Choices, choices.

More specifically, the difficulty of making choices when there is someone in the same room asking you to make a choice. We'll use food as an example.
I often buy my lunch in a food court in Brisbane. The prices are reasonable, the food is good at the places that I go to and if I don't go between the hours of 11 and 2 I can avoid any sensory overload. I usually don't have trouble deciding on what to eat. It's a simple matter of
1. Check for wallet.
2. Count money, now I know what I can afford.
3. Put wallet in backpack again.
4. Decide on food. I go back to 3 or 4 places all the time, so this is easy. At the most, it involves a couple of circuits of the food court while I decide.
5. Attempt to find wallet again. IT'S NOT THERE! Panic.
6. It's in the other compartment, you idiot.
7. Count money again.
8. Line words up.
9. Approach counter. Count money again. (Me, obsessive-compulsive?)
10. Place order, or alternatively just point to what I want, while counting money.
11. Exchange money for food.
12. Find table. Sit, get out book, eat.
Simple. Easy.

With another person, it's not so easy. Firstly, there is the fact that just having another person interacting with me does strange things to my ability to function. Secondly, a lot of the time my way of knowing what I want involves wandering around looking at things until something appeals. I cannot say straight off, "I want sushi with fresh salmon" (to use an example). Finally, having another person there complicates things, because if you are sharing something, you have to take their preferences into account. Even if it's a place like a food court where you can just get different food, it makes a difference.

Even worse is when people ask me to make a decision about something that will happen later in the day. For example
My mother: "Rachel, what would you like for dinner tonight?"
Me (thinking) It's 1pm, I'm not hungry, I may feel like different food tonight, and the only thing on my mind is this article on genetic disorders.
Me: "Ummmmm... I... don't know?"

As a footnote, does anyone have strategies for getting rid of an annoying stim? I've developed one where I click my jaw constantly. It is embarrassing and I've done it so much that my jaw hurts.