Have you ever felt two opposing feelings at once or had two contradicting thoughts about something? For example, experiencing something bittersweet like a graduation can feel this way. On the one hand, you feel happy and proud of your accomplishments. On the other hand, you feel sad that this era of your life is ending, and you’ll miss seeing friends every day. Or maybe when you think your dog is badly behaved for tearing something up, but you also can’t help but smile at the thought of how cute she is? Feeling and thinking two different things at once can be confusing, but it is also something to be embraced as a human experience. This is something I often encourage my clients to do during sessions, and it encompasses the world of dialectics.
Dialectical thinking is rooted in the philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and involves therapeutic thought patterns like considering multiple perspectives, reconciling opposing ideas, and embracing contradictions. Marsha Linehan widely popularized dialectical thinking when she created Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in the 1990’s to help people struggling with emotional turmoil. At the core of DBT, Linehan teaches the very therapeutic dialectic of finding a balance between acceptance and change, which she found to be an effective way to help those tormented with intense emotions. Having a therapist validate your emotions and learning to accept yourself however you are feeling leads to self-compassion and understanding. Following this up with encouraging change and appropriately holding yourself accountable rounds out the therapeutic process. Upholding both acceptance of what you’re going through and changing what you can control at the same time is empowering.
You can incorporate this balance of acceptance and change in your life by practicing thinking dialectically and watch the benefits unfold. One benefit includes letting go of black and white/all or nothing thinking. All or nothing thinking can get us into trouble when we think one mistake makes us a failure, one slip in trying to break a habit means we completely screwed up, or one negative thing our partner says means they don’t love us. Thinking dialectically can reality-check us by reminding us that two things can exist at once: We can make mistakes and still be successful, we can have one off day or moment and still maintain a habit, and someone can be unhappy with us for a moment but still love us. This way of thinking encourages us to be less rigid and more flexible with our thought patterns, which helps us disentangle from intense emotions.
Another benefit of dialectical thinking is seen in increasing self-compassion. When we get away from black and white thinking and start embracing the gray, we can lessen those harsh judgments we tend to have on ourselves. Thinking “I’m a failure” turns into “I’m allowed to make mistakes and still have value as a person,” saying “I’m a bad person” becomes “We all have desirable and undesirable parts of ourselves,” and feeling “I’ll be depressed forever” converts to “I can allow myself to feel glimmers of hope in the midst of this dark time.” Embracing dialectics gives us a break that we all deserve to give ourselves!
In addition to understanding ourselves more, thinking dialectically can also help us better understand others and our environment through perspective shifting. In dialectics, understanding the opposite of something is what brings full appreciation. This benefit of dialectical thinking can be felt when dealing with a difficult person or situation. For example, giving your best effort to understand how someone can arrive at an opposing viewpoint from yours can lessen contention in an argument even if you still maintain your viewpoint as the most sound. And remembering the good times you had with someone can make the pain of dealing with a loss more bearable. Again, two things can be true at once when thinking dialectically.
Dialectical thinking can ultimately help us feel more in control of our emotions, thoughts, behaviors, and environment by learning to embrace opposing forces and realizing that this is a very human concept. Good and bad, strong and weak, and abundance and scarcity can all coexist in the messiness that is life. Keep in mind, though, that as humans, our brains love placing things in categories, so thinking dialectically will definitely take practice. By practicing dialectical thinking, we can embrace living in the gray, increase self-compassion, understand our world more, and gain a sense of control. I would love for you to experience these benefits, so get to practicing thinking dialectically today if you’re up to it!
