today i'm going to be talking about all or nothing thinking
what it is how it makes depression and anxiety worse and what you can do about it
hi everyone this is the first in a series of videos on cognitive distortions which
are are biased or faulty ways of thinking that can drive negative emotional states
like anxiety or depression and the first cognitive distortion we're going to be talking about is
all or nothing thinking or sometimes referred to as black and white thinking but before i get into
that just a couple of disclaimers to go over i'm a registered psychologist in the province
of british columbia canada and this video is for informational purposes only it is not intended as
a substitute or replacement for advice from your doctor or mental health professional
now with those things out of the way let's start talking about all or nothing thinking
so i want you to imagine a scenario that i'm at a job interview it's a job that i'm
really really wanting and i'm really interested in and things are going really well in the job
interview i'm answering all the questions i'm feeling confident things are going really smoothly
but then i get asked a question that catches me off guard and i fumble it a bit and i don't
answer the question as well as i would have liked and i end up leaving the interview feeling awful
i feel that it was a terrible interview it was a complete waste of my time it was a complete waste
of their time this is an example of all or nothing thinking which is a a tendency to view things
as extreme all or none so i'm a success or i'm a total failure my performance was
exceptional or it was terrible i'm either thin or i'm fat i'm competent or i'm incompetent i'm
on a diet or i'm totally off the diet something is good or it's bad things are black or they're white
all or nothing thinking leads to this perception that anything that isn't a hundred percent correct
or a hundred percent perfect is useless or equates to nothing zero and so you you can see how this
might negatively affect how i think about myself and my performance in situations how i might think
about relationships recreational activities work you can see how this tendency to view things in
this all or nothing way can really have a negative effect on how i perceive all areas of my life
but it can also apply to how i perceive other people so the relationship is
either perfect or it's horrible my partner is totally considerate and loving
or completely self-centered that other person is friendly or nice or they're harsh and mean so this
all or nothing thinking it dovetails and is really quite strongly related to perfectionism so kind of
like these perfectionistic expectations that we create for ourselves but also for other people
essentially at its core all or nothing thinking tells us that if something isn't perfect
it's pointless it's worthless if i'm not perfect i'm worthless if other people aren't perfect
then they're worthless to me and so think about how this might affect my mood if i tend to view
things in this way so if i'm on a diet what it means is that i must stick to that diet
a hundred percent of the time or the diet's ruined and i have failed what's the point of
being on a diet or trying to improve my health if i'm just going to continue to fail at it
if i'm going to be in a relationship my partner must be perfect in every way or
she's a monster and the relationship will never work out you see this type of thinking a lot in
borderline personality disorder in with relation to relationships where a person
can either idealize their partner or see their partner as completely self-centered and selfish
and awful you can get this sort of fluctuating in terms of how a person with borderline personality
disorder thinks about their partner but it's not just in borderline personality disorder
we all do this and and this can come up a lot in a lot of interpersonal relationships
so this this type of all or nothing thinking what ends up happening is it leads to
so much failure on my part and it leads me to view others as failing me all the time
and so you can see how this might be a recipe for depression or anxiety it's just
it just sets you up to feel disappointed in yourself and feel disappointed in other people
all the time so so if you engage in all or nothing thinking what can you do about it well
the key with all or nothing thinking is to look for the shades of gray look for evidence that
can balance out some of this extreme thinking so any evidence that doesn't support this extreme
way of viewing myself or the other person yeah i was thrown by one interview question
and i answered it poorly but the rest of the interview seemed to go pretty well
if i stick to my diet eighty percent of the time well that's still better than not being
on a diet at all isn't it another thing you can do another tip that you can do to try and
address or get over this all or nothing thinking is to sometimes replace the word or
with the word and so that person might be a republican and a nice person
you see this this type of thinking is really pervasive in depression but unfortunately
it's also becoming more pervasive in society more generally particularly in politics where
we tend to define people and they're they're the entirety of who they are
by their relationships to particular groups or political parties so if for example i'm a democrat
and i meet a republican then they must be wrong about everything and there's no validity to
any of their opinions and vice versa and unfortunately this has kind of become
the political discourse in society this has kind of become the way that we
interact with other people who may hold different views than we do in various areas so if they hold
different views in this area then i dismiss everything that that other person might believe
so we need to get better at seeing the shades of grey in in ourselves the world other people
looking for evidence or data that don't support our extreme views of a situation or a person
so if you notice or you want to overcome this tendency for all or nothing thinking
the key first step is to recognize and become more aware of when you're actually doing the
all or nothing thinking so to recognize the all or nothing thinking when it's happening
and when you catch it to ask yourself where are the shades of gray in this
what's an alternative way of thinking about this that isn't quite so extreme
so i hope that makes sense i would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about this so
please leave me some comments in the comments section down below if you're enjoying my
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thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video and i will see you in the next one