Finding the Middle Way in Black & White Thinking with Marbling

Black and white thinking is a trauma response that is important to break down for our overall happiness and wellbeing. When we are not feeling safe, it’s easy to slide into rigid thought patterns such as everything is either good or bad, friend or enemy, kind or mean, awesome or awful etc. The reality is things are rarely ever all one or the other, and as we break down binary ways of thinking we allow more space for connection and collaboration to move forward in our lives.

According to the research from Dr. Stephen Porges, in our brain stem, we have three parts which can roughly be broken down into:

1. A newer ventral vagal system that allows us to read facial cues, listen, and engage.

2. The sympathetic nervous system, which allows for aggressive defense and mobilization when it senses danger.

3. The older dorsal vagal complex that allows for passive defense or a freeze response when under a life threat.

This wandering vagus nerve connects to most major organs and 80% of it’s fibers are sensory, so it connects our body up to our brain and lets our brain know what’s going on. But trying to approach things cognitively without the body can trip us up, because this part of the nervous system can’t sense the difference between a tiger running into the room, and failing out of school. We might equally freeze in those two responses if we are sensing it as a life threat, even though cognitively we know we won’t die from failing a test. The biological reaction happens before we make the personal narrative, and often the way we make sense of the world is informed by these subtle biological sensations.

In Buddhism we talk about the idea of the Middle Way as a path towards liberation, and the wisdom to avoid extremes. As we build a toolkit to support the nervous system and to tap into our neural circuits, we can start to feel safer and see things more as a continuum of emotions and circumstances, in a sense to see more grey zone. Think about a Venn diagram, when two circles come together, there can be overlap. However, when two circles are separated, there are two separate rings, and no ability to connect or engage.

Brain marbling is a term I like to use for exploring opposite emotions in the body and can be helpful for getting us back into sensing safety. It starts with noticing warmth vs. coolness, then seated vs. not, tense vs. spacious and continues onwards towards noticing our whole body can hold space for multiple feelings and sensations at once.

Here are a few journaling prompts and inner statements that may be helpful to explore as well:

• Can my partner, friend, parent or child both love me and be insensitive at times?

• Can one aspect of my life be hard now and other parts easier or more enjoyable?

• Can I honor my own worth and intellect and still make a poor decision?

• Can I love my children and still be irritated and annoyed by them?

• Can I be both scared and courageous?

• Can I trust myself and allow room for mistakes?

For more information, please check out my blog post and video on breaking down the PolyVagal Theory.

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2. Guy, K. and Guy, N. (2003) The fast cure for phobia and trauma: evidence that it works. Human Givens, 9, 4, 31-35

3. Wessley, S., Rose, S. and Bisson, J.A. (1999). A systematic review of brief psychological interventions ("debriefing") for the treatment of immediate trauma-related symptoms and the prevention of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

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5. Porges, S & Buczynski. Rethinking Trauma 2014 Webinar Series: QuickStart Guide. NICABM.

6. ‘All or Nothing,’ or ‘Black and White’ Thinking and Depression. In clinical-depression.co.uk

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8. Shapiro, J. Finding Goldilocks: A Solution for Black and White Thinking: the sweet spot between opposite extremes is the zone of effective living. In Psychology Today. 2020.