Emotion or Intelligence: What to Believe?
Emotion or intelligence , Reason or feelings
- The modern trend says that intelligence is more important, and emotions are a rudiment (something dead and unnecessary). Moreover, usually logic and emotions are opposed and understood as different, and people consciously choose one thing.
- Nowadays, in general, the fashion for intelligence, logic and cold calculation. I will assume that it is in the era of computers, numbers, structural logical thinking.
When after graduation I came to work (in the field of psychological counseling), I had both an external conflict and an internal one. Neither my logical system of thinking nor the purely scientific system of education wanted to accept the existing reality with emotions and spiritual values.
Let's figure out what is more needed and whether it makes sense to compare at all.
- Science, logic is good - it comprehends the unknown, creates a new one, but. In life in general, and in psychology especially, one has to deal not only with personality and logic, but also with soul and feelings.
- When I started to work, I realized that the world is not one-sided, and not only what you see and understand is true. I realized that emotions and logic are part of one process - the process of processing information. They are completely different, but they are about one thing.
- Emotions are an older (primary) way of processing information, so sometimes it dominates the mind. But this does not mean that emotions are more important.
- People who turn off emotions and are guided only by logic, live an incomplete life, without the ability to feel, see and understand aesthetic and spiritual things. Conversely, people who are guided only by emotions make many impulsive mistakes.
If you understand that emotions are dull, inadequate (it should be sad, but it should be normal for you, it should be fun, but you don't feel anything) - do the following exercise.
Write in a column the names of 10-20 feelings (irritation, anger, anger, sadness, grief, longing, joy, surprise, interest, admiration, happiness, love, peace, guilt, etc.), and do the following with them.
1. Go through the list and ask yourself about each feeling - when I experience it, do I allow myself to show it, to manifest it. If yes, put plus, no - minus.
2. Go through the list again. Where there is a plus, ask yourself: What do I get from this, what benefit do I get from this, what good do I get when I show feelings (there is always an answer, sit and think until you can answer).
3. Where there are minutes, ask yourself: What am I depriving myself, what am I losing when I do not show feelings and keep them in myself? (The answer is always there, sit and think until you can answer).
This short workout will help you develop the shades of feelings, understand yourself better and listen to yourself.
The division of feelings into negative and positive is very conditional, because in fact, feelings are all necessary and positive, they are markers that show us what is good and needs to be accepted and continued, and what is bad and needs to be corrected or stopped.
So, for a full life, you need to be able to use both information processing systems, so let's not run away from what doesn't work, but simply learn to receive information from feelings.
