When You Can't Make an Important Decision, do this.

Indecision causes agony. The in-between is a gray floating-place; the days seem longer; the small joys are harder to recognize; productivity is stifled, and you lose touch with yourself. As an adult, you can't escape the inevitability of some sort of reckoning. My reckoning came when my husband admitted he'd been smoking crystal meth.

Before, when things were good, my husband and I had typical issues. We'd have arguments about finances, parenting, and housework. Those common problems evolved into constant emotional abuse at the height of his addiction. I had just landed my first teaching job; it took up a lot of my time, which gave his meth-induced paranoia the space it needed to take root. 

According to my addicted husband, I was a horrible mother, a cheating whore, and a selfish bitch. I won't pretend I was a perfect wife, but the insane accusations forced me to fall into a lower version of myself. I defended, rejected, and fought passionately against all of the terrible things he said. A pattern I am still working tirelessly to break.

He took my devices and began a 3-month long descent into the history of my text messages which he referred to as "the database." The texts in the database were fully editable, with no numbers or names attached, so he made sure to connect the dots where he saw fit. He once questioned me for an hour about a text referencing an Uber, which, to him, meant I was sneaking around and had a lesbian lover. The insanity still plagues me.

During this time, I had no idea of his addiction. I was under the impression that he had developed a mental illness and was, with his father, working on getting him a psychological evaluation, of which he wholeheartedly refused. My two boys and I moved in with my parents and loved him from afar. Eventually, the truth came out, and he admitted to all of us that he had been smoking meth every day for a year and a half.

I began discussions with a divorce lawyer to see what steps I would need to take to leave him, but then he quit smoking meth. I started to see small glimpses of who he used to be. He was treating me with respect. He was apologetic. He started counseling. I found a marriage counselor and began counseling individually, too. I began to feel myself lift again; I got more confident in my future, with or without him. 

Then I was hit. Hit hard by indecision.

When we let worry rule, much of our lives are spent in the space between. We often walk the tight line between the present and our next big decision. Still, the trick to moving forward is staying in the present and keeping your other interactions sacred. The weight of my husband's drug use caused physiological changes in my body; rapid heart rate, anxiety, and bouts of depression. My body was rejecting the truth of my marriage, a reality I was not ready to face.

Below are several life-saving tools I used to decide the future of my life and marriage.

• Designate a specific time of day to think through your options. You miss out on the little joys of life if you let your stress consume you. For some of you, this may seem impossible, but even amid immense struggle, you can feel joy and relief. Find an activity you enjoy and do that thing when you start to overthink. Stay in the present, laugh, drink some herbal tea, practice yoga or meditation. When you are sore from exercising, you have to stretch and rest. Do the same for your mind. Then, when you sit down to weigh your options, you will be well-rested and ready.

• Keep adjectives and adverbs in reality. When you describe your situation as hopeless/disastrous/impossible, you unintentionally escalate your emotional response and, as a result, lose clarity. Realistically size up your case, and it will help you free the mental space to go about the business of deciding.

• Separate your feelings from your thoughts. When we are faced with the stress of a hard choice, our feelings and thoughts can get confusing. If you start a sentence with "I think," your emotions muddy your thought process and inhibit your ability to make a decision logically. Additionally, when you start a sentence with "I feel," your logic can confuse and misinterpret your true feelings. Sometimes your heart is telling you something different than your mind. Try to separate them by journaling. Focus on feelings first. How do you feel about this situation? Don't forget about step two during this process. Try to be specific in this step. If you are feeling sad - dig into that emotion. It could be that you are feeling a sense of inadequacy or inferiority. According to The Gottman Institute, "beneath [your base] emotion is a more nuanced emotion." The Feeling Wheel, developed by Dr. Gloria Wilcox, is a beneficial resource for this step.
• After accurately naming your feelings, you can begin to journal your thoughts. How can you logically evaluate the reasons behind these feelings? What triggered you at that moment? How can you avoid future triggers to maintain mental clarity and ultimately make your choice easier?

• Find a person who will play devil's advocate. In the course of decision-making, we overlook unpleasant outcomes. Find yourself a family member or licensed professional to help you analyze the negative consequences of your choice. Thinking through possible roadblocks will make you more confident when you ultimately have to face them. An ideal devil's advocate is someone you trust who has weathered several storms and doesn't mind hurting your feelings.

• Finally, flip a coin. I find this ritual to be rather valuable, but ONLY once you have gone through the previous steps and believe you've made a decision. Assign an option to either side of the coin and flip it once and once only. If you feel inner turbulence about the answer, that is your answer. I have found the freedom to let the coin decide. I'm always ready to take the other path, primarily if the flip doesn't satisfy my need to become the most authentic and beautiful version of myself.

Life presents many doors, and we never know what is on the other side. There are no guarantees. Things may even get uglier before they get better, but the fact is you eventually have to reach out and take a chance. I didn't know if my husband would remain clean. I didn't know if either of us had the energy to salvage our marriage. After months of counseling, I was finally able to decide. 

For the sake of my mental health and my boys, I chose to divorce the love of my life. I made that choice because the man I once knew was gone. I can't live on glimpses of a past life. Some days, my heart is an exposed nerve, and others, it is a place where I find warmth. I'm content with both.

These tips have helped me heal my negative thoughts and worry habits. I hope these tools and my story can also provide you with some sort of relief.