Once upon a time, I was nervous about a thing. Back then I was baseline nervous all the time but this was extra, specific worry. I don’t even remember the thing now, but I never forgot the lesson. I was “having the emotional experience of risk,” as a friend described it to me. The emotional experience of risk? Yes, the emotional experience of risk.
Choices are emotional experiences. Often choices involve opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is what we miss out on we can do one thing but not another. You have some scarce resources like time, money, and social battery. When you spend your Saturday night going to the bawdy show with a big live audience you’re going to miss the cozy, intimate dinner for three at 7:30 PM. Let’s say you choose the show and have a great time, and you still feel curious and a little sad that you’ll never know where that dinner could have gone. That’s emotional opportunity cost.
It’s cute to think about a party and a dinner. The emotional opportunity costs sky rocket, however, as the stakes get higher. I see it every week in my client sessions, people are coming to therapy for support in making some of the biggest decisions in their lives. They come to me contemplating divorce, or having kids, of opening up, and a relationship, cutting off from family members. A big part of our work is figuring out their best rational choice and then walking together through the emotional experiences of those choices.
