The thinking trap you need to avoid

Have you ever heard of all-or-nothing thinking? It’s a cognitive distortion, which is an irrational pattern of thinking, that is associated with depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges.

All-or-nothing thinking sees the world in extremes, with one outcome being good & the other bad. There’s no view of the nuances, of an alternate perspective or of the bigger picture. One way that we tend to use all-or-nothing thinking is on ourselves. We take one event and extrapolate it out, labeling ourselves as bad (in all sorts of different ways) in the process:

If you don’t achieve a goal… you're a failure.
If you can’t help a friend with something… you're a bad person.
If you make a mistake… you're worthless.
If you don’t get a task done… you're lazy.
If someone doesn’t like you… you're unloveable.
If you haven’t gotten a job yet… you're never going to.

To address it, we can start by paying attention to the voice in our heads.

First, take note of the words used, and write them down to really make it salient. Once you identify your typical talk track, you can start to hear it far more clearly.

Then, challenge the voice. Look for data that disproves your all-or-nothing response. Our brains have a negativity bias that incline us to focus on what went wrong, which means we have to actively look for the things that might have gone right. Maybe you didn’t get that one task done today — but think about all that you did do instead. Maybe you couldn’t help your friend with what they needed — but you prioritized something else that matters to you.

Third, zoom out. Recognize that there is a wide range of interpretations that live between the extremes. Ask yourself, ‘what’s another way to look at this?’ or ‘what’s another way I could interpret this event?’ Friends can be great helps here in finding alternate explanations.

Finally, practice self-compassion. Holding ourselves to a standard of perfection is so harmful for our well-being. Recognize that these things are inevitable: we will not achieve goals, we will not be able to help all of the time, we will make mistakes, we won’t get all of our tasks done, not everyone will like us, and we will struggle to make things happen.

These do not indicate that we are bad; they indicate that we are human.