Distortion 3. Black and White Thinking

Hi everyone! I hope you are well. We have covered two distortions so far, catastrophizing and mind reading. Please check them out if you have not yet. 

Today we will talk about black-and-white thinking, also known as polarized thinking, all-or-nothing, or binary thinking. It is the tendency to think in extremes and ignore grey areas. Either something/someone is great or horrible, no in-between. Healthline, in this article, makes a good point ‘There’s a reason most people don’t live on Everest or in the Mariana Trench. It’s hard to sustain life at those extremes.’

Examples of black-and-white thinking:

• Seeing people as good or bad. X is a good person, Y is a bad person. Failing to see grey areas, areas where X is acting poorly or Y is acting in a good manner. 
• Seeing something is smart or stupid. Your peer presented a project in class, you failed to see its value and deemed it as entirely stupid. On the other hand you presented a project and dismissed a valuable constructive critique as you believed the project to be good and therefore it has no flaws. 
• Thinking you are a failure because you don’t do well in school. You disregard your other strengths and focus on the negatives that weigh you down. 
• Thinking someone hates you because they were rude to you once. 
• Thinking you have no friends as you were unable to meet your friends for a month due to busy schedules. 

The reality is that most of life happens in grey areas. People are far more complex than being good or bad. Similarly, situations we face are often not all good or bad. There are times when we face exceptions to this rule, something tragic happens or we lose someone we love. However, in this post we are talking about the tendency to think black or white in general, creating a pessimistic point of view in life. 

We will use the same technique that we have been using in other posts where we train ourselves to not think in extremes. 

📢Points of Action:

Find out your personal hit rate (how accurate your negative assumptions are), don’t just assume, look into your past and get an accurate percentage. (You can skip this if you recall this from our last post)

Counter your black-and-white thoughts with counter-positive thoughts based on logic/facts/experience. 

⭐After practicing this with at least one thought. Tell us about your experience with this exercise.

⭐ When was the last time you engaged in black-and-white thinking and what actually ended up happening?

Further Reading

How Black and White Thinking Hurts You (and What You Can Do to Change It)

🗒️If you are interested in making a post or more in this series. Please reach out to me via PMs.