Distortion 5. Emotional Reasoning

Hi everyone! Thank you for following our learning about cognitive distortions series. You have shown great courage by challenging your negative thoughts and putting in consistent effort to reframe your mindset. All this consistent work will pay off!

Today we will talk about another common cognitive distortion that can mess with our minds. It is called ‘Emotional Reasoning’ also known as ‘Feeling Driven Thinking’. Simply put it's a fault in our thinking where we rely on our feelings to decide if something is true, even when the evidence states otherwise. It does overlap with already discussed cognitive distortions such as mind reading and catastrophizing. Still, it's important to look at this alone as we need to understand that regardless of the intensity of our emotions, feelings alone don’t dictate whether something is true/false, right or wrong. 

Example:

• You feel guilty because you had to cancel a meeting with a friend. You believe you did something wrong based on your feelings of guilt when in fact you had no choice but to cancel as you fell sick. 
• You believe your teacher could never treat someone poorly as she is always nice to you. When in fact several people have stated experiencing unjust treatment. 
• You suspect your partner is cheating on you but there is no clear evidence that can support this feeling
• You believe you are not worthy of a role, despite having done many projects with the skill set needed to complete this new role. 
• You think no one cares about you as you feel lonely but people consistently reach out to you and make an attempt to include you in their events/meet-ups. 

It is important to understand that your feelings are valid and there is plenty of room for you to sit with them. However, your feelings do not dictate reality. It's important to make this distinction that how you feel does not equal how it is! This empowers you to see the world beyond the lens of emotions open yourself up for more opportunities and avoid unnecessary heartbreak. 

As always we will try to use facts/evidence to counter these strong thoughts and feelings so we can have a more neutral view of life. 

📢Points of Action:

Find out your personal hit rate (how accurate your negative assumptions are), don’t just assume, look into your past and get an accurate percentage. (You can skip this if you recall this from our last post)

Counter your emotional thoughts with counter-positive thoughts based on logic/facts/experience. 

⭐After practicing this with at least one thought. Tell us about your experience with this exercise.

⭐ When was the last time you engaged in emotional reasoning and what likely was the truth of the situation based on facts/evidence? 

Additional Resources
Emotional Reasoning

This post is part of the 'Learning about cognitive distortions series'. The series starts here!