When I was in school, I had a professor tell us to “get used to the gray area”. It was simple, but possibly one of the more useful pieces of advice I got throughout my tenure as a graduate student. The gray area rests between the black and white; the all or nothing; the yes or no. The gray area is a very uncomfortable place due precisely to its lack of certainty.
Yes or No
As we navigate through life, we operate almost exclusively on a yes or no basis. Maybes come along once in a while, but they don’t offer any extra comfort, unless they are being used as a method of holding out hope for a lost possibility. As a kid, you might have asked a boy or girl if they liked you. You write the question on a piece of paper and give the two options: yes or no. If they circle yes, you feel great. If they circle no, you experience your first rush of heartache. What if they write ‘maybe’ in? Suddenly there is a third option; a gray area. On one hand, they didn’t circle ‘no’, but on the other hand, they also didn’t circle ‘yes’. Come to think of it, I wonder how much anxiety is born out of this moment?
In simple daily life tasks, we see the yes or no options constantly. Do you want fries with that? Do you have this item in stock? Will you marry me? None of these questions function well with an answer of ‘maybe’, and for good reason. In the simplest example, if you are grabbing a quick lunch and the server or the drive-thru speaker asks if you want fries, you can’t say maybe. Maybe pauses the interaction because, like many things in our lives, your food order relies on a yes or no answer.
We Don’t Know
Furthermore, in more complex problems, the lack of a certain answer creates even more issues. In 2014, when flight MH370 went missing from radar, the world sat in this gray area of not knowing what had happened to the plane and its passengers. The lack of knowing an outcome created additional anxiety for some, but gave hope to others. For most people, though, they just wanted an answer. Did the plane crash? Was there some scenario playing out like the show Lost? As humans, we crave that certainty; that yes or no. It’s precisely why the gray area is so uncomfortable.
As a more personal example, we can take the estranged parent. Let’s assume a mother or father left when the child was too young to remember anything. When that child grows up, they go looking for their estranged parent. Sadly, they learn their estranged parent has passed. Upon learning this, in addition to the expected grief, there is the grossly uncomfortable gray area of never knowing. Did the parent love them? Why did they leave? Did the child do something wrong? Did they ever look for them before? Because that person has passed, we can never know and then must live in the gray area.
Yes and…
I like to think of this space using the golden rule of improv comedy: yes and… The idea behind this is that no improv player ever denies another’s idea or premise, but instead adds onto it. In therapy, it helps with the idea that two things can be true. We all have a list of things in our mind that make someone a bad person. Some of these things are atrocious and agreed upon by most people, and some of these might be as minor as what kind of car someone drives. Either way, we have these rules in our mind that draw a line in the sand about people. If you do this, then you are a bad person. If you drive this, then you are a bad person.
As therapists, we dive into the foundational pieces of a person that cause them to make the decisions they do, and therefore cannot rely on many of these sweeping generalizations. Instead, we have to say to ourselves, “yes and…” A person can do this bad thing, yes, and they could also not be a bad person. This doesn’t excuse the bad thing, but it doesn’t label a person as a bad person in every way because of it. Obviously, there is some concern for the severity of what the “bad thing” is, but that again, is a gray area. Additionally, that definition and line in the sand is different for each person.
Living in the gray area
The real discomfort comes from living in the gray area. This is because, in doing so, we accept that there are things that do not have absolute answers. One could argue that, as they relate to how we interact with people and our surroundings, most things are gray. Accepting that this gray area exists more often than not allows us to open our minds to the struggles of others and helps create more empathy in our thought process. It’s at that point that living in the gray area goes from uncomfortable to natural.
One example most people can relate to is being cut off on the highway. For many people, when you are cut off on the highway, you may immediately think ‘this guy is an asshole!’ This thought process is due to absolute thinking. The rules of the road say not to cut me off, but you cut me off, so you are a bad person. Embracing the gray area, however, allows us to consider the other options. Maybe they didn’t see you. Perhaps they were forced to get over by another vehicle. Maybe they were tending to a child in the car and simply failed to check their blindspot. These are not the automatic thoughts we typically have in this situation. Instead we make our absolute rule. They cut me off, so they are an asshole. Embracing the gray area of things we don’t know, we can now see this entire situation from a different and more compassionate perspective.
Gray area as a client
The discomfort in a therapy session comes from the client being challenged to lean into the same gray area that many therapists operate from. In most cases, a client’s narrative about themselves is based on a series of absolutes. A lifetime of “I am this” or “I am not this” make it difficult to dive into the idea that those answers may be different, or that they may not have those answers at all. In many cases, people hold onto the narratives about themselves with the same steadfast thinking they use to call someone an asshole in traffic.
If a client comes in thinking they are a bad person, a therapist is going to challenge that way of thinking. In doing so, they will likely challenge the client to reframe other aspects of their lives. Accepting that these narratives we have about ourselves, good or bad, are not absolutes and can be changed and altered in the first step towards positive change and growth. Challenging these core beliefs about yourself is not easy. Real change never is. However, it is through this difficult hard work and introspection that we learn to lean into the discomfort. It is there that we learn to embrace the gray area.
Ready to lean in? Give me a call.
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