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margharris
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Body dysmorphia. Emotional Reasoning.

Permanent Linkby margharris on Mon Mar 30, 2015 10:15 pm

Just because you feel something doesn't make it true. Having a conversation with my son trapped in feelings thinking is a battle I often find myself drawn into. He defends his feelings as though the depth of intuition they must connect with provides a certain type of truth. But my experience is that feelings are the prime reason for all the distortion. Feeling what you think leads to impulsive decisions.
So when you think whatever you feel is true regardless of other people's logical argument and what is known to have been said on the matter, you must be distorting and moving away from the truth.
"I feel ugly, so I must be ugly even though others tell me I am not." " I feel it is my fault, so I must have done something wrong." I feel overwhelmed and hopeless, so I must be a worthless." "I feel everyone is looking at me, so I must be repulsive." "I feel anxious, so something bad is happening." My son's in a "I'm not in the mood to do anything, therefore I might as well just lie in bed"
I don't know really what advice you can give someone who believes they can judge reality through their emotions. Your emotions are just too volatile and your judgement is likely to swing wildly. Are you discounting positives, personalising, mind reading, fortune telling, catastrophising, using negative filters? These are all means of preventing the true knowing of the facts, disguising emotional reasoning from facts. Dismissing facts as lies or half truths maintains the illness.
The emotional reasoning in BDD is very strong and defended as truth. I think because different areas of the brain are employed in emotional reasoning and fact, the logic just can't modify the emotions to make change. So things become fixed into rigid patterns.
My son now lies in bed screaming about androgen receptors and the blood that comes out. He has been able to ferment his feelings of terror into stories that fall over the fence into psychosis. " What if it is true?"
I go in and scream back," I don't care about your story." Another example of faultless emotional logic.
I think emotional reasoning is also behind a lot of procrastination. " I feel anxious so I won't do it today." Maybe you think your emotions are protecting you. My son feels his emotional reasoning is just about him trying to find the truth. But there is no truth found in emotions. They change from day to day. How he can stop this and accept that all is not known and what is not known needed be a worry. I suppose that is the answer to why he still wants this disorder in his life.
He is a long way from just getting up and telling himself he has to do the opposite of what he feels. But in the end he has to do what is right. Not what he feels.
Hope we get through this day. It is a struggle with a new med just begun overnight. Marg

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