Relinquishing All or Nothing Thinking, Part 1 (TMF:2367)

Tuesday, June 04, 2024
Peace to Live By: Relinquishing All or Nothing Thinking, Part 1 (TMF:2367) - Daniel Litton
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       If we’ve read Psychologist David D. Burns’ best selling book, ‘Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy,’ we know that one of the cognitive distortions that people can suffer with is ‘All or Nothing Thinking’ (see Chapter 3). This is a particularly bad distortion because it makes everything black and white—too easy, too clear-cut. Things often aren’t that way in our world. Not everything is as clear cut as people can make it out to be. And this is especially true when talking negatively about ourselves, or about another person, or another whole group of people. This area has been a particularly bothersome one for me because I have witnessed Christians falling victim to it so frequently in our society. And I am not talking about just naive people. I’m talking about well-educated, perhaps even highly-esteemed people in some cases, becoming deceived by following this distortion, this mindset which is incorrect. One reason I think Christians can so easily fall prey to this is because of what we have been taught about as regards the Bible. We’ve been taught that things are clear cut—that there’s no negotiation with them.