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Try this right now: Pick an emotion. Fear, anger, etc. Now, using logic, make yourself feel that emotion. How did it go? I picked fear. I reasoned myself into f

Try this right now: Pick an emotion. Fear, anger, etc. Now, using logic, make yourself feel that emotion. How did it go? I picked fear. I reasoned myself into feeling a little bit worried, but I sure didn't experience actual fear. So why do we think we can reason ourselves out of emotions? Something that has been helpful for me is the idea of the 'Wise' mind. How individuals deal with experience like anxiety (or anything else) falls on a spectrum. On one end is the 'logical' mind, much like you described. On the other is the 'emotional' mind. In the middle is the Wise mind. I spent most of my life far into the logical side of the spectrum, and the most useful thing I've ever done for my anxiety is shifting more into the center. Most of your post focuses on training yourself to think critically and using logic to treat anxiety. I've spent many years working on my anxiety with various techniques and therapists. The common factor among all the things that did help was that you can't just use logical thinking to fix anxiety! We may use logic all day at work to fix problems, but you simply cannot reason yourself out of experiencing anxiety. Emotions play a huge role in anxiety and really cannot be ignored or just reasoned away. They need to be experienced. They need to be felt and expressed. And once they are, logic is a useful tool, as you said, to dive into them and think more about why you are feeling that way. This is also my opinion, and I'm glad you have the logical portion figured out. But please don't ignore the illogical, emotional aspect. It's trickier and messier, but it can be figured out.

Jarwain 10y ago
I personally think of my emotions as actual Things that I interact with or feel logically. I feel and express whatever emotion I have, and I try to logically understand it. I believe trying to ignore or rationalize it away is the worst thing one could do, but understanding the feeling, feeling the feeling, and understanding Why i'm feeling the feeling is important. And I tend to go about this discovery/understanding in a logical/rational way in terms of your exercise, I evoked an emotion through taking a memory, and extrapolating in a certain direction. I've done it before, brought myself to tears, but I think sadness is one of the easier things to evoke.
- devilsavocado 10y ago
  Right, just so we're clear, I think you relied on memories and emotional thinking to bring out other emotions, not logical thinking? You didn't come up with a proof for why you should be sad and then started crying. I definitely agree that trying to ignore or rationalize away emotions is the worst way to handle them.
Domenic_S 10y ago
Here's where I found logic does help: 1) Acknowledging that you're not the only one battling anxiety (makes you feel not so alone) 2) Realizing that the negative feelings will pass (whether through pharmacy or death -- nothing's forever) 3) (useful for GAD/agoraphobia) Asking "what's the worst that can happen [if I have anxiety/a panic attack]?" and following that to its truthful, logical end. Unless you're a pilot or tightrope walker, the answer is usually nothing, which takes off some stress and helps. 4) Recognizing automatic thoughts and discarding them. Anxiety is often marked by runaway "snowball" thoughts (my cat is meowing funny, he must be sick, the vet will find cancer, the treatment will bankrupt me, I'll get fired, I'll be homeless, I'm going to die under a bridge). Practicing recognizing the start of those thoughts and intentionally saying, "nope, that isn't true or helpful" and guiding your mind elsewhere helps greatly. This often becomes second nature after a time. Like you said, there is a continuum. Our thoughts influence our feelings, and our feelings influence our thoughts.
- devilsavocado 10y ago
  Sounds right to me. Worded differently, #4 is the basis of Cognitive behavioral therapy. Except you can't quite just 'discard' thoughts, but I get your point.
PavlovsCat 10y ago
> So why do we think we can reason ourselves out of emotions? Well I think I'm doing it all the time. Annoyed about how some clerk treated you? Rate the importance of that on a scale from 0 to 100. Take 2 minutes pondering the heat death of the universe. Rate it again. Compare.
- devilsavocado 10y ago
  First, I think you're using more of a 'wise' mind than you think. You've (1) recognized the emotion that you are feeling and have acknowledged it, (2) thought about how important it was to you, and (3) compared it with other thoughts. To do all those you actually do have to experience the emotion and it sounds like you've got a hand on that. Second, not that your frustration with a clerk is not important, but when I was explaining not reasoning yourself out of emotions I was thinking more along the lines of intense anxiety. A few years ago I had an interview with a cool tech company for a position I really wanted. I was so anxious I threw up in the elevator (...sigh...) All the logical thinking in the world didn't help me.
thinkharder 10y ago
When you were thinking about fear, were you thinking about an actual threat, or an imaginary one? Was it something realistically possible, something that has caused you fear in the past, or something theoretically possible, like getting in a car accident. I tried the exercise and it took me about 30 seconds to work myself into a minor panic attack, and a couple of minutes to walk that back. I'm in the process of buying a home and didn't leave myself enough time between the offer and when I needed to deliver the earnest money check to make the bank transfers into the checking account I needed to do so the check will clear. Thinking about that creates enormous anxiety in me. Working out of it involves logically walking myself thru the steps, the possible outcomes, and what I need to do in the event of each outcome. Basically, if I deliver the check today and they deposit it same day, it won't clear until tomorrow, giving the transfers just enough time to get completed. I"m still slightly nervous about it, but it was easy to ramp that way the hell up. It was less easy, but completely possible to ramp it back down by thinking it thru. "Emotions play a huge role in anxiety and really cannot be ignored or just reasoned away. They need to be experienced. They need to be felt and expressed. And once they are, logic is a useful tool, as you said, to dive into them and think more about why you are feeling that way." You are totally right there. What i learned in CBT: you experience emotions. Period. You have no control over whether or not you feel them, and if you try to repress them they will force their way out in weird and inappropriate ways. Emotions cause physical feelings in the body. Fear gives you that pit in your stomach, the FFF reflex fires up and your body prepares to flee, fight or freeze. As you experience the physical sensations, it provokes cognitive thoughts, and the combination of feelings and thoughts will produce actions. Each of these things feed back into each other either reinforcing them or diluting them. You may take actions that produce more fear, or actions that make you feel safer. Your thoughts may reinforce your emotions or calm them down. For me the big revelation was that there was a separation between emotions and feelings. To me they were literally the same thing. Understanding this concept has allowed me to find a tiny bit of space between experiencing the emotion and the physical sensations it provoked. That allows me (sometimes) to drive a wedge of logical thought in between them and experience the emotion, without it uncontrollably driving physical sensations that then uncontrollably drive thoughts that feed back into the emotion, creating a vicious cycle. It's true that you can't just tell yourself "stop being afraid". But there are a lot of cognitive things you can do to temper and interrupt the anxiety cycle. For me, it's not easy, takes a ton of work, but it DOES work, and it has changed the way I view life and my place in it in enormous positive ways.

Jarwain 10y ago

I personally think of my emotions as actual Things that I interact with or feel logically. I feel and express whatever emotion I have, and I try to logically understand it. I believe trying to ignore or rationalize it away is the worst thing one could do, but understanding the feeling, feeling the feeling, and understanding Why i'm feeling the feeling is important. And I tend to go about this discovery/understanding in a logical/rational way in terms of your exercise, I evoked an emotion through taking a memory, and extrapolating in a certain direction. I've done it before, brought myself to tears, but I think sadness is one of the easier things to evoke.

devilsavocado 10y ago
Right, just so we're clear, I think you relied on memories and emotional thinking to bring out other emotions, not logical thinking? You didn't come up with a proof for why you should be sad and then started crying. I definitely agree that trying to ignore or rationalize away emotions is the worst way to handle them.

Domenic_S 10y ago

Here's where I found logic does help: 1) Acknowledging that you're not the only one battling anxiety (makes you feel not so alone) 2) Realizing that the negative feelings will pass (whether through pharmacy or death -- nothing's forever) 3) (useful for GAD/agoraphobia) Asking "what's the worst that can happen [if I have anxiety/a panic attack]?" and following that to its truthful, logical end. Unless you're a pilot or tightrope walker, the answer is usually nothing, which takes off some stress and helps. 4) Recognizing automatic thoughts and discarding them. Anxiety is often marked by runaway "snowball" thoughts (my cat is meowing funny, he must be sick, the vet will find cancer, the treatment will bankrupt me, I'll get fired, I'll be homeless, I'm going to die under a bridge). Practicing recognizing the start of those thoughts and intentionally saying, "nope, that isn't true or helpful" and guiding your mind elsewhere helps greatly. This often becomes second nature after a time. Like you said, there is a continuum. Our thoughts influence our feelings, and our feelings influence our thoughts.

devilsavocado 10y ago
Sounds right to me. Worded differently, #4 is the basis of Cognitive behavioral therapy. Except you can't quite just 'discard' thoughts, but I get your point.

PavlovsCat 10y ago

> So why do we think we can reason ourselves out of emotions? Well I think I'm doing it all the time. Annoyed about how some clerk treated you? Rate the importance of that on a scale from 0 to 100. Take 2 minutes pondering the heat death of the universe. Rate it again. Compare.

devilsavocado 10y ago
First, I think you're using more of a 'wise' mind than you think. You've (1) recognized the emotion that you are feeling and have acknowledged it, (2) thought about how important it was to you, and (3) compared it with other thoughts. To do all those you actually do have to experience the emotion and it sounds like you've got a hand on that. Second, not that your frustration with a clerk is not important, but when I was explaining not reasoning yourself out of emotions I was thinking more along the lines of intense anxiety. A few years ago I had an interview with a cool tech company for a position I really wanted. I was so anxious I threw up in the elevator (...sigh...) All the logical thinking in the world didn't help me.

thinkharder 10y ago

When you were thinking about fear, were you thinking about an actual threat, or an imaginary one? Was it something realistically possible, something that has caused you fear in the past, or something theoretically possible, like getting in a car accident. I tried the exercise and it took me about 30 seconds to work myself into a minor panic attack, and a couple of minutes to walk that back. I'm in the process of buying a home and didn't leave myself enough time between the offer and when I needed to deliver the earnest money check to make the bank transfers into the checking account I needed to do so the check will clear. Thinking about that creates enormous anxiety in me. Working out of it involves logically walking myself thru the steps, the possible outcomes, and what I need to do in the event of each outcome. Basically, if I deliver the check today and they deposit it same day, it won't clear until tomorrow, giving the transfers just enough time to get completed. I"m still slightly nervous about it, but it was easy to ramp that way the hell up. It was less easy, but completely possible to ramp it back down by thinking it thru. "Emotions play a huge role in anxiety and really cannot be ignored or just reasoned away. They need to be experienced. They need to be felt and expressed. And once they are, logic is a useful tool, as you said, to dive into them and think more about why you are feeling that way." You are totally right there. What i learned in CBT: you experience emotions. Period. You have no control over whether or not you feel them, and if you try to repress them they will force their way out in weird and inappropriate ways. Emotions cause physical feelings in the body. Fear gives you that pit in your stomach, the FFF reflex fires up and your body prepares to flee, fight or freeze. As you experience the physical sensations, it provokes cognitive thoughts, and the combination of feelings and thoughts will produce actions. Each of these things feed back into each other either reinforcing them or diluting them. You may take actions that produce more fear, or actions that make you feel safer. Your thoughts may reinforce your emotions or calm them down. For me the big revelation was that there was a separation between emotions and feelings. To me they were literally the same thing. Understanding this concept has allowed me to find a tiny bit of space between experiencing the emotion and the physical sensations it provoked. That allows me (sometimes) to drive a wedge of logical thought in between them and experience the emotion, without it uncontrollably driving physical sensations that then uncontrollably drive thoughts that feed back into the emotion, creating a vicious cycle. It's true that you can't just tell yourself "stop being afraid". But there are a lot of cognitive things you can do to temper and interrupt the anxiety cycle. For me, it's not easy, takes a ton of work, but it DOES work, and it has changed the way I view life and my place in it in enormous positive ways.