"I went to sleep with gum in my mouth And now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell It was going to be a terrible horrible. No good very bad day. " Have you ever seen this book?
"Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. " Well. It's a perfect example of black and white thinking So what is black and white thinking?
Black and white thinking is a pattern of thought characterized by thinking in the extremes Everything is always the worst day ever! or The very best day ever! We think of things in their absolutes It's a polarized way of thinking and it messes us up because it makes our emotions more extreme than they need to be.
Black and white thinking is also known as all-or-nothing thinking. It interferes with our ability to have healthy emotions and relationships. Signs that you might be using black and white thinking is if you use words like "always" "never" "terrible" "ruined" "furious".
Or you try to make things out to be worse than they were like I mean you might have actually had a bad day But it was "The worst day ever" or some things might have gone wrong and you might say "Nothing went right! " right? So we're taking something and we're making it out to be more exaggerated than it already was Now why does black and white thinking mess us up?
Well the way we think affects our emotions And if we're thinking in an exaggerated manner then our emotions are gonna swing rapidly from one extreme to the other. People with anxiety or depression tend to think in extremes and we can combat anxiety depression and other mental illnesses by having more realistic honest or moderate thinking patterns. Black and white thinking makes the problem worse than it already was.
Black and white thinking creates helplessness. If my husband is a "complete jerk" "the biggest jerk in the whole world! " Then it makes no sense for me to try and change myself or improve myself because "Nothing" is ever gonna work.
See that black and white thinking in there? And how that's going to contribute to problems in my relationships. Another reason black and white thinking messes us up is it invites defensiveness in others.
So if you say to someone "You never do the dishes! " They're gonna feel attacked because that's not quite true. You're exaggerating how bad they are.
Sure they might miss doing the dishes, and they might have forgotten to do the dishes and they might have Intentionally not done the dishes that day or multiple days, but to say "Never" exaggerates how bad they are, puts people on the defensive, and it just invites arguing and debating and Fighting. The more extreme the statement the more likely the other person is to feel attacked. If black and white thinking is so awful.
Then why do we do it? I work under the assumption that everything we do serve some kind of function. Even if it's dysfunctional in the long run, we do it for some sort of reason.
Black and white thinking does serve a function- it just doesn't work very well. So black and white thinking helps us feel like we're the victim of our circumstances. Which is kind of comforting right isn't it nice to think "well poor me".
You know "Everything's out to get me" Black and white thinking excuses us from having to do the difficult work of taking action and changing ourselves. So if my job is the "Worst job ever" or my boss is the "Meanest guy ever" it excuses us in our mind from having to take responsibility for our part of the problem and working hard to fix it. Black and white thinking helps protect us from feeling guilty or accountable for our own actions.
And this might feel more comfortable but in the long run creates more problems. Black and white thinking also protects us from feeling vulnerable So if we're thinking in extremes like "everything is awful". Then we have more excuse to just kind of hide in bed you know pull the covers over our head and wallow instead of actually experiencing those tender feelings that we might be having like hurt or sadness.
Perhaps we're feeling guilty or uncertain about the future. Black and White thinking is also very simple. It gets rid of the complex nuanced reality that we have to face every day and it gets it gets rid of that complexity that we experience when we're interacting with another person because every human being is a Combination of good and bad.
But if we just label them as being completely bad Then we don't have to manage a lot of that complexity That's involved in in Relationships. Now while these are some of the functions of black-and-white thinking And it does you know work in the short-term to relieve us of a little bit of that discomfort in the long run, It's gonna make us pretty unhappy if we consistently use this pattern of thinking in our lives. The more extreme our thinking the more likely we are to be depressed.
So saying things like "I'm a terrible person" Or "Wow she has it all together. She is such a saint! " or "No one's gonna ever like me.
No one wants to be my friend". These are simplistic statements that feed those negative emotions And create that feeling of helplessness that is associated with depression. The reality of life is there is no perfect job No perfect marriage.
No perfect person and by telling ourselves that someone is either perfect or awful we're Creating more problems for ourselves than there need to be. If we want to improve our emotional control We need to challenge our black-and-white thinking. So how do we fix it if we catch ourself engaging in some of these thinking patterns?
What do we do about it? Well number one: Start to notice the signs of all-or-nothing thinking so look out for words like we talked about "always" "never" any type of Exaggeration what I like to call "horribleizations" or trying to make someone else out to be perfect. Number two: Challenge your thoughts.
Just because you're thinking it doesn't mean it's really true, so look for a more truthful and more moderate Way of thinking about each situation or person. So that takes us right to number three Which is we need to replace those thoughts with a more moderate view of the situation. So back to the dishes situation: Instead of saying "You never do the dishes you big jerk!
" say something like "Okay, It bothers me when you don't do the dishes and I know that I also Miss my chores sometimes how can we work together to solve this? " Number four: an essential part of resolving black-and-white thinking means we have to increase our capacity to experience ambiguity. Meaning we need to increase our tolerance of Complex situations, our ability to hold on to a little bit of discomfort while we wrestle with a situation or a problem.
Remember life is beautiful, difficult, complicated, joyful, painful. In order for us to be able to fully live and appreciate enjoy life we need to embrace all the complexity that is involved with it. If we want to get healthier It's not about just feeling better.
It's about getting better at feeling. So consider a couple of these questions: "Can Someone love you and still be insensitive sometimes? " "Can you be basically intelligent and still do something dumb?
" "Can an experience be really hard But still be beautiful in some way? " Remember one of the main reasons people get depressed is because of how they perceive reality. "When we change the way we look at things the things we look at change.
" When we're able to be more flexible and Intentional in how we think that depression is going to be more likely to lift. And we'll start to get feeling better. Depression often centers on one Incessant thought like "No one likes me" When we replace those negative thoughts with healthy thinking then the depression has nothing to feed on.
Changing the way we think is really quite difficult. We might not even notice that we're doing it. So try to reach out for some help.
Ask others for their Perspectives on how you talk about yourself or how you talk about situations. Watch yourself for signs of this negative and black-and-white thinking. Or work with someone like a mental health professional to change the way you think.
By reducing or eliminating black and white thinking we can live much healthier lives. So I hope this was helpful.
