When the Right Choice Still Has Downsides
I quit Instagram and Facebook six years ago because using them made me feel not attractive, popular, or interesting enough.
Even though I knew that wasn’t actually true. Even though I understood intellectually that I was looking at carefully curated pieces of other people’s lives and comparing them to the entirety of my own. Knowing that didn’t seem to change how I felt when I used them.
Quitting had downsides too. I completely lost touch with multiple acquaintances (Dan from my first job, did you ever end up buying that boat?). I stopped having a pulse on my friends’ social activity. I missed invitations, announcements, photos, and some truly great content.
Ultimately, I had to evaluate the decision based on what mattered most to me: protecting my confidence, my peace, and my desire to be present in my actual life. There are still times I miss being on those platforms, but I know I made the right choice for me.
It also took me several years to actually make that choice.
Knowing Something Isn’t Working Isn’t Always Enough
Many of my therapy clients find themselves stuck in patterns of behaviour that don’t feel good. They stay in friendships they dread. They say yes to plans they don’t want to attend. They check work email all weekend even though it leaves them feeling like they never really get a break. They scroll until they feel terrible. They continue doing things mostly because they’ve always done them.
And usually, they’re not oblivious to the fact that the pattern isn’t working. They know.
The hard part is that there’s often a very legitimate reason they keep doing it.
Maybe stepping back from a friendship means losing a connection that has mattered for years. Saying no to plans might disappoint someone you care about. Not checking your email on Saturday might mean walking into more work on Monday. Deleting an app might mean losing a source of entertainment, connection, or information you genuinely enjoy.
There’s a reason we develop our habits and patterns in the first place. They usually give us something, even when they’re also costing us something.
That’s why simply recognizing that a behaviour isn’t serving you doesn’t necessarily make it easy to stop.
Waiting for the Obvious Decision
I think we often wait for decisions to become obvious. We want one option to reveal itself as clearly good and the other as clearly bad. Once that happens, we imagine, we’ll finally be able to act.
But a lot of the decisions that improve our lives don’t work that way.
Leaving a job that makes you miserable may also mean leaving people you love working with. Setting a boundary may protect your energy while also creating tension in a relationship. Ending a friendship can bring relief and grief at exactly the same time.
Sometimes there isn’t a choice that allows us to keep everything we value while eliminating everything that hurts.
That can keep us stuck for a long time. If every option involves some kind of loss or discomfort, we can convince ourselves that we just need to think about it a little longer. Maybe eventually we’ll find the perfect solution where nobody is disappointed, nothing is lost, and we feel completely certain.
Usually, that solution doesn’t exist.
Are the Downsides Worth It?
When I finally quit social media, I didn’t suddenly decide there was nothing I liked about it. There was plenty I liked about it. I decided that what I was getting from it wasn’t worth what it was costing me.
That distinction matters.
When we’re considering changing a pattern, we can spend a lot of time asking whether the new choice will have downsides. Of course it will. Most meaningful choices do.
A more useful question might be: Are the downsides worth it?
Is the awkwardness of saying no worth having an evening you actually want? Is disappointing someone worth protecting a boundary that matters to you? Is losing some connection worth feeling more present in the relationships you care about most?
There isn’t one correct answer. Different people will make different calculations because we value different things and are willing to tolerate different costs.
And sometimes we’ll decide the downsides aren’t worth it. That’s useful information too.
Change doesn’t always require discovering that something is entirely bad for us. Sometimes we already know exactly what we’re getting from a behaviour and exactly what it’s costing us.
Then we have to decide which matters more.
