Beyond Black and White: Finding Your Free Will in the Spectrum of Emotion

Kristen Vallely
3 days ago
4 min read

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), I often see clients struggling with the pressure to fit their wonderfully complex lives into rigid, unforgiving boxes. We are all taught rules, values, and cultural norms, but what happens when your heart and mind tell you something profoundly different?

This inner conflict is often rooted in what we call dichotomous thinking or otherwise known as black-and-white thinking: it is a cognitive distortion that insists everything must be either good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure. This mental trap forces us into emotional extremes, making true peace and intuitive choice feel impossible. If you want to learn to unlock your inner peace, try understanding and embracing the shades of grey perception.

The Scientific Spectrum of Being

If you want to understand your mental state, stop thinking of it as a set of static categories and start viewing it as an energetic spectrum.

Modern research into consciousness and physiology suggests that our emotions are not just feelings; they are correlated with measurable energy fields or frequencies. These energies radiate from different areas in our body and can be physically felt.

Embodied Emotion and Energy: Research into somatization shows that we physically map our feelings. One of the first things I do with clients is practice somatic awareness. Questions like: What are you feeling? Where is it coming from? Studies using topographical mapping have found that:

High-frequency emotions like love and happiness are often associated with feelings of warmth and energy radiating across the entire chest and head.
Lower-frequency emotions like sadness and depression are often felt as a diminished sensation in the extremities and chest.
Specific dense emotions like anger might be concentrated in the hands, face, or chest, preparing the body for action.

This physical reality means that when you are stuck in black-and-white thinking, you are also physically forcing your energy into rigid, dense, or chaotic patterns.

1. The High Cost of Being "Good"

As children, we are taught that certain low-frequency emotions like anger, fear, or profound sadness are "bad" or unacceptable. We learn, or are trained, to suppress these feelings in an attempt to be "good," "compliant," or "strong."

But energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. When you force a low-frequency emotion into the dark, your system doesn't lighten up; it just gets denser and more rigid. This suppression leads to two things:

Numbing: A disconnection from all feelings, making it hard to access the higher-frequency intuition of the heart.
Contraction: A chronic, low-level energetic state that makes your whole world feel heavy, solid, and unforgiving—a true state of condensed matter.

We are usually never told when it is okay to reconnect. Sometimes we do not even know that we are disconnected. That internal loneliness can become heavy, even unbearable.

2. High Frequency vs. Condensed Matter

Borrowing from energy science concepts, we can imagine two poles:

The Dark/Condensed Pole (Lower Frequency): This is where emotions like shame, guilt, apathy, and fear reside. When feeling "heavy" or "stuck," you experience the density of these lower vibrations. They are contractive, forcing your focus inward on survival and scarcity.
The Light/Expansive Pole (Higher Frequency): This includes joy, love, peace, and reason. These are expansive states that feel light, fluid, and effortless.

Black-and-white thinking forces us to flip-flop between the extremes such as: (e.g., "I must be perfect" and "I am a total failure"), locking us into these heavy, low-frequency states.

The work of Dr. David R. Hawkins (below), who mapped the frequency of human consciousness, clearly illustrates this hierarchy.

3. The Coherent Heart and Free Will

The real breakthrough happens when we understand coherence.

Research into Heart Rate Variability (HRV) shows that when we align our mind, heart, and emotions (which is the very definition of finding the shades of grey) our internal rhythms become harmonious and ordered. This is a higher frequency state known as coherence.

When you are in a coherent state:

Your physical systems work together efficiently.
You gain access to intuitive clarity.
You move past rigid extremes and into a place of free will.

You are no longer reacting based on old, black-and-white rules (low-frequency fear) but responding from a place of unified intelligence (high-frequency flow). This expanded view allows you to see things as they truly are—complex, vibrational, and fluid—rather than how your fear-based perceptions distort them.

Finding the Shades of Grey is Finding Your Truth

The goal of therapy, and of conscious living, is not to eliminate "dark" feelings. That is simply impossible. The goal is to move them up the spectrum. Guilt can become Acceptance. Fear can become Courage.

Finding the shades of grey means acknowledging that you can be brave (a high-frequency quality) and anxious (a mid-low-frequency quality) at the exact same moment. It is the acknowledgement of complexity that stops the oscillation between extremes and brings you into alignment. This is where you finally put your cards on the table. You stop trying to fit into the mental box you were taught and start making intuitive choices based on your authentic, whole self.

The Spectrum Check-In

Whenever you feel stuck, use this simple exercise to shift out of the black-and-white trap and into the freedom of the energetic spectrum:

Identify the Extremes: Name the black-and-white thought that is trapping you (e.g., "I must either quit my job and be a failure, or stay and be miserable").
Locate the Frequencies: Name the lowest frequency emotion associated with the dilemma (e.g., Misery/Apathy) and the highest desired frequency (e.g., Peace/Reason).
Find the Shade: Ask yourself, "Where on the spectrum, between the extreme poles, does the honest effort or current truth lie?"
- Example Shift: "The truth is I am Courageous enough to explore new options while maintaining the Acceptance that change takes time."
- This middle ground—Courage and Acceptance—is a measurable higher frequency than Apathy and Misery.

Self-compassion is always found in the middle ground, not the extremes. Start living in the beautiful, complex shades of grey, and watch your true free will emerge.

Resources Hawkins, D. R. (2014). Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. Hay House. (This is the foundational text for the Map of Consciousness).

Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2014). Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), 646–651. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1321664111

McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., Tomasino, D., & Bradley, R. T. (2009). The coherent heart: Heart–brain interactions, psychophysiological coherence, and the emergence of system-wide order. Integral Review, 5(2), 10–115.