Black & White

Thinking about my post yesterday, I was suddenly reminded of something my therapist told me over and over and over again. Session after session. She would always say that my tendency was to want to see things in black and white, as one option OR another, yes OR no. She always warned that thinking like that is a danger because there's a whole lot of gray area in between the extremes that I tend to move things towards.
She tried to drill it into my head that there's a whole lot more options in the world, things that I kind of block myself off from seeing. Just recently I've been reminded how much I've forgotten about that, and how easy it is to fall back into dangerous ways of thinking.
Just like my tennis matches this weekend. My first 3, I played completely defensively, my last 1 was completely offensive. I couldn't figure out a way to do both, to take the best qualities from them and create something better.
An answer can be yes AND no. I can like someone AND dislike them. I can be happy AND sad. It seems so simple, but I'm so skilled at polarizing things--so skilled at choosing to make something the absolute, wrong thing to do.
It's one thing to be irrational. It's another to realize I'm being irrational and continue doing it. To still keep taking huge swings at the ball even though it's a losing game I'm playing.