Cognitive Distortions: Emotional Reasoning

[@thehayleygrace]

Thank you so much for this informative and helpful series. I was hoping you’d cover emotional reasoning so very excited to see this pop up today!

[@RandyPaterson]

You’re very welcome.

[@ShaunLuttin]

I find it useful to engage with the content by brainstorming those "slogans" or "mantras." 1. Don't believe everything you feel. 2. Bad appraisal, bad emotion. 3. Emotions follow appraisals. 4. Feeling tired doesn't make it correct. 5. Feelings don't justify facts. 6. Reality hides behind feelings. 7. Feel the effect, investigate the cause. 8. Emotions cloud reality. 9. Act through the feeling. 0. Reappraise your feeling. I find it exhausting to stay on top of these distortions, because my mind produces such a steady stream of rubbish. Instead, sometimes it's worth ignoring them and acting contrary to the feeling. Yes. I have distorted appraisals; they seem persistent; I can mostly ignore 'em, accept 'em, and get on with life. Move to a tiny act of self-care; do a tiny task-focused action toward self-preservation. The emotions provide one, biased guide to behavior. I can pay attention to other guides like the colors and sounds around me, and the need to eat something and shower myself! Take a bit of rest - only a bit (nothing too ruminative) - and then DO something. Would you consider it a reasonable end goal of cognitive therapy for a person to land at 1. a bias toward self-care action coupled with 2. a skepticism of the vast majority of their appraisals?

[@aronbalogh42]

We would gladly see some sucess stories about falire to launch syndrome!! Thank you!!!

[@RandyPaterson]

The first of a series of posts on this subject - most involving parenting and family dynamics - is now up: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bnLVkK2veNNnaaM

[@mackenzieclark1501]

Thanks this series helped a lot!

[@RandyPaterson]

You're welcome.

[@Orangebitingthing]

I like to tell myself when I'm jumping to conclusions that Evil Kanevil couldn't make that jump😅

[@Jsmith-xi8ft]

Ah, then the reverse must also be true. If I'm feeling joyful/happy, and I can't trust my gut feeling because it may be incorrect and/or inaccurate to reality, so maybe, in reality, I'm really miserable. Double bind.

[@RandyPaterson]

Keep in mind that the principle isn’t about distrusting that you feel what you feel. It’s about whether those feelings are a reliable guide to what’s actually going on in external reality. So yes, this applies to both uncomfortable emotion and positive emotion. When, for example, you have had four beers and feel a deep sense of confidence that your driving is unimpaired, that feeling is a poor guide to the actual state of affairs.