Dichotomous thinking, also known as "black or white thinking," is a symptom of many psychiatric conditions and personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder (BPD). Dichotomous thinking contributes to interpersonal problems and to emotional and behavioral instability.
Borderline personality disorder.
Borderline personality disorder is a mental illness that causes people to experience intense feelings of anger, anxiety, and depression. They often will have symptoms of poor impulse control and frequently display black and white thinking.
: in a way that involves a simple choice between two opposite things (such as good and bad or right and wrong) She sees everything in black and white.
Also known as polarized thinking, all-or-nothing thinking, or dichotomous thinking, black-and-white thinking refers to a habit of thinking in polar opposites without accepting any possibility of a gray area, according to the American Psychological Association (APA).
The narcissists black and white thinking, known as splitting, is their common defence mechanism, leaving them with an inability to bring together positive and negative qualities. They think in the extremes of everything is all good to everything is all bad with no middle ground.
Symptoms of BPD
A tendency to see things as one extreme or the other – a.k.a. Black or white thinking. Severe mood swings. Unstable or distorted self-image. Continuous and rapid changes in one's opinions, values and/or interests.
The official psychological term for black and white thinking is “splitting.” At its extremes, splitting can be a symptom of mental illness like Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). In everyday settings, it can simply hold us back from experiencing some of the richness of our lives and relationships.
Emotional Dysregulation
Bursts of emotion from both ends of the spectrum show in people with ADHD, like explosive anger or wild excitement. People will describe this as having emotions that are hard to hide and difficult to regulate. Those with ADHD may also struggle with black-and-white thinking.
Shoulding and musting are types of black and white thinking. In terms of social anxiety disorder, these involve thoughts such as "I must always do everything right" or "I should always agree with what people say."
Achromatopsia is also known as “complete color blindness” and is the only type that fully lives up to the term “color blind”. It is extremely rare, however, those who have achromatopsia only see the world in shades of grey, black and white.
In very rare cases, no color is perceived – only black, white, and shades of gray. Roughly 8 percent of men in the world are affected by color deficiency, and only 0.5 percent, or 1 in 200, of women. Ironically, this condition is usually inherited at birth from mothers' genes – mainly to their sons.
Some individuals naturally have more vivid visual imagery, while others may have a harder time visualizing images or experiencing colors in their mind's eye. This variation is a normal part of individual differences in cognitive processing.
An example of black-and-white thinking is labeling a person as entirely good or bad based on a single action, rather than taking into account their varied traits and behaviors.
"Black and white thinking" is a common manifestation of immature thought; thinking that is rigid, stubborn and often extreme, with few 'grey areas'. Examples of black and white thinking are: The teachers all treat me like crap. Everybody hates me.
Dichotomous thinking, also known as "black or white thinking," is a symptom of many psychiatric conditions and personality disorders, including borderline personality disorder (BPD). Dichotomous thinking contributes to interpersonal problems and to emotional and behavioral instability.
The cognitive pattern of black and white thinking is a very common trait of autistic people. It refers to a tendency to view situations, emotions, and ideas in absolutes or extremes.
Talk To A Professional
Working with a mental health professional can help you address the emotional effects of black-and-white thinking and develop a more nuanced mindset. A therapist can provide you with tips for limiting negative self-talk and show you how to reframe cognitive distortions.
There are many types of cognitive distortion, and black-and-white thinking – also called all-or-nothing thinking — is common in OCD.
Black and white thinking is a trauma response that is important to break down for our overall happiness and wellbeing. When we are not feeling safe, it's easy to slide into rigid thought patterns such as everything is either good or bad, friend or enemy, kind or mean, awesome or awful etc.
Black-and-white thinking is common to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Black and White thinking, also known as either/or thinking may be defined as an extreme way of thinking where a person can only see one possibility. Finding the gray may be defined as being able to find more than one possibility or solution.
Bipolar blackout is a term that refers to a period of memory loss during and after a manic episode. When a person experiences mania and goes into a “blackout,” they have trouble staying cognizant of their environment and what they do during their episode.
No two people with bipolar disorder share the same thoughts or experiences, but there are some common thought patterns among most folks who have it. This includes cyclical thinking, manic and/or depressive episodes, suicidal ideation, and psychosis.