Mindset Traps of the Empty Nest - Trap #2 - All or Nothing Thinking | Ep. 141

February 08, 2025

In this episode of the Small Jar Podcast, I’m diving into the second mindset trap on the road to the empty nest—all-or-nothing thinking. You know the feeling: if your teen misses a curfew, your brain leaps to worst-case scenarios, or if you’re not the 'perfect mom,' you fear you’re failing altogether. But here’s what you might not believe—you’re not falling into this trap because you’re anxious or overreacting. In fact, your brain thinks it’s protecting you. I’ll show you why this instinct to think in extremes is actually a survival mechanism, how it sneaks into your parenting without you noticing, and—most surprisingly—how letting go of this mindset can make you feel more in control, not less. If you’ve ever felt trapped in black-and-white thinking, this episode will open your eyes to the freedom waiting in the gray.

Episode Transcript

MINDSET TRAPS OF THE EMPTY NEST - TRAP #2 - ALL OR NOTHING THINKING | Ep. 141

Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 141.

Hello, friends, and welcome back to my series on the mindset traps of the road to the empty nest. Raising and launching teens is not easy. I was talking to a friend the other day, and she said something I've thought so many times before, that raising little kids is physically challenging, but raising teens is emotionally challenging.

And actually, when you consider that our emotions come from the way that we think about our lives, it's interesting to consider that the way we think about raising teens is actually what makes this journey harder as our kids get older. And look, it makes sense. The risks are greater.

There's so much that's no longer in our control, so much that's uncertain. I've talked about our instinct to want to avoid danger, and this time of life feels fraught with dangers. So this series is on mindset traps.

Now, let me ask, what do you think of when you hear this phrase, mindset traps? I ask because I saw a post the other day that referenced toxic habits that people need to drop, and the post proceeded to identify a few different mindset traps. Here's my problem with this. Labeling mindset traps as bad or worse toxic just reinforces this idea that mindset traps are a sign that there's something wrong with us, something that needs to be fixed, or even a sign that there's a flaw in who we are as people, a downfall of our particular personality.

I want to remind you that mindset traps have nothing to do with there being something wrong with you. If you take nothing away from this series, I hope you will at least hear this. If any of these mindset traps mirror some aspect of your experience or how you show up under stress, just know that this is a sign that you, like me, and like the rest of us, are human.

And these mindset traps are simply a function of the way our minds work. Although these traps can sometimes become habitual, and I'll talk much more about this, these habits themselves aren't toxic. They're not bad.

And actually, these habits are solutions. The way we react to these mindset traps is simply a reflection of our instinct to stay safe and comfortable, to make things easier. And the sooner you can find compassion with these traps, and the way that we respond to them, the more quickly you can break free of them.

And what I mean by breaking free is no different than the way you would free yourself of any habit that's no longer working for you. I loved drinking coffee when I was younger. I would actually drink five or six cups a day, until I got older and realized this much caffeine was making me feel really stressed out and jittery.

So I cut back on this habit. The habit wasn't wrong. It wasn't a sign there was something wrong with me.

It was simply something I used to like to do. It used to solve a problem for me, both by creating pleasure for me because I loved coffee, and it also gave me a bit more energy throughout the day. But as I got older, this habit had more downsides than upsides.

So I decided to break free from it. I wonder, if you have a habit of falling into a mindset trap, like all or nothing thinking, which I'm going to talk about today, I wonder if you can first see in your own life how it's actually a solution for you in some way. Maybe all or nothing thinking is solving a problem for your mind.

So if you think about it that way, you can understand and analyze and decide if it's something you might want to rethink and perhaps approach in a different way. Mindset traps are not a flaw in who you are, but they're also not just happening to you. These traps are automatic patterns of thinking that may be triggered by deeply ingrained beliefs or assumptions.

You can think of it like this. These traps operate on the subconscious level of our minds. And until you learn how to observe this unconscious dialogue in your mind, you often don't even consciously realize that you're thinking in a way that relates to a mindset trap.

Part of this is because at first glance, our brain feels like these traps are logical or justified. In a previous episode, I covered the mindset trap of emotional reasoning, what I called the emotional roller coaster. So when you think something like, I feel anxious, so something must be wrong, it feels kind of valid.

The problem is, assuming that your feelings reflect reality without really digging into what's actually creating the emotion, specifically what thoughts are creating that emotion, all of this just creates a lot of unnecessary anxiety. So mindset traps are unconscious. They seem innocuous at first, but they're also self-reinforcing because our thoughts create our emotional experience, and then we react to our emotions.

And so we tend to learn a habitual pattern of behavior in response to certain triggers. And as I mentioned, this time of life with our teens and as we approach the empty nest is fraught with a lot of triggers. There is a lot for our brains to work through, a lot of potential danger and risk.

And so of course our brains are going to default to trying to protect us and protect our kids, because I honestly feel like as a mom, our kids are just an extension of ourselves. It's like our own heart is roaming around the world, untethered, just waiting to get hurt. And we're left waiting at home, hoping our hearts will be okay, that they'll stay safe and do the right thing.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with us that we fall into mindset traps. I can't say this enough. But I'm so passionate about sharing this work with you because I've experienced the power of stepping out of these traps, understanding how we all actually have the choice to step out of these traps, and how this can empower us to create so much more peace and confidence in our lives, in ourselves.

I've experienced this myself. I've helped so many women achieve this as well, and it's nothing short of life-changing, when you really understand that these ways of thinking are not who you are, but simply a habit you can change. This is everything.

And it changes your experience of raising kids, it changes your experience of approaching your own life as a woman who's a mom, but also a person with her own needs and dreams and goals. So with all of that as a backdrop, let's dive into all-or-nothing thinking. This mindset trap shows up in so many different ways in our lives as moms.

All-or-nothing thinking is essentially when you look at things in extremes, that there are only two options, one good and one bad, one perfect, or what we think of as acceptable, and the other a failure, success or disaster, safety or danger. Basically, that your mind sees only these two extreme options without recognizing the middle ground or really the millions of other possibilities in between these extremes. In the past, I've talked about all-or-nothing thinking in relation to catastrophizing, but this type of thinking comes in a lot of different forms, and many of them are really subtle.

Catastrophizing is, of course, one form, when you think either everything's going to be okay or it's going to be absolutely terrible, the worst-case scenario. An easy example of this is in the curfews we give our kids. So we tell them to be home at midnight, and in our minds, if they get home at midnight, everything's okay.

But if they're a few minutes late, our brains immediately go to the absolute worst-case scenario. Perfectionism is another form of all-or-nothing thinking. I've done this to myself with so many expectations around parenting.

For some reason, I've always felt guilty about not cooking more regularly for our boys. But it's something, and I know I've said this before, but I really don't love to cook. It's been a really long time since I haven't worked during the day, and so for me, the thought of cooking dinner after a day at work is literally the last thing I want to do.

But I do cook, not every night by any means, but when I can. But somehow, in my mind, it's never good enough. I literally think that in my mind that the only way I would be fully free of guilt is that if I cooked every single night everyone was home.

Of course, this isn't realistic, and it's not even something anyone in the family expects. But this form of all-or-nothing thinking has me thinking that anything less than perfect equates to failure. We can also look at outcomes for our kids, or even for ourselves, through a lens that will either achieve success or will fail.

Going through the college process, especially if your child has their heart set on a particular school, it's hard not to set yourself up for this. No matter how often you hear the guidance that the college process truly works out in the way it's meant to, or that the name of the school doesn't say anything about a child's future success, no matter how many times you hear this, when you think about how disappointed your child might be, or worse, when you see how disappointed they are if they don't get the news they hope, at least in those first few moments, our brains default to this all-or-nothing thinking. That news we didn't want is terrible.

One of the biggest impacts of all-or-nothing thinking when it comes to the path to success is that we tend to dismiss the value of progress. In other words, dismiss the idea that sometimes failure is required for us to achieve our goals, but also that there are a million different paths to success. When I'm coaching women who are struggling with dread around the empty nest, or actually even when women are excited about the empty nest but just not sure how to approach it, what often comes up is that they tell me they don't want to fail.

Or maybe more that they don't want to pick the wrong thing to pursue, as if there's a right answer and a wrong answer. And notice how thinking this way can lead us to stay stuck, because we don't want to choose the right thing. So we actually choose no thing.

Another form of all-or-nothing thinking is when we view situations or people as entirely good or bad with no in-between. The typical example is if your teen comes home with one bad grade and your mind immediately goes to, oh my god, they're going to fail the class, or not get into the college that they want. Even if we are able to talk ourselves out of this type of binary thinking, it's fascinating to me that this is where our brains go instinctually.

There are more subtle ways this comes up as well, ways our brains fall into this thinking around issues that are particularly triggering for us. I've coached a number of women who have family histories of addiction, and so when their teens experiment with drugs or alcohol, their minds immediately go to the risk of addiction. And of course, back to the comment I made about how often mindset traps are illogical and reasonable on the face of it.

I mean, addiction is a risk of drug and alcohol use, so you're not wrong to be concerned. So the invitation here is not to discount real dangers or downsides. In fact, as I'll talk about, there are very important reasons our brains default to all-or-nothing thinking.

But the invitation here is to become conscious of these extreme judgments that can cloud our perspective of the facts and also cause us to react in ways that don't necessarily help the situation. There are also times our brains feel justified in this type of thinking because we've collected a lot of evidence that we're right. Like if our kid isn't social and often appears to be alone or not engaging with friends.

It doesn't feel like a big leap for us to be really concerned that they'll struggle in life with making connections. Or if our kid seems lazy or unmotivated, when they avoid getting a job no matter how many times we've asked, when they don't study. Our brains make these judgments then about what they're capable of and how they might struggle in life.

All-or-nothing thinking shows up in relation to so many of the mindset traps I'll be talking about in this series. So like emotional reasoning, this type of thinking is a pretty common factor fueling our minds' sometimes unproductive patterns of thinking. As I mentioned, perfectionism and catastrophizing can be forms of all-or-nothing thinking.

Another impact of all-or-nothing thinking is that it fuels the way we judge people we love. It can also fuel the way we judge ourselves, causing us to define ourselves in particular ways. Defining ourselves only on our mistakes or even based on the fact that we fall into these mindset traps.

So let's talk about why our brains default to all-or-nothing thinking. Because remember, these mindset traps are normal. They are our brains' automatic, unconscious, go-to ways of reacting to the circumstances of our lives.

It's like the mental fight-or-flight response. So it's really valuable to understand why this is happening. Why, in fact, these ways of thinking are our minds' solutions to the problems in front of us.

Because understanding this is the first critical step to helping us break free of these traps. So as I covered in the three-part introduction to the series, mindset traps are a result of the motivational triad. Really, how our brain is wired for survival.

Our brains want to protect us from danger, or really any negative outcomes. They also want to help us seek pleasure, or move toward what feels good or rewarding. And finally, our brains want to help us conserve energy.

And one way they do this is to try to reduce how much we have to think about a situation. So notice how all-or- thinking simplifies life. In fact, it's kind of overwhelming when you think about how infinite the possibilities of life are.

I attended a masterclass years ago where we were encouraged to think about the possibilities of our life as something that was truly infinite. The coach directed us to stop thinking in the extremes of, keep the job, quit the job, or move to this place, or stay in this place. But to throw out all of the options and start from scratch.

Literally, blue-sky thinking. What if I moved across the world? What if I got a new partner? What if I went back to school for something totally different than I'd ever studied before? Our brains want to fight against this type of expansive thinking. They want to default to, nope, you can't do that, that would be crazy.

It's so much simpler for your brain to wrap its head around two options, good or bad, success or failure. It's simpler, but it also feels safer. Because if there are only two options, it's easier to see the danger.

One of the reasons this time of life is so challenging for us moms is that we've lost a lot of control. Now, I actually don't know that we ever really had total control over our kids, but up until they were teens, they did tend to let us take the lead for the most part. And even if they didn't always behave or do what we said when they were little, we had a lot of leverage in terms of consequences and setting the parameters of their life.

I mean, little kids don't have a lot of agency, and so they can't just do whatever they want without our support. Like, if we didn't like a particular friend they had, we just wouldn't make those playdates. They wouldn't be able to get anywhere without our permission because we'd have to drive them.

But none of this means that we ever had control over their thoughts, their feelings, or really how they behaved. But we did have the illusion of control, and the practical control of many of the circumstances of their lives. But that goes out the window as our kids grow up.

So consider how all-or-nothing thinking is actually also a way our brains try to take control of a situation. By looking at things as either good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable, your brain feels like it's establishing clear boundaries, like it's taking back control. So let's say you see your teen's grade slipping.

On default, our brains see danger. We might catastrophize. We think, if they don't fix this now, this will become a big problem.

I have done this so many times. And so our brains feel this sense of power and motivation to fix the situation, to take back control by avoiding the extreme negative outcome. It makes us feel better, honestly, to have this sense of control.

But if you've ever found yourself in this loop, feeling this almost desperate urge to fix a problem with your teens, and let me just say I know I have, but if you've found yourself in this place, this pull to fix is so powerful. And yet, it's actually an illusion. There are so many aspects to our teens' lives that we simply cannot control.

And the truth is, most situations aren't black and white. They are truly nuanced. And ultimately, the outcome of the situation, particularly if it has to do with our kids, these outcomes are most often influenced by things completely beyond our control as parents.

But when we feel anxious or uncertain, our minds crave safety and certainty. So we want to be able to predict the outcomes, even if one of them is really bad. It's actually so interesting that our brains find comfort in the certainty of a terrible outcome.

It's like, well, if I know what it is, then I can prepare myself for it. I think this is what our brains can do as we look ahead to the empty nest as well. If we're not yet sure what lies ahead for us, our brains fight against the uncertainty.

And so, instead of a big question mark, we default to a projection that's negative. A life that's empty and lonely. We might also struggle in that first year or so of the transition to the empty nest, and then assume it will always be this hard.

We feel dread. And believe it or not, it's easier and more comfortable for our minds to settle on dread as one of the two possible outcomes, rather than grapple with the infinite number of possibilities ahead of us. So all or nothing thinking is a shortcut for our brains.

It simplifies the complexity of life. Just think about how much information your brain is taking in every single second. Your brain defaults to shortcuts to help you process all of this information and help you make decisions more quickly.

All or nothing thinking also makes us feel more comfortable by giving us this false sense of certainty, even if one of the outcomes we see is terrible. And our minds think this type of thinking also keeps us safe. Our primitive brain is constantly scanning the world for possible danger.

And that could be physical danger, or a social or emotional danger. And it's so much easier for our brains to respond to that one simple threat than prepare for all of the millions of possible negative threats out there. Not to scare you, but it's actually fascinating that we're often afraid of very specific things, but don't even contemplate all of the other potential risks out there.

And I'm not at all telling you to go there, but it's amazing when you think about it, how certain our brains want to be about one specific type of danger. I remember thinking during the pandemic that this was one danger that had literally never crossed my mind. But again, simplifying the possible dangers in our minds means that we can more easily prepare ourselves, or better yet, do something to avoid that one specific danger.

Now think about how all of this works together. And let me just give an example from how I imagine this worked back when man lived in caves. If a caveman heard rustling in the bushes, it was so much safer to assume it was a predator and immediately prepare for danger or simply just run than it was to go through the mental process of evaluating whether or not it was actually a predator that could kill him.

Can you imagine you're sitting there, you hear this noise in the bushes and you think, well, maybe it's a predator, but it could be a rabbit or even my friend or any number of things. Let's wait and see or go investigate. If that caveman didn't default to all or nothing thinking as a base case, we probably wouldn't still be around as a species today.

So this way of thinking truly is beneficial to human survival. And I guarantee that there have been times in your life when you've also reacted immediately to a perceived threat, and thank God you did. So we don't actually want to rid ourselves of this pattern of thinking entirely, but we do want to develop the skill set of being able to evaluate whether this type of thinking is creating unnecessary stress or anxiety for us.

And let me talk for a minute about the downsides of all or nothing thinking. Well, first, it negatively impacts our own mental well-being. When we're focused on these binary negative outcomes, we can find ourselves consumed in needing to fix the situation to avoid that outcome.

When we make black or white judgments about our kids or about ourselves, then we're stuck in disappointment or guilt or frustration. We can also find ourselves stuck in this loop of needing to guard against all of these negative outcomes, but not having the power to actually make that happen. And often these terrible outcomes we envision aren't even these one-time events that we can get through so we don't have to worry about them anymore.

I mean, when it comes to our kids' success, our kids' well-being and mental health and their safety, this is a daily worry for us. If our kids struggle in school, every test, every grade, every class that we worry they're going to miss becomes one more opportunity for us to worry about a negative outcome. Every time our kids go out, every time we see them in a bad mood, every single one of these circumstances becomes a trigger to our all or nothing thinking.

So we're in this constant loop of stress and anxiety. I talk a lot about how we take action from our emotions, and when we're stressed and feeling like the way to fix our stress is to change the situation, to avoid this one negative outcome, the way we do that is to try to change our kids or often fight against a circumstance that isn't in our control. So with our kids, we try to get them to study more or go out less, to not drink, to behave in a certain way, to get a job.

And look, that's not at all to say that these aren't valid goals, but we can find ourselves in this position where we're trying to control our kids' behavior so that we can feel better. We do want to protect them from this danger that we perceive, that we see in front of them. But so much of this also has to do with our own fear, our perception of danger.

So now we're nagging them, we're constantly frustrated when they don't do what we ask. It becomes a power dynamic between us and our kids, and the potential impact on the relationship we have with our kids is not good. All or nothing thinking can make us overreact, but it can also cause us to feel paralyzed in our decision making because we don't want to do the wrong thing or make the wrong choice.

So as much as this way of thinking has practical, important implications for our basic survival, there are so many ways that it can cause us to spiral into feeling unnecessary emotional pain. It impacts our relationships, particularly with our teens, and it also leads us to feel overwhelmed with either anxiety and stress or just a feeling of being stuck and not able to move forward. So when we find ourselves in this place, it's time to consider whether all or nothing thinking, this very normal, unconscious pattern of thinking of our primitive brain, whether it's time to reconsider if this is actually the solution we want for the challenge in front of us.

So the first step in breaking free of this or any other mindset trap is really awareness. And not simply that your brain is falling into all or nothing thinking, but awareness of how this trap is actually your mind's solution. So if you've noticed your mind falling into the trap of all or nothing thinking, ask yourself, how am I trying to avoid danger here? How am I trying to feel better by creating a false sense of certainty around the potential outcomes? And how is it actually simpler for my brain to default to a focus on one worst-case scenario rather than to imagine all of the possibilities that are actually in front of me? The answers to these questions won't necessarily talk you out of your all or nothing thinking, but they will help you take a step back to gain perspective about your thinking.

Are you gearing up to fight against a worst-case scenario that's real or just in your head? Unlike the early ancestor who hears the rustling in the bushes and has to react immediately to stay alive, the situations we're facing with our kids and in our own lives are rarely life-or-death situations. Some of them might be really serious and may even involve terrible possibilities or some catastrophic outcome because that's where our brain goes. But we typically have time to step back and understand the impact of our thinking in a way that those cave people did not.

So what you can notice is that your brain can get attached to this one possible negative outcome and it becomes hyper focused on avoiding that outcome. It latches onto the certainty. And so notice when your brain is certain, it's like we're living in the reality of that negative outcome or negative identity.

And when we're already there, we're already mentally in that worst-case scenario, already in the identity of being someone who made the wrong choice or went down the wrong path. We already feel the weight of that negative emotion. We experience that negative emotion ahead of time.

And because we don't want to feel this, we fight like hell to get out of it. Now there are definitely times when we can do something to make an impact or to fix a situation. But often, particularly when we're taking action from this negative, anxious, stressed, beaten down, or dread-filled place, the actions we take aren't very effective.

We can be controlling or overprotective. We can nag or communicate in a way that ensures our kids will definitely not listen. Or as I mentioned, we can be paralyzed in non-action.

All of this simply because we're certain about something that might not at all be true or ever come true. So after really coming to terms with how we're trying to keep ourselves safe, how we're trying to keep ourselves comfortable and to make life simple, the next step is to notice how the way we're reacting to this certainty, to this binary outcome, isn't productive. For example, when it comes to uncertainty, one possibility is to open your mind to the fact that you don't know.

You don't know what's ahead. You don't know what's to come. And maybe it's okay.

I think one of the things that holds us back in our lives more than we realize is the fear of future pain. But if you notice, all or nothing thinking actually creates pain for us right now. So are we really avoiding pain or just creating pain unnecessarily? It's so natural for us to want to avoid terrible outcomes.

But I also wonder if we could develop a greater confidence and trust in ourselves that we're actually capable of feeling any emotion. This is what the human body was designed for, to feel emotions. Look, unfortunately, there will be times in life that we cannot avoid feeling pain.

And in those moments, we will know what to do. We'll put one foot in front of the other. We'll make decisions.

We'll do what we need to do. But in the meantime, what if we could let go of this fear we have of this future imagined pain? Even more, what if we could foster the belief in our own capacity to feel any emotion? Imagine how that might save us from having to protect ourselves from all of these fictional worst-case scenarios in our heads. My friend, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you if your brain defaults to all-or-nothing thinking in this subconscious effort to keep you safe.

It happens to all of us. But freedom from the stress and anxiety of this type of thinking? This is what I teach in my coaching program, Mom 2.0. And the impact of this goes beyond letting go of negative emotion. This is about shifting from a need to control life, to feel okay, to finding peace even when things aren't perfect.

It's about trusting yourself to know you can show up in your life and in your relationships no matter what comes your way. The skill of letting go of all-or-nothing thinking is actually already inside of you. And in Mom 2.0, I can show you how to use it.

Until next time friends.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.

Mindset Traps of the Empty Nest - Trap #2 - All or Nothing Thinking | Ep. 141

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