Some people are great at feeling emotions and working through them when they arise.
Others… not so much.
They’re far better at intellectualizing emotional pain that they either don’t want to deal with or aren’t able to work through for various reasons.
If you fall into the latter category, you’re likely an analytical sort who prefers logic and reason over emotion.
And that’s ok.
But should you relate to the following behaviors at all, just be aware that they’re signs you’re intellectualizing emotional pain such as grief, disappointment, and despair instead of allowing yourself to feel it, and that comes with a cost, eventually.
9 signs you’re intellectualizing emotional pain instead of letting yourself feel it:
1. You find yourself rationalizing your physical responses.
I’m the queen of this kind of behavior, and chances are you can relate to it as well.
Whenever I experience something that upsets me, I immediately analyze and rationalize all of my physical reactions in order to both distance myself from them and justify why they’re happening.
For example, my body is feeling anxiety because my amygdala has signaled my hypothalamus to flood my flesh vehicle with adrenaline and cortisol. And I’m crying during the grieving process because my body is releasing that cortisol along with oxytocin and endorphins through my tear ducts.
Suppressing emotion is an automatic reaction for me (thanks, C-PTSD!), so rationalizing it allows me to work through emotional pain without actually feeling it.
2. You do as much research on the issue at hand as possible.
Another coping mechanism that many people have is to do as much research as they can on a topic that they may be struggling with.
This type of intellectualization allows the individual to shift their focus from emotion to thought.
It protects their minds from overwhelming emotion and gives them an intellectual point to fixate upon in order to get through it.
For example, let’s say a person is dealing with intense grief because their parent or partner has been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
Instead of allowing themselves to feel grief, fear, and so on, they’ll deep-dive into the illness and try to consume as much information as possible about the illness, treatment options, prognosis, and so on.
3. You make jokes about the experience (especially dark ones).
People who aren’t comfortable feeling emotions often make jokes about whatever they’re going through.
In particular, they tend to have a rather dark sense of humor and aim to make other people laugh in the midst of pain and discomfort.
If you fall into this category, you might have been made to feel responsible for regulating other people’s emotions in the past.
Because of that, you learned to set aside whatever you were feeling at the time in favor of lightening others’ hearts. That’s a difficult role to move on from, especially if you’ve been embodying it for some time.
4. You dismiss your own feelings as being irrational, and explain why.
This may not be a conscious decision so much as an automatic response to intense emotion.
The reason being that many people with PTSD and similar past traumatic experiences learned to intellectualize emotions to protect themselves at an early age. That behavior followed them into adulthood and became second nature.
In particular, people who weren’t “allowed” to express — or in some cases, even experience — emotions in childhood had to learn how to negotiate experiences while giving the impression that they weren’t feeling anything at all.
One technique for doing this is to dismiss emotions as irrational, including to themselves.
For instance: “It’s irrational for me to mourn my grandmother’s death, because she was old and isn’t in pain anymore.”
5. You focus your attention on things that are “more important” than feeling emotions.
Many people grew up being inundated with the idea that emotions were irrelevant, unnecessary, or worthy of contempt.
Some were even threatened by their parents or caregivers if they got upset or cried, with phrases like “I’ll give you something to cry about!”, followed by physical violence or other punishment.
If you grew up in a situation like this, you likely learned to refocus your attention on things that others deemed more important than processing emotions.
For example, you may consider it silly or self-indulgent to grieve the loss of a pet, and instead turn your attention towards doing housework or something else that’s more “productive and worthwhile”, in other people’s opinion.
6. You brush off physical symptoms that don’t make “sense.”
Emotions may not always make sense, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t valid.
Similarly, feelings can cause a number of different valid physical symptoms to manifest.
Unfortunately, people whose emotions have been consistently invalidated over time can often brush off those physical symptoms because they seem illogical or irrational.
For example, if you fall into this category, you may think that a symptom like stomach upset is only valid if it’s caused by food poisoning or hormonal lurches, or that shivers only make sense if you’re cold, and so on.
As such, if whatever you’re feeling doesn’t have a rational cause, you choose to dismiss or ignore it.
7. You detach or dissociate to avoid feeling the emotion.
This is another behavior that’s often an automatic response rather than a chosen one, but it can be a conscious decision as well.
For example, a person who’s uncomfortable dealing with challenging emotions may dissociate by refusing to think about what’s upsetting them and focusing on something more pleasant instead — like binge-watching a favorite show, attending a concert, or otherwise distracting themselves.
Alternatively, they may intellectualize and detach from what’s going on by focusing on all the negative things associated with the challenging emotions they’re avoiding.
A classic example would be a person who’s dealing with the loss of one of their parents.
Instead of allowing themselves to feel the grief they are experiencing, they may choose to think about all the awful things this person did to them when they were younger, thereby trying to overshadow the hurt with anger, resentment, or even relief that they’re gone.
8. You stay busy as a means of redirecting the emotions.
When people don’t allow themselves to feel emotions, they often redirect those feelings into actions instead.
For example, one of my friends scrubs her kitchen and bathroom with a toothbrush when she’s feeling stressed, while another cooks and bakes in order to keep herself busy.
The side benefit of this is that she can feed her family and neighbors and feel good about doing so.
And while they are certainly productive activities, all of these behaviors are distractions from the emotions that are threatening to overwhelm them.
If you fall into this type of behavior when upset as well, chances are you have some tried-and-true ways of channeling your feelings into action. Personally, I’m prone to organizing things, either physically or in different computer folder sub-categories, or knitting.
9. You release torrents of those ignored or suppressed emotions later (or they manifest as poor health).
Those emotions that have been repressed and intellectualized don’t just go away: they just get packed into boxes and tamped down instead of being dealt with and worked through.
As a result, they build up over time until they can’t be repressed anymore.
They’ll either flood out of the individual in hysterical weeping during a mental health breakdown, or they will manifest in stress‑related physical symptoms such as headaches, digestive issues, muscle tension, sleep disruption, fatigue, or flare‑ups of existing conditions.
The prolonged, unprocessed stress and emotions may even contribute to increased risk of cardiovascular events.
All of that self-silencing builds up over time and can cause severe damage if it isn’t addressed and released properly.
Final thoughts…
Although many of these behaviors might have become second nature to you over the years, that doesn’t mean they have to be your only method of emotional regulation forever.
If you’re now in a safer place where you can learn to work through and regulate your emotions on your own terms, consider dipping a toe in.
You may discover that getting back in touch with your feelings is far more fulfilling than living life as though they don’t exist. And if you need help doing so, definitely consider working with a trusted, trauma-informed therapist to support you in getting there.
