Us Versus Them Thinking

We look at how us-versus-them thinking becomes a cultural habit that quietly harms our mental health and our relationships. IDr. Shemena discusses how fear and vulnerability often sit under anger and certainty, and how making room for nuance restores compassion, critical thinking, and connection. 

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Thank you for listening!

Transcript

Welcome And The Core Concern

SPEAKER_00 0:05

This is the Dark Matters Podcast with Dr. Shemina. I'm Dr. Shemina, a licensed therapist that underwent my own transformation. And I'm here to share my insights and revelations. This is a podcast that goes well beyond the surface of everyday psychology to help you become conscious and aware. It's about understanding and it's about empowerment so that you can take control of your life in this challenging world. So, what do you say? Let's dive in. Hello and welcome back. This is Dr. Shemina Johnson. And today I want to talk about something that I think has become so common in our culture that many of us barely even notice it. And that is this us versus them type thinking. It's happening socially and psychologically. Because the

Why Binaries Feel So Natural

SPEAKER_00 1:20

way of this way of organizing the world has almost become like second nature. It's part of our current zeitgeist, where we see it everywhere. In politics, of course, in social media, friendships, families, intimate relationships, workplaces and our communities. But just like politics, families and our intimate relationships are like small, mini systems where you kind of start to understand the rules of engagement, you know, when you start to join and have this collectivist way of being, including our thoughts and behavior and feelings. It's a mini system. And so we are living in a time that encourages us towards these binaries where we're thinking us versus them, which has you feeling like you're living in almost like two different realities. But it can also move us towards quick conclusions about who's right, who is wrong, who's with us, and who is against us. And that can create a lot of anxiety within someone. And while thinking in binaries may give us a certain kind of relief, I think it has also become like a silent threat to our own mental health because life in human beings are way more complex than this. Relationships are more complex than this. And our minds can suffer when we lose our capacity to hold complexity and understand the other. And that for me is one of the hidden costs of this us versus them thinking. Sure, I understand that it may make us feel clear and have a sense of certainty and feel very morally anchored in the moment. But underneath, it can quietly kind of narrow us and our ability to think critically. It can make us more reactive, more emotionally inflamed, and less able to stay connected to compassion and curiosity and reflection. And over time, that does have consequences, not just for public life, but for our own psyches, for our relationships family, intimate, platonic, but also how we live our lives with each other. And so today I want to explore that. What this way of thinking does for us, what it does to us, and why it's so compelling to gravitate towards these binaries, but also why it's so hard to step out of it once we're in it. It's this kind of division is never just about the argument on the surface, it's also about what's happening underneath what we care about. A lot of big emotions. So let's explore what happens when we begin to see the world through the lens of us versus them.

Fear Under The Surface Argument

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Beneath the argument on the surface, you know, there's often fear, a lot of fear, pain, anxiety, and maybe even frustration, trying to organize itself around what feels too much to hold on to. And when that kind of thinking takes hold, sometimes something in us begins to close up, like tighten up, like even go inside ourselves to even form a rebuttal as a way to anchor ourselves, and we stop listening to the other person. So I want you to ask yourself like, what fear is being stirred up inside of you? What pain point is being touched? What's not being heard? What feeling is becoming like too much? But also what form of certainty is being used to manage the feelings, the anxiety? What does the anger do for you to get so inflamed and angry when someone has a differing opinion or a different idea than you? What does it do to you? What does it do for you? Because when us versus them thinking takes hold, something in the mind just begins to shut down. And it's not necessarily intelligence or language, but something more subtle and I think more important can begin to close up. And it's the capacity to reflect and to really think critically about various ideologies, including your own. The ability to tolerate contradiction, you know, the capacity to let someone be different than us without feeling like they must be corrected, converted, or even cast out. And that is where I think the threat really lies. Because once the mind gets trapped in this kind of binary, it becomes really much harder to think. Not just think in the intellectual sense sense, but think deeper. Because when you're unable to pause, question, wonder, or even hold the tension of nuance. To stay with discomfort long enough for something more complex to emerge, that becomes very difficult. And I just want to repeat like it's like repeating understanding to understand things that we don't have a problem listening to. What is extraordinary is how hard it is when it doesn't comport with your own understanding or feel like it is about you rather than an idea. It becomes essentialized. And the current Zeitgeist does not help us at all. It rewards the sense of immediacy and understanding that this is the answer, this kind of fast moral verdict. It's like having to choose a side or be cast out. But inner life does not thrive in that kind of environment. People need space. The psyche needs room. It needs time and space to reflect. It needs contradiction to understand nuance. It needs contradiction to be able to grasp that there's many different ways to think of something.

Anger As Protection From Vulnerability

SPEAKER_00 8:02

It needs the ability to say, I feel strongly, but I still want to think about this. Or I am angry, but I do not want anger to become the only thing that's available to me in this moment. You know, because anger can be really powerful. And I don't want to speak about anger as though it's inherently bad. Anger is human. Anger can be clarifying. And I think anger can also help us recognize a violation when it occurs. It can also help us feel our boundaries around a particular topic or a subject. It can help us know when something really matters deeply to us. But anger also does something. And I think that is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is what does the feeling of anger do for you? What does it do to you when you're hearing something, an idea, or something that doesn't really comport to your own sense of understanding? And maybe that anger protects you from helplessness. Maybe it protects you from feeling sad about something or grief. Or maybe it makes you feel strong when underneath you're really hurt. I think anger can help you avoid the more softer, more vulnerable feelings like sadness, fear, loneliness, humiliation, or envy. Often the feeling we are most identified with is not the only feeling that's present. But once anger takes over, those softer emotions can get pushed out of our awareness. And then what happens is compassion goes out the window, curiosity goes out the window, nuance goes out the window, the ability to imagine another person's inner world begins to almost disappear, as if your idea, your feelings, your ideology, your thoughts of what you care about is the only thing that exists. And when that happens, the mind becomes organized around this kind of rigidness, hardness. And you're no longer asking, what is happening here, or you're asking who's wrong? I'm right, you're wrong. You're not asking, what do I feel beneath this? You're asking, how do I win this argument? How do I win this disagreement or this conflict? You're not even asking, how can we remain in this relationship or on this topic and communicate while also acknowledging a difference? You're actually really saying, How do I get you to see it my way? Because my way feels like the only thing that matters. And that is a shift. And that is when difference begins to feel intolerable, not just difficult, not just frustrating, but really intolerable, unbearable. There becomes no room for someone else to be different. Difference begins to feel like a threat, like an insult. If I believe what you say, then how does that reflect on me? And then the pressure begins, subtle or overt, for the other person to convert, to come to your side, to mirror your worldview,

When Difference Becomes Intolerable

SPEAKER_00 11:30

to validate your emotional reality, to confirm your version of things. And when that happens, relationships can begin to kind of crack. Because really, relationships can't survive under the constant pressure of a forced sense of sameness. It just can't. At least not healthy ones. And I definitely understand how gravitating towards wanting a sense of sameness can feel so anchoring. It can feel secure. It can make you feel safe. I mean, this is one of the reasons I mention, like in families and intimate relationships, like it's like a mini system where you feel a sense of sameness. It's like it joins you. But at the end of the day, I think we all know individually we are different. And how can we provide space for those differences? You know, relationships require something much more than agreement, that we all agree on something. They require the ability to tolerate separateness, difference. That's how we grow. Tolerate that another person is not like you, that they may even think differently, feel differently, understand the world differently, and arrive at conclusions that you may not share. But that doesn't mean that all differences are easy to live with. Some differences can be very painful. You know, some are ethically serious, some may absolutely strain or even end relationships, which I definitely understand that. But what I am pointing to is something a little deeper. If everything that is different is experience, is experience as something that must be eliminated, corrected, or converted, then connection becomes almost impossible. Because a lot of in relationships and you know, navigating being with another person, connection needs space. It needs room for a sense of friction so that you can reach the sense of understanding, room for feeling disappointed, maybe even a sense of misunderstanding, but also room that it can be repaired. Room for the fact that two people are really not the same person, but we have the capacity to understand each other and what matters. And the us versus them thinking erodes that room. It narrows the emotional field. It really says, if you are not with me, you are against me. If you don't understand me in the right way, you are dangerous. If you cannot affirm what I affirm, then maybe you do not belong in my life at all. And I have heard in my therapy room with family members, even in couples, even individually in friendships, I've heard people move to this area where if you can't affirm what I say, then you don't belong in my life at all. Now, sometimes people really do need to step away from relationships that are harmful or destructive. And I'm not romanticizing connection at all costs. I really want to be clear. But I am interested in the psychological process by which difference itself becomes unbearable. That's what I'm talking about. Because often it is not just about the content of the disagreement, it is also about what that disagreement stirs up within internally

The Mental Health Cost Of Rigidity

SPEAKER_00 15:20

within a person. Not being agreed with can feel like you're not being seen. Maybe you're not mirrored, and that can feel like you're being erased. Maybe not being validated can stir up feelings of old hurt, old wounds, feelings of shame or rage or even loneliness. And so the wish to convert the other may not only be about ideology, it may also be about emotional survival, like it's essential for your way of being and the way you've kind of navigated your life. But if you would disagree with me, then maybe I won't feel so alone, right? I think that's the idea behind it. That it is much more a vulnerable place to be in than binaries allows us to see. The thought, you are against me becomes a feeling, and the feeling is still hidden, which is feeling lonely. And that is why it's so hard to occupy that space. It's hard to stay with the softer emotions because it brings up other feelings, deeper, bigger feelings that I have to wrestle with. You know, it's really hard to remain in contact with someone when you're feeling hurt and the rage is available. It's hard to stay with grief and sadness when self-righteousness feels stronger, like I'm in the power position. But that relief is costly. It's costly to the mind and the body, which stays in a state of activation. It can diminish your actual sense of empathy. Because if you can stay in the place of curiosity and reflection, you actually build a sense of empathy. It can keep you locked in a cycle of reactivity that feels powerful in the moment, but leave you feeling more depleted and more cut off later. And that is why I think that this is really a mental health issue. Not in the simplistic sense that disagreement or strong views is unhealthy, but in the deeper sense that when the psyche loses its flexibility, it suffers. Because mental health involves the capacity to feel without becoming consumed, to think without becoming rigid, to care deeply about one's own beliefs and the other person without collapsing into a place of hatred. And that is hard work. And it is especially hard in a culture and the current zeitgeist of what's happening outside in our world that keeps rewarding us for becoming more binary. That binary feels clean. So learning to manage these emotions does not mean becoming passive. It doesn't mean becoming neutral. It really doesn't even mean denying what matters to you. What it means is learning to have strong feelings, big feelings, right? But also staying present and being kind and having a sense of logic without losing access to the other parts of yourself. It's like to ask questions. Can I recognize these feelings in me and still stay in contact with my own sense of humanity? Can I let the other person be different without experiencing that difference as an annihilation of parts of me or my beliefs? These are developmental tasks because for many of us, difference does not stay in the present moment. It touches older places. That is one reason why relationships can feel so strained right now. People are not only arguing about ideas, they are colliding through histories, wounds, fears, identities, and unmet longings. And unless we understand that, we will keep mistaking emotional activation

Compassion With Boundaries And Maturity

SPEAKER_00 19:20

for clarity. Now, I want to say something about compassion because I think it is one of the first casualties of this very us versus the uh them thinking. Like when anger and rage get stirred up, compassion goes really out the window. Compassion really requires a lot of room. You know, it connects us to our vulnerabilities and contradictions. And that can become flattened. And once those softer feelings are flattened, it's easier to dismiss them. Without compassion, we become more efficient at sorting people, but worse at living with people. Compassion here doesn't necessarily mean softness without boundaries, it means a more mature compassion, a compassion that can remain present, also alongside feeling frustration. Compassion really says that there's more happening here than the surface argument alone. There's another human being here with me, trying in whatever way they can to manage their own feelings. And I think when you can understand that, that perspective does change something. And if we want to remain psychologically alive, like open and very thoughtful and relational and curious, then we will need to make room for all this complexity. So as I kind of close this out, as we come to an end on this,

Reflection Questions And Closing

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I really want to leave you with a few questions to sit with. Like, where in your life do you notice this very us versus them thinking take hold? What kinds of differences feel hardest for you to tolerate right now? What softer emotions might be sitting just underneath the surface? And where have you begun to confuse a sense of certainty with a feeling? Remember, a thought that is a feeling rather than the feeling that is hidden? I'll repeat that because it probably sounded a little confusing. We can confuse our thoughts for feeling rather than the feeling that is underneath the surface. But also, where have you felt pressure, internal or external, to convert someone rather than understand the deeper stakes of the difference? In reflecting on your relationships, where is there more need for reflection and capacity and room to let the other person be different than you without that difference meaning the end? Just something to think about. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. And I'll talk with you next time. Be well. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Dark Matters with Dr. Shemina. Thank you for listening in. You can find me at shaminajohnson.com. All the links of where you can find me are in the show summary. Come back often and make sure you subscribe, rate, and review because I'd love to hear your comments. And remember, either you deal with your feelings or they deal with you. See you guys soon.