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Black and white thinking occurs when a person takes a difficult situation and makes it horrible and uses the most extreme words. The more extreme one thinks, the more intense their emotions will be and they are more likely to be depressed and anxious. Black and white thinking makes one helpless to escape depression and anxiety. It distorts nuanced reality by ignoring the good and exaggerating the bad. It involves lying.<h1>FUNCTIONS OF BLACK AND WHITE THINKING</h1><ol><li>It justifies you-&nbsp;If your wife does the cleaning sometimes and not other times, why would you want to phrase that in the worst possible way.(My wife never does the cleaning). The reason for phrasing your statement like that is to make you feel good about yourself or maybe make you seem like a good person and put your wife down. You are making yourself feel better by worsening the situation in the long run.</li><li>It excuses you from work- when a person has talent and strength but struggles to communicate in a few areas, why would you want to say that they are terrible in every way. It makes you put an effort to be assertive to communicate your needs and not to listen to theirs.</li><li>It protects you from feelings- why would a person want to lie to make a sincerely difficult situation harder? Because then you are excused from trying to put in an effort from the difficulty of hours of studying or the painful emotion of failing a test.</li><li>Black and white thinking protects you from painful emotions like uncertainty and disappointments-&nbsp;When we exaggerate how bad things are, it excuses us from action. It creates the idea that we are helpless and therefore we do not need to act.</li><li>It helps you feel powerless and thereby protects you from feeling guilty or accountable-&nbsp;There are reasons why the brain makes excuses and it is connected to fear, fight and freeze response. The fear, fight and freeze response shuts down nuanced and options in the brain.</li><li>Black and white thinking makes it easier to fight back and to kill-&nbsp;In life threatening situations, black and white thinking may help us make quick and decisive decisions. Simplicity is easier than dealing with the nuanced complexity of reality and might help us survive. In the day- to-day situation, the vast majority of the decisions we make aren’t life threatening. Black and white thinking interferes with our emotional stability the rest of the time.</li></ol><h2>HOW TO OVERCOME BLACK AND WHITE THINKING</h2><h3>HONESTY&nbsp;</h3>One have to be willing to admit that black and white thinking is a lie and that you are lying to excuse yourself from something.<ol><li>Notice extreme words- notice your trigger words .e.g. Never, always. They are not accurate. Slow down-&nbsp;do not overthink your situation, you need to internalize and reflect every word before saying them out loud.</li><li>Name an emotion or use an emotional word- the emotion might be real but the thoughts aren’t. So you may say, I feel angry, not, I feel like you are making me angry and alway attacking me. These are lies and also thoughts. They are not feelings. Honest emotions contain three words. E.g. I feel angry.</li><li>Reframe the thoughts- there might be a real problem that needs to be solved. The emotion can motivate you to take action but extreme thinking like black and white thinking will interfere with your ability to solve the problem.</li></ol><h4>HOW TO BE LESS EMOTIONAL REACTIVE (LOOKING FOR THE GRAY)</h4><ol><li>You can use both/And-&nbsp;You can feel two emotions or truths that seem contradictory at the same time e.g. if your boss miscommunicates the deadline to you, instead of thinking he’s a terrible communicator, you could say, my boss didn’t communicate well and he’s also trying to help our team succeed. Admitting you can also make mistakes instead of pitying and devaluing others or it might be true that your wife might be insensitive sometimes and she also loves you alot.</li><li>Look for exceptions-&nbsp;Look for counter examples. So if you have a thought that your wife never cleans the house, you look for the time that she did or some other way that she contributes right. Look for an exception to this extreme way of thinking.</li><li>Be precise when talking about the problem-&nbsp;Be specific about one single situation and use less extreme words to express yourself. Instead of saying your boss is a poor communicator, you can say my boss wasn’t clear about his/her expectations for the timeline for this assignment. Describe specifically what is awful.</li><li> Be accountable-&nbsp;For your own accountability in the majority of situations, we are playing a role in the cycle. If there is a communication problem at work, perhaps we need to work on using clarifying statements or being more assertive. If there is a problem with chores in your marriage, you may consider how you are contributing or clarifying household tasks or we need to manage our stress levels better or not be so busy all the time. There is probably something we can do to contribute to the solution.</li></ol>In conclusion, one of the main reasons people get depressed or anxious is how they perceive reality when they are able to be more flexible, intentional and truthful in their perceptions and their words.Get notified of our posts by following us on:<ul><li>LinkedIn:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/bloom-lessons" alt="linkedin.com/bloom-lessons">linkedin.com/bloom-lessons</a>​</li><li>Facebook:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.facebook.com/bloomlessons" alt="facebook.com/bloomlessons">facebook.com/bloomlessons</a>​</li><li>Youtube:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.youtube.com/@bloomlessons" alt="youtube.com/@bloomlessons" class="on">youtube.com/@bloomlessons</a></li></ul>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@enginakyurt?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText">engin akyurt</a>.

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