SELF IMPROVEMENT
Why Black And White Thinking Harms Your Perspective
3 ways to avoid impulsive behavior in response to extreme feelings
Black and white thinking (also known as “all-or-nothing thinking”) describes the tendency to think in extremes. Good or bad. Pretty or ugly. Success or failure. But this way of thinking often leads to mental and emotional problems.
Thinking in black and white is the tendency to look at things in extremes. Someone is fat or thin. We are failures or winners. A person is good or bad. Something either always happens or it never happens. So there is no gray, no middle, no average.
It’s important to understand that our life mainly takes place between these extremes. You are not a total failure, nor do you always do everything right. Your partner is not a selfish asshole, nor an angel who always gets everything right. And your life is not perfect, but at the same time, everything is not bad.
Of course, it’s easier for us to think in terms of categories: good or bad, intelligent or stupid, success or failure, fat or thin, always or never, everything or nothing. But these extremes do not describe reality. The reality is in the vast majority of cases somewhere in between.
