"You don't have to decide right now."

This is the therapist phrase — the one that reduces pressure so effectively that it often produces the answer that pressure was preventing. Social situations have an implicit demand for resolution: pick something, commit, answer the question. Most people feel that demand even when no one has explicitly stated it. The phrase removes the demand and, in doing so, removes the resistance that the demand was creating. Lower pressure almost always produces a better answer. The person who feels they must decide immediately will often default to whatever seems safest or easiest in the moment. The person who feels genuinely free to take their time will often give you their real answer — the one that actually reflects what they want. The counterintuitive truth is that the easiest way to get a genuine commitment from someone is to make clear that you don't require it yet. What arrives under those conditions is far more reliable than what arrives under pressure.