I see this a lot as it is quite an effective coping mechanism (in the short term!) for some people, but essentially it’s a big attempt to avoid actually feeling any feelings at all. We don’t want to do that because often when avoiding dealing with emotions completely, this can end up backfiring. When this backfires, it can look like an emotional rush, panic attack, or sleeplessness – often at the times we are least prepared for the emotions to wash over us.
The Importance of Feeling Our Emotions:
The way that we can avoid that unexpected wash of emotions is by not avoiding our emotions when they come up. They’re there for a reason. We need to feel our emotions so that we understand what they’re signaling to us so we can take action.
Intellectualizing your emotions is when you try to explain away your feelings with intellect, facts, and logic. It can be highly useful in certain moments but it can also be not so useful if we do it regularly and as a coping mechanism every time we feel any emotion at all.
In sessions, this can looks like me saying “what do you feel right now” and the person will respond with “I think it was a good choice that I made”. That is not a feeling! That’s intellectualizing your emotion to avoid actually feeling the emotion. Remember, that when a person decided emotions are bad/unhelpful, that their tendency is to rationalize ALL feelings – the “bad” feelings and the “good” feelings are all intellectualized.
How you feel right now is an actual emotion so the response we’re looking for is more laong the lines of “brave, scared, vulnerable, sad, etc”. We’re looking for an emotion and an actual feeling that you’re connected to.
If you are one of those that like to intellectualize their emotions, that’s okay. We all do it at different times! It’s normal. It’s if you’re doing it all the time that it can be a problem because it can backfire on you.
Try to let yourself feel the feeling and try to understand what you’re feeling by saying “I feel [x] because [y]…”. These “I feel X because Y” statements can really help you return back to the emotion rather than intellectualizing. E.g. “I feel frustrated because things didn’t work out the way I hoped.
