Editing Cognitive distortion (section)

===All-or-nothing thinking===
{{Main|Splitting (psychology)}}
The "all-or-nothing thinking distortion" is also referred to as "splitting",<ref name="mentalhelp.net">{{cite web |title=Cognitive Distortions Affecting Stress |url=https://www.mentalhelp.net/cognitive-disorders/stress/ |website=MentalHelp.net |date=12 March 2019 |access-date=8 April 2020}}</ref> "black-and-white thinking",<ref name="grohol" /> and "polarized thinking."<ref name="Grohol">{{cite web |last1=Grohol |first1=John M. |title=15 Common Cognitive Distortions |url=https://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/ |website=PsychCentral |date=17 May 2016 |access-date=8 April 2020}}</ref> Someone with the all-or-nothing thinking distortion looks at life in black and white categories.<ref name="burns" /> Either they are a success or a failure; either they are good or bad; there is no in-between. According to one article, "Because there is always someone who is willing to criticize, this tends to collapse into a tendency for polarized people to view themselves as a total failure. Polarized thinkers have difficulty with the notion of being 'good enough' or a partial success."<ref name="mentalhelp.net"/>
* Example (from ''The Feeling Good Handbook''): A woman eats a spoonful of ice cream. She thinks she is a complete failure for breaking her diet. She becomes so depressed that she ends up eating the whole quart of ice cream.<ref name="burns" />
This example captures the polarized nature of this distortion—the person believes they are totally inadequate if they fall short of perfection. 
In order to combat this distortion, Burns suggests thinking of the world in terms of shades of gray.<ref name="burns" /> Rather than viewing herself as a complete failure for eating a spoonful of ice cream, the woman in the example could still recognize her overall effort to diet as at least a partial success.

This distortion is commonly found in [[Perfectionism (psychology)|perfectionists]].<ref name="burns2" />