Transcription
If you can follow this one rule, you'll probably decrease your emotional reactivity by half. And this rule isn't about willpower. It isn't about doing something that takes a ton of energy or effort. It's a rule about being really freaking honest with yourself.
[Music]
When it comes to emotional reactivity, emotions are the match, the initial source of ignition. Our habits and our self-care and our problem-solving skills might be the wood, or what maintains the fire. But how we think is like gasoline. And there's a certain type of thinking that's especially explosive when it comes to emotional reactivity. And that's black and white thinking.
Now, black and white thinking is when you take a situation and you think about it in an extreme way. You push out all of the nuance and you turn it into something as intense as possible. Now, you can usually recognize it when you use words like always, never, perfect, terrible, or like, every, everything, everyone, nothing, nobody, worst, or best. Right? The Arbinger Institute calls these "horribalizations." You take something and you horribalize it.
Now, notice how in these situations, black and white thinking exaggerates the situation. So, for example, a husband says to his wife, "You never do the dishes. I always have to clean up after you." Or a depressed young adult, "Everything is awful. The world is a a terrible place. Climate change is hopeless. I'll never be able to succeed. I'm no good at math." Or some at work, right? They might think, "My boss is the worst communicator." Or a young mother might say, "I'm just a terrible person. She has it all together. She's such a saint."
Right, each time the person takes a difficult situation and they make it horrible. They use the most extreme word: never, always, everything, hopeless, terrible. So the more extreme your thinking, the more intense your emotions will be, and the more likely you are to be depressed or anxious. But black and white thinking also makes you helpless to escape that depression or anxiety. And it's a lie.
When you use black and white thinking, you are usually distorting nuanced reality by ignoring the good and exaggerating the bad. You're lying. So if it's so awful, why do we do it? You subconsciously like black and white thinking because it serves a function in the short term. And like a drug, it makes you suffer in the long term.
So what function does it serve? Number one, it justifies you. So if your wife does the dishes sometimes, but not often, why would you want to phrase that in the worst possible way? "My wife never does the dishes." The reason you want to phrase it that way is to make yourself feel like the good guy and put her down. You're making yourself feel better by making the situation worse in the long run.
So if your boss has some skills, some strength, some talents, but struggles to communicate in a few areas, why would you want to say that they're terrible in every way? Because then you don't have to put in the effort to be assertive and communicate your needs and listen to theirs. Believing that your boss is terrible is a mental habit to excuse yourself from work.
So if math is hard for you, let me give you one more example. If math is hard for you, why would you want to believe that it's impossible for you? Why would you want to lie to make a sincerely difficult situation harder? Because then you're excused from trying, from putting in effort, from the difficulty of hours of studying, or the painful emotions of failing a test.
Black and white thinking is an old habit that protects you from painful emotions like uncertainty and disappointment. When we exaggerate how bad things are, it excuses us from action. It creates the idea that we're helpless and therefore we do not need to act. It helps us feel powerless and thereby protects ourselves from feeling guilty or accountable.
So be honest with yourself. Like, it kind of feels good when you can call up your bestie and tell them that you've had the worst day in the whole entire world, and then they say, "Oh, you poor thing." But the thing is, most of the time, we don't even make that call. We just have that little internal dialogue with ourselves. "You poor thing," we say to ourselves. And we kind of like it. Like that vindication feels good.
Now, on a side note, there is a reason your brain made this fun little backdoor excuse. And it's connected to fear and the fight, flight, freeze response. When we're in danger, let's say our ancestors were at war with another tribe, the fight, flight, freeze response shuts down nuance and options in the brain. We see the attacking tribe as being sub-human, as being terrible, as being awful human beings. Black and white thinking makes it simpler to fight back, to kill them, because we're not thinking of them as humans with wives and children and parents, with dreams and loves and hurts. Right? They're just simply the bad guys.
In life-threatening situations, black and white thinking may help us make quick and decisive decisions. Simplicity is easier than dealing with the nuanced complexity of reality. And it might help us us survive. But since the vast majority of our day-to-day decisions aren't life-threatening, black and white thinking interferes with our emotional stability the rest of the time.
So if we want to be less emotionally reactive, we need to replace black and white thinking with something more helpful and more honest. So what do we do about it? The first thing is this rule: honesty. You have to be willing to admit that black and white thinking is a lie, and that you're lying to yourself to excuse yourself from something. If you're willing to be more honest about that, then you can move on to the next step.
So notice that you're doing it. Notice your trigger words. So 99% of the time, words like always or never are not accurate. Do you have other words that you use when you're justifying yourself? Just start to catch yourself doing it. Write a big Post-it note somewhere that you can see that has a list of the words that are warning signs that you're slipping into black and white thinking and emotional reactivity. And then take a deep breath. Slow yourself down.
[Applause]
Next, name an emotion. The emotion might be real, but the thoughts aren't. So say something like, "I feel," followed by an emotion word. "I feel angry." You are not allowed to say, "I feel like you're making me angry." "I feel like you always attack me." "I feel like you never take out the trash." I'm sorry, those are lies. And they're also thoughts. They're not feelings. They're lies because they're exaggerated. But that's not a feeling statement. Right? Three words only: "I feel emotion word." "I feel angry." That's honest, right?
Okay, next, reframe the situation. Speak in the gray. There might be a real problem that needs to be solved. The emotion can motivate you to take action. But extreme thinking like black and white thinking will most likely interfere with your ability to solve the problem. So we're gonna look for the gray. Here's how: use "both and" instead of extreme thinking. Now, this is an annoying, purposeful skill that's actually super effective, right? You can feel two emotions at the same time. You can have two nuanced truths that seem contradictory at the same time.
So, for example, when your boss miscommunicates a deadline to you, instead of thinking, "He's a terrible communicator," you could say, "My boss didn't communicate well, and he's also trying really hard to help our team succeed." Or if you messed up, right? Instead of me either being a complete idiot or a perfect worker, you could say something like, "Oh, I'm I'm basically intelligent and valuable. At times, I make mistakes too." Both of these can be true.
Or if if a loved one passes away, you could say something like, "Oh, I feel so sad about the death of my mother, and I feel relieved that I don't have to be her caretaker anymore anymore." Or, um, you know, it could be true that your wife might be insensitive to you sometimes, and she also loves you a lot, right? So that's the skill of "both and." You look for two parts, or lots of parts, of these situations.
Okay, next, look for exceptions. Look for counter-examples. So if I have this thought, "Oh, my wife never does the dishes," you look for a time that she did, or some other way that she contributes, right? Look for an exception to this extreme way of thinking. Or be specific. Speak about one single situation. So use a less extreme word. So instead of saying, "My boss is a terrible communicator," you say, "My boss wasn't clear about her expectations for the timeline for this assignment." Be really specific.
Right? So instead of "everything is awful," describe what specifically is awful. So say, "Oh, she didn't tell me the time frame." So when we get specific, then we can actually do something about a problem. So like, uh, you could say something like, "Oh, hey boss, next time I need more clarity about deadlines." Okay?
And then last, make sure to check for your own accountability. In the majority of situations, we are playing a role in the cycle. If there's a communication problem at work, perhaps we need to work on using clarifying statements or being more assertive. If there's a problem with chores in the marriage, we may need to consider how we're contributing or clarifying household tasks. Or we need to manage our stress levels better. Or, you know, not be so busy all the time, right? There's probably something we can do to contribute to the solution here.
Now, remember, one of the main reasons that people get depressed or anxious is how they perceive reality. When we're able to be more flexible and intentional and truthful in our perceptions, in our words, we're often able to escape the extreme emotions. And depression and anxiety can can lift, right?
Now, when you've been thinking in extremes for much of your life, it can be really hard to catch yourself doing it. So working with a therapist can really help you notice and replace this type of thinking with something that's way more emotionally stable. When it comes down to it, you can change your brain. You can improve your mood. You can get better at feeling. So I hope this helps. Thank you for watching and take care.
Hey, this video is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp has licensed professional therapists in your area, and you can reach them from the comforts of your own home. They make it really easy to find a therapist who you can start working with very quick quickly. They also make therapy more affordable and more accessible. So if you're interested in learning more, please click the link in the description, and you can get 10% off your first month.
[Music]