Dichotomy

Speaking of anger, one time my husband sat down to have a talk with my stepson about the broken state of their relationship in general but before my husband could get much out, my stepson declared that he had to "pick between the good side and the bad side of the family and [he] picked the good side," referring to his maternal side. When my husband gently pushed back that in families there is no "good side" or "bad side" my stepson's purported response was a dismissive, "Yeah, right."

Black and white thinking, splitting, binary thinking or thinking in extremes is a common defense mechanism when it becomes hard to perceive the nuances of your experience and so your perception can only swing between extremes. It's often considered an immature thinking process that crops up as a stress response. As an example when I'm feeling stressed and then depressed as a result, I will often employ that kind of extreme thinking at my lowest moments: "I am the worst," "I'm a terrible person," "Nobody cares about me," and so on. Recently it cropped up because a set of mugs I worked on for days thinking, hey, I might just be getting my feet under me, was ruined because the studio door, apparently, opened overnight to the freezing cold and they all froze. My first thought was, "I can't do this anymore. I quit." I have examined myself repeatedly over the years to the extent that when this type of episode does happen (less over the decades), my inner voice stops me with a hand on my mind's shoulder and reminds me, "That's an exaggeration and not true. Now take a breath and see things as they really are. You're just feeling bad. This feeling won't last forever."

Childhood and adolescence are often the primary stages where this kind of thinking happens first but if a child doesn't develop a more balanced view of themselves and the world, they can drag this defense mechanism with them for their entire life. When my stepson declared there was a bad side and good side to his family, I wish I could say he was 12 when he said it to his dad. He was 28 and had just had his first kid. So, hanging on to guilt about his parents' divorce, stress of a huge life change and my guess is he fell back on an old emotional coping mechanism that helped him navigate his parents' rather hostile and prolonged split. I felt bad for him hearing about this because we all integrate in our background mind that we are half dad and half mom so if he's thinking one whole part of his family is ALL BAD, still, at age 28, how does he feel about himself? What kind of self-perception is he carrying with him? If Dad is ALL BAD, does that make him 50% bad? Does that make his kid 25% bad?

When you get in that mode of binary thinking, I will say from my own experience, trying to guide yourself out of it by challenging that thinking feels like this gargantuan task because, for me at least, when I start my internal dialog, I feel like I just cannot believe myself. And yet, I know that the only way out of that corner of thinking is to chip away at the fallacy of the extremes and venture back to the subtle neutrals of human experience.

My mother was 93 when she died. Some of her last words before she passed were, "I was a terrible mother." She, too, dragged that black and white extreme thinking with her until her last moments. Yes, I have my issues with my mother and how she mothered me and I have been sorting through that with a better sense of finality now that she's dead, but part of the way I've been healing is a realistic examination of my mother and her mothering. It was not ALL BAD. Nor was it ALL GOOD. (Don't get me started on the Cult of Motherhood out here in Kentucky just yet.). Through exploring all the moments, I'm able to accurately see my mother for who she was. To me. By accepting things as they really were, both the happy and unhappy moments, I can more accurately see myself and move forward. Hopefully, ha!