the time. Silence is misunderstood as snobbishness; similarly chattiness is misunderstood as gossiping, getting emotional everyone and then is misunderstood as drama queen/king. A very successful doctor – an acquaintance of mine who appears aloof confided in me in one of the parties over a drink that he somehow can’t liberate from his shyness and he thoroughly enjoys when people interact with him. When I told him that he comes across as an aloof person he was astonished as it is just the opposite of his intent; in fact he looks forward to chat and interact with people. Sometimes, if we make the first social move and say hello, we might be wiping out two people’s nerves.

I think everyone feels a little uneasy and off-balanced when they’re around that handful of people who just seem to have everything going for them. They may be really outgoing as well, which can add in all the problems from the point above. You will find their intimidating impression shrinks when you just have more experience with them. When you get used to them, start seeing them as normal people, you will learn firsthand that they too have flaws and quirks and insecurities like everyone else. And, this might improve your own confidence and social skills. You then see these people as closer to your level, rather than them being on a pedestal and your feeling you’re a walking example of lame, awkward unworthiness that’s lucky to even be talking to them.

I would add here a very well managed movie ‘English Vinglish’ which is the story of Shashi, a woman who doesn’t know English and is intimidated by her family and society at large. The film though light-hearted is about the touching and transformational journey of Shashi. Circumstances make her resolute to overcome this insecurity, master English language, teach the world a lesson on the way to becoming a self assured and confident woman.

And, don’t we all believe in stereotypes about looks, styles, mannerisms, eating, drinking, about certain subgroups positive as well as negative. Many times we group religion, races or individuals together and make a judgment about them without knowing them; this is a pattern of a stereotype. Racial remarks, sexual remarks, and gender remarks are the biggest stereotypes. A common stereotype about Asians is that they are good at math and that all Asians like to eat rice and drive slow. Another example is that Irish like to get drunk and they love eating potatoes. And commonest of all is that all boys and men mess up their surroundings and girls are not good at sports. Most stereotypes probably tend to convey a negative impression.

We all want to consider ourselves as liberal, progressive, open-minded citizens of the world while we sometimes subtly act on negative stereotypes about certain groups without giving much importance to it. At University, someone who comes from rural area may feel nervous around young stylish men and women speaking fluently and without any hesitation. Someone may feel a little hesitant to try to be friendly to the Chinese students, because of a negative stereotype going around campus that they’re all selfish and aloof and only associate with each other. I know many people who feel very insecure about their educational qualifications. It is either because their love of education and not having so many degrees.

When someone is intimidated by really outgoing people it’s that they’re worried about having to talk to them and feeling really besieged about feeling that they won’t be able to keep up or know what to say. Let me tell you the moment we think that we won’t be able to converse freely and we might fall short of words trust me that’s what happens. If we’re inhibited, we may assume everyone is constantly looking for a reason to review our flaws. Some people come across as snobby and judgmental without intending to as well.

I think we need to face our fear and just get more used to talking to people we feel intimidated by. We must try to analyze our intimidation. The first time might be tough, but once we get used to talking to them asking question, conversing with them freely the fear evaporates.

I have seen sometimes more of a problem for young adults when they’re still in high school, where all kinds of students are mixed together and they run into some very intelligent, dull, whacky, flamboyant, argumentative, foul mouthed, cheater, sober all sorts of students. It sometimes becomes difficult for peace loving and sober students to fit in a class of tough guys. Once someone has moved on to college or the work world they usually don’t run across as many tough guys. The fear in the work world is that these people are dangerous loose cannons who may kick your ass at any second. This world is more political and full of bias where you face sweet tongued people who say something and do something in contrast.

Some men don’t feel comfortable hanging out with other guys. They find them to be too macho, destructive, cutting in their humor, or impulsive. They may feel that way because they got picked on as a kid, or because they never really felt like they fit the male stereotype. Some women feel the same way and see other females as being too catty, girly, backstabbing, or dramatic, among other things. This is another area where some childhood experience can take the intimidating edge.

We all are product of our subconscious mind; we are what we think. If we think we are unsafe, we are going to remain unsafe till end. If we see someone as threat, the person will surely turn out be a threat. You can take back your power by just changing the way you see yourself. When you learn to see yourself perfectly, you will feel safe in any condition. Don’t care too much what others think of you. Other people can think you are a terrible, stupid, poor, ugly person. But,   does this change what you actually are? You are born with a purpose; understand that purpose, there is no reason to feel threatened by anyone, because in reality they can’t hurt you. Occasionally spend time on yourself – deep down you are an amazing, complete, secured, beautiful and good enough. Off and on you might experience some storms they will come and go. You are matchless, one-of-a-kind soul on a journey of learning and growth. Your value cannot be questioned – your value is infinite and absolute.