All-or-Nothing thinking is also known as Black-and-White thinking. Some people also call it “My way or the highway.” It is a cognitive distortion where you see things as either entirely good or entirely bad, without considering the gray areas in between. This is a stress-inducing, anger provoking, sadness producing, self-sabotaging way of viewing yourself and the world that can set you up for failure, especially if you have a setback or make a small mistake. For example, perfectionism exists in All-or-nothing thinking. So does a case of the “Might as wells.” The “Might as wells” are what we tell ourselves when we break a diet, slip and have a drink, or spend money that we were trying to save. “I’ve already done this little bit, so it’s all ruined anyway. Might as well go all the way.” Can you imagine if you set a bill on autopay for your landlord, mortgage company, or utility department, and they turned around and said “We already got your monthly bill, we might as well take everything else you got.” You would throw a fit about it and rightly so. It doesn’t make sense! Yet so many of us use and apply All-or-Nothing thinking to many areas in life, including relapse. Believing that one slip-up means you’ve completely failed can lead to a cycle of shame and relapse.
There’s another form of All-or-Nothing thinking that contributes to relapse, and it is called having a reservation. Just like you would call a restaurant to hold a table for you to arrive and enjoy a meal, many people keep reservations for relapse in their back pocket just in case things don’t go the way they’d like them to. If you are holding onto a reservation, you’re really only holding onto an excuse to use, which the manipulative mind knows is convenient to play into a victim mentality, which enables harming/using behaviors.
Challenging All-or-nothing thinking:
- Check the facts and don’t make decisions based solely on your opinions. Your opinions are not facts- They are opinions and opinions can change in the presence of facts.
- Don’t believe everything you think. Check the facts!
- It is about progress, not perfection. It is not about being perfect, it is about being well. Life-long wellness and recovery is a daily journey. Setbacks can happen on the journey; however setbacks are not the final destination. Wallowing in setbacks is only the negative self-talk of self-pity, which is just another form of All-or-Nothing thinking: “I can’t do anything right, I’m a failure, etc.” Both are examples of All-or-Nothing thinking.
- Build your resilience by viewing both accomplishments and failures through a lens of self-empowerment. Accomplish something? Reflect on the traits that helped you achieve it. Fail at something or experience a set back? Gain self-empowerment by reflecting on the learning opportunities the failure provided. “I failed at something” is not that same as saying “I am a failure.” Failure is an incredibly valuable experience if you learn how to apply its lessons and grow from the experience, so long as you don’t internalize failure as an identity.
- Check your need to be right. Feeling like you must be right all the time is a form of All-or-Nothing thinking and it is making your life full of far more internal and external conflict than it has to be.
- View yourself with self-compassion and recognize that mistakes don’t define your worth or your ability to recover.
- Be willing and open to receive advise, counsel, and suggestions from people who have “been there and done that.”
