Dr Katzenstein continues…
“As we continue our discussion of how our emotions can often cloud our perception of reality, we will study a phenomenon called emotional reasoning. Emotional reasoning is a distortion in which a person concludes that their emotional reaction proves that something is true, without considering any evidence that proves otherwise. Simply put, it’s when your emotions cloud your thoughts, which in turn can cloud your reality.
This is a pattern of what we call negative thinking, and it can cause a lot of unnecessary distress in life.
Signs of emotional reasoning include thoughts like, “I feel guilty, so it must be that I've done something wrong.” Or, “I feel inadequate, so it must be that I'm worthless.” Or, “I feel afraid, so it must be that I'm in a dangerous situation.”We feel a certain way, and then we conclude, based on that feeling, that there must be something true, otherwise we wouldn't feel this way.
Emotions aren’t positive or negative. They may indicate something to be accurate, but it's also possible that they're inaccurate.
For example, someone who's afraid of spiders might feel, in the moment like the spider may kill them, but we know objectively that that's extremely unlikely. Emotional reasoning can lead a person to feel like a failure before even beginning working toward something. Letting our emotions take over is exhausting and can often very trick us into thinking we've failed before we've even begun.
This can lead to procrastination or even not doing the task we aimed to do at all.
When emotions take over, it also can decrease the desire to change, because of the feeling that change isn't possible even if we were to try.”