Our Black & White Thinking resource

Our innate resources are powerful tools which can help us meet our physical and emotional needs.

Black & White Thinking is a complex resource which is useful in an emergency, as it can help us to make quick decisions when we don’t have the luxury of time to think things through.

However, when we are stuck in Black & White Thinking, it can affect our ability to think rationally.

Quick thinking

There are times in our lives, and fast-moving situations, where making a decision quickly is crucial.

In an emergency situation, split-second thinking can be key to survival, swiftly getting us out of the path of danger as quickly as possible.

As a resource, Black & White Thinking simplifies our thinking, and locks attention on what matters most in a crisis.

It’s a valuable resource when we – or a loved one – is in harm’s way but it comes with strong emotions which can overwhelm us. This can leave us stuck in a way of thinking, which psychologist call pervasive. We may then have thoughts like “everything is wrong” or “nothing is ever going to change”.

These kinds of thoughts seem to take away our options and our power to make changes in our lives.

So, Black & White Thinking could save us in an emergency, but if we get stuck with it, it can be a barrier to meeting our Emotional Needs.

Rational Thinking

We also have another innate resource, which is Rational Thinking – this is the flip side to Black and White Thinking.

Rational Thinking allows us to carefully analyse our lives, to plan and to better understand our feelings.

It gives us the ability to think in ‘shades of grey’, to understand that there are subtleties and nuances to our lives, experiences and emotions.

It can help us put situations into perspective and allows us to think clearly about what our next move could be to improve our situation.

Using Rational Thinking, we can turn “everything is wrong” into “some things are ok” and “nothing is ever going to change” to “change will come”.

Rational Thinking can help us to see that we have more power than we often realise to change our lives and to take steps to meeting our physical and emotional needs.

How to maintain your Rational Thinking

To use Rational Thinking, we may first need to calm strong emotions and distress. This will help us think more clearly.

Breathing techniques, such as 7/11 breathing are useful tools to calm strong emotions and allow us to think rationally again.

Once we have calmed down, it should be easier to use Rational Thinking to plan, make lists of things we wish to change, and meet our needs to feel safe and more in control of our situation.

We can also:

• Counter anxious thoughts by realising we are doing the best we can.
• Avoid dwelling on what cannot be changed.
• Think about what we can do in the future to meet our needs.

By keeping calm and using Rational Thinking, we are in a better position to identify which physical and emotional needs we are not meeting and develop constructive steps in which to meet them.

Find out more about our Emotional Needs and Innate Resources.