I caught myself Splitting, now what?

"Splitting" is a fairly common psychological defense where a person sees a person or thing as all good or all bad. I must admit I never liked the sound of it, because it has obvious drawbacks.

I realized recently that I use it way more than I thought. After some thinking and reading, I realize I very rarely use it on other people or the outside world. I seem to use it very frequently towards ME, though. For example, if I fail in some regard or notice some habit or thought pattern of mine I am not happy with, I have a strong tendency to see it as a "fatal flaw that defines who I am". I DO have enormous difficulty forgiving myself for mistakes and setbacks, and separating the concept of "this is PART of who I am, and it IS fixable" from "This DEFINES who I am, I am now unacceptable and bad, and I am too <insert vicious put-down here> to ever fix it. Now I must punish Self-which-is-bad, because I hate it and cannot alter it."

I really do think this way automatically all the time!!! Now I have seen it, I am horrified. It's like the "harsh and critical Superego" concept. How do I stop it?

Hi Onwards,

First of all, it's actually a good start when you notice your own negative self talk or inner critic. Unfortunately, society overall tends to encourage that in that more focus is placed on whatever someone does wrong, rather than the things a person does right. This can actually end up creating a problem with stress/anxiety/depression in that this encourages individuals to mentally navigate in self shaming rather than embracing the positives of whatever one achieves that contributes to a positive gain.

Even in training and working with animals, an animal will be much more receptive to positive tones rather than growling negative tones. With that in mind it's important to think about how you treat yourself, do you growl at yourself, or, do you practice patience and allowing self to focus on the positives.

I raised a child with dyslexia which meant I had to learn "how" she learns best and that her learning style is different than what the current education system expected. I helped her with her homework and when she took tests I made it a point to show excitement about whatever she got correct rather than encourage her to focus on whatever she could not seem to get right for whatever reason her brain just did not grasp those questions/problems. When one focuses on that more a child can begin to slowly figure out "how" they learn better and that child begins a productive path of figuring out how they navigate best.

I taught very young children how to learn to ride ponies, these children were around age 5. I wanted to specialize with that age group because I knew that was a really good age to help a child learn how they learn and start on the path of developing healthy self esteem. My entire aim with each child was not to focus on what they did wrong or struggled with, but to focus on whatever they were doing that was right and I helped them slowly learn how to see their own improvements so that they walked away from me feeling good about themselves.

It's very important children understand that just because something feels difficult at first, that with practice and time it actually does get easier. If one is a teacher that helps a child discover how they learn and how to feel good about themselves, that child will always remember something "good/positive" happened when they were with that teacher. I got to see that years later when I would run into students I had that remembered how they learned to feel positive about themselves, so that does last and is more important than how well they rode and if whatever they did was perfect or not.

So when you begin recognizing your self talk as being on the critical side, that is the first step towards slowly learning to change it.

I don't call it splitting, but "black and white thinking" do you like that term better?

Hello Onward2wards... Please check out my reply in this thread and see if what I conveyed feels like it could be applied to your particular circumstances:
https://forums.psychcentral.com/copi...778-shame.html

Open Eyes...thank you for your response. It was particularly helpful in relation to how I'm feeling today.

Onwards: I hope you will be more gentle and compassionate with yourself. I call splitting black and white thinking but I apply it to several areas of and to experiences in my life. It is not helpful and I am working on it. You got some excellent advice here with Open Eyes and wolfgaze that I will be using myself. I hope you are successful in reducing this type of thinking. Best wishes....