Extreme Thinking Anonymous
Extreme Thinking Anonymous (ETA) is a community of people who seek to free themselves from a broad range of extreme thinking, including hostility toward those with different political views, rigid ideologies that discourage compromise, idolatry, fundamentalism, conspiracy theories, and racism (directed against any race, whether in the minority or majority). ETA brings together people from a spectrum of political beliefs and parties, and from different races, ethnicities, religions, educational backgrounds, and personal interests. ETA is inclusive, welcoming all who seek to reclaim balanced thinking.
Many of us have had similar experiences with extreme thinking.
For much of our lives we held strong views about the world and our place in it. Our beliefs were informed by our varied backgrounds, our communities, families, religions, economic situations—and our core values, too. We often engaged in lively debate with friends and neighbors who held different beliefs, but we did so with mutual restraint and respect. There were even times when we were persuaded that some of our best thinking was misguided, and we adjusted our views as a result. We were part of a community that could disagree yet remain connected through shared interests and values.
Despite our best intentions, though, our ability to maintain balanced thinking and openness to different ideas would not last. Many of us became fearful of trends in our society and the world at large. Some began to see threats on the horizon and changes to our communities that scared us. Others became overwhelmed with the speed and reach of rapidly evolving technology. People from a broad range of backgrounds and political views feared that their rights might be taken away. These changes—some real, some imaginary—became amplified, and we soon found that our sense of security was slipping. Many of us became agitated, fearful, resentful. To help us face these challenges, we began to explore new ideas, theories, leaders, movements and politics. But as we did so, something unexpected happened: we tended to revert to black-and-white thinking that favored certainty over nuance. And, to our relief, we soon found that this approach—thinking in absolutes—eased many of our fears.
Over time, our newfound beliefs grew more extreme. We became immersed in inflexible and impassioned views of the world, becoming convinced of our own righteousness. We came to believe that only our way of thinking and living was correct. These beliefs sustained us. They made us feel empowered, that we were part of important movements, that our fast-paced, confusing world had become more secure and understandable.
We developed friendships with those who shared our beliefs, and as a result we felt less lonely: at last, we had found “our people.” We gravitated to the news and the social media that offered similar views, further deepening our convictions and, in the process, we became less exposed to different perspectives. We came to believe that we knew things that were lost on others, that we possessed a special clarity—that we had inside information. Armed with this validation, we felt better about ourselves and our place in the world. In short, extreme thinking was working for us.
For many of us, though, things began to change, and we started to see tiny cracks in the foundation of our thinking. Events occurred that ran contrary to our belief system—or at least made us wonder. Perhaps our child’s life was saved by a member of a race we mistrusted. A charismatic religious leader to whom we had donated much of our savings was revealed to be a fraudster, making us wonder how we could have been so deceived. A politician violated our trust. Or maybe the circumstances of our lives themselves had changed for better or worse—a growing family, a new job, money woes, or illness—and as a result, our long-standing views of the world had become less aligned with our new priorities. Regardless of the reason, our extreme thinking—once all-consuming—was no longer operating at maximum levels. Our thinking still guided us, but perhaps our beliefs had dropped from a 100 on the intensity scale to, say, a 95. For some of us, this minor cooling down was just enough to open a small window of self-reflection.
When our thinking had moderated even a bit, we were now able to glimpse some of the consequences we had suffered. We started to connect dots that we previously could not see. There was the neighbor who stopped inviting us over following our angry support of a popular conspiracy theory. There was the time we violated company policy by wearing a t-shirt that disparaged certain people, and we were admonished by our employer: we had dimmed our prospects or lost our jobs because of the strife that our thinking, justified to us, had caused in the workplace. Perhaps we spent precious money on a distant event, leaving our frustrated family alone and in economic distress—and we came to see that disappointing those we loved was one of the awful consequences of our thinking. Some of us went even further. Perhaps we defamed another person, exposing ourselves to liability and the threat of a lawsuit. On rare occasion we became so inflamed by our thinking that we crossed the line into criminal behavior, and we became familiar with the most unpleasant aspects of the judicial system.
When we started to connect the dots, we realized that our thinking was leading to negative feelings, too. So consumed were we by the obsession of our beliefs that we learned, to our surprise, that we were also paying a heavy internal cost. The early euphoria of our extreme thinking was replaced by something a bit more complicated. Yes, our certainty about the ways of the world could still bring us comfort, but all was not perfect: we now saw that we could also be distracted, anxious, angry, consumed with grievances and a sense that others were doing us harm. We might have trouble sleeping. Many of us were stricken with a terror that “they” (whoever they might be) would take what we had or deny us what we needed. As our thinking became reinforced by our chosen community, and by the social media and the news sources that echoed our beliefs, we might find that our compassion for “the other side” had disappeared and that, in our darkest moments, we even reveled in the humiliation and defeat of others. Our thoughts and the feelings that flowed from them, which once gave us righteous comfort, were now working against us, violating our core principles in the process.
When our extreme thinking came to coexist with some awareness of its potential harm, we were stuck. We found that we could no longer enjoy the absolute certainty of our beliefs, but at the same time we couldn’t surrender them. We were imprisoned in a purgatory that, with each passing day, felt more like hell. We feared letting go of the thinking that had long sustained us, even though we had a gnawing sense that some of our beliefs might be vulnerable to scrutiny—or perhaps even indefensible. We worried, too, about the social and reputational costs of letting go. What would our like-minded friends say? And what about the reactions of those organizations and movements that we had long supported? Our minds were spinning!
Many of us felt ashamed, but we needn’t be. We would come to learn that we weren’t bad people. Rather, we were often well-intentioned people who had, without realizing it, embraced extreme thinking to better function in a rapidly moving and confusing world. At this point many of us came to recognize that we needed a change: we craved a more balanced belief system. We realized that we couldn’t do it alone, that we needed help. We saw that the solution to our problem was to connect with those whose fervor had diminished, even if just slightly, and who were also striving to align their thinking with their core values: we sought out those who were no longer operating at the peak of the intensity scale We sought a community comprised of people from the farthest reaches of politics, from a range of religions, races, economic beliefs, and societal views. We sought a place where we could shed our most fervent thoughts and still hold on to our identities, our unique personalities, and our agency. We yearned for connection, community and camaraderie with those going through a similar struggle—and a similar rebirth.
And it was only when we began to identify with others who were also seeking change, to learn how their minds worked, to understand their joys and sorrows, to see them as neither adversaries nor as co-conspirators, but as imperfect human beings trying, like us, to get through life, that we were able to recover. We had, at last, found a safe passage back to balanced thinking.