🧠 I’ve been thinking about paint colours a lot recently, as I’m redecorating. Despite my love of bold hues, when it comes down to it, my home will likely end up in different shades of grey. A bit like life, really.
Therapy is so often about helping a person reach a balanced perspective and find the middle ground. Which doesn’t mean not taking decisive action btw - that’s often required. But it is about moving away from black and white thinking, and existing in a more nuanced world.
📢 Ask yourself:
“When did I last forget all the good, or bad, about a person or situation?”
“When did I last use extreme language in a disagreement like “always” or “never”?”
Most of us fall foul of these behaviours. But no one, including you, is just one thing.
For example, you can both love a person and know they’re not good for you. Or dislike a person, and see their vulnerabilities. Or be outraged at someone and know you, too, may be capable of their same wrongdoing. This is all too common when it comes to cheating. People fearing their partner will cheat on them, only to realise that they themselves are sometimes tempted.
When we move away from black and white thinking and recognise the grey, we become far more empathic. That doesn't necessarily mean liking or forgiving someone if they do wrong by you, but it does mean being able to sit with your own complex feelings.
💡The revelation: Black and white thinking can hold us back and make us far less accepting of our own complicated responses.
Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein referred to this as 'splitting' - when a person can't hold two contradictory thoughts or feelings in mind at the same time. She explained that this paranoid-schizoid position begins in infancy when we encounter conflicts between the primary emotions of love and hate, based on whether our basic survival needs were met. In a baby’s head, this might sound something like: "I hate mother if she doesn't feed me what I want and love her if she does."
Often we carry this attitude into adulthood. But when we learn to accept and integrate our ambivalent, mixed feelings, we can build a far healthier relationship with ourselves and the world.
So in short, don’t be a beige person ‘cos that’s just a bit boring, but grey might just be where happiness lies.
💛 Product I’m loving: The Magnesium Sleep Mineral Lotion by Better You. I’m a Magnesium devotee when it comes to helping me sleep better, and I've been using this for years as part of my wind down ritual before bed. Magnesium is absorbed more easily through the skin. Personally, I rub it into my legs and it gives them a weirdly heavy, grounded feeling, which helps my whole body relax.
Thanks for being here,
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