Improving Our Mental Health: Emotional Reasoning

This post is part of a series about cognitive distortions I've dealt with and how changing them helps improve my mental health. Of the sixteen most common cognitive distortions (read: Cognitive Distortions: When Your Brain Lies to You to see all sixteen), I'll be writing on the handful of distortions that have been most helpful for me to tackle.

Emotional Reasoning is a common distortion that everyone deals with from time to time. An excellent article on emotional reading can be found on the Psychology Today website: "What is Emotional Reasoning and Why is It Such a Problem?"

The PsychCentral article, "15 Common Cognitive Distortions," says emotional reasoning:

can be summed up by the statement, “If I feel that way, it must be true.” Whatever a person is feeling is believed to be true automatically and unconditionally. If a person feels stupid and boring, then they must be stupid and boring.

Everyone does this. From your attributes as a person to your taste in restaurants, it's easy to believe that if you feel a certain way about something, it must be true. For example: if you feel like you're a boring person, you must be a boring person.

To combat this cognitive distortion, you can use facts. Let's take the boring person example. Say you feel like a boring person. As a result, you avoid social interactions because you feel like you'll just bore people. You ignore evidence to the contrary like the fact you have friends who want to spend time with you.

You also give yourself a feeling of helplessness when you think, "I am a boring person." Rather than consider things that may help you feel more confident in social situations like learning how to ask people questions, sharing things about your hobbies or interests, or talking about things you are knowledgeable about, you instead avoid social interactions altogether because you feel like you are boring.

You can apply using facts and solutions to all kinds of emotional reasoning. What facts might contradict how you feel about something? What are some solutions you could apply to change your negative feelings?

Thanks for reading.