Emotion vs Reasonable Mind
DBT Skills for Adolescents and FamiliesSo before we get into the overlapping state of mind, wise mind, I wanna ask you all, because you may hear about emotion mind, and how many people when I described it thought "Well, that's not good. It's not good to be an emotional mind. " I wouldn't wanna spend time and emotion mind because you do impulsive things, you do things you regret, Right? So emotion mind though, definitely can have its problems. No doubt, when we live a life, especially with a lot of mood dependent behaviors. But emotion mind also has its place. So for example, anyone here a sports fan or have a favorite concert that they've been to and like to go to games or like to go to see your favorite band.
So has anyone ever been at your favorite band playing or your favorite sports team and just when they did something you love, you stood up and just started shouting and cheering and the whole crowd was cheering. Are you thinking, well, let's see. If I stand up this high, I'll be able to see over the person in front of me. And what time is it? How long should I cheer for? Are you thinking, Elijah? Are you just in the moment? And are your emotions really carrying you?
And is that harmful in that situation? No. No. No. Not necessarily. There's definitely a time and place to be an emotion mind where it's not necessarily harmful. Similarly, if you lose a loved one or a beloved pet and you're crying and you're tearful and you're really sad about that, probably makes a lot of sense that for that time that you're mourning, you're feeling really strong emotions and you are crying and you're not going out and partying and doing all those things because you're sad and it's the time for that. So there is a time and a place for emotion mind and emotion mind can be okay, and I think, but it can also cause us problems. And one of the important things is just to notice when we're in it.
And how do you think you would know if you were in a motion mind? How'd you be able to tell? You were crying. Okay. Crying. So really acting on the emotions and Yeah. Yelling, screaming. Yelling and screaming. Mhmm. Can't really focus on what you're doing. You can't focus at all because your emotions keep grabbing your attention.
Excellent. Right. Yeah. Maybe you're just kinda overwhelmed by the emotions and aren't really in control. Yeah. You really feel out of control. You feel overwhelmed, and maybe you have some things you have to do, like, homework or get up and go to school and you feel like you can't do it because the emotion is holding you back. Right? Okay. So that's how you would know you were an emotion mind. So reasonable mind. Does that sound? Did that sound all good to you to just take out your lists and be writing down?
What do I have to do? How do I go a to b. Is that a desirable state of mind to be in all the time? What do you think? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. How come Ruben? You know, like, how do you ever show passion? Mhmm. How would you ever show or express past? How do you ever, like, be in love? And how would you be in love?
Right? Love isn't such a-- It's not a reasonable thing. It's not necessarily such a reasonable thing. We hope it's so reasonable, so that but no. But but it's not necessarily certainly reasonable when you're feeling love and you wanna have that passionate feeling. And again, it could be toward a person, it could be toward your favorite rock band and you're at concert and you want some passion. What what else? Yeah. It kinda just makes you less understanding of other people.
And maybe you can't connect. Okay. So if you are in reasonable mind, you might not understand if another person you're interacting with is having strong emotion you might not connect, you might not get it, you might not be able to show that you understand, or you might not actually understand. Yeah. Okay. Any other? Yeah. Like like with the whole thing, like, if you lose like a close person to you, like, and let's say like he doesn't do this, but let's say he was just like, we have to do this for the funeral and this and this and this and like not showing any emotion, like, you could feel a disconnect between you two. You feel a disconnect between you two, and you might even be just really kind of cut off from emotions. And, yeah, and it would make you feel distant from that person, somehow.
Right. Also, let's say some of you are deciding or have decided where you go to college. Let's say you're looking at what you're doing after high school and you're looking at colleges and you decided where you wanted to go to college only based on reasonable mind. What might that look like? Could that be? Is that good news or could that be a problem also? But what do you think today? I think when you go into the college, you might not feel the best because let's say, like, you did it based off of, I don't know, the student to teacher ratio.
Right. Student is great student to teacher ratio. You might not fit your vibe because you didn't really emotionally connect with the school. Good. You might not have emotionally connected with it, and you didn't really listen to how you felt about it. So it made sense. I like the ratio. I like this. Like that, close to home, maybe, but I go there and I feel miserable because I didn't pay attention to how it made me feel what I actually felt about it. So another risk of reasonable mind is that we discount our emotions and we make important life decisions in reasonable mind, but aren't really taking into account how we feel.
And when you have confusion about yourself and you don't have much awareness. Sometimes we might not even know how we feel, but it's important to start paying attention to that and noticing our emotions.