How to stop black and white thinking/all or nothing thinking

Black and white thinking (or all or nothing thinking) is one of the most common types of faulty thinking that is exposed by CBT

It is typified by the idea that there are no grey areas and that situations/events/life are completely binary.

You either succeed or you fail.

You win or you lose.

Further to this people can take singular events in their life and then massively overgeneralise this result across their entire life.

Here’s an example of something that I used to do which sums this up perfectly.

In my late teens I worked at a call centre for car insurance.

I took somewhere between 80-100 calls in a day, I was always nice, polite and tried to be as helpful as possible.

Most people calling were the same.

However if there was one crappy caller then when asked about my day at work I’d end up saying it was terrible.

So even though 99% of the calls were perfectly fine I would let the 1% define the day.

Here are some other examples of black and white thinking in action:

“I stumbled over a few words in my presentation so the whole presentation was awful.”

“My friend didn’t text me back so I might as well not bother texting them again”

“My date went badly so I’m obviously bad at dating.”

People who are prone to black and white thinking tend to take whatever has happened to them and let it colour their full experience of life.

Something good happens – everything is wonderful

Something bad happens – my life is over.

This can lead to massive mood swings as they simply don’t seem to recognise that there is an area of grey in the middle of these two extremes where most people live.

This is not a blog designed to help people with manic depression which can look very similar to this, although someone with manic depression may well experience all or nothing thinking.

Enough of the explanation of what it is, let’s start dishing out the quality advice on how to combat it.

1. Examine how we describe events

The way in which we talk about our life and feelings can have a massive impact on how we feel. By using extreme words like “always/never/nothing/everything” incorrectly we worsen our experiences.

If you partner forgets to take the bins out one day but normally doesn’t forget people prone to black and white thinking can tend to then explain this to someone else as “my partner ALWAYS forgets to take the bins out”.

The inclusion of the word “almost” can help to soften the impact these words have on us

If you’re struggling on the dating scene and don’t get many matches the temptation might be to say to yourself or a friend “no-one I like EVER matches with me” whereas a softer approach would be “I almost never get matches with people I like”.

The difference is subtle but it starts opening up the idea of there being grey areas to us and it is important that we know that these grey areas exist.

How to stop the all or nothing thinking

Either stop using words like never/always/nothing/everything or prefix them with almost/nearly to soften their impact.

2. Start being more honest

On a similar note to the above it’s time to start being a lot more honest about EXACTLY what’s going on in your life.

When we look at the dating example from above by saying “I never get any matches” you’re literally lying.

What you’re saying isn’t true.

Yes, saying “I don’t get many matches” isn’t as impactful but at least you’re telling the truth.

In order to start moving away from black/white and start living in the grey we need to make sure we’re not falling into black and white when we don’t need to.

How to move away from all or nothing thinking?

When we’re talking to people about our lives and describing our situations take a second and as ourselves the following?

“Am I being exactly truthful about this situation?”

If something is 99 times out of 100 our “all-or-nothing” brain can just say, well that’s every time then.

But in truth it isn’t.

We need to be objective and talk about things in a truthful manner.

You should also correct yourself if you say something untruthful and you realise after you’ve said it.

3. Look for evidence that you’re wrong.

A very common theme in the mind of someone who is prone to all-or-nothing thinking is this:

“I’ve failed at this therefore I’m a failure at life”

At times when you catch yourself either saying things like this to people or thinking it to yourself stop and look for the evidence that you’re actually talking crap.

Ask yourself
“What evidence is there that I’m not ___________”

Then answer, in written full sentences if it helps.

“I’m not a failure because I’m still paying the bills every month and putting food on the table.”

“I’m not bad at work presentations, I got good feedback from the people who watched it.”

“I am not unfit, I just couldn’t run as far today because I had a bad sleep last night”

How to stop the black and white thinking:

Find the evidence that you’re not looking at the situation accurately.

4. Balance out your statements

This has nothing to do with banking.

When we’re prone to all or nothing thinking we can also end up using blanket statements.

A great example of this is when asked how your day was and the answer comes back:

“Oh, I’ve had a really shitty day”

This has some crossover with “negative filtering” whereby the positives just get completely ignored.

A great way to remind yourself of the grey areas is to catch yourself saying these statements and then adding something positive that has happened on the end of the sentence.

“Oh, I’ve had a really shitty day but I got a text from my cousin who I haven’t heard from in ages and I’m talking to him tonight.”

How to find the grey areas:

By catching these statements and tacking on these words we drag the wildly negative back towards the positive into the lovely squishy and warm grey area we want to be in.

5. Score things out of 10

This is annoyingly good.

Sorry, well, I’m not sorry, but it’s really good.

When something happens in your life that causes a great deal of thought/stress I want you to give it a score from 0-10.

0 would mean that it couldn’t be any worse at all.

10 would mean that it couldn’t be any better at all.

If you score something from 1 to 9 then this is brilliant, it’s proof to you that this grey area does exist – success!

If however you score something a 0 or 10 then there’s further work to do.

So ask yourself 

“What could happen now to make this situation even worse?” (if it’s a 0 ask the converse for a 10)

There’s either something that could make it worse in which case by definition the situation can no longer be considered a 0 – hence it moves it into our grey area.

Or the situation couldn’t be any worse in which case it must be pretty flipping awful so it’s ok to be feeling bad about it.

How to stop this all or nothing thinking:

Use this scoring system to train your mind to live inside this grey area of life.

6. Use less emotive words

When we tell stories as humans we want people to engage with them, we want them to feel interested. To do this we make the stories as interesting and evocative as possible.

When you’re telling your own story either to yourself or to others try doing the opposite of this.

Make it as boring an unemotive as possible.

If someone has annoyed you a bit say “I’m a bit annoyed” rather than “I’m furious”

When something goes a bit wrong say “it’s gone a bit wrong” rather than “it’s a disaster”

The words we use both in our heads and when we talk/write about how we’re feeling directly impacts how we feel.

If we are a little bit upset but then say we’re furious we’ll actually make ourselves feel furious.

Which we don’t want – it’s essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How to stop the all or nothing thinking:

Use words that accurately depict how you feel and tell boringly accurate stories about your day and emotions.

7. Make lists of possibilities

As I’ve mentioned a boring amount of times so far in this blog it is really important to try and remind ourselves of the grey area in the middle of the extremes.

When we find ourselves in a situation where we feel certain there are just two possibilities it can be powerful to stop and ask “Am I sure I’m not missing any other possibilities here?”

And then list literally every other possible solution you can think of.

For example let’s say that you’ve discover your partner has been liking the Instagram posts of someone they might fancy.

The black and white thinking of this situation might be “I have to break up with them or I have to pretend like nothing has happened.”

However you could do any of the following (I’m not suggesting all of these as good ideas, they are just a bunch of different possible responses):

• Ask your partner about it
• Take some time to see if a pattern develops before doing anything.
• Speak to your friends about the situation
• Speak to your partner’s friends about it.
• Make passive-aggressive comments about people liking Instagram posts
• Decide the liking someone’s Instagram posts isn’t actually very much of a big deal.
• Do something grandiose to remind the person what they’re risking.

Now some of these answers are WAY better than others, the point here is to remind ourselves that the situation isn’t as dire as “leave them or be a doormat” there are loads of different possibilities too.

How to stop being so black and white in your thinking?

Ask yourself if there are ANY other possibilities whatsoever.

8. Consult others (mentally or otherwise)

Seeing as our thinking comes from our own brains (no way!) it can be very hard to not believe that we’re right. 

Why would we think stuff that isn’t true, right?

So when we find ourselves questioning whether we’re black and white thinking we can ask “what would ________ say about this?”

Where blank is another person.

We can literally ask this person what they would think or simply try and think from their perspective.

This can be particularly useful when you’re in an argument with someone, stopping to calmly ask questions to clarify the position the other person is in can really help move you away from your extreme thinking.

How to not be an all or nothing thinker:

Do whatever you can to see things from other people’s viewpoints.

9. Give yourself time

When all or nothing thinking makes us feel like we have come to the best answer straight away it can be the best thing just to stop and say:

“Is there any downside to taking some time to think about this in full and get some further information before making a decision?”

More often than not there isn’t a downside to taking some time and getting more information.

Giving ourselves time and information allows us the opportunity to seen other possibilities and make a better decision for ourselves.

How to step away from black and white thinking:

Give yourself time and more information before making decisions.

10. Learn about dialectical thinking

Dialectical thinking allows two seemingly opposite things to co-exist at the same time.

For example:

• You can love someone and be angry at them having wronged you in some way
• It is possible to accept and love your body but also want to make positive changes to it.
• We can love time to ourselves and also feel lonely at times too.
• You can love being at a party but also imagine it being nice to be curled up on the sofa with your partner instead.

To start learning this we can do the following.

1. Make a strong statement about something you like or dislike
2. Then finish it off with BUT and then say something you do like about it, or why you can see that people do like it.

For example

I don’t like Game of Thrones but I like that people get so passionate about it.

I love football but I don’t like how violent some of the real fanatics get.

By doing this you begin to accept that whilst you like/dislike something there are things that make you feel the opposite.

Liking or disliking something and understanding why people might feel the exact opposite is a great step towards moving away from things being so binary.

Thus you begin to recognise this grey area even more.

How to stop being so binary:

Do the exercise above!

We can be afraid of the change but also willing to give it a go!

Conclusion on how to stop all or nothing thinking

Viewing the world in such a black and white way can be incredibly damaging to how you feel about yourself, to relationships, to careers and so much more.

Just being able to take a moment and ask if there’s another way to look at things can be a powerful first step.

It would be amiss of me to say that anything will change over night as it is a process.

It is very unlikely that you started thinking this way overnight so the chances of you stopping overnight are very low.

My hope is that one or two of these techniques will have resonated with you more than the others, these will be your “go to tools”.

Your goal to start with should be to catch yourself doing “all or nothing” thinking just once a day and to correct yourself with a “go to tool”.

This is a small step on the path to correcting the faulty thinking pattern.

If you do manage this is not something to be overlooked, it should be celebrated!

Then try and catch yourself twice in one day and correct yourself.

Build up your progress and be happy with any time that you do succeed.

Don’t expect perfection.

We don’t want perfection, we want progress.

If you have found that you are “guilty” of all or nothing thinking and would like some more direct help with overcoming it then get in contact about working with me 1-on-1.

That starts by booking a free consultation session with me, click below to do that.

If however you’d like some general help with anxiety that you can do yourself then click the button below to learn about anxiousness to awesomeness by 4-week anti-anxiety course.