Emotional Reasoning.
Having been interested in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for a good while, due to my own issues related to depression and anxiety, I have found perhaps the most insidious cognitive distortion of them all.
It is named "emotional reasoning".
There isn't any way to reason with it, because it is inherently emotional. The fact that it is called as a reasoning process is somewhat illusory, due to the fact that it isn't inherently logical, predictable, or actually reasonable.
Every doctor, therapist, or a psychiatrist is aware that in times of crisis people are overwhelmed with feelings of dread, despair, and a whole amalgamate of negative emotions that give momentum to self-destructive thoughts about suicide, homicide, and such matters.
Just this past week, I was overwhelmed with feelings of suffering and was quite helplessly wallowing and crying about my predicament. No matter what I thought hard enough the feeling of despair and anguish of having to face them constantly returned. I saught emotional support in talking with my sister and mother, which helped; but, wasn't completely resolving the issue.
Now, I have learned from this experience that has happened for more than once, that patience and impulsivity are two traits that can only help in times of trial and tribulations.
Meaning, that reasoning is quite hopeless in the face of such feelings. Yet, is it?
Hume is known to have said that reason is the handmaiden of the passions. Is that true in light of this cognitive distortion that at times every one of us may face?
It is named "emotional reasoning".
There isn't any way to reason with it, because it is inherently emotional. The fact that it is called as a reasoning process is somewhat illusory, due to the fact that it isn't inherently logical, predictable, or actually reasonable.
Every doctor, therapist, or a psychiatrist is aware that in times of crisis people are overwhelmed with feelings of dread, despair, and a whole amalgamate of negative emotions that give momentum to self-destructive thoughts about suicide, homicide, and such matters.
Just this past week, I was overwhelmed with feelings of suffering and was quite helplessly wallowing and crying about my predicament. No matter what I thought hard enough the feeling of despair and anguish of having to face them constantly returned. I saught emotional support in talking with my sister and mother, which helped; but, wasn't completely resolving the issue.
Now, I have learned from this experience that has happened for more than once, that patience and impulsivity are two traits that can only help in times of trial and tribulations.
Meaning, that reasoning is quite hopeless in the face of such feelings. Yet, is it?
Hume is known to have said that reason is the handmaiden of the passions. Is that true in light of this cognitive distortion that at times every one of us may face?
Comments (39)
I would guess reasoning serves the purpose of getting to the right end scenario. It is the part that can attempt to calculate the way through to the desirable situation. So, despite emotional difficulties, reasoning can be used to not loose sight of the bigger picture.
Quoting Wallows
I don't think we are strictly divided into emotional and rational. Both need to coexist and cooperate in an organic way. In other words, it's not about turning on the reasoning side and or the emotional side. In that sense, "emotional reasoning" may make sense, for all I know. Anyway, my two cents.
Interesting. So, you would assert that there is some metalogical component to the reasoning process that gives rise to some reciprocal relationship between the emotions and reason?
Quoting Kaz
Well, yet here we are talking about them in some dichotomistic fashion? Is it language that is confusing us here or what?
This makes me think of Perl's Gestalt, where he mentions that awareness can help facilitate the self-regulation of emotions. Probably similar to laying down with a flu and letting it being worked out by the body itself. Or so his talk went. I wouldn't call the relationship reciprocal, personally. Since they work together, one cannot be imagined without the other, which makes it difficult to talk about it as well.
Quoting Wallows
Probably. Sometimes being more reasonable means being more emotional.
Ah, an important concept. Self-regulation. Why do people stray away from some safe equilibrium or state of affairs and risk disturbing themselves? What is this component of human nature called? Risk taking, exploratory behavior, etc.?
Quoting Kaz
Can you provide an example?
I would argue that most people are nowhere near the safe equilibrium. There are disturbances of one sort or another, and achieving equilibrium isn't that simple since the self-regulation process requires continuous awareness, at least as far as Perl's Gestalt is concerned.
Quoting Wallows
Let's say my brother is going through difficult times, but he hates me just sitting there and listening to him while making only practical suggestions. He wants me to show some emotions and empathy towards him and his situation. So, for the benefit of my brother, and for my own sake to emotionally connect with my brother, it is reasonable for me to be emotional with him.
As far as I understand the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex are supposed to work in tandem. Without emotions one wouldn’t be able to make decisions. The limbic system places emotional value to the logical choices governed by the prefrontal cortex. Or something like that.
So, is it ideation itself to assert that some state of affairs will lead to complete bliss and nirvana? Buddhism talks about such a state of affairs quite a lot and isn't the easiest philosophy to master despite the simplicity and elegance of its core message.
Quoting Kaz
But, he's there talking with you. Isn't that enough?
True. What do you think about "emotional reasoning"? I'm trying to disambiguate this concept here.
As far as I'm aware the Prefrontal cortex is responsible for inhibition of emotions and stimulus control.
As someone interested in a lifelong goal of mastering the art of reasoning and impulse control, I tend to place a great deal of interest in my PFC, rather than the wild and rambunctious limbic system.
But like I said, the limbic system is crucial to making decisions. One could think about options all day long, but without an emotional value placed, you would go nowhere.
Isn't that "philosophy" in a nutshell? Hehe?
Maybe. The circumstances don't have to be ideal, but there are elements that can contribute to deviating person from that equilibrium, such as modern obsession with jobs and careers, approaches to relationships, and health related issues.
Quoting Wallows
Maybe it is, maybe it is not. However, if it is preferable for me to be emotional and it brings benefits to both me and my brother, it is reasonable for me to be emotional.
Plato would have called it an ailment of the mind and society that produces such disharmonious states of affairs. Marcus Aurelius was very concerned with treating philosophy as an act of self-therapy. Even if we boil down the issue to devising a calculus of utility, the goal should be the reduction of the least common denominator to maximize benefits. Such, as limiting the scope and range of one's desire and passion.
Quoting Kaz
I contest that it is never rational to act on emotions in an uninhibited and without reflexivity.
I do use some of the philosophy for therapeutic purposes, but for the life of me, I cannot get into Stoics. Some of what Seneca's writings had comforting effect on me, but I couldn't identify with the Stoics past certain passages.
Quoting Wallows
Well, in the example of the brother, the rational calculation could have preceded the acting in an emotional state. I get tangled here, though. Getting back to how rational and emotional are not two strictly divided parts, even the emotionally uninhibited behaviour contains some rationality. Why is it never rational to you?
How about Wittgenstein, or Schopenhauer?
Quoting Kaz
Yes, it is puzzling. I suggest the best option is to always listen to what is rational?
Not well read in either of them, regrettably. My therapeutic examples would be Camus' Myth of Sisyphus and Sartre's short stories. There's something refreshing about absurdism. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology is oddly comforting, too.
Quoting Wallows
Best for what? Could you give an example of rational vs. emotional?
Ah, both comforting stories to the mind. Yet, strangely comforting in their fatalism.
Quoting Kaz
Going to Las Vegas to have fun might be a good example. If one were relatively poor, then what's the point?
Well, why is having fun the right rational point? What if it's done on a whim while one is rich?
Well, there is a typical tendency to place a great deal of emphasis on the gratification of wants and needs as resulting in happiness. This is a distorted view, which I don't believe in at least, though.
Then is it still rational, to act in a way that's based on a distorted view of reality?
Well, if one were to actually believe in the notion that gratifying wants and needs would produce lasting happiness, then I suppose that would be a rationale, though not rational...
I say that it's not rational because it's an endless marathon run that is the attainment of happiness, and is most likely not a result of direct behavior; but, rather indirectly.
What kind of behaviour is rational to you then? Or rather, what kind of lifestyle.
Perhaps one as close as possible to a Buddhist one, what do you think about it?
Well, getting one with the authentic self (whatever that means in the end). The idea of not identifying with one of the roles we play in our society, but actually becoming that which is our own potential. Again, Gestalt and some Jungian ideas can be incorporated here.
Sounds like you're describing a runaway positive feedback, not a healthy and necessary, negative one. What I've taken from CBT, which doesn't seem it will ever lead to mental health (for me anyway) compared to auto-psychoanalysis is that it recommends something like canceling negative thoughts. Of course we know from the genius of Freud, that whatever is denied or repressed has a boomerang effect, and returns as repressed derivatives (which are controlled by instinct's dominations). Canceling anything that goes through your thought-feelings isn't a good idea for mental health due to the above mentioned feedbacks/feedforwards we've known about for a long time now. We have depression and anxiety for a reason, it hasn't popped out of the blue.
Quoting WallowsWhat, now? Not sure what this means.Quoting WallowsThe relationship between what you are conscious of and unconscious of is a place difficult to enter with reason, and maybe it's true it isn't enough. When you feel empty inside, running away from that feeling isn't going to help because that is what is. Never run away from what is. The trick is to have a psychopomp in you, or a Hermes or a Janus that can communicate between states of consciousness. Maybe when we are more self-aware, we are less conscious of our unconscious and when we are less self-aware, the unconscious is more conscious of the consciousness. There's nowhere consciousness doesn't exist, it's only awareness that does or doesn't exist in various states of mind.Quoting WallowsI've given up on passion as a meaningful source of anything good or that will advance you wholistically. Passionate people are usually impulsive, compulsive, and infantile, myself included when I used to get passionate. Now the concept of least effort has replaced passion. Wu-wei is a much healthier and more intelligent substrate of psychological well-being and integration than passion. I'd recommend giving up passion and do all that is done in the spirit of Wu-wei (least effort).
I mean to imply that since there is no way to reason with depressive ruminations or anxious neurosis, then one must wait for the storm to pass and clean up and salvage what can be salvaged after the storm.
Quoting Anthony
Interesting. What is this Wu-wei, thing?
Yes, there is a disposition to view the Buddhist's life as restricted and self-deprivation; but, I don't necessarily feel as though this is true.
One issue that has cropped up for me in regards to Buddhism in the West, is trying to reconcile the Western obsession with growth, economics, and consumption with Buddhism. I haven't found a way to resolve the discrepancy, and the only way to do so would be to move to a monastery or to India or Nepal.
What do you mean by "authentic self"? I find this concept interesting.
A self that is not engaged in playing any role. For example, I may chose to get a certain job for financial reasons, but me identifying with that role would not be my authentic self. Me identifying with my job title would be superficial at best. The authentic self is the self that realises its own potential. Again, to bring in some Gestalt from Perls, playing a societal role is something we do for practical purposes of our survival and functioning within a society. The authentic self may not necessarily be connected with that. It's difficult to define the authentic self clearly, in my opinion. The ones who really attained it may have been called sages in various traditions. So, in order to be "the sage", one has to become him. It's a developmental thing, while identifying as this or that role in society is just a choice of comfort.
Affectivity provides the sense, direction and significance of though, how and why things matter to us.
We think of intense emotion as 'irrational' when what those experiences represent are periods of a crisis of thinking, when our way of making sense are no longer effective and the world begins to appear incoherent, That is not a capture of intellect by emotion but a crisis in the intellect itself. We are anticipative creatures, and negative affects like far, grief, anger, and guilt signal transitions in our sense-making, when formerly effective schemes of anticipative comportment toward others and ourselves break down. That is why such affects are both painful and potentially creative. They represent where the limits of our understanding lie.
That’s very interesting. It’s as if emotional breakdowns may have some evolutionary significance. Do you think that CBT is wrong-headed?
I don’t know enough about it, but that seems to me to be the philosophy behind it.
Yes, quite true. I have had my reservations about CBT as a reflexive "band-aid" that can be applied at the symptoms of an issue; but, never really the cause of the source of discomfort or some such.
However, this all hinges on how much you think reason can be a guiding force in shaping one's state of mind. CBT, REBT, and ancient Stoicism contested contra Hume, that reason has a more dominant role in shaping one's mindset and not as a passive feature of humanity.
Traditionally, it tends to be equated with objectivity and logic, and that's a dead end as far as understanding actual sense-making phenomenologically. Logic treats meaning within an artificially closed universe,
What is recommended to contravene the DMN? Onset of sleep and sleep not REM, sleep deprivation, psychedelic drugs, deep brain stimulation (probably TMN and direct current TMN), meditation, psychotherapy, and anti-depressants (booo).
As for anxious neurosis, it's one type of neurosis amid myriad. Psychoneurosis is the more important, or capital affect of neuroses on mental health. This is what describes how blocked instinct returns in a disguised response or symptom (derived and disguised from the material that was originally repressed or denied). So psychoneurotic blocking often leads to mania and impulsiveness..or maybe anxiousness. Which is what I think of when I think of CBT's weakness. We ought not to seek to be disguised from our own recognition. Neurosis is as bad as psychosis, that neurosis is accepted as necessary to socio-economic functioning is a big blow to mental health of modernity. It must be something is wrong with the socio-economic values of the times they cause so much neuroses and mental illness (ego is necessary to function in the market society, where ego is essentially consubstantial with psychoneurosis). Diseases that stem from psychoneurosis, and their virulence, are fairly largely underappreciated.
Quoting Wallows
It could be that effort or exertion is what leads to the tightening of the posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex of the DMN. Lessening effort may lessen the open/existing paths in the brain and make them relax to more expansive routes and create new anastamotic branchings. This ceasing to try and relinquishing the struggle of existence, the fight...is possibly analogous to wu-wei (as I think of it). In the west, we've been insinuated with a false maxim you must use effort to advance in life. Violating this false maxim and unlearning that effort is necessary to get anywhere is probably beneficial to mental health. Wu-wei is a concept from Taoism.