Your Brain’s Freeze Button

Before I explain the similarities between Parkinson’s disease and decision paralysis, let’s address the question you might be asking: What exactly is decision paralysis?

Decision paralysis—also known as analysis paralysis or choice paralysis—is a temporary inability to decide between options. 

Let’s put this in context:

You sit down after dinner, ready to start homework. You have an essay, calculus problems, and a history reading. Do you start with the hardest? The easiest? The one that’s due first? Minutes pass by as you debate. You open a document, close it, and glance at your phone. The longer you think, the heavier it feels.  You haven’t written a word or solved a problem, yet you already feel behind.Over time, you become frustrated: you want to get your homework done, but the pressure to make the “right” choice about where to start keeps you stuck before you can even start your homework.

Sounds familiar? This is decision paralysis.

On the other hand, Parkinson’s disease is a progressive brain disorder that affects movement. It typically happens when nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine (a chemical that helps control movement) degenerate. This leads to symptoms like tremors, slowed movement, and sometimes “freezing,” where your body feels stuck even with a strong desire to move.

Muscle freezing, specifically, only lasts a few seconds, but it is one of the most menacing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Freezing episodes can happen at any time but tend to happen more often when you are in transition— starting to move, transitioning from standing to walking, transitioning within a space. 

So, just like muscle freezing leaves you standing still when you want to walk, decision paralysis leaves you stuck when you want to move forward. Both feel like losing control of your body and not being able to act on a need to accomplish a goal.

The scariest part isn’t just losing time; it’s losing trust in yourself. Every time you freeze, it chips away at your belief that you can handle things. And once that mindset invades, the paralysis doesn’t limit itself to homework. It becomes pervasive; it starts creeping into “bigger” choices, too—the ones that actually shape your future.

To be continued :)

Sources: