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I'm frustrated a bit lately... and can't seem to break through what appears to be black and white thinking....

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sky, how do you know it is black and white thinking that is the problem here? What you describes sounds like it could very well be something else. Not every difficulty can be explained by black and white thinking, IMO.

I often have a problem with too much thinking "in the gray," which is counter to what many on psychcentral describe as being problematic for them. It's interesting to me. I see the black and white vs. gray as a means of categorizing. With gray thinking, you divide things into many categories (6 shades or gray, 100 shades of gray, or whatever suits your purpose). With black and white, you break things up into only 2 categories. That can actually be useful sometimes and not a negative thing. Like when you are going through a huge pile of junk in your basement and need to categorize things in either the "keep" pile (white) or the "get rid of" pile (black). In this instance, you can cause problems for yourself by having too many piles (too much gray thinking). You would end up having piles for "maybe" and "keep for a time but probably get rid of eventually" and "can't decide" and "wait to ask kids" etc. You never get through your task and end up paralyzed. So I think the trick is knowing when to use black and white thinking and when to use gray (and how many shades of gray to allow at that).