How to Shift Black-and-White Thinking
“They let me down, so I am just done with them,” a client tells me about a situation. As I listen to their story, what’s missing from this one statement is that the situation being described is complicated.
What’s not being related about the situation are the layers of miscommunication and different perspectives and gray areas that are absolutely not one way or the other. Like most events in our lives, the situation was nuanced and certainly not something to terminate a friendship over without a conversation.
So, why was this situation so crystal clear and simple to my client, and yet not as clear to me?
The answer lies in what’s called all-or-nothing or black-and-white or dichotomous thinking. This kind of “one-way street” is very common for people with ADHD and other neurodivergent brains. You may have seen it in your own thinking or in your loved one’s thinking before.
Thinking in this way can be painful and even harmful for children or adults with ADHD, because it closes doors or ends relationships—often before it’s the right time. When someone takes time to explore all the possible reasons for someone’s behavior, it quickly becomes clear that there’s often more going on. And that “friend or foe” may just be having a bad day, or a tough moment, and not something so egregious that it’s worth ending a friendship over.