What to do when you don’t agree with a decision

Ever heard the adage “people have the right to make their own decisions, even if you don’t agree with them”?

If not, you’ve heard it now. And after many years in practice, it rings truer and truer all the time. 

There are bookmarks in our life. They delineate everything that happened before, and everything after. Sometimes they’re wonderful. A job, a new home, the birth of a child. Then there’s the other life stuff: an accident, an illness, the death of someone you love.

These are all bookmarks. Life was one way before, and something different after. Whether your bookmark is good or bad, chances are, it required some decision-making. Stressful decision making. Decisions you never anticipated you’d have to make. Decisions that change the course of everything. Decisions you regret. 

The thing about decisions is: they’re complicated, and you arrive at them from the context of everything that came before. All the chapters in the book that came before this bookmark. 

Which is why, as clinicians…or parents, spouses, friends, sons, or daughters for that matter, it is our duty to refrain from passing judgment on other people’s decisions. We can’t possibly know what is leading them to that decision. You haven’t read the whole book, so you don’t know the whole story.

Discontinuing therapy. Choosing thin liquids. Not doing the homework. Letting the kiddo eat snacks. Continuing life support. Whatever it is that you don’t agree with, remember: it’s not your decision to make. 

Most importantly, whatever it is that you don’t agree with, remember this: there will come a time in your life, when you’re making decisions that someone else doesn’t agree with. When that time comes, you’ll be grateful for the person who stands by your side, and says,”I support your decision, and we’ll get through this together.”