EMOTIONAL REASONING

This thinking pattern has become a habit for us that we might not be even aware of doing this. Emotional reasoning happens when our feelings tell us what reality is about situations, ourselves, and others. Here feelings become facts. 

You feel guilty, 'you must've done something wrong', 'you feel attacked, he must be getting at you', 'you feel scared, something awful is about to happen', 'If you feel fat, that means you're fat', etc..We treat our feelings as if they were evidence for the truth of our negative thoughts, when the truth is that our emotions cloud out judgement and make it hard for us to see things clearly.




How to escape from this thinking pattern?

• Recognise that your emotions are not necessarily accurate guides when it comes to establishing the facts and the truth.

• Set your feelings to one side and consider what hard evidence there may be that supports your conclusions.

• Consider other possible explanations.

• Ask yourself: "Would someone else be reacting to this situation in the same way?"

Of course emotions are important for the information they provide, but they have to be interpreted in an objective way to understand what they mean.