Anyone able to overcome 'all or nothing' thinking?

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A therapist opened my eyes to all or nothing thinking a couple of decades ago, simply by pointing it out to me whenever she noticed me engaging in it.

For me it tends to be attached to perfectionism.

With the perfectionism it's like, say with gardening. I love gardens and gardening. But I tend to spend too much time doing it because I always notice something else "needed to do"; tiny weeds here and there, some aphids there needing elimination, a plant wanting a new site....it goes on forever. All gardening all the time or no gardening; all or nothing. A balance of a nice garden but not a perfect garden is a healthier choice; it leaves time for other work & leisure.

Having my eyes opened to the problem was a huge 1st step...........you mean it doesn't need to be all or nothing?! !

I still struggle with it. But reflecting on the option (need) to move on to the next task and commiting & then doing it is rewarding discipline.

I think it is worth taking the hours to analyse until you can see the grey areas.

I have read an awful lot of books on relationships and sex, but it has not helped me feel better about myself. I think that it is because there is a difference between knowledge and feelings, I can change my thoughts but not my feelings. For example one could know that it didnt mean one was bad because ones parents beat one but might still feel a bad person because of it.

anyway my now ex said i was fat ugly and disgusting so all my insecurities are very reinforced and I doubt anything could make me feel ok about myself enough to have sex again.

There is a lot more to research than reading some books on a topic. If you are dealing with an emotional experience, involve yourself in every community you can find who has gone through the same experience, and learn from them. If you can't personally and intimately relate to the information, it won't help you with any emotional issues.



I would question why you are in contact with an abusive ex? It seems that isn't going to help you feel well about yourself again.

I haven't read all the posts, but I wanted to respond anyway.

I have been a very B&W thinker. And yes, sometimes I still am. I realize that many people don't believe in God or ascribe to a specific religion, however, this is how I was able to navigate through much of my autism. I learned that there is alot of grey in life. I learned through receiving and then trying to give compassion. Compassion for when people make mistakes. I learned by being judged and unacceptable to many people around me. I learned to release my Black and White thinking by being segragated for being black by white people, and by being ignored for thinking differently by both black and white people. To this day some asian people still don't like me because of my skin color and was recently informed of such.

So I learned to adjust my thinking by remembering my past experiences and vowing that I didn't want anyone else to experience the pain that I have experienced and still experience. I was crying last week over what someone said about 2 black people. I am a person. People with my skin color are people. People who are gay or lesbian or transexual or whatever are people. And all these people have value. So, I've learned to accept people for their differences and not look at people quite so much as good or bad, unless someone is just plain selfish evil.

Regarding life experiences, each experience has given me an opportunity to understand someone else or what someone else is or has gone through.

I've learned that as a person with autism, I can learn to use my autism to my benefit. I am more patient than the people around me now. It's taken me many many years to develop this but it seems to be happening. Because of my patience, I do receive compliments at work and harder assignments, I can handle the tough situations. I have learned that by letting go of my judgements, my soul feels lighter. I figure God can handle the judging stuff. I do have to learn how to navigate the experience though, without ascribing it as good or bad per se. Sometimes, I just use dangerous or not dangerous to describe situations in my brain. Or I change the wording to healthy or not healthy.

When I get stuck with some situations, I call a friend to help me sort through the thought process. I also journal. It isn't easy to adjust my b&w thinking. but I still struggle.

I think the hardes thing for me is to know when I should be looking at a situation more black and white, than i do. that's why i'm now trying the dangerous or not dangerous (healthy or not healthy).


I have to admit, if I'm a real snot or really irritated with someone or something, I change the wording to Darwin worthy or Honorable mention worthy, or even Epic Fail.

I think it's great you are working hard to over came it and got so far.

Yeah everyone makes mistakes and in fact I find it hard to judge people. I only judge when I think someone is bad or when they give me bad vibes. And sometimes it is hard to not judge when something looks ugly. Like at work I knew someone there who was overweight but in her trash can, she always had candy wrappers and TV dinners and it makes me think no wonder she is that big. But that is all I think of her. People would call that judging.

Things you can be black and white in are rape, child molestation, child abuse.

There is never an excuse to abuse a child or to rape someone or molest a child. These are the things most people are black and white in. Even if the person was mentally ill, people still are mad at the person and want them to rot in hell, no sympathy nor saying how that person needs treatment and help. Even if someone was a schizophrenic and didn't know they did it at the time, people are still mad about it. But it's still not okay what they did, like I say, there is never an excuse. Sometimes they get locked up in the mental hospital instead than in prison if found not guilty due to insanity.

You can also let people be your guide but unfortunately most of them are judgmental and jump to conclusions too quickly. Like if they hear about a child drowning in the swimming pool, people jump to a conclusion the parents were stupid and did neglect when it was just an accident and the parents do watch their kid normally but one day their kid got out and wandered into the neighbor's pool and drowned and all these people forget about their own incidents with their own kids. (Unless they were perfect which i highly doubt they were). Heck my brother has pulled down a Christmas tree before when he was three but luckily he was okay. But sadly some parents aren't so lucky because they end up losing their child from an accident while others are rushing their kids to the hospital from an accident in their home or kids getting hurt and not needing the ER because their owies are too small and not serious. People just don't think really when things happen nor think of their own situations to not judge.

I have exercised my thinking in regarding laws and rules about when it should be okay to break it. Okay it's wrong to run a red light but what if my breaks were out or what if there was a fire truck behind me or a ambulance or a police car and they had their sirens on and I had a red light and I had no way of pulling over, so I drive out in the intersection to let them by. Okay I shouldn't get a ticket for those things.

What about auto theft, I have seen in movies where there be an emergency and a character would car jack someone's car to go after someone (The movie Speed for example), okay gray area there but in real life it's very unlikely you would need to do that but if you had to, no criminal charge for that.

Here there is a rule about creating multiple accounts, but what if you forgot your password and couldn't remember the email you registered with? What if you forgot your username? What if you never got a confirmation email to activate your account? You are going to create a new account breaking that rule and it should be acceptable. This just proves here I am not black and white or I wouldn't have found these gray areas and think it should be okay.

What about lying, what if you want to protect yourself from getting bullied or judged or to avoid a conflict? Also there to think about if it's okay to lie or tell the truth and suffer the consequence.

You are probably wondering how the last part of these are relevant to your B&W thinking, well people do these things so you can easily judge them for their "wrong doings" without hearing their reason why they did it and understanding it and looking past it even if you still thought it was wrong of them to do.

Okay if it was something serious like killing (unless it was for self defense) or child porn (unless some virus downloaded them onto their computer or someone put it on their computer and they didn't know about it) or molesting a child or raping someone or child abuse or any sort of abuse, then you can be black and white about it. If someone makes you uncomfortable because of their bad temper, you don't need to accept them. If someone embarrasses you in public when you are with them, you don't need to be with them. Same as if they don't show you respect.

I have even found out sometimes you do have to judge people because of your experience. If you notice a pattern, learn from it and judge. Like one example for me is if someone loves to troll online and are nasty to people because it's part of their trolling but yet they are nice to me and want to be my friend, do not trust them. Do not look past their behavior because they will turn on me eventually and be mean to me too and treat me the same. This came from my own experience a couple times. Same as if someone was once nasty to me and bullied me and all of a sudden are nice to me, do not trust them and lost past their old behavior. They will go back to being nasty to me again if I happen to piss them off again. So I am going to judge them no matter how hard it be for me to judge them.

I found an odd solution to black and white thinking that may not work for many people.

When I was young I was very black and white, to the point where I became nihilistic and refused to eat or drink and would simply sleep because there was no point to anything if time and catastrophe was going to destroy everything I accomplished. Naturally my parents forced the issue and I was hospitalized for this behavior. Since I was too fearful to comit suicide (but sleeping was somehow better?) I had no choice but to continue on with life. I was extremely depressed for a long time because I could not see the point of doing anything that did not offer me immediate gratification, unless it was working to enable future gratification.

As you might imagine, this attitude upset quite a lot of people. I felt guilty about the way I made everyone feel and I had to make a personal change in my life that would stop the guilt without becoming bitter. I adopted a shift in my philosophy and began to view everything at grey. I literally turned my black and white thinking upon itself such that "Everything is Grey" was the Black and "Nothing is Black and White" was the White.

It took a while to actually convince myself of this, but it has really helped with my problem solving abilities because I can look at a situation and see too many options that it could have arrived at that point. In some ways all the options are frightening and bothersome but as long as I can take my time to eliminate the least useful options I can usually arrive at a useable solution that lands in the grey zone.

I am very non grey in thinking. It always causes me trouble later but I can't seem to beat it. Things seem right or wrong period, and even in trying to see the other side I fight it mentally. It makes me kind of an a**hole but I only see that in retrospect. I have been trying to just shut up but then I always think, what if I"m making things worse by saying or doing nothing? I think I fear that more than making an a** of myself.

As a Chinese Singaporean I am sorry to hear that. I don't know any African-Americans personally, but what from you have written, I think you are an intelligent person with definite ideas about what you want in life.

perhaps I am forever doomed

Yes. I've been told I go to extremes. I lack balance. I feel unable to balance all the things I have learned and experienced to date, to a degree. I am very intense as a result lol It's all about focus I think. I imagine myself surrounded by ideas, picking up one at a time and studying it intently and learning everything I can about it. As soon as I try to pick up another, perhaps to make a comparison, the previous is forgotten or I lose interest. So it's all or nothing.

Is that kinda what you mean?

It helps to remind yourself to think about both sides of things. But the first time I was actually able to experience understanding of the grey areas was when I started taking Seroquel. It was like a previously unused part of my brain suddenly started functioning and I could actually understand the blend of black and white.

My solution to that is to be hyper-aware, by practicing until I am able to focus simultaneously on thousands of separate ideas at once.

I have not been diagnosed with anything,

But I am definitely a B&W thinker. I think it is related to perfectionism for me, like someone before posted. It is also related to stressful situations, and not knowing what the possible consequences of something are.
If I cannot do something perfectly, I often get into a negative downward spiral. When I was younger, my mom would make me take the spiral all the way- in a discussion- until it eventually became a joke.
For example, when I was in high school, if I was working on a school project and it wasn't coming out perfectly, then I would say that I was going to get an F on the project, and therefore an F in the class. Then I'd have to drop out of school, never get a good job and be homeless. Then I'd have to live in a box in the gutter outside my parents house. It's a silly exercise, but I'd make the last part as absurd as possible and be laughing by the end.
It helped me recently with my performance review. I was very stressed out about it, and started thinking I'd do horribly and get fired, etc, etc. I realized the problem was that I didn't know what would happen on the off chance I did flub. So I emailed my boss and found out they'd work with me to help me improve, and then do another review.

That was a little long. Hope it made sense!

I've been told this. It's part of depression, sometimes.

I think I do it to make life simpler. I think aspies hate uncertainty.

From my perspective, I would say that I hate not knowing what is supposed to happen in a given situation, which has lead me to a lifetime of intensely studying every system I can't accurately predict.