(Pt.1 of 3)
Stages & Gradations Of Acute Behavior
Healing ‘All-Or-Nothing’ (AON) thinking
Please been cautioned: The only way to heal what’s broken is examine the wound. This article may be triggering for some. Discretion is advised.
Below is the wound of an all-or-nothing (AON) thinker, in all its gory glory. You’ll find this is the foundational wound for many other behavioral types as well.
Please let me know if any of this resonates with you.
With love,
A former AON thinker – turned
Graduate in Addictions Work & Social Sciences, Applied Nutrition, certified in SMART Recovery, Suicide Prevention, Nonviolent Communication, Trauma-Informed Yoga. Completed one-year training with Dr. Gabor Mate called Compassionate Inquiry. Diagnosed ADHD, living with anxiety/depression (without pharmaceuticals), lived experience in AON thinking & substance abuse. Please pull up a chair.
All-Or-Nothing (AON)
aka: Victims of Victims
There are different gradations of AON thinking that can range from extreme to mild. The more you believe you’re a AON person, the more mired you will be in self-condemnation and victimhood.
This might ruffle feathers a bit, because you may think: “Victim? I’m a strong, independent, indestructible, spontaneous, resourceful person!”
Yeah, I hear you. I used to think I was’t one either.
Try this on for size:
“No one understands me. No one can possibly know what I’m going though.” (isolation, conceit, sense of superiority).
Or: “I’m a piece of shit. What I’ve done is unforgivable.” And guilty people deserve punishment, right? (justification for self-condemnation).
Sound familiar? Can you see a pattern emerging here?
AON thinkers don’t want to be well, they want to be right. Please read that again.
They want to believe they’re the smartest ones in the room, the life of the party, that they can do no wrong, yet somehow they always seem to be the victim of circumstance.
They think they’re special, different: High achievers, ambitious, smart, A-types, successful.
Yet when their time comes to shine, they may succeed for a brief period before finding themselves falling short, spiraling out of control, almost always because of something that seems to have happened ‘outside their influence.’
If they have the courage to admit they have a problem, it usually happens after a sting of dire consequences: getting fired, arrested, divorced, sick, kids taken away, hospitalized, etc.
No matter how badly AON thinkers lie about their spirals, after a while their behavior gives them away. They can no longer get away with things they used to be able to hide with ease. No one buys their lies anymore, people can see right through them.
This leaves the AON feeling exposed, threatened, uncertain and terrified of being outed to the world.
They’re forced to face their lives head-on which they generally find exceedingly difficult to do.
The AON thinker is usually very uncomfortable with facing things because they’ve never really had to; they don’t want to see reality for what it truly is.
They want to continue to believe themselves pictures of perfection from the outside, worthy of admiration, inspiration even. Yet they live in the paradox of concurrently feeling like pieces of shit.
The only way to leave behind AON thinking is to first understand, deeply and fundamentally, that AON thinking is – in actual fact – really not cool, despite what they think.
The second thing that can then occur is to see they’re the only ones who are able change their behavior. They must first appreciate they are 100% responsible for their actions while actively engaging in their own healing.
Yet – at first – they’ll find it difficult not to blame the world that their lives haven’t worked out they way they imagined. As healing occurs, they’ll gnash their teeth in denial.
They may try things like meditation, medication or movement, not because they want to but because they think that’s all they’ll have to do for change to happen.
Initially, they’ll do it with the AON spirit: Either superficially (like two days then quit) or excessively (like exercising three times a day), neither of which is sustainable, despite it being a nod in the right direction.
They’ll continue to fall back to their old habits, wondering why what they’re doing isn’t working, why they’re still stuck in first gear.
They’ll keep falling back into victim mode because they’re reacting to the results, rather than responding to the cause of the behavior and are surprised as to why they’re making little to any headway.
This is where many either give up, or feel stuck in what seems to be an endless loop of stopping then starting the cycle over and over again.
Eventually, they realize they’ll have to reach out to others, to let people in, to seek help; this will be a mix of revulsion, defensiveness, stubbornness and trepidation. They’ll think asking for help is for the weak; AON thinkers believe they’re impenetrable fortresses.
But there comes a point in every AONs life (barring death, which sadly happens more often than not in extreme cases, i.e. Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, etc.) when they’re forced to admit the problem is bigger than they are and they must reach out for help.
Once this happens, the AON personality scrutinizes the people they seek out, look for faults in their character, for flaws in their methods, to have excuses/reasons to not continue seeing them.
They’ll say, “See? I told you! This guy is more fucked up than me, he’s useless! Why would I listen to him? How can he possibly help me?” which somehow justifies (at least in their minds) going back to old familiar patterns they hate themselves so much for relying on.
They won’t stay open to the assistance professionals offer. They’ll refuse to try anything that doesn’t line up with their beliefs, or what they feel is within their control. They won’t want to make an effort without feeling like it’s punishment, or that they ‘have to.’
Alternatively, they’ll want someone to tell them exactly what to do, how to ‘solve their problem.’ They’ll expect to be better within three to five business days. Clinical, matter-of-fact, ruthless.
They’ll be willing to take any ‘magic pill,’ SSRI, anti-psychotic, barbiturate; be put into an induced coma, or seek out a ‘one-stop-shop’ to fix the problem, with little-to-no effort required on their part. As if having something done unto them externally will wipe out years of self-loathing and destructive behavioral patterns.
They’ll think the professional they’re paying should be perfect, knowing full well that all of us have faults, no matter how competent or educated a person is. They’ll look for cracks they can squeeze their excuses through to fall back into the wishing-well of self-annihilation.
This is not the fault of the AON thinker; it’s been programmed into them. Their behavior is textbook, as predictable as clockwork, even though AON thinkers believe their actions are spontaneous and unpredictable (spoiler alert: they’re not).