Ask a Psychologist: What is Emotional Intellectualisation?
We all do it. Something happens that hits us hard, instead of sitting with those feelings, we find ourselves breaking down in our head exactly why it occurred, providing a rational explanation to the distress. Maybe we are listing all the logical reasons why a relationship ended rather than acknowledging the heartbreak. Or perhaps we are researching statistics about job loss instead of feeling the anxiety and disappointment.
This pattern has a name: emotional intellectualisation.
What Does Emotional Intellectualisation Mean?
Intellectualisation occurs when we try to explain and reason emotional experience, as though these explanations are facts. This helps us to ‘feel’ in control and to ‘feel’ that we have a solution for every emotion and to think our way out of emotions.
Emotional intellectualisation is a form of emotional avoidance. By reasoning emotions in a rational and factual way, we are trying to remove ourselves from the experience as much as possible. We try to engage our cognition and thoughts to eliminate our feelings.
This approach might feel safer - after all, logic feels more controllable than raw emotions. However, emotional intellectualisation is actually a form of emotional avoidance. By reasoning emotions in a rational way, we're trying to remove ourselves from the experience as much as possible.
Why We Turn to Emotional Intellectualisation
Several factors contribute to us intellectualising our emotions:
Growing up affects how we deal with feelings now. If our parents told us"stop crying" or "think before you feel." We picked up that emotions “are bad”, and explaining emotions rationally looked better than actually having them. We might also then start to invalidate our feelings, believing that emotions are unreasonable, and invalid, and that we “should not have them”.
Sometimes feelings get too intense and our cognition takes over. Sometimes the panicky feeling when emotions seem way too big. Our brain goes "nope, let's think about this instead" rather than actually feeling it, aiming to reduce the suffering of experiencing intense emotions.
Past experiences shape our responses. If we have experienced traumatic or deeply challenging experiences, staying in an intellectual place about them can help us feel safe and comforted, keeping these intense experiences from a distance. This usually feels safer than vulnerability.
The Costs of Avoiding Our Emotions
Using logic to handle emotions might help briefly at the start, however, there are challenges that come about.
Emotional Regulation
Always intellectualising means we miss out on learning emotional regulation. Emotional regulation requires us to be able to notice, identify, and name emotions to start. By intellectualising emotions, it might mean that we don’t (often) feel the actual emotions, making emotional regulation challenging. Intellectualisation means there is an inherent judgement of emotions, thus we may find it difficult to open up and seek support
Unresolved Underlying Issues
Avoiding emotional pain means we're not finding healthy ways to process and make sense of difficult situations or issues. The underlying emotional suffering remains unaddressed because we falsely believe they've been "resolved" through logical explanation, and that we can “move on”.
Social Distance
Genuine connection happens when we are in touch with ourselves and our emotions. It occurs when we are vulnerable with someone. If we struggle to feel or connect with our emotions, it contributes to emotional distancing from important others in our life. Subsequently, building a warm and genuine connection, where we feel seen and accepted, becomes challenging. We might also find it hard to fully appreciate others’ emotional experience, which may lead to feelings of loneliness and disconnectedness socially.
Emotional Awareness
Emotions are useful in many ways. They communicate to ourselves what’s happening to us, and what our values and needs are. When we rely heavily on intellectualisation, we miss out on these cues. Sometimes, it is then hard to meet our needs or have our boundaries reinforced due to the same.
Reducing Emotional Intellectualisation
Recognise the Pattern
The first step is to notice when we intellectualise a feeling. When there is a trigger, might it be external or internal (another emotion, thought, or body sensation), start by noticing and asking ourselves, “how am I feeling right now?”, “what’s the emotion that I can feel right now?”
Practice Emotional Awareness
Start identifying emotions as they arise.
Noticing when we are having an emotional experience
Noticing where we feel it in your body
Naming the specific emotion
Telling ourselves that it is okay to have emotions, and they are safe
Sitting with the feeling for a few moments before thinking through it
Develop Emotional Tolerance
When we start feeling an emotion, it helps to stretch our emotional tolerance window. Tolerating an emotion means that we are feeling and acknowledging an emotion as a starting point. We then subsequently can learn how to manage it. The goal is not to completely eliminate emotions, but to learn to make room for distress, which then helps us develop strategies to reduce the intensity of these emotions.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Emotional intellectualisation occurs when we try to explain and reason our emotional experiences, treating these explanations as facts rather than acknowledging the feelings themselves. It's a psychological defence mechanism where reasoning is used to manage internal conflicts and their associated emotional stress.
It's like putting on analytical glasses whenever emotions get too intense. We engage our thinking brain to eliminate uncomfortable feelings, creating distance between ourselves and what we're actually experiencing.
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A common example would be that someone has a strict parent and they are hurt and angry about it. When they are asked about their childhood, they say something like: "Yes, my parents were quite firm, I suppose that’s the way it is back in the days.". Or they say “I see where they are coming from, they want the best for us all.” In both answers, emotions are not acknowledged, rather an intellectual explanation is provided to understand the situation as well as the emotions that once is feeling.
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There are a number of therapeutic approaches that help with emotional intellectualisation. E.g., Mindfulness, DBT. These therapeutic helps us to be more understanding, validating and aware of our emotional experience.
Take the Next Step Awareness and being in touch with our emotions are the first steps to start managing our emotions in a healthy way. It is often challenging, and for some people painful to start acknowledging our emotions. By noticing and naming our emotions, it then helps us validate and understand how and why certain emotions occur. The power of validation is discussed extensively. Following this, we can then come up with ways to effectively manage our emotions.
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