Treatment Decision Making Guide
Step 2 – Understand Your Decision-Making Style
Retinoblastoma is a rare and complex cancer that most parents have never heard of before their child’s diagnosis. Making treatment decisions can be especially hard in the days after diagnosis, relapse, or receiving high-risk pathology, when removal of an eye is being considered, or when the potential to save the child’s life is remote.
If you rely on facts and logic when making decisions, you may find the volume of information, and the potential consequences of each option, trap you in a constant state of analysis, without the ability to make a decision.
If you naturally follow your intuition and feelings, you may find in this intense situation that you have difficulty connecting with that inner perception, or distinguishing it from the voices of fear and wishful thinking.
Maybe you’re so confused and scared that you’d rather wait for others to decide and lead the way – even if that is not your usual style.
Knowing your personality type – and the type of your partner and other relatives and friends – can help you understand your decision making process, strengths, weaknesses, responses to stress, and sources of support. That information will empower you to identify:
- Where and how you may become stuck.
- How your decisions may be imbalanced.
- How to reduce the sense of overwhelm.
- Where to focus your attention.
- Who to ask for help.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one of the most widely used personality tests in education, business, and personal development, and is also used in healthcare research. It helps users understand how people receive, process, and interpret information, and interact with the world.
The MBTI can help:
- Explain how personality type and decisions impact one another.
- Clarify a person’s decision-making skills.
- Identify causes of indecision.
- Highlight individual reactions to stress (and how to help).
And much more.
If you don’t know your Myers Briggs type, you can take the test for free (available in 35+ languages).
Exploring and going beyond our familiar habits can be tough, but hugely beneficial in life-impacting situations like this. Drawing on logic, intuition, thoughts and feelings, and allowing others to support you with their perspectives, will not change your natural style, but it can help you be your child’s best advocate through this process.
You will be better able to understand and tell the medical team what you need and how you want to be involved, and ultimately make your decisions with more clarity, confidence, and peace.