Emotional Reasoning

When it tends to show up

• When you have an uneasy feeling but can’t say exactly why
• When things pile up and you feel rushed
• When you feel strongly guilty or awkward about something

A hint for another view

Try writing “what I’m feeling right now” and “what is actually happening” as two separate lines. Feelings are an important signal, but they aren’t always a forecast.

What is Emotional Reasoning

Emotional Reasoning is a habit of treating your feelings as direct evidence of the facts: "I feel this way, so it must actually be true." When you feel uneasy, you conclude "Something bad is going to happen." When you feel guilty, you conclude "I must have done something wrong." When you lack confidence, you conclude "I can't do this." In each case, the feeling decides the conclusion before anything else.

Feelings are an important signal that tells you about your own state. When something feels off and you become more careful, that is your feelings doing their job. But feelings change as easily as the weather, and they are strongly affected by tiredness, lack of sleep and how your body feels that day. When you treat the mood of the moment as if it were a fact, problems that haven't actually happened can start to feel real, and you may feel down more easily.

There is nothing strange about having this habit. When you are feeling something strongly, it is hard for anyone to doubt it. Noticing "I might be using a feeling as evidence right now" is the first step toward seeing things differently.

Everyday examples

At work, when several tasks land on you at once and you start to feel rushed, you may become convinced "There's no way I'll finish," or "This is more than I can handle." Yet when you actually list the tasks one by one, it often turns out to be an amount you can finish in time. A report, a few emails and getting ready for a meeting, all due the same afternoon, can feel like a mountain; written down, each one may turn out to take about half an hour.

At school, if you get a vague sense of dread before an exam, you may decide the result in advance: "I'm definitely going to do badly this time." You may have studied just as much as usual, but the uneasy feeling alone becomes the forecast for the result.

At home, after you speak a little harshly to someone in your family, you may feel so sorry that you keep dwelling on it: "I did something terrible," "They'll never forgive me." The other person may have already let it go, yet the size of your guilt feels like the size of what happened.

In friendships and dating, just feeling some awkwardness in a conversation can make you sense "This relationship might be over." On social media, seeing other people's posts can leave you with a vague feeling of being left behind, and you may decide "I'm the only one whose life isn't going well." The feeling of being left behind is real, but it is not the same thing as proof that you actually are.

When it tends to get stronger

Emotional Reasoning tends to get stronger when your feelings are swinging widely. The stronger the feeling, whether it is pressure, unease, guilt or awkwardness, the more it feels like "the right answer."

It is also affected by your physical state. When you haven't slept enough, when you are hungry, or when you haven't had a proper break in a long time, the same event tends to feel heavier. Late at night, when you are mulling things over alone, is also a time when feelings easily pull conclusions along with them. Something that seemed manageable at lunchtime can feel impossible at one in the morning, even though nothing about the situation itself has changed.

Questions that help you find another view

When a feeling is about to decide the conclusion, try asking yourself questions like these:

• What happens if you write "what I'm feeling right now" and "what is actually happening" separately?
• Apart from the feeling, what facts support that conclusion?
• If you thought about the same thing on a day when you were in a good mood, how might it feel?
• After a good night's rest, would you likely reach the same conclusion?

Feelings are an important signal, but they aren't always a forecast. Accepting your feelings without denying them, while checking the facts separately as facts, can make it a little easier to think calmly. For example, writing "I feel like I'll never finish" on one line and "I have five tasks, and two of them are short" on the next can make the difference between the two easier to see.

How it differs from similar patterns

Emotional Reasoning often shows up together with Jumping to Conclusions. Jumping to Conclusions is a habit of guessing a bad conclusion from small clues, like someone's expression or how quickly they reply. The difference is that Emotional Reasoning bases its conclusion not on outside clues, but on the feelings inside you. Suppose a friend hasn't replied: reading their silence as anger is closer to Jumping to Conclusions, while thinking "I feel uneasy, so something must be wrong between us" is closer to Emotional Reasoning.

It can also overlap with Should Statements. Should Statements is a habit of blaming yourself when you can't keep your personal "I should" rules. When guilt makes you feel "I did something wrong," there is often a rule about "how things should be" behind it, and the two habits can strengthen each other.