What is Emotional Reasoning?
Regarding feelings as facts is a psychological phenomenon known as emotional reasoning. Emotional reasoning is the cognitive filter that makes a person believe that anything they are feeling or the emotional reaction they are having is true regardless of the evidence against it. Your mind creates an emotional truth and believes it to be true instead of the actual perception. The truth is, is that feelings do not equal facts. Simply put, emotional reasoning can look like this, “I feel fat,” therefore, “I must have gained weight” or that, “I feel nothing is going to get better” it means “future will not be good”.
It is one of the most common cognitive distortions that people engage in, finding something reasonable based on their emotional response in contrast to the actual truth. So what happens is that when we are doing emotional reasoning our decision making is dependent on the things we tell ourselves we feel rather than the logical reasoning of what actual event is. It is a presumption we make that triggers a whole process in our minds. The important thing to notice is that it is not necessarily the truth or only slightly true.
Emotional reasoning is inefficient and causes problematic behaviors. It is an unhealthy way to cope. For example, if someone is scared of flying, they might feel scared of getting on the plane and reason with themselves that it is in fact dangerous to fly. This might lead to avoidance and reinforce the avoidant behavior further increasing the phobia. Similarly, someone who is qualified enough to apply for a job might not do so because due to their low self-confidence they have rationalized without even applying that they will not get it because they are not capable.
One factor that seems to exaggerate this kind of thinking among people is the overemphasized idea of your gut feeling being true or right. Culturally, it is quite an established thing, that if your gut feeling is telling you not to do something, avoid it or that something bad is going to happen you should believe it. It is imperative that we work through this myth of gut feeling and look at life situations logically rather than based on off our feelings. As discussed in the above examples your gut feeling will be telling you not to do something because it is not your comfort zone or it makes you anxious, that does not amount to it being a fact. Feelings and emotional states are not equal to the facts or practical situations.
How to Cope with Emotional Reasoning?
Understand the ABC model of cognitive behavioral therapy that states that there is going to be an activating event from the external environment, how we respond to it depends on our underlying beliefs and thoughts that trigger our emotional states or behaviors. So the first and foremost thing to do is to look deep within and identify why am I using emotional reasoning to cope? What beliefs do I hold about myself or the situation? It is easy to get caught up in your emotions and feelings, however, if we take a few seconds and understand scientifically what is happening we will be able to start identifying whether or not a thing gets true just because we are feeling like it.
Secondly, consider your feelings as waves, they will come and go some days you might feel you are a failure that does not equate to the facts once you sit with yourself start logically listing things you have achieved and you can see for yourself that what you felt was different from reality. So it is imperative that you give yourself a few seconds to differentiate your emotional states from the factual information you have.
Lastly, give selective attention to your emotional states, not every thought or feeling means something, being hyper vigilant about what I am feeling leads to mental health issues such as anxiety, low and depressive moods, emotional dysregulation. Be mindful of your thoughts and emotional states with the realization that it is distinct from the reality it is a subjective state.
A Take Home Message
It is quite human to sometimes get too caught up in your feelings and consider that what you feel is how things really are. It is not a healthy way of thinking, it plays a major role in developing depression and anxiety disorders. If you struggle with anxious thoughts, depressive moods, overthinking, you can keep in mind that feelings are not equivalent to the facts, they are subjective in nature and are changeable.
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