Both Can Be True: Moving Beyond Black-and-White Thinking
As humans, we naturally look for certainty. Our brains like clear answers, simple categories, and either/or thinking. It feels safer to believe that something is either good or bad, success or failure, strong or weak.
But true emotional growth often asks us to hold something much more complex.
It asks us to believe that both can be true.
You can love someone and recognize that the relationship isn't healthy.
You can feel grateful for your life and struggle with sadness.
You can make the right decision and still grieve what you left behind.
You can be healing and still have difficult days.
This is the opposite of dichotomous thinking, also known as all-or-nothing thinking—a common cognitive pattern where experiences are viewed in extremes. When we're stuck in this mindset, we often believe:
- If I'm not perfect, I've failed.
- If someone disappointed me, they're a bad person.
- If I took two steps backwards, I must not be making progress.
- If I needed help, I'm weak.
The problem with black-and-white thinking is that life rarely exists in absolutes. Most experiences live in the gray space.
When we learn to replace either/or with both/and, something begins to shift. We create room for nuance. We become less reactive and more compassionate—with ourselves and with others.
Consider these examples:
Instead of: "I should be over this by now."
Try: "I'm healing, and this still hurts sometimes."
Instead of: "If I set boundaries, I feel guilty."
Try: "I can care deeply about others and care for myself."
Instead of: "I'm either confident or insecure."
Try: "I have moments of confidence, and I still experience self-doubt."
Instead of: My parent(s) rarely met my needs
Try: “My parents did the best they could given their limitations. There were some good moments and some not so good moments.”
Notice how the second statements don't deny reality—they expand it.
Holding two truths at once doesn't mean you're confused or indecisive. It means you're allowing space for the complexity of being human. This perspective can soften shame, reduce perfectionism, create a deeper understanding and strengthen emotional resilience. It reminds us that growth isn't linear, relationships aren't one-dimensional, and most importantly: our emotions don't have to compete with one another.
The next time you catch yourself feeling, speaking or thinking in absolutes, pause and ask yourself:
"What else can be true here?"
You will often find that the answer isn't one truth replacing another.
It's that both have been there all along.
What often gets overlooked is that this shift isn't simply about "thinking differently." When our nervous system has been shaped by trauma, chronic stress, or overwhelming life experiences, it may not feel safe to hold complexity, as the nervous system has been in a state of threat detection. So, in those moments, our brains are wired to simplify the world into extremes because extremes can feel more predictable and protective.
This is where Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be so transformative. EMDR doesn't just help reduce the emotional intensity of distressing memories—it also helps the brain integrate experiences that once felt fragmented or contradictory. As memories become less emotionally charged, our nervous system often develops a greater capacity to tolerate discomfort without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down.
This capacity is known as the window of tolerance—the zone in which we can stay emotionally present, think clearly, and remain connected to ourselves and others. When we're outside that window, we may become overwhelmed with anxiety, panic, anger, or emotional flooding (hyper-arousal), or we may disconnect through numbness, dissociation, avoidance, or shutdown (hypo-arousal). In either state, nuanced thinking becomes fairly impossible.
Clinically speaking, the window of tolerance reflects a neurobiological capacity for integration. In layman’s terms: the ability to maintain functional communication between all areas of the brain (specifically the one that processes fear, panic and anxiety and the area that is responsible for rational thinking) while processing an experience. For the majority of us, when we are in a state of anxiety, panic or trauma, the rational brain shuts down because the fear center (the Amygdala) goes into overdrive and overwhelms the rational brain and thus, the two parts of the brain stop communicating. The experience essentially then gets stuck in the primal, fear part of the brain. This plays out in a few ways: the hysterical/historical response, generalized anxiety or panic attacks, avoidance, hypervigilance, people please, and/or black and white thinking to name a few.
As the window of tolerance expands through healing, integration becomes more possible. This optimal zone is not about comfort per se, but rather about access. It is the range in which emotional material and information can be activated without overwhelming the whole system, allowing the experience to be understood, processed and then filed away. It also allows for integration- the nuances of understanding an experience in its entirety. Instead of feeling forced to choose one truth over another, we can begin to hold both without becoming emotionally dysregulated. By regulating the nervous system through EMDR, the process is actually much quicker because there is a reduction in overwhelm through the bilateral stimulation ( whether it’s eye movement, headphones or pulsers) while targeting past memories or current or future overwhelming situations. When this is done correctly, space is created, and as many of you have seen there is a cognitive shift that happens by the end of the session as if a light switch went on where we can truly believe things such as:
"I was hurt by someone, and they may have loved me in the ways they knew how."
"I did the best I could with the tools I had, and there are things I would do differently today."
"My childhood included moments of joy, and it also left wounds that deserve healing."
"I still have triggers, and I am making meaningful progress."
This is integration.
Healing isn't about erasing painful experiences or putting all of the painful experiences into neat files; It's about allowing our experiences to exist in a fuller, more coherent story. We stay trapped by extremes and more grounded in reality when we hold space for all truths.
Consider these examples:
Instead of: "I should be over this by now."
Try: "I'm healing, and this still hurts sometimes."
Instead of: "If I set boundaries, I'm selfish."
Try: "I can care deeply about others and care for myself."
Instead of: "I'm either confident or insecure."
Try: "I have moments of confidence, and I still experience self-doubt."
Notice how the second statements don't deny reality—they expand it and there is comfort in that.
Holding two truths at once doesn't mean you're confused or indecisive. It means you're allowing space for the complexity of being human.The next time you catch yourself using words like always, never, completely, or ruined, pause and ask yourself:
"What else can be true here?"
As your nervous system learns that complexity is safe, your answer may come more easily.