Hey guys. This is Aime Lynn with Flipswitch’s Erasing Negative Thoughts. On each edition of Erasing Negative Thoughts, we identify one way of stinkin' thinkin' and show how it’s more often than not, ether completely untrue or extremely exaggerated. On this edition of Erasing Negative Thoughts, we’ll cover the thinking pattern known as All-or-Nothing Thinking, otherwise known as Black and White Thinking.

“I’ll die if I don’t buy that new coat” Seriously... going without a new coat is going to kill you... I highly doubt that, unless maybe you’re a bum on the street, don’t own a coat, and are living in 10 degree weather... which I seriously doubt.

“If I fail this exam like I always fail in this class, I’m going to fail out of school and end up living on the streets!”

Last time I checked, people take more than 1 class in school, so unless you are receiving Fs in EVERY one of your classes and don’t have the skills to work at McDonalds (which is unlikely) and you don’t have family members to help support you succeed in getting help for your classes, I don’t think you’ll end up on the side of the street.

“I can’t do well on this project, so what’s the point in even trying” Have you even started the project? What do you have some secret way of knowing the future that I don’t know about? How exactly do you know you won’t do well? Well, you definitely will not do well if you don’t even try.

You know... the ARE grey areas where you could be a little cold without a coat or look a little dorky in your old coat, but you’re not going to DIE. And first off, you could do well on that exam, you don’t know for sure, and even if you do fail the class, you could still take it over. You’re not automatically going to be thrown on the streets. As for the project, the only way you can secure a failing grade for sure, is by not even trying to do it. All-or-Nothing Thinking is when you don’t see the middle ground or grey areas that actually do exist. There is a possibility that things will not go horribly wrong and yet, you are right, they may not go exactly perfect, but you will survive. This is a problem for depression because often people will use these lies and tell themselves that things are always going to be that way and that they will never get out of their depression. That’s actually not true so start allowing yourself to see things as they are rather than contributing to the depression enforcing the belief that it will always be like this.

Things are rarely so black and white. Find the middle ground.

Well, that’s all for now. Now, go and work on telling yourself that things may change and you can succeed.