A Decision Is Rarely Made From One Thing

When someone starts shouting, I can feel a deep stress almost immediately. The shouting does not have to be directed at me. I may have nothing to do with the argument. Still, I want to leave.

By the time I begin asking what is happening, part of me is already looking for a way out.

That reaction has made me think about what goes into a decision. I can say, “I left because someone was shouting,” and the sentence is true. It also leaves out much of what made the sound matter to me.

There is what I hear now, what I remember, what I fear might happen next, and what is actually happening around me. They can arrive together, so quickly that I experience them as one reason.

What shouting used to mean

When I was little, shouting was sometimes followed by being hit. My father hit me. My adoptive mother did too. A raised voice could mean that something painful was about to happen.

There were also the sounds of anger elsewhere in the house. My parents, and later my adoptive parents, could slam doors or other things when they were angry. Sometimes I was part of the situation. Sometimes I could only hear it.

Hearing it could be enough to make me afraid that something would happen to me.

I did not always know whether the anger would reach me. I knew that it could. A noise from another room could change how safe I felt in the place where I was standing.

As an adult, I still react strongly to shouting and slammed doors. A very loud car accelerating outside can also leave me stressed. I connect that reaction with what sudden, forceful noise meant in my childhood, even though the car and the person driving it have no part in that history.

This is how I understand my own experience. Another person may hear the same sound and respond quite differently. They are hearing it with a different history.

For me, sometimes what feels like a decision made in the present is partly a response to the past.

The feeling is real, and the situation needs attention

I do not want to talk myself out of the fact that I am stressed. The feeling is happening. Telling myself that I should be unaffected does not make the sound easier to hear.

I can take that feeling seriously while asking what it tells me about this particular moment. Is someone threatening me? Is something being thrown? Can I leave freely? Or has a sound reminded me of a danger without bringing the same danger with it?

Sometimes there may be an old memory and a present reason to be afraid. Knowing my history should never become a reason to explain away somebody else’s threatening behaviour.

I am allowed to step away before I have understood every part of my reaction. I do not have to stay near shouting to prove that I can distinguish the present from the past. Getting some distance may be the first decision; understanding what happened can come afterwards.

What interests me is being able to return to the experience with more curiosity and less shame. What did I notice? What did I expect? What did the situation actually require of me?

Those questions give me more to work with than deciding that I was either completely right or simply overreacting.

Love and dislike can change the explanation

Fear is only one influence. Love can shape a decision just as strongly.

When I love someone, I want to understand them. I may know how tired they are, what they are worried about, or what they have lived through. That knowledge can help me respond with patience. It can also make me hurry past the effect of what they did.

“They were having a difficult day” may be a fair explanation. I still need room to say that their words hurt, or that something needs to change. Caring about their circumstances does not remove me from the relationship.

Dislike can pull me in another direction. I can hear a sentence from someone I already distrust and assume the worst before I have checked what they meant. A mistake I would forgive in a friend becomes, in someone else, evidence of the character I expected to find.

Anger and hatred can make that judgement feel especially certain. I want to notice when my feelings about a person are doing more work than the information in front of me.

One useful question is whether I would give the same behaviour the same explanation if it came from someone I felt differently about. The answer may reveal a real difference in their history with me. It may also reveal that I have decided what happened before giving it much attention.

What I see is part of a longer moment

Seeing something can make me feel that I have the whole answer. Yet I can walk into a room halfway through an argument. I can see someone leave without knowing whether they are angry, frightened, exhausted or trying to prevent a worse conversation.

The action is visible. Much of its context may be missing.

The same is true of a word. “Okay” can mean agreement, reluctance or a wish to finish talking. Tone matters. So does the conversation before it, the person’s usual way of speaking and the possibility that I have misunderstood.

I have written about the circumstances we did not choose and how much they can change the choices available to us. Here I am interested in another part of that question: how much of the context behind a decision is being supplied by the person making it?

My experience can help me recognise something. It can also make one explanation arrive sooner than the others. I want to notice that difference without assuming that everything familiar is a repetition of the past.

The reason I give afterwards

There are decisions that sound clearer when I explain them than they felt while I was making them.

Imagine deciding not to ask someone an important question. There may be sensible reasons to wait: they are busy, the setting offers no privacy, or the answer is not needed today. There may also be a fear of hearing an answer I cannot change.

If I only mention the sensible reasons afterwards, I can leave that fear out of my own account. The explanation sounds complete, even though something important is missing.

I want to be able to ask myself what I am protecting. My time? A reasonable boundary? The hope that I can postpone disappointment by postponing the question?

The answer does not automatically make the decision wrong. Waiting may still be appropriate. But understanding the influence gives me a more honest choice about what to do next.

Enough understanding to take the next step

I do not think a good decision requires an inventory of every feeling and memory. In an urgent situation, there may be no time for reflection. In an ordinary one, trying to understand everything can become another way of staying still.

When there is room to pause, I can begin with a few specific questions. What do I know happened? What am I adding to it? What matters to me here? Is there something I can reasonably check that would change my next step?

Not every influence deserves the same weight. A clear threat calls for action even if I also love the person making it. A strong suspicion may call for a question when the available evidence does not support a conclusion. Experience deserves attention alongside the details of the present situation.

The circumstances also determine what is possible. Time, money, support and responsibility affect a choice. An option can be sensible in principle and unavailable to the person who has to live with it.

Eventually I need to recognise when thinking has stopped helping. If another round of reflection produces no new information and no clearer next step, I may be asking for a certainty the situation cannot offer.

Sometimes the next step is small. Ask what a sentence meant. Take a break. Decline something. Leave the room. I can make that choice without deciding everything about the person, the relationship or my future at once.

A fuller answer to why

If you ask why I wanted to leave when someone was shouting, I may need more than one sentence.

I heard a raised voice. I felt stressed. I remembered what that sound had meant before, perhaps without consciously recalling any particular event. I noticed what was happening around me and what choices I had. All of that belonged to the moment.

I want to give other people room for that kind of answer too. A reaction I would not have had may still be understandable. Someone does not owe me their childhood history before I respect a request for space.

I also want to leave myself room to learn. I can feel strongly and still discover that I misunderstood. I can recognise an old fear and still decide that leaving was right. I can understand why I made a choice and choose differently when the circumstances change.

I doubt I will ever see every influence clearly. What I can do is remain willing to look beyond the first explanation, especially when my decision will affect somebody else.

A sound, a feeling or a memory can tell me something important. I want to hear what it is telling me, and leave enough room to notice what else is true.