What is polarized thinking and how can I stop doing it? - Video transcript
Hey everyone, I'm Kristen, the anxiety therapist, and today I'm going to talk about polarized thinking, which is a type of cognitive distortion. That's just fancy terminology for thinking errors. 'Cognitive' pertains to thinking and our thought processes, and 'distortions' means that something is inaccurate or distorted in some way. So when we have these cognitive distortions, it's usually because of repeated and habitual errors in thinking. We all have thinking errors sometimes. Maybe we misinterpret what somebody said to us once and need clarification, or it elicits a certain type of feeling, and that's normal.
However, when it comes to cognitive distortions, these thinking errors are pervasive and can cause us to interpret events in a negative way and view reality inaccurately or irrationally. This reinforcement of negative thinking can lead to anxiety, depression, and so on because they become our automatic thoughts.
The one I want to talk about today is polarized thinking. It's sometimes referred to as all-or-nothing thinking or black-and-white thinking. Basically, you are looking at things as being on one end of the spectrum or another, and you're operating at one extreme or the other. It's very hard to find that middle ground or that gray area, and you might use words like 'always,' 'never,' 'everything,' 'nothing,' and so on if you engage in polarized thinking a lot.
An example of this would be the belief that if you aren't perfect, then you're a complete failure. Neither of those is probably true, and it's likely that the reality lies somewhere in the middle. Maybe you have certain strengths and you've done really well in certain areas of your life, but not so well in others. It's not an either-or type of scenario.
We also get caught up in this thinking when we think things are either good or bad. A lot of times, we can experience some rigidity in thinking that the way we do something is right and the only way to do it. So, if somebody does something differently, we perceive that as being the wrong way when, in reality, it's just different.
One thing that's helpful to overcome these cognitive distortions, and polarized thinking in particular, is to pay attention to your thoughts. If there is something that evokes a strong emotion, analyze it to see if you are engaging in polarized thinking, and see how you might be able to think about that situation differently.
That's just one of several cognitive distortions. I plan to do a video for each, so stay tuned for some other ones. I hope you found this helpful. If so, subscribe to my YouTube channel, and I will see you next week. Take care.
