Why Your Brain Thinks in Extremes: All-or-Nothing Thinking, Trauma, and Healing
All-or-Nothing Thinking: When Everything Feels Black or White “If I can’t do it perfectly, there’s no point.” “They either love me or they don’t.” “I failed, so I’m a failure.” “If I make one mistake, everything is ruined.” “Either I’m completely safe, or I’m in danger.” If these thoughts feel familiar, you may be experiencing all-or-nothing thinking , also called black-and-white thinking or dichotomous thinking . It is a way of interpreting experiences in extremes, with very little room for the middle ground. You are either successful or a failure. Someone is either good or bad. A relationship is either perfect or completely broken. You are either completely productive or “lazy.” But real life rarely works that way. Most things exist on a continuum . And learning to see that continuum is one of the most important skills for developing emotional flexibility. What Is All-or-Nothing Thinking? All-or-nothing thinking is a cognitive pattern in which situations are interpreted in ext...
