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I am a huge fan of chocolate cake. My go to is anything with a name resembling “death by chocolate.” While I am a dessert fan in general, this is the one that will always make me happy.

Vanilla cake, on the other hand, holds no appeal to me. I am secretly disappointed when I go to a party and they serve vanilla cake. I know there is nothing wrong with vanilla cake and that many people love it. Yet, it will never hit the spot like chocolate.

I do have other cakes that I enjoy. Red velvet is often enjoyable, and I was recently pleasantly surprised by a pistachio cake.

Beyond loving, dessert, there is another reason I am bringing your attention to my cake preferences.

I am confident that no one would argue that one type of cake is objectively and universally better, or worse. We recognize that our personal preferences do not define the inherent value of each option. Yet, despite my confidence in these facts when discussing cake, I am equally confident that many of us struggle with this concept when thinking about ourselves.

Let me be clear, just because a person, or many people consider us “not good enough” for them, doesn’t mean we aren’t good enough. It simply means we are their vanilla cake.

As I write this, I need to share that this is what DBT calls my “wise mind” speaking. Wise mind is when we are able to balance our rational thinking and our emotions. It is my wise mind that explains this concept to clients facing the end of a relationship. I believe this wholeheartedly.

But then there is what my emotion mind tells me.

When we are in emotion mind, our emotions override our capability for rational thought.

Like most people, my emotion mind takes over at times. These are the times when I can forget about chocolate and vanilla cake. These are the times when all of us are susceptible to the deeper fears that we are somehow “not good enough.”

Our emotion mind can play tricks on us. To do so, it often distorts our thoughts in two ways that make us jump from “this person doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me” to “I am not good enough for anyone.”

First, emotion mind increases the likelihood that we personalize information and events. In the case of a relationship ending, we use this distortion to assume the end is all about us and all our fault. Wise mind, in contrast, recognizes that any relationship is between two people. That means the relationship ending also falls on both parties.

In addition to personalizing, our emotion mind often leads us to generalize. We generalize from one instance to all instances. If one person says we are not good enough, we may generalize this to believe all people think we are not good enough. The end result is that we think we are not good enough. A more wise mind approach is to remember that one person’s thoughts do not represent everyone’s thoughts. After all, do you know anything that everyone agrees on?

My wise mind knows my preference for chocolate cake is about my preferences. It is not about the cake and it is not everyone’s opinion.

Sometimes we need our wise mind to really shout at our emotion mind!

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