Curiosities about the emotional mind

Our brain is made up of an emotional part and a more rational or thinking part. Sometimes, both combine to help us in our daily lives, while at other times each one manages on its own what comes its way.

Currently, most of the information we have refers to the most rational part of our brain. But what differentiates the emotional mind? What are its characteristics? Below we reveal some curiosities about the emotional sphere of our mind.

The emotional mind is faster to act

The emotional mind is characterized by being faster than the rational mind, taking action almost immediately, without stopping to consider what he is doing, acting automatically, his responses generally being more imprecise.

Such is its speed, which usually makes analytical reflection, a characteristic task of the thinking or rational mind, impossible. And at the end of what happened, when things return to their place, we surprise ourselves wondering why we did it, indicating that the rational mind is beginning to activate, in a much slower way.

There is a slower way of processing information that is carried out by our rational part, but the one carried out by our emotional part is faster, happening almost without realizing it and trusting first impressions, capturing everything at once, leaving one hand the evaluation of the details.

Although this quick reaction, which can sometimes be wrong, scares us, it also has its advantages, since the emotional mind can capture an (emotional) reality in just a few momentsdeveloping a series of immediate judgments that tell us who we should trust or who we can take care of.

Paul Ekman, a pioneer psychologist in the study of emotions, explains in relation to the power that emotions have over us before we are aware, that they play an adaptive role, giving us the possibility of mobilizing ourselves to respond to urgent situations or issues without that we waste time stopping to reflect on how we have to act.

On the other hand, The slowest mode of emotional response would be the one where it is first reflected before leading to the feeling. Here we are more aware of our thoughts, these playing a determining role in emotions.

Has an incredible feeling of certainty

Actions that originate in the emotional mind also carry a feeling of powerful certaintyconstituting a disconcerting way of seeing things for the rational mind at times.

It is like If the emotional mind were our radar on alert to perceive the dangers that lie in wait for us, constituting intuitive judgments that, when made so quickly, can sometimes become erroneous.

It’s childish

Many times, The emotional mind is infantile as Daniel Goleman says in one of his books. And the more childish it is, the more intense the emotion will be.

To understand it, Goleman gives us some examples such as categorical or all-or-nothing thinking, in which there is no gray scale, or personalized thinking, in which facts are perceived by focusing on ourselves.

That is to say, The emotional mind has its beliefs as absolute reality, putting aside all evidence that leads to the contrary. For the emotional mind, what is felt is always what is real, even when our way of feeling comes from an erroneous way of thinking.

That is why it is sometimes so difficult to reason with a person when they are emotionally shocked, experiencing their emotional kidnapping, since the logic of the arguments does not matter if they are not molded to the emotional conviction of that moment.

Respond to traces of the past

The emotional mind has the ability to respond to a situation that presents some features similar to a memory from the past, activating the feelings that accompanied the event in question.

The emotional mind reacts in the present as if it were in the past due to those common features that the situation presents, performing a selective function.

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Image courtesy of Sandra Stipan