Constantly questioning my decisions, is this anxiety?

[ClaireRed]

I feel like I am fixated on the decisions I make for my little boy, constantly questioning myself and researching. Its mainly around schooling, he is young for his year so I spent months agonizing whether to defer him and then spent more months questioning which school. We didnt defer and he is in a nice school with friends but im constantly going back and feeling like I made the wrong decisions, even the school we chose, its nice but ive made no mum friends and feel very different, its an integrated school but mainly one religion, im not religious at all but feel so out of place and different. Im constantly talking to my DH and hes getting sick of it, he's just made his peace that we'll never know if we made the right decision amd just have to live with it. I suspect I maybe have anxiety but it seems to just be fixated on decisions on my DS school. Anyone else experience this?

You sound very anxious, maybe it’s time to speak to someone about it

Yes, I think that when you are overly anxious it can be expressed as an endless rumination about decisions that you have taken. And when you are a parent of a young child, the rumination will naturally focus on the important decisions you are making about their life. Particularly when those decisions affect your life too -- your daily routine, your social world, are all affected by the school environment.

Indecisiveness is often a very big feature of anxiety and depression specifically because, as depressed/anxious people we are aware of the awful pain of rumination, of constantly second guessing ourselves and our choices.

It is really good that you can frame your worries as possibly being an expression of excessive anxiety. In the longer term that will help you to detach from them. Try to remember that if you had made the opposite decision, then your anxiety would still have caused you to ruminate, to pick at yourself and regret your choices endlessly.

It is tempting, when ruminating, to imagine that you can 'think your way through' to a resolution of the pain of doubting your decisions. You can't. The best thing to do is to try to interrupt the rumination. Distract yourself with something - preferably something that involves self-kindness.
xxx

Thank you for your reply, I appreciate it. It is strange to me that's its only decisions around my oldest son I worry about and ruminate on, constantly thinking what if/regretting decisions I made and worrying about his future. For myself I don't really worry once ive made a decision like moving jobs, buying a house etc

But yes I agree no matter what decision Id have made I would probably worry that it was the wrong one. I think because he is one of the youngest in the class maybe I worry more about him, I do feel if I had deferred I wouldn't have felt this way but so many people told me he was ready I felt I was deferring for myself not for him.

Ive had CBT in the past and not sure itll really help but ill try to research some alternatives,
Thank you again for replying