Life-Topic Coaching – The “all-or-nothing thinking” represents an attempt to escape the ambiguity of life. But nothing in life is entirely black or white, completely right or wrong. People who think in such extremes often fear complexity because it disorients them. But how does such a rigid thinking style develop?
“I’ve always solved my problems on my own, and I did it decisively – quick and radical. Always by the principle: ‘all or nothing.’ It’s worked well for me. No compromises! Compromises are for weaklings. You know what I mean?”
These were Andrew’s opening words during our three-hour Life-Topic Coaching session. Andrew, 63, had been a project manager in a major company but had been on a severance arrangement for the past nine months.
“What I understand so far is that being perceived as weak is something you deeply want to avoid,” I responded.
“Exactly!” he exclaimed. “And yet, here I am – a weakling! I’ve been sitting at home for months, unable to motivate myself, uninterested in anything. It’s disgusting!”
My first thought was that he might be experiencing a reactive depression due to the severance – a situation that, at his age, could signify an involuntary transition to retirement.
Most people imagine retirement as a serene phase: sleeping in every morning, leisurely breakfasts at a café, strolling through town or visiting museums, meeting friends for dinner and engaging conversations without worrying about work the next day. Many dream of rediscovering old hobbies – painting with those dusty oil paints, picking up a forgotten violin, spending time with grandchildren, gardening, biking, or even writing a novel.
Andrew, too, had harbored such fantasies. But after six months, his idyllic visions had disintegrated.
“I wake up every morning with this oppressive feeling I can’t explain. Financially, I’m secure thanks to a generous severance package. I’m healthy and have no obligations. And yet, I feel lousy as soon as I wake up, rolling around in bed, unsure whether to get up or not.”
“So, your ‘all-or-nothing’ principle isn’t working anymore?” I concluded.
I intended empathy but worried it might come across as smug.
“How did you end up leaving your job?” I asked cautiously.
“I didn’t lose my job; I quit!” Andrew retorted, visibly defensive.
“The company was acquired by an American firm, and suddenly, my position was ‘no longer necessary.’ They didn’t want to fire me outright because of my tenure, so they offered an early retirement package. I took it. But the decision hasn’t done me any good. I’ve been miserable ever since.”
“What does your wife say about this?” I asked, steering the conversation toward his personal life.
“She’d probably say it’s my own fault. But we’re no longer together. We were married for over 20 years, but one night at a party, she cheated on me. She confessed immediately and apologized, but for me, it was over. I filed for divorce the next day – that was five years ago. I’ve been living alone ever since.”
“Do you have children?”
“No. My wife wanted kids at one point, but I told her she’d have to take full responsibility for them. That put her off. I find children exhausting – always needing attention, always something to worry about. It was too much for me.”
“You seem to have a preference for quick, decisive, and solitary choices,” I observed, noticing a potential behavioral pattern.
Behavioral patterns are recurring ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in response to specific situations or triggers
I prefer the term ‘pathways of influence’ because it conveys that these are not arbitrary, easily changeable tracks, but ones that, for better or worse, become entrenched grooves of habit – ones we find as difficult to deviate from as a train does from its rails.
“Probably. I can’t stand half-measures. My motto is: either do it completely or not at all,” stated Andrew.
“Ah, yes, as you mentioned earlier – compromises are for weaklings.”
“That’s how my father was too. When he was 47, a severe car accident left him in a wheelchair. Six months later, he ended his own life. In his farewell note, he wrote, ‘Better to die now than to live crippled and dependent.’”
“How did that affect you?”
“I thought it was consistent. That’s how he always lived – never showing weakness. I think I inherited a lot from him in that regard.”
“Well,” I said, “what you’ve also inherited seems to be his belief that it’s better to leave than to be left behind.”
All or Nothing Belongs to A Life Topic
The “all-or-nothing” mindset is more than just a thinking pattern – it ties into a deeper Life Topic.
Life Topics are fundamental beliefs about what life is primarily about. As children, we don’t simply live without direction; our total dependence on others forces us to grapple with two essential questions:
- What is this place I’ve arrived in?
- What must I do, or how must I be, to ensure my needs are met?
A hungry baby, for instance, signals its need for care through restless movements and sounds – turning its head quickly from side to side, clenching its tiny fists, smacking its lips, or kicking its legs.
Attentive parents learn to recognize and interpret these signals, responding by feeding the baby. The infant learns that such nonverbal cues can elicit a caring response. If this doesn’t work, the baby intensifies the signals, escalating to crying or screaming.
Interestingly, a study revealed that children of drug-dependent mothers exhibit an opposite behavior. Even when hungry, they remain conspicuously quiet. Their experience has taught them that crying and screaming are ineffective; instead, these mothers are more likely to respond to prolonged silence.
This interactional pattern extends beyond infancy.
What does a three-year-old do who has just drawn a picture?
She doesn’t file it away or throw it out. No, she runs to an adult and says, “Look!”
The appropriate response to this “look!” is a simple expression of acknowledgment, such as “Great!” or “That’s a beautiful picture!” Satisfied with the feedback, the child returns to her activity, whether it’s drawing another picture or playing with something else. In showing her picture, she establishes a connection with the adult and seeks validation for her accomplishment.
A child’s self-esteem is partly built on the experience of achievement.
Over time, the element of competition also plays a role. For a toddler, the baby in the family becomes the benchmark for progress – “I’m older; I can do more.” A fifth-grader, similarly, perceives their advantage in knowledge and skills over a third-grader. Particularly for boys, this sense of progression often becomes a motivator. Who can tell the funniest jokes? Who can run the fastest?
This dynamic persists well into adulthood, where the unofficial motto becomes “higher, faster, stronger.” When our self-esteem is closely tied to personal achievement, however, we eventually encounter the trap of having to prove ourselves continuously. Aging reminds us that we won’t always be able to keep up with others, and this realization can evoke anxiety about the future. This anxiety was evident in my client’s story.
What a Client’s Way of Speaking Reveals
The way, topics, and amount a client speaks during coaching offer valuable insights into their personality. Sometimes, I bring this observation into the session.
“I’ve noticed that you communicate rather sparingly,” I said.
“What do you mean by that?” Andrew asked.
“Well, you mostly speak when I ask you a question – and even then, your answers are quite brief. It feels almost like an interview, where you’re trying to reveal as little as possible.”
“Yeah, but what should I talk about?” he responded, looking slightly puzzled.
“Well, anything that comes to mind – memories, thoughts, questions. That kind of thing.”
“And you’re interested in that?” he asked incredulously.
“Of course! It seems that surprises you. Did people in your family not talk about personal things – what was on their minds, their wishes, or fears?”
“I don’t recall my parents ever having personal conversations with each other,” Andrew replied. “My mother spent a lot of time on the phone with her mother, and my father only had his hunting buddies, with whom he regularly went out.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to talk much while hunting,” I joked lightly.
“Did you struggle with this lack of communication? Surely, in your friends’ families, you saw something different?”
“How can you miss something you’ve never known? But, yes, I noticed other families talked more, and everyone seemed involved. I decided to focus on being the best at everything, hoping that might finally get my parents’ attention and recognition.”
“And did it work?”
“Not at all. I became class president and was chosen to give the speech at our graduation ceremony. I prepared for weeks, working to make it as perfect and engaging as possible. The speech went over brilliantly, but my parents didn’t even show up. The next morning, when they casually asked how it had gone, I was so angry and hurt that I just stormed into my room and slammed the door.”
“With so many disappointments, it must have felt safer to stop speaking and stop wanting altogether,” I suggested gently.
How to Recognize All-or-Nothing Thinking
People with an all-or-nothing mindset often view the world in extremes, believing that something is either entirely good or entirely bad, with no middle ground. This cognitive distortion prevents them from perceiving life as it often is: complex, multifaceted, nuanced, and full of contradictions and gray areas.
This thinking style reveals itself in their language, marked by frequent use of words like never, always, every time, absolutely, perfect, catastrophic, ruined, only, everything, nothing, everyone, no one, all, and none. These absolutist expressions are also characteristic of individuals struggling with suicidal thoughts. A British study published in Clinical Psychological Science analyzed the language of over 6,000 online forum members and identified such speech patterns as a specific indicator that warrants attention and care.
Black-and-white thinkers often have little interest in alternatives or lack the capacity to compromise
This style of thinking is inherently dangerous because it polarizes, overvalues or undervalues, and excludes nuance or alternative perspectives. When criticism is automatically perceived as malicious or deeply hurtful, the ability to use feedback as a catalyst for personal growth becomes severely limited.
All-or-nothing thinking is frequently observed in individuals dealing with narcissistic vulnerabilities, addiction, depression, or anxiety. For them, the world is divided into binary categories: good versus bad, friend versus enemy, winner versus loser, success versus failure. While this thinking simplifies reality and provides a sense of clarity, it sacrifices the richness of multiple perspectives.
This cognitive pattern also manifests on political, societal, and cultural levels, where it fosters division, alienation, and extremism. For instance, the unemployed may be categorized as either “parasites” or “willing workers.” During the COVID-19 pandemic, industries were starkly divided into “essential” and “non-essential.” Extremist groups, whether on the far-right or far-left, often capitalize on this dichotomous mindset to promote their agendas, using all-or-nothing thinking as a tool for polarization and radicalization.
Why Do We Fall Into All-or-Nothing Thinking?
Boundaries are essential – they create order. To objectively assess performance, we rely on grades or thresholds, such as “pass” versus “fail” or “full bus” versus “three seats available.” While boundaries serve their purpose, they also divide. These dividing lines can feel unjust when we find ourselves on the “wrong” side of them.
Populists excel at exploiting this need for simplicity by reducing complex issues to extremes. They often use black-and-white thinking to craft messages that are easy to understand and emotionally impactful. The simpler the message, the faster it processes in the brain, requiring minimal effort to grasp:
- “Make America Great Again” – a popular U.S. campaign slogan.
- “Take Back Control” – the rallying cry of Brexit supporters.
- “The Only Solution” – a campaign promise by Argentina’s Javier Milei.
- “Make Love, Not War” – an anti-war slogan during the Vietnam era.
These slogans are effective because they simplify complex realities, denying nuance and depth. Black-and-white messages polarize by fueling strong emotions and creating clear distinctions between “us” and “them.” You may have noticed your own emotional reaction to some of the slogans above.
Black-and-white thinking is the opposite of both-and thinking
Only with the latter can we engage in dialogue, build mutual understanding, and develop other – potentially more helpful – perspectives in a complex world.
Common Examples of Black-and-White Thinking:
- All men are the same
- If I’m not number one, I’m a failure
- Everyone I love leaves me
- This always happens to me
- I can never do anything right
Such extreme thinking often triggers negative emotions, creating a feedback loop where feelings reinforce distorted thoughts. Cognitive therapists call this cycle emotional reasoning.
Origins of Black-and-White Thinking
This thinking style often develops in childhood, sometimes as a response to trauma, bullying, or growing up with a narcissistic parent. It serves as a coping mechanism to protect against future harm. By simplifying the world into absolutes, individuals shield themselves from disappointment or ambiguity.
Yet life rarely exists at the extremes. The middle ground – where diversity, options, and choices reside – overwhelms many people. They seek simplicity: good versus evil, right versus wrong, success versus failure. Black-and-white thinking is the mind’s attempt to simplify a complex world.
I wanted to delve deeper into Andrew’s family life to understand the origins of his thinking patterns.
“In my family, achievement was non-negotiable,” he explained. “My father was a criminal court judge, and even at home, he created an atmosphere where you always felt slightly guilty. If you were just sitting around, he’d snap, ‘Why are you being lazy? Don’t you have anything to do?’ At lunch, he’d test us with mental math problems. Sundays were spent in museums or theater matinees – education was everything.”
“Wow, that sounds like boot camp for wayward children!” I remarked.
“And your mother – did she go along with all this?” I asked.
“My father didn’t really respect her. If I asked her about schoolwork, he’d cut in, ‘Your mother doesn’t know about that – she only finished secondary school.’ She was a stunning beauty, raised me and my brother, and managed the household. That was the role he assigned her, and she seemed content with it.”
“How is she now?”
“After my father passed away, she flourished. She remarried and is doing well.”
What Does Andrew Want?
I shifted gears to clarify his purpose for the session.
“So, what exactly do you want to achieve here?” I asked.
“I’m not entirely sure,” he admitted. “A former colleague suggested I contact you, so here I am.”
“Fair enough – what do you want now that you’re here?”
“What do you want? What do you want?” Andrew echoed, clearly irritated.
“Maybe a professional assessment from you.”
“An assessment of what?”
“Whether I’m doing everything right.”
Andrew seemed to struggle with expressing a desire for change, pretending that everything in his life was fine. But this avoidance was precisely the issue – he couldn’t articulate his dissatisfaction, resorting instead to vague answers and deflection.
The ability to identify a goal or desire for change is crucial in the coaching process.
It gives both coach and client a direction and ensures they stay on course. Without a clear destination, the client may flounder, unsure of what they want. This was precisely Andrew’s dilemma: he felt uneasy but couldn’t pinpoint its source or identify what he wanted to change.
Over the years, Andrew had trained himself to “want nothing” to avoid disappointment. All-or-nothing thinking played a significant role here. If he couldn’t have “everything,” he settled for “nothing,” shielding himself from the pain of unmet expectations by projecting an air of invulnerability.
Addressing the Core Conflict
To accelerate the process, I decided to confront the internal conflict I suspected was driving Andrew’s ambivalence.
“My assessment? You’re doing everything right in life – following your ‘all-or-nothing’ principle. But it doesn’t seem to make you happy,” I began.
“Being happy isn’t enough. Happiness is a consolation prize. I want more.”
“More of what?”
“More of everything – at work and in my personal life.”
Once again, we found ourselves in the no-man’s-land of all-or-nothing thinking.
“I think I understand what you want now,” I ventured.
“Let’s hear it!” he challenged.
“You want my help, but you don’t want to ask for it.”
Why I Use Small Experiments in Coaching
Uncovering a client’s internal conflicts – those that block them from achieving their goals – is no easy task. Since such conflicts are often unconscious, we can’t simply ask about them. While I might form hypotheses, the client themselves is unlikely to recognize or connect with these insights if they remain theoretical. So, how can we address this?
The Role of Experiments in Coaching
The Hakomi method offers a way to bring unconscious conflicts into the client’s awareness through lived experience. By conducting mindfulness-based experiments, I can help the client to experience their inner conflict. For this, I need an experiment in which the client gains a deeper understanding of their “self-organization” and the context in which the behavior that troubles them – and that they often wish to eliminate – plays an important role.
“Self-organization” means having a clear understanding of why I do something and how I do it. These experiments are not about rational analysis (e.g., “I think I do this because…”); instead, they are about directly experiencing these processes in the moment. In my view, mindfulness experiments are the best tool for observing one’s self-organization in real time.
I decided to try this approach with Andrew. I asked him to:
- Sit comfortably (this serves to build anticipation for what follows),
- Close his eyes (without mindfulness, it’s difficult to access unconscious information),
- Say the following sentence aloud (this is the trigger meant to activate the presumed conflict),
- And to carefully observe the internal reactions that arise afterward (body sensations, emotions, thoughts).
“I’d like you to say the sentence:
‘I need you.’”
When choosing sentences, I focus on those likely to provoke internal resistance – phrases associated with painful past experiences. These often activate the amygdala, the brain’s fear center, causing discomfort or even alarm. For Andrew, this experiment worked as expected.
His face turned red, and he clutched his chest as he blurted out,
“I will never say that sentence again. I don’t need anyone. Never again!”
After a pause, I gently said, “It sounds like you made an important decision at some point.”
Andrew took several deep breaths before sharing,
“I know exactly when I decided that. My father wanted me to study law, naturally, since he was a judge. But after three semesters, I realized it wasn’t for me. I wanted to study computer science, so I enrolled at NUS in Singapore – it was already the best university in the region back then. But Singapore was expensive, and the program was demanding. After a few months, I realized I couldn’t do it alone and told my father I needed his financial support.”
Andrew paused, visibly holding back emotion. He continued,
“His face went cold. He said in a threatening tone, ‘If you go against me and don’t study law, then you’re on your own. I won’t give you a penny.’
“At that moment, I thought, I will never need anyone again. And that decision has served me very well throughout my life!”
The Psychological Cost of Survival Strategies
It is often in particularly painful moments in life that we, in our emotional distress, choose a psychological survival strategy. This strategy can then become a Life Topic in our lives because it works in that situation – because it feels like the only possible way to act.
I gently challenged Andrew’s claim. “It’s not entirely true that you don’t need anything in life,” I said.
“How do you figure that?” he replied, slightly offended, “I don’t need my wife – that’s why I left her. I’ve never taken out a loan because I refuse to depend on a bank.“
„And you avoided having children because you feared being vulnerable to their well-being, which is never guaranteed. And now, you don’t need a job because you’re financially independent.”
“That’s all true. So why is it wrong to say I don’t need anything?”
“Well,” I said, “you need the feeling of independence more than anything else. You don’t deviate from that – ever. It’s either total dependency, like with your father, or complete freedom. Black or white. All or nothing.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Andrew asked.
“Your strict all-or-nothing approach helps you avoid the complexity of life. But in reality, very few things are entirely right or wrong. For example, when you’re at the grocery store, staring at the yogurt aisle, do you instantly know which one to choose?”
“I grab the cheapest one from the bottom shelf,” he said, shrugging.
“Exactly,” I responded. “You act on a principle to avoid dealing with the overwhelming variety. Your wife cheats on you once – boom, you immediately end the relationship.”
“I have principles – and she knew where I stood on that.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But life, fortunately, isn’t as black-and-white as your thinking. The less we want to feel, the more we rely on rigid rules.”
“I’ll have to think about that,” Andrew said as we ended the session.
Six Months Later: A Letter from Andrew
Half a year after our session, I received an email from Andrew.
He wrote that the session had been a painful but eye-opening experience. It had prompted him to comb through his life for situations where he had made radical decisions based on his “all-or-nothing” principle. For example, during a vacation in Italy, he had been pickpocketed and, as a result, had vowed never to return – despite his love for the country. At work, colleagues had often remarked on his “elephant memory” and how he never forgot a slight. He also admitted that he had been ignoring at least three of his neighbors because he assumed they didn’t like him.
Andrew confessed that he had often reflected on the sentence “I need you” and pondered who he could direct it to. The only person who came to mind was his ex-wife. He took this as a sign that she still meant something to him and decided to call her one evening. To his surprise, she didn’t hang up. Instead, they arranged to meet. What began as one meeting had now turned into three evenings together. While he wasn’t yet sure what it all meant for him, he felt that something important had been set in motion during our session. He also mentioned that my final comment – that strict rules often serve as a substitute for feelings—continued to resonate with him.
I replied, expressing my happiness that he had dared to reach out to his ex-wife. I also suggested that he might adopt a new rule for himself: to check in several times a day and simply ask what he was feeling in that moment.
All coaching stories are real but have been altered to ensure confidentiality
and prevent any identification of my clients.
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