In the last two blogs we’ve been looking at the common cognitive distortions that are used by people struggling with sex addiction and porn addiction when they want to act out. And we also looked at the cognitive distortions partners use in an unconscious attempt to protect themselves from further pain and trauma. In this blog, we’re going to focus on one particular cognitive distortion – emotional reasoning.
Emotional reasoning is getting a whole blog to itself because it is such an insidious process. It is a very subtle cognitive distortion that can have devastating consequences for our mental health and for our relationships. Here we will be focussing on the impact it has on recovery from addiction and recovery from betrayal trauma, but first let’s look a little deeper at what we know about it.
According to Wikipedia, “Emotional reasoning is a cognitive process by which an individual concludes that their emotional reaction proves something is true, despite contrary empirical evidence.” In other words, emotional reasoning creates an ‘emotional truth’ that may be completely different from actual reality. The term ‘emotional reasoning’ was made popular by Aaron Beck who was the founder of Cognitive Therapy, which we now more widely refer to as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT for short. He identified emotional reasoning as one of many cognitive distortions that can impact positive mental health and in particular he noted how people with anxiety disorders were especially prone to it. When someone with anxiety gives too much weight to their emotions, their anxiety increases. Furthermore, they focus their thinking on finding reasons for the anxious emotion, which exacerbates the feeling further, rather than focussing attention on ways to reduce the feeling of anxiety. Hence, their emotional experience becomes their reality.
Let’s look at an example. You wake up in the morning feeling anxious; tummy is jittery, thoughts are scattered, heart pumping in your chest. Emotional reasoning tells you there has to be a reason for this feeling so you begin to search for explanations. Perhaps you don’t really want to see friends this weekend, or shouldn’t have spent so much on that recent purchase, or maybe a work project is more than you can handle. The more you consider how frightening each of the options is, the more anxious you become. By lunchtime you’ve cancelled seeing your friends, found the receipt to return the purchase and are considering resigning from your job. And unsurprisingly you feel even more anxious as your self-esteem plummets along with your capacity to cope with the world. In reality, you feel anxious because you drank far too much coffee yesterday and didn’t sleep well – but your ‘emotional truth’ says otherwise. Let’s look at some examples specific to sex and porn addiction recovery and partners.
How emotional reasoning fuels addictive behaviours
We know that addiction, whether to substances or behaviours, is frequently triggered by an uncomfortable emotional state. Stress and anxiety are common culprits, as are depression, loneliness and anger. When you add the cognitive distortion of emotional reasoning the emotion intensifies along with the likelihood of acting out. The example of anxiety that we looked at above would be similar for someone with addiction, but accompanied by acting out as a way of soothing the worsening anxiety. With depression, the focus becomes on finding explanations for why life feels so meaningless; with loneliness exploring reasons why you’re always alone and with anger emotional reasoning seduces you into replaying hurts and irritations to justify your mood. Whichever route you go, the end result is perceived as evidence that the emotion is real and needs soothing. And without recovery, soothing means acting out.
How emotional reasoning increases trauma responses for partners
For partners of people with sex addiction or porn addiction who feel traumatised by the deceit and betrayal, emotional reasoning keeps them trapped in the fight, flight and freeze responses. Rage is amplified as emotional reasoning directs the thoughts to all the ways that the partner has been hurt. Anxiety increases when focussing on the ‘what ifs’ and the impossibility of certainty. And depression digs an ever-deeper hole in the psyche when emotional reasoning reminds partners of their powerlessness. My experience has been that partners can be particularly susceptible to emotional reasoning because their sense of reality has been so devastated by betrayal. For most there was no evidence of acting out, no suspicions or doubts so when you discover that your partner, and indeed many aspects of your life, are not what you thought they were, you understandably find yourself trying to establish new criteria on which to base reality. Hence emotions can become the new foundation for what’s real and what’s unreal, because facts have so often been distorted. As we’ve explored before in these blogs, rebuilding trust in the self is an essential part of recovery for partners, and to do that emotional reasoning has to be recognised and overcome.
Overcoming emotional reasoning
In many ways, emotional reasoning is the opposite of emotional intelligence. Emotional reasoning identifies an emotion, justifies it, blames it on circumstances and then dwells on the perceived emotional truth. Emotional intelligence identifies the emotion, compares it rationally to current circumstances, takes responsibility and acts appropriately. Overcoming emotional reasoning doesn’t mean ignoring your feelings or minimising them, but rather identifying them and before attributing an explanation, asking yourself the following questions:-
- What factual evidence to have to support my explanation?
- Might my explanation be biased by past experiences rather than current reality?
- Might my explanation assume something in the future?
- Might my feelings be biased by prejudice or preconception?
- Have I fully considered other explanations for my emotional state?
If you’re thinking right now, ‘well that’s easy to say but much harder to do’ – I know. When addiction is screaming in your head to act out or you’ve been so hurt that you can’t tell up from down, let alone truth from reality, then it often takes more than this. Getting the support of others is undoubtedly one of the most effective, and gentlest ways of challenging all cognitive distortions and that’s why the Laurel Centre offers its recovery courses and support groups for partners.
For more information, follow the links on our Starting Soon page https://thelaurelcentre.co.uk/services/starting-soon/
