All Or Nothing Thinking

[SinkorSwim]

Lately I have been struggling with all or nothing thinking. As in if I am going to do something I have to give it my best shot if I fail than I am completely negative and hard on myself. How do you even start to combat this type of thinking. There is never a grey area for me it's always black or white. If something needs to be done it has to get done immediately so I can move on to the next thing.

 

[Carmen J. Brown]

Lately I have been struggling with all or nothing thinking. As in if I am going to do something I hav...

I also have trouble with this.

 

[Teamwork]

I have struggled with this as well. But when I can get to a place of reflection I'm able to think about it so that the next time I can take a small step towards not going to the extreme on either side.

 

[Fiadh]

It sounds weird but when I have been like this in the past I have had to purposefully 'failed' at something. I put it in '' because when I say 'fail' in my mind it would mean that I hadn't done it to my standards, and it would wreck my week or day that I hadn't done it. So instead of challenging myself to do things, I challenge myself to half do them, and walk away from it, and it will be ok. Or even worse NOT do it. Making that choice is hard. But after a while your brain gets the idea that maybe these things don't NEED to get done now, it can wait for a while, and it's OK not to do things to those high standards.

 

[DrCreative27]

For me, all or l nothing thinking is rooted in a belief that tomorrow won't come... that is, I would forget to take the next step, or forget that I even started, or get distracted by something more compelling...

Not too long ago I started taking a DBT class, and coincidentally I began doing things that required multiple steps, things I had put off for my whole life: learning to draw, for example.

The key for me was killing the anxiety buzz. DBT is a set of specific skills that help me focus on the now and make decisions; I also am taking an anti-anxiety med. When the fight or flight reaction is out of the picture, it's easier to see the intermediate steps.

 

[DrCreative27]

Footnote to my reply: I recently finished a PhD. I almost didn't, because I couldn't remember one day to the next what I had done the day before or why... part of beating all or nothing thinking was beating the PhD.

The book Getting Things Done helped me a lot. It taught me how to plan a project and work one step at a time. When I got overwhelmed I could return to the plan and/or jot down the source of my anxiety and often times the antithesis of the anxiety.

 

[SinkorSwim]

It sounds weird but when I have been like this in the past I have had to purposefully 'failed' at somet...

Ooooh I like this! I like this a lot!