What Is Splitting?
A Simple Guide to a Complex Human Habit
By therapist Sarah Woodcock
Do you ever notice yourself judging harshly or praising in an over energised way? Or maybe you have noticed it in others. An energised opinion, filled with certainty and backed by intense emotion often just under the surface. We seem to exist in a time where at the macro level our world is split; good / bad, left/ right, black/ white, old/young. On many fronts we seem to approach our problems in society, culture and often our own lives as if the answers to complex issues are binary. Welcome to the world of splitting..
What is Splitting:
Psychological splitting is the mind’s habit of reducing a complicated world into a pair of discrete boxes. It divides people, feelings, and experiences into two states—good or bad, safe or unsafe, saint or sinner.—as if the idea of both positions being simultaneously true is dangerous terrain.
Why our brain loves black and white stories
This process of splitting can provide speed over complexity, our older emotional circuits in the brain tend to prefer speed. Nuance takes time and reflection, and in moments of threat or stress, the mind reaches for the fastest category available: safe or unsafe, friend or foe. This can be a habit developed over many years.
Ambiguity is uncomfortable. We cannot relax into it. The brain, tired of juggling possibilities, drops the tension of complexity and chooses a simpler story. The relief feels real.
When emotions surge, the reasoning centre PFC (Pre Frontal Cortex) gets quieter and the danger sensors get louder. The world feels smaller. Colours go flat. The brain’s capacity for nuance narrows.
Predictability can feel like a way to protect oneself because if someone is entirely good, you know how to behave. If someone is entirely bad, you know to stay away. Mixed motives are harder to work out. The brain likes rules, even if they’re flawed.
Memory takes sides so when we are in a process of splitting or used to having a split lens on the world, memory will look to prove the narrative by finding previous evidence and highlighting it. The story reinforces itself.
Where does the term Splitting come from?
Melanie Klein was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis, she was born in 1882. She suggested that infants begin life with a limited capacity to hold mixed emotions. When a baby is hungry or scared, the world feels bad. When fed and held, the world feels good. The caregiver becomes two separate “objects”: the satisfying one and the frustrating one. The young mind protects itself from overwhelm by keeping them apart. Over time, if development unfolds steadily, the mind learns to integrate these opposites into a more realistic picture.
Object Relations Theory later expanded on this idea. It describes how early relationships shape our internal maps of self and others.
The Jungian Approach to splitting
Carl Jung’s (1875-1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who was one of the greatest influences on the work of this field in the twentieth century. His idea of “Balancing the tension of opposites” is one of his most important (and most beautifully human) concepts. Imagine your inner world as a house with two wings: one bright, one shadowy. Jung believed that psychological growth doesn’t happen by choosing one wing over the other, but by learning to hold both without collapsing into either.
Jung said that the psyche is full of opposites that naturally pull against each other:
• confidence and doubt
• strength and vulnerability
• ambition and rest
• kindness and anger
• light and shadow
• persona and true self
Most people try to solve these by choosing sides. Jung’s approach was that real development comes from holding the tension between them without rushing to resolve it. Giving space and time to see what can emerge as we hold that tension.
He called this the transcendent function: when you keep both sides in awareness, the psyche eventually forms a third thing—a more integrated, fuller version of yourself. It’s like waiting for two clashing notes to settle into an unexpected harmony.
Jung believed that your mind is not trying to delete conflict. It’s trying to use conflict to grow.
To him, opposites are like the two ends of an electrical wire.The tension between them creates psychological energy. Avoiding the tension—by picking a side—kills the current. Hold both ends, and the spark becomes transformation.
Jung wasn’t talking about a calm, tidy process. It feels uncomfortable, often difficult.
Examples:
• wanting independence but craving closeness
• wanting to be brave but fearing failure
• being furious at someone and loving them at the same time
• desiring change but clinging to old patterns
Jung encourages us to stay with that discomfort, to notice the split, to make conscious there might be an opposite to accommodate.
Balancing the tension of opposites is staying present with your contradictions long enough for them to teach you something.
Why It Connects to Splitting
Jung’s approach can help us when we do notice a split occurring to first identify the opposite and see how much we can flex to accommodate that opposite in our minds, the task to be to tolerate it as an idea.
The tendency to split will me we want to rush to resolve the tension by choosing one side and rejecting the other:
Jung believed that splitting collapses the tension, before transformation can happen. It’s a quick escape hatch that robs the psyche of growth.
Jung invites us to slow, pause and be more patient even though there will be discomfort.
A Simple Narrative Example
Imagine someone who sees themselves as “strong,” so they deny their fear. This creates an imbalance; the fear goes into the shadow, held subconsciously. The person will be more likely to be brittle in behaviour as appose to resilient and adaptive.
If they can hold both truths—
“I am strong” and “I am scared”—the two meet, blend, and create something new:
courage, which contains both strength and fear. That’s the transcendent function at work.
A Modern Translation
Jung’s approach, boiled down:
Notice your inner opposites.
Don’t choose sides too fast.
Let the tension breathe instead of fixing it.
Wait for the third thing to emerge.
Integration beats elimination.
It’s a psychological slow-cooking process.
There are several ways that therapy models approach splitting:
DBT - Dialectical Behaviour Therapy focuses less on the theory and more on the fallout—the emotional waves, the sudden shifts in relationships, and the urge to react quickly. It teaches stability, emotional regulation, and slowing the storm.
Schema Therapy sees splitting as a rapid switch between inner modes. A person can feel like a frightened child one moment and a furious protector the next, each one convinced it’s the only truth.
MBT - Mentalization based therapy treats splitting as what happens when mentalization—the ability to understand minds—drops out. When overwhelmed, a person loses their sense of why someone acted or how they themselves came to feel this way.
Though these approaches differ, they point to the same thing: splitting isn’t a character defect. It’s an emergency shortcut and unchallenged can become a bad habit that will affect how we cope with life’s stressors. Most therapeutic modalities will offer support to work on a tendency to split.
What Splitting Looks and Feels Like
To understand splitting, picture the world narrowing down to a pair of simple colors. You lose the muted hues, the blended tones, the space where two truths can sit side by side. Instead, everything sharpens.
Splitting can look like: - swinging from admiration to anger - jumping from self-confidence to self-hatred - viewing conflict as proof of betrayal - expecting perfection or assuming disaster - experiencing others as entirely trustworthy or entirely dangerous.
Narrative Snapshot 1: The Friend Who Forgot
Mara texted her friend Leo earlier in the day, asking if he wanted to meet after work. Five hours passed with no response. By the time she reached her apartment, her mind had taken off.
“He’s ignoring me.” “He always does this.” “Maybe he never valued the friendship.”
Her chest tightened, her stomach knotted. The story felt complete and certain.
Then Leo replied: Sorry, long shift, didn’t check my phone. Want to grab dinner?
The ice in her chest melted. The story flipped.
“He’s such a good friend.” “He’s always there for me.”
Both stories felt true in the moment, even though they couldn’t both be the whole truth.
How to Approach Splitting with Care
Splitting often happening when we experience emotional overwhelm.
1. Slow the Moment
When the mind snaps into certainty, pause. Notice your breath and slow it down, box breathing can help to unhook from thoughts and become more present.
Ask: What’s happening in my body right now?
Notice: tightness, heat, racing thoughts.
Slowing the body slows the story.
2. Look for Two True Things
Try holding a pair of truths at once:
“I feel ignored, and there might be another explanation.”
“I’m angry, and I care about this person.”
“This hurt me, and this relationship has value.”
Two truths can soften the need to split.
3. Ask a Wider Question
Instead of “What does this mean about them?” try: “What am I missing?”
It invites curiosity instead of collapse.
4. Find the Softer Feeling Underneath
Splits often cover fear, sadness, or shame. When you name the softer feeling, the sharp edge dulls.
“I’m furious” sometimes really means “I’m scared you don’t value me.”
5. Hold Off on Action
If you’re in a split, it’s not the moment to make big decisions, send big messages, or cut ties.
Give it time. Waiting until the emotional arousal has ebbed.
6. Repair When Needed
Everyone splits at times. When it leads to hurt, repair is possible.
“I reacted strongly earlier; I was overwhelmed.”
“I want to understand better.”
Repair builds resilience in ourselves and our relationships.
Summary
Splitting is an old survival strategy, not a sign of weakness. It emerges when the emotional world feels too heavy to hold in one piece. The mind divides the world to protect itself. Psychoanalytic theories framed it as a developmental stage; modern therapies see it as a signal that the emotional load has become overwhelming and a reframe is required.
In everyday life, it looks like sudden shifts, confident conclusions, and emotional snap judgments. It feels like certainty. It simplifies, but at a cost: relationships, self-worth, and wellbeing.
The brain loves splitting because it offers speed, safety, and simplicity. It’s the mind’s version of turning a complex landscape into a flat map. But a map isn’t the terrain.
With awareness, care, and patience we can learn to hold the tension of opposites. Breath by breath, thought by thought, the sharp edges can soften. The mind relearns what it once knew: that people are mixed, feelings are layered and the truth complicated.
Resources:
This Jungian Life Podcast:Tension of opposites
Video on black and white thinking: