#intellectualize

[academic-vampire]

People always say you “need to feel your emotions and not intellectualize them.” Problem is, I have no idea how to do that. Isn’t that just thinking about them and then thinking about them some more? Cry? Scream? What is there?

(Genuinely I have no idea. Like, yes I know I’m mad about things that happened in my childhood. But what good does it do to be mad now? What’s done is done and no one can fix it.)

[nusaibaaaa]

no because i doubt i even intellectualize my emotions. sure, i assign some coherence to them. sprinkle in salted self awareness. but i don’t think i ever cradle them close afterwards, accepting them. no. i pretend i know what i feel and i accept that, and when no one’s looking (myself, hundreds of reflections in broken mirrors) i take a knife and shear it away like cutting through clay. i trim and disfigure it the way fire burns flesh off a bone, getting rid of substance and leaving behind a mere trace. i turn my emotions from some intellectualized whole to a barely-there thing. like a house withered away in storms. and it is this portion of clay i allow to harden, that i place on my head like half a crown and claim, “yes, i feel like this because so and so.” but why is it that even after all the shearing, the burning away, the withering and ignoring and avoiding they come back and i find myself shattering on a random tuesday? i throw the crown away, feeling like the discarded clay somehow runs in my veins and solidifies my entire being into sorrow, heartache, betrayal, all these nasty emotions I keep away from like monsters in a closet. or at times i don’t even know how i feel. ignorance is so blissful i’m not aware of what my own heart is saying until it screams at me and i can do nothing but cry.

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

Experience first, then intellectualize.

Carl Orff

[graceandgracey]

I think sometimes I probably do intellectualize emotionally painful experiences so that I don’t have to confront/process them emotionally.

John Green

[artemisvexing]

[corvismortalis]

Where are my fellow folk who intellectualize their feelings instead of feeling their feelings? Looking to start a little group for daily reminders to get out of your head. Could call it something cool, like Intellectual Internalizers or Head Above the Clouds.

[mypictures3504-blog]

15 Common Defense Mechanisms

In some areas of psychology (especially in psychodynamic theory), psychologists talk about "defense mechanisms," or manners in which we behave or think in certain ways to better protect or "defend" ourselves. Defense mechanisms are one way of looking at how people distance themselves from a full awareness of unpleasant thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Psychologists have categorized defense mechanisms based upon how primitive they are. The more primitive a defense mechanism, the less effective it works for a person over the long-term. However, more primitive defense mechanisms are usually very effective short-term, and hence are favored by many people and children especially (when such primitive defense mechanisms are first learned). Adults who don't learn better ways of coping with stress or traumatic events in their lives will often resort to such primitive defense mechanisms as well. Most defense mechanisms are fairly unconscious – that means most of us don't realize we're using