The Mental Trap That Makes You Overreact to Setbacks
How to overcome what psychologists call “dichotomous thinking”
We all know people who greet life’s challenges with grit and grace. People who are calm and even-keeled under pressure, approaching worries, fears, and even injustice with magnanimity.
I have never been one of those people. As a classic overachiever, I’ve always had a tendency to equate my self-worth with external validation. At times, it has come in handy, feeding my ambitious streak by pushing me to work harder. But constantly living for the next gold star also led me to process each minor setback like a major disaster, filling my brain with dramatic thoughts: I couldn’t do anything right. Everyone hated me. I was doomed to fail.
Maybe you can relate to this kind of unwitting overreaction. It happens when one fight with a friend leaves you convinced that the two of you are over for good, or when your partner does something hurtful enough to make you believe, just temporarily, that you truly hate their guts.
We even see it in pop culture and politics — worlds where we’re often quick to categorize people as good or bad, worthy of admiration or disdain, without fully understanding their motives or the fuller picture. These reactive cycles of love/hate, yes/no, up/down, and…
