Why Rationalizing Away Your Feelings May Actually Be Hurting You

Throughout my entire life, I’ve always thought of myself as the type of person that doesn’t get bothered easily. It was an identity I held, and one that I thought was important. I am not someone who lets their emotions get the best of them, and to do so would be a sign of weakness—a break from who I am, my identity.

What this has led to is a lot of cognitive dissonances when—because like a normal functioning human, I do have feelings and emotions—I am overwhelmed with sadness, or depression, or am just simply irritated by someone else.

This also means that I rarely, if ever, talk to anyone about my feelings, because I don’t want to bother anyone with what I think is my responsibility to deal with. I call this toxic responsibility.

Toxic Responsibility

I’m not completely sure if this is an inherently masculine trait, or if I’m unique in this, but I have a suspicion that a lot of men deal with what I’m calling (have I coined a phrase?) “toxic responsibility.”

That is, the problems they are facing are theirs and theirs alone. Even if the problem is caused by someone else, it is your responsibility to solve it alone, without bringing it up or bothering anyone else.

I’ll give you an example from my life that, when I look back on it, seems absolutely insane.

I live in a basement suite and there’s a lovely bulldog rescue that lives above me. She’s adorable and loving and snores so loud that my entire room will vibrate like there’s a freight train nearby.

Instead of texting my upstairs neighbour, the first thing I tried to do was sleep on the couch whenever it occurred—because they didn’t always let her sleep in their room. This wasn’t a tenable solution, so I came up with a new plan. I switched bedrooms (I live in a 2-bedroom suite).

This fixed the problem for about a month, and then the dog started sleeping above my bedroom, every night, driving me insane. What did I do? Not text my upstairs neighbour.

I went and bought an industrial fan and earplugs, hoping to drown it out. This blocked about 80% of the sound, but I’d still often find myself on the couch, or switching back to the other room, or just not sleeping at all.

So the question any normal human would ask: Why couldn’t I text my upstairs neighbour? Because I identify as someone who doesn’t complain, who doesn’t get bothered by things, who deals with problems themselves. I have toxic responsibility.

Finally, at my wit's end, six months in, I text my neighbour and can’t believe how easy it was. I asked her to not have the dog sleep above me. She replied, apologizing profusely, and the problem was solved. I can now sleep again.

Cognitive Dissonance

It wasn’t until another event occurred, a few months later, that I had what I’d call a mental breakthrough in my understanding of myself.

I went to an art gallery with a woman I’m romantically interested in, and she brought another man—a completely platonic friendship—but spent most of the time with that other man (she knows I like to write poetry alone while at art galleries).

However, before I had gotten there, I was already in a bad mood, so once I felt that I was being ignored, I started to experience a great deal of cognitive dissonance. I was feeling alone, and upset, and grumpy, but she wasn’t doing anything wrong, so I was trying to rationalize away my feelings, telling myself that I wasn’t allowed to feel the way I was feeling, instead of simply being honest with myself (or her) about how I felt.

It got so bad that, at one point, I left the art gallery without even saying goodbye. I could not handle the emotions I was feeling, so I abandoned the situation instead of dealing with it.

Of course, she asked me to explain myself, and I did, in full, telling her exactly how I was feeling and why I was feeling that way.

And something miraculous happened. She thanked me for expressing myself, and being honest with my emotions. I instantly felt better. It was easier to tell someone how I was were feeling, and that I was feeling insecure, or hurt, or sad, or alone, or abandoned, than it was to try to rationalize those feelings away. Not only that, but it brought the two of us closer.

And that’s when the mental breakthrough happened. I realized that your feelings can be factually inaccurate (she wasn’t ignoring me), but it doesn’t help to tell yourself that in the moment, because the fact remains—that’s just how you feel.

Be honest with the people around you. Allow yourself to feel those feelings. Tell yourself it’s okay to feel those feelings. Sit with yourself in those feelings. Don’t try to rationalize them away. That will come later, when they aren’t so hot in your belly—because I feel like there’s a time and a place for both rationality and emotion.

How to Deal With Rejection

For a final example of this in action, I was recently rejected from an award I really wanted for my first novel. I was crushed, but my immediate reaction was deny myself the right to feel crushed. Instead, I tried to rationalize why I shouldn’t feel sad.

“You have a back up plan.” “You knew this was a possibility.” “You’ll just keep trying.” “Failure is a part of success.” and on and on and on and on. I was literally slamming rationalizations at myself, hoping they’d fix the fact that I was sad.

But they wouldn’t. They’re all true, sure, but right now, I’m sad. And it’s completely normal to be sad. You should feel sad. You wanted something and you didn’t get it. So let yourself be sad for today. Then tomorrow, when the sadness has faded slightly, the rationalizations will start to become more useful.

But in the immediacy of the reaction, while the hurt is fresh, just feel your feelings. It’s the best thing you can do.