no no there is a truth to be attained in every field, existence is infinitely nuanced, but that truth process requires emotional intelligence to learn the infinite nuance about themselves, experience their own truth events, and self actualize for real.
I think everything in terms of that can be explained with neuroscience, but I think you cannot logic your way out of feelings they are two separate things in the body and you need to cry to self regulate etc but you cant do just by thinking and using logic. I think the most logical thing u can do is feel ur feelings bc in terms ur helping ur body heal and the mind and the body are very interconnected.
"Defining the meaning of life is like trying to capture the essence of a river in a bucket." (not verbatim) It’s impossible, because you’re just left with water in a bucket. The same can be applied to language as it is merely an easier way to communicate. It is fixed. The words can never express what e.g. "love" truly means. It’s something to be felt through all your senses. This was from one of Alan Watts books, I think "Wisdom of Insecurity."
I left high school suffering from extreme amounts of trauma, both from my home and an abusive boyfriend. I attended an elite college and stuffed down my trauma, and I certainly intellectualized. Until I had a massive breakdown my senior year. I couldn't push myself anymore and my feelings hit me like a thousand trucks. No one cared.
Yeah, when it finally comes out the people around you, who all bought into that type of mentality, might not recognize it as natural or justified. I'm very sorry that happened.
@sb1206 Yea, this will happen. Sorry you went through it alone. I hope you are healing and understanding what happened to you. When I started delving into why this happened to me, I realized pretty late in life, when I awakened (figured it out) that my father was a covert narcissist. I'm thinking sociopath as well, as he never could connect with ANYONE, EVER. Which I then started analyzing my mother's behaviour growing up, and she was co-dependent. Answers so many questions I had. So I hope you find the answers, I'm not even sure if you're looking to find out but much love and peace to your journey. : D
@@loanicastillo3327 NOPE!... I found REAL FREEDOM from the teachings of THE BUDDHA the reason you believe in JC is because you're 100% full of fear, yea? YOU ARE EXACTLY what he's talking about, yea? I dare you to research BUDDHISM, and I know you won't because you are full of fear, yea? Oh, by the way, I went to a Christian school where I learned and experienced HELL, yea? "EVERY WISH FULFILLED" E.T. .......................................................
So true! You can see it early on in school, emotions are seen as unnecessary adjuncts to life, wrong, weak and are often medicalized away so people can preform and be efficient and rational (normal)
Intellect in a way, even when it’s very abstract, is still a more understandable process than trying to live with emotions. That’s probably why our society accepts intellect more often.
Intellectualization is helpful when you are a still a child, or a teenager, and cannot escape your abusers. Classical music (playing the violin, including in an orchestra, which enabled me to spend time away from 'home'), spending time in nature (which included birdwatching and trying to identify flora), and schoolwork (especially Mathematics and learning Latin and foreign languages) really helped me through those years of Hell.
It really is a way to protect the heart. True wisdom comes from the heart, true healing comes from the heart, true connection and conversation comes from the heart. I can fall into this I love this quote from a poem by Anne Sexton: "Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth."
"The heart" is a euphemism for the core combination of thinking and feeling (intellect and emotion). Just in the interest of health and wholeness for everyone... overromanticizing is as dangerous as overintellectualizing.
"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" -Jeremiah 17:9 The only thing your heart tells you is about your heart; it tells you nothing about the world outside your heart, which is most of reality.
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”@@stevedoetsch
In that passage from the Bible, it then talks about how the Lord searches each man's heart and "gives to every man according to his ways." I believe there is a way to live from the heart in a way that honors the divine within. That would be then the ultimate intelligence, an intelligence or 'consciousness' that only few beings have ever reached. That consciousness is what is talked about in Jesus Christ's and also many of Buddha's teachings. In is a consciousness generated from compassion, empathy and connection with the entirety of humanity. Those feelings could not exist without a heart filled with love. I find having empathy for those with the least is a direct connection to reality and not the opposite. The quote you referenced is talking about how human beings are inherently sinful and I agree with that. Much of the Bible then talks about how the heart can be purified, changed for the better and made clean. I believe that making choices, finding and building a purpose from a (healed) heart - from a place of love is the most powerful & emotionally intelligent thing a person can do@@stevedoetsch
The message I got from my family: * My feelings reveal a lot of my real personality which then can be used to shame me and hurt double time. * My feelings are often to be mocked. * My feelings reveal vulnerabilities which can be used against me. * My feelings are wrong. * My sad/hurt/painful feelings are often a source of pleasure for others (which hurts even more, therefore best not to express them or better yet, not feel them). * My feelings are not even talked about or paid attention to. And when I do, they are minimized, poorly explained or made sense of. It makes them confusing and me not even aware of what I'm feeling (alexythimia) This didn't leave much space for feeling. Without realizing it I became a much more logical "in your head" type than emotional person. Now undoing this is a pain in the ass
I believe when people mock you feelings sometimes its because they dont want to have to feel bad for treating you shitty so they just mock your feelings because then they can keep feeling ok with themselves because it is not thier behavior that is a problem but its your fault your too sensitive... "It wasn't even that bad, you shouldn't feel that way" . which is just them lying to themselves usually because they absolutely would get offended or mad if they were treated the same way..
Okay, you got me. But, and forgive me for intellectualizing this, you overlooked a key reason. Intellectualization is not just avoidance, it’s control. I am a professor and I absolutely have a ton of blocked trauma. A literal ton. Not only could I attempt to fill a deep hole with academic accomplishments and avoid anything emotional, I could also control a room because I was/am the smartest one in it. The feeling is almost one of desperation; a desperate need to control outcomes in our adult lives, because we couldn’t do it as children. And I am a female. I can’t even imagine how it must be for male academicians. But I do know they have the same type of desperation. As long as we are one step ahead, at all times, we can impose order on our environment and feel in control of it. It also allowed me to be kinder and more understanding of the vulnerability of my students. But, yeah, wtf is an emotion? I wasn’t allowed those. My dad would mock us if we needed to cry. We are all, my siblings and I, really screwed up, now. I’m aware of it and deal with a lot of hopelessness. My siblings are still pretending. Control. In academics, we have control for the first time, of our environments.
Goddamn man, I need to comment a little of my story here. When I was in middle school/high school, I took a lot of my personality cues from sheldon cooper (big bang theory). I wanted to be so smart that I could intellectually fight anyone. I hid my emotions, I was too smart for them, maybe. In private I knew girls didn't like me, I knew I didn't have any friends, the friends I did have wanted to be smarter than me! When I went to college, I wanted to keep it up, my degree was in math, I wanted people to be impressed by how smart I was. I could think about stuff that no one had ever thought about. Then I took that to social sciences and I knew everything could be explained, even more I knew it could be explained by me if I tried hard enough. During college I had a hard time finding friends bc I was so annoyed by people like me but I never understood why no body treated me like a friend. ... By the end of college, I had so much depression and anxiety adding up from situations and from school that I turned to weed heavily. A girl broke my heart, my roommate was disrespecting my emotional bandwith, I felt so alone, but at least I felt a little better with weed. One day the weed induced a panic attack, I felt like I was stuck like this forever, I was dying, I was falling into my head and I couldn't get out.... The next few weeks I had heart palpitations, feelings of being violated, feelings of being afraid of my own head. Everything was triggering. The panic attacks subsided after a few months but then came back again more extreme during covid, fear of death and dying, fear of my family's health. I couldn't move, I was frozen, i couldn't eat or look at my family members. I began to take medication to help me back to normal. Eventually I found spirituality as a means to mitigate. Now two years later, I realize the way I used spirituality was a way of "spiritualizing" instead of "intellectualizing" -- kind of like I now had bigger and better answers and I could outsmart my feelings this way. ... Cut to, about six months ago, spirituality isn't working any more. I'm desperate for help, anxiety meds and spiritual books don't help like they used to. It took me up until about two weeks ago to realize that I needed to feel everything. Don't be smarter than it, don't science it, don't think it thru until there's a logical end. Just feel it. Feel the fear, the dread, the isolation, feel it all. Break down. SUFFER. I'm reminded of the girl I used to be in love with, we dated for about 3 weeks (haha) and it took me 9 months of grieving and crying and being mad and being depressed to feel like I was even close to normal again. But I never let myself feel fully what was happening. I smothered that pain with weed, I smothered covid/death pain with medication, i smothered the depression of having no friends or girlfriends with school. ... But I promise, if you've gotten this far, life has not a single answer. And all you need to do to be at peace with anything is feel it. Its trying to make you grow, its trying to make you better in some way. Let go of the FEAR of feeling it, it cannot hurt you, let go of the DESIRE to NOT feel it. Its absolutely necessary to be emotional. An exercise I've been doing recently is I've been letting my mind come up with one thought, allowing the emotions to come, and then saying okay brain, I need you to pause, I have to sit with this one. I focus on the feeling, I breathe, I let it in. It feels painful sometimes, it can make you break down, it can make you realize things you've never before realized. But understand that avoiding the emotion is not the answer. Let it break your heart. Broken hearts, just like broken arms, heal with time and love, not by ignorance. Hope you've enjoyed my story up til now.
Yeah, nothing should be used as a band-aid. Even if the things you intellectually or spiritually discovered were true it doesn't mean the dysfunction miraculously disappears. Nor should they be pursued as an avoidance or distraction. I do think, however, that access to those things can help you understand, submit to and endure the process towards a clearly defined goal of wholeness, to whatever degree you might attain it. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Your videos in our today's stupid and highly traumatized world are like breeze of enlightening fresh air. I am usually a disagreeable and critical person, but when I listen to you, there is absolutely nothing I can disagree with or criticize, I almost 100% agree with everything you say and truly enjoy listening to you. Thank you for being you.
Ive been thinking about this a lot. To me it seems that there are two mechanisms by which people become smart. One is out of love and i consider that curiousity. The other is out of fear (wanting to understand things to have a sense of control with the external reality) and i consider that conditioned intelligence. One path opens up possibilities, creativity and joy, thr other grows the sense of alienation and dissatisfaction. I work in both modes and try to be aware when i fall into the latter so as not to crush the pleasure of learning.
Precisely! My ex-boyfriend was bizarrely obsessed with emotion VERSUS logic. As if they were antithetical, mutually exclusive forces that fought one another. He put "logic" on a pedestal, more than I've even seen in today's bizarre "facts don't care about your feelings" war. Emotionality was something he deeply shamed me for, and he talked a strange amount about being "logical". The funny (or perhaps sad) thing is, he was EXTREMELY emotional - he was explosive. And he was deeply, deeply illogical, that most of his views and statements were wacky and extreme. I'm pretty certain he had BPD, and intellectualization was his way of trying to suppress his violent storm of emotions - and miserably failing. He was constantly crying, screaming, smashing things, and yet he would scoff at people for being emotional and said things like "My goal is to be a robot that only engages in logic, because emotions are disgusting.".
@@AmazingRebel23 - Oh wow. That checks out, actually. I never followed his content, but I literally remember seeing a clip of him saying "When you disagree, you're disagreeing with logic - which makes you wrong.". Also, I saw him have a meltdown. Very much like my ex, and very much the type of thing my ex would say. He would make the most extreme, bizarre statements, and just claim that he is logical, and everyone else is disgustingly emotional. He had very little self-awareness, so I genuinely don't think he could see how crazy he was.
Damn this kind of reminds me of myself when I started loosing her. I remember being extremely depressed but tried to keep myself busy with this useless shit. I felt her slipping away from me and I just went off the rails contantly, making it worse. I was extremely emotional, unstable in general. I just wish I could have helped myself and saved a great relationship. But only a literal fucking break up could get me to actually get better. Jeez. I hope your ex got his shit together too.
And here you are on the internet shaming him for his emotions. Just like a woman. Hypocritical and cruel to the end. I bet you believe you are being the goddess of balance of both emotions and logical reasoning with this scornful hit piece. You're unfit for any relationship.
The more someone is trying to force cold logic into everything and suppress emotions, the more they tend to be driven by them. They try to suppress them in the first place because they have unhealthy relationships with emotions and see them as useless, undesirable. But they cannot successfully rid themselves of their emotions. And they just become less aware of what is driving them and how to healthily respond.
Well... If you have suffered trauma, conceptualising and abstracting helps to understand what's going on, reframe, and (if ongoing or if the respective people are still in your life) develop a plan to make changes. While you need to stay in touch with your feelings for alignment, just indulging and acting on them mindlessly likely won't improve the situation or make it worse
Completely true. For example, if one is rejected, the natural inclination is to connect such rejection with self-value., however, the intellectual researches and comes to realize that rejection is protection from a future with someone or something that isn’t good for you. Secondly, rejection is projection of the other person. Not you. Understanding the logical theory actually helps with healing. :)
Very true. Pete Walker ('Complex PTSD') warns that people should do 'self work' in very small doses, and Dr Judith Hermann ('Trauma and Recovery') warns that people's first priority should be to establish safety, i.e. leave their abusers and make sure they cannot get to them, which usually means getting a job so that you can pay for housing.... I've been homeless on and off my entire adult life and part of the reason is that my past makes it difficult for me to find work, especially as I am always asked personal questions, and because I am good looking, people always assume I must be in a relationship, i.e. that I don't need to work for a living, and when I explain that I am single and I am the only one paying the bills, they wonder what's wrong with me and often suggest that I find myself a rich husband or boyfriend.
@@naghamibrahim1373 I couldn't find the ted talk but I think I can quickly summarize the message. Rejection is protection from a future with someone or something that is not good for you. Even though you may like them, that job, etc. it is not good for you to be with someone or something that is unable to see your value. Relationships like that simply do not work. Reasons don't really matter. Fact of the matter is they'll never see your true value. That will always be based on their lense in life. Those that see your true value will stick around and give you the world. Consider it a blessing. Another facet of this is that rejection is projection. Again the reasons don't really matter. It could be a busload of reasons they are choosing to not move forward. This can be internal with them or based on something that may not even be true. Fact of the matter is they'll never see you or your value. Your best option in life is to quickly ascertain whether or not someone is wasting your time. Quickly get the answer. If it is rejection then that is a good thing. You can move on to someone or something that'll yield better benefits. Trust me there definitely is someone or something out there that will. Hope this helps!
What culture? Certainly not the one I'm in. Many adults I know are monosyllabic, unintellectual mental infants, and they're certainly not less traumatized than the degree-holding pompous emotional infants that Daniel describes.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJr I live in Sweden. My experience and observations present with a duality of the anti-intellectualism you describe and also cerebral-narcissistic pseudo-intellectualism. I think it's a fork in the road in the development of the false self for the traumatised child: somatic or cerebral false self. The mutual features are trauma and dissociation/fantasy defense and the ensuing distorting and bias-forming rationalisations of their own character. An effort to destroy the misperceived (as bad) true self, as modelled and internalised by early-life perpetrators. I guess they have a hard time tolerating eachother because in the end they are essentially the same and they rejected themselves.
@@3nrika Good observation. I think Daniel might see your wording as the kind of "intellectualization" he was talking about here. And I appreciate that you're using Vaknin's idiom to honestly describe your own genuine observations. If anyone is a perfect example of a "pompous intellectual," it's Vaknin, and Sam himself would probably be forced to agree with that assessment.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJr Thank you, appreciate your recognition there. To be clear, you're right I have been influenced by Vaknin's thinking. And another yes, he would probably be a strong contender. 😁 Found your comment amusing as I was self-conscious about giving off the impression of the cerebral bend. In defense of tempered intellect, it might be worth acknowledging that cerebral narcissism is an imitation of something real. ✌
Well said. I read so many books about self improvement and psychology it just helped me to rationalise the issues and try to find the spots. But instead when I simply tried a practice of daily prayer & gratitude I felt much much better.
Hi Daniel, I’m from Russia I am so glad that I’ve learned English to understand you. Thanks for your videos, watched them all. Very very helpful. Take care
So I had a therapist who was convinced that I was doing this - Intellectualizing as a way of bypassing difficult emotions, traumas etc. But by that time I was already super committed to this path of healing, feeling my real feelings, going to every difficult place in myself. But I was speaking a ton in this session with this therapist and had a lot of ideas and thoughts I was sharing. Which is attributed more to having been silenced for so long and now I wanted to speak the truth and own my power. And the therapist was putting it into this little, constructed box and denying my perspective. I think it just illustrates how problematic the therapy relationship can be.
Same. Extremely problematic when any of my questions/disagreements are met with unfalsifiable allegations of "resistance", "defense", "intellectualization" when I really just have unanswered questions. I'd rather them tell me "idk" than basically tell me "I think too much". Therapy is really a secular religion.
I can relate to your comment @nick… I had the rather humiliating experience of a young therapist, making a clinical note that I certainly wanted to talk a lot! Little did he know that I was like a freshwater spring on a mountain and having someone available to listen, was turning me into a little geyser.
This happened to my ex best friend sadly. She is currently studying to become a psychologist and became too intellectualized, to the point where if someone tells her about their fears of disability or dying (very real human fears), she starts recommending books on how they are wrong to feel that way. She can't just let people be anymore.
So true, I myself had been this way for a long time (as was everyone else around me) and it stinks. I hate how I didn't listen to people's emotions (and mine own)
I want to train to become a psychologist; I empathize with those fears I’ve had them. I think you shouldn’t be a therapist unless you’ve lived it and healed otherwise you can’t empathize. Too many privileged people become therapists. I’ve been abused by therapists.
And this is how and why; the higher a persons education level, the less effective they are as a human being... THIS is why govt mandates that you have at least a bachelors degree to get a govt job, because the degree indicates the level of disassociation that you have, and you are therefore NOT a threat to the system and will look the other way when morally questionable stuff takes place.
I think that's more a consequence of faulty academic institutions and decadence of society than it being a fault of the entire idea of using the intellect in life. You're taking "education" to mean "adherence to dogmas" when it could just as easily mean "freedom of thought."
Aaaaaaaaand you missed the point. 🤦♂️ just because some people use education as an armor to hide their feelings, doesn’t mean that every educated person is like that. And it most surely DOESN’T mean that uneducated people would run governments better. Try running the economy without a degree in economics, some countries tried it and it ended very poorly. You have to know how things work to get stuff done. The point is, education should give you knowledge without dehumanizing you.
agree with this. I went from a cold, intellectual therapist to discovering my own inner screaming baby. My therapist hated the fact I was feeling things all over. Left therapy and spent the last few years connecting to the original trauma though first cranio-sacral therapy and then my own 'unwinding' breathing and body movement. Allowing all the feelings to be what they were. My body language is very powerful, face contorted, sobbing very deep. It's all about embracing all. The pain is awful, it's very scary, but it's the truth. It's helped me change my self-defeating habits, but it's a long job.
Maybe it's equivalent but i prefer using words like "educated" or "cerebral" compared to "intelligence". From my experience in academia, you see a lot of very educated people but not very smart outside their small area of expertise. Especially when it comes to emotional intelligence that is very rare. I think you've hit something in why i find staying in academia and research almost repulsive emotionally. All of these abstract stuff paired with people who kinda have to be cerebral because if the job, makes me wonder what us the point in all of this in regards to the real world and the human experience. Obviously there's an element of taste and interest, together with the field and its community, but overall it does feel like a distraction even if so much scientific advancements comes from it (like computers or modern medicine).
Knowledge, intelligence and wisdom are different traits. An intelligent person can be unwise and thereby act very foolishly in the world. Or an intelligent person can be un-knowledgeable in a subject they are not interested in. Or a knowledgeable person who has done a lot of studying can show a poor result on an IQ test. Or a very wise person could be neither knowledgeable or intelligent, but spend all their time doing no harm, meditating on the few truths they grasp like an ascetic yogi or something.
Timely video Daniel. I just reconnected with a family member I hadn't spoken to for 20 years. She is a globe trotting university educator and after the call I made notes about how drained I felt from our conversation. I find her difficult, hard work to connect with and I don't feel at ease to speak freely. Just observations....but your video has given me food for thought. Thanks
We over-intellectualize to avoid painful feelings, and also to feel and appear strong and in control. (Am I doing it right now?) Anger and aggressive dominance is sometimes part of it, too. Angry aggression can masquerade as intelligence, especially in men. Also, intelligence or intellectual achievement gets confused with worth, value, and worthiness of love. This can get passed down the generations in families, creating pain.
There is a very deep and ancient tradition of using the intellect to "remember" one's true nature in order to let go of traumas and to come into a fullness of being, an awareness of cosmic unity and the soul's presence in that field. Children are innocent and pure. But, like it or not, most adults have accumulated a level of mental sophistication at the same time that they've acquired some traumas simply by living (or sometimes being neglected/abused), that mental complexity which generates naturally as a consequence of growth requires some "intellectual" untangling for most people. I don't think a return to calmness, to centeredness, to thankfulness and happiness is necessarily a return to infancy, you can't go backward in time. We have to work on ourselves, who we are today.
I do this. When I was a kid, I was very sensitive and cried easily. I was also bullied by my peers and abused by some of the adults around me. I had to grow a thick hide, and my intellectualization is a result of this. It may not be healthy, but I have to maintain it. Otherwise, I would probably end up killing myself.
i believe this is a key component of why i have felt very out of touch with the stem portion of my undergraduate degree and schooling in general. people who were good at high level math or logical thinking were emotionally cold and distant. to be involved in my career path i do find myself having to suppress my emotions or feelings in order to have a sense of belonging the comment on parents also being intellectualized is also something ive noticed. so many future engineers with engineer parents, or in general parents who went to college; i compare it with myself whose parents barely finished high school, very different emotional worlds it almost makes me angry to think that some people inexperienced with academia look up to it and believe it to be highly rigorous and credible. i don't want people to feel less capable or less qualified about themselves because they didn't attend college. the intellectuals are not all that they seem
I've been a very emotional person all my life and trauma therapy has taught me about logic. How I wish I'd learnt years ago my life would've been so different. We need both ❤
I tried to make sense of my own mind for over 20 years to try and understand my emotional trauma. It created all sorts of other pathways in my mind around the problem itself.
As always you collect this subject superbly. I had a father who was a teacher and struggled exactly as you describe. Information and knowledge was both armor and weapons. Only interesting people, knowledgeable people, had worth. Emotionally capable and educated is a definite issue for many. Thank you Daniel. It's like having a good friend and brother how looks out for you listening to your vids. 👍🏻
TY for being here. I always wanted a sibling & you are what I would wish for as a brother. I appreciate your passion you share to help us heal & understand each other better. Bro hero.🙏❤️🔥🥰
@@mariahconklin4150 For me it helped to practice mindfulness. Either thru long walks or meditation on my own. Writing down your feelings helps immensely so. The simple question goes of 'why' goes a long way: Why Do I get angry at people? Is it because they are not respecting my boundaries, is it because I have short temper, is it because I have natural tendency to react in manner that is anger? Whatever the reason may be - it's your responsibility to act accordingly. To act as if you are interacting with yourself. Because at the the end of the day - we are all one. But beware of over intellectually analysing the issue. Be sure to feel the feeling.
I very strongly believe from own experience that suppressed anger and rage are a key factor. In my childhood I was punished for being angry when I felt mistreated. But I come from a very intellectual household. So thinking and rationalizing was always around me. It is like you grow up in a household where smoking is a thing. So you start smoking and feel "hey! That makes my pain go away!" so you smoke more. Intellectualizing was for me like smoking. Thanks god I never started real smoking! Today I feel relatively indifferent to horrendous things because I can so quickly rationalize/relativ...ize (?) them. It is almost like a reflex. But I don't feel really alive anymore and that is to me more frightening than to feel the pain, anger, disgust etc. one is SUPPOSED to feel for what's going on in the world right now!!!! Hi google! Here you go, have another bit of info about my psyche so you can cluster me into some group. You're welcome! 🖕🏻
This one has really helped me. I saw after watching it how strong of a defense intellectualising is in me. I get these insights as I’m sitting quietly with myself and run with them because they seem so important. But I can see now I’m using that as an excuse to not feel something, maybe many things. It’s ironic that I realised this and am now writing about it, I know. But I just wanted to say thank you for the video, and all your videos, they really are helping guide me towards growth
it's dangerous when you got intellect combined with emotionlessness and lack of empathy or consideration. because you got someone just trying to unnecessarily complicate things without thinking about humanity and putting humanity first. there's a reason why narcissism has gone up so much in today's world to the point where it's normalized. because narcissism wins, and to make a change we should stop indirectly encouraging narcissism and allowing it to win. cause we're not seeing each other organically as humans from a humane perspective, we're seeing each other in a more robotic way and as if to "one up" each other through outsmarting. we should remember today what it means to have some real empathy and consideration for people. because a lot of things don't need to be explained through words or intellectually, they can be felt in other ways. a musician doesn't need to understand frequency synchronizations and the physics of sound waves to know what harmonies work well and how to become pitch perfect. it can be learned in many other ways, that doesn't make him dumb. in fact, if he tries to unnecessarily dig into those things, it may drive him to anxiety to the point where he can forget and lose touch with the strong instinct of melody and rhythm that was there before. it's like in the movie A Beautiful Mind, what John Nash says. when we're babies and for many people out there who are more empathetic and kind, it's frankly straightforward that love comes first and love is life's first priority, it doesn't need to be explained to them. but in his case, It takes him a lifetime of intellectualization, downs and ups, from facing schizophrenia to become a nobel laureate, to come to the same conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is.
The intellect is one of three parts of our mental awareness Are basic mental awareness is energy and energy is 30% of a feeling Spiritually, there are feelings deeper than energy Our spirit is love and love is a Feeling In our basic mental awareness, we can be conscious of our feelings initially only on an energy level of consciousness Then there is the Trance mind The mind will separate from awareness of the physical body and go into a trance state when a person begins to use their visual brain to fabricate an illusion in their mind and imagine they're doing some thing that they're not really actually doing for real in the moment, and this is also called fantasy and of course many people fantasize when they pleasure themselves and imagine they're having an intimate experience when really, they're all alone and lonely Then there is the intellect, and the way someone gets to the intellect is through repeated practices of going into a trance, and going into a daydream on purpose by fantasizing The intellect has zero feelings, yet someone living in the intellect believes that they are feeling and actually they're not feeling at all and they can easily be indifferent or have no sympathy Stressing out the body physically, can also cause the mental awareness to separate into the intellect due to excessive physical trauma, such as going through Boot Camp in the military, and this has been documented that the excessive physical training in the military produces the results of the men and women being more separated from their feelings and instead just observing from their intellect It seems to me that the intellect abhors vulnerability and sees a connection with feelings as weakness Grief is the feeling that opens the heart Yet the depth of devastation and despair that a person can experience when they allow themselves to grieve, authentically can feel like TRAUMA to someone who is used to being separated from feeling anything We have both basic feelings and elements of feeling, and they all exist for a reason, and have a purpose to allow us to become more conscious
Intellectualization.. TBH, I've never known the def of this word until now. I am sometimes like this, didn't know it was hiding emotions. I've been treated so badly my whole life by my caregivers that I have no clue when someone is even being rude to me. Since awakening I see it so clearly now, but still act the same way. It's hard to break out of this "what I think is normal" attitude b/c it was my environment for 45 years. We are a work in progress. Integrating our wounded inner child with our adult self is so important. It's painful at times with the crying and grieving but crucial to my healing and growth as a healthy human. Daniel, your topics are always so interesting and informative. TY
I was shamed for expressing my worries, fears, and panicking growing up. I was ignored when talking. I wasn't looked in the eyes as a sign of respect. I was told I was a baby when I got angry. I was shown laughter when I couldn't get a ride somewhere, I was blamed and not talked to really for 8 years. And then I was manipulated into thinking it was all my fault. That I was intentionally avoiding my parents. That I didn't talk to them and I'm a bad kid. I was lied to saying that "I used to ask you how it's going, and you just said you're good. Well of course-I learned any other emotion other than I'm good, whatever that means, will be met with boredom or rage. Anything other than being quiet wasn't acknowledged. Emotional expression was mocked. Now I avoid sharing parts of me out of fear. The fear of being left. Because even back then, it was better to be around people who weren't engaging me, than to be alone. Better to be mocked, laughed at, discarded, any other relationship other than alone. I had tried for 35 years to explain this away to myself. But the real truth is being alone is the answer, the way out for me. I can be alone now and not worry about others needs all the time. Or if they'll call me to yell at me, or if they're enjoying their lives while I'm not. That hatred, bitterness, and anger. Going towards the emotions and state of "i'm all alone, what now"? is a great way for people with abandonment and fear of rejection issues. Coupled with "these are safe people, these are people I can be myself with". Some relationships will end, or in a way change. I've changed as I no longer deflect responsibility for my choices. Nor do I go into deep shame cycles and beat myself up. I just learn, have new insights daily, and keep moving on. The best way to get valued, security, and love from your parents-who you're looking for out there.....is to turn the finger around on you. Be brave, you have a self-too, and its worthy anad valuable of getting its needs met. Need for safety? Give it to yourself. Need for connection? Connect to yourself. Then go out and be that way with others, knowing you have a physical and emotional home to return to. Start looking for ways to validate yourself, parent yourself, and love yourself. Then you can get into a relationship with others.. It's not indepedence and I need no one else attitude.....it's practicing non-neediness.
This is fantastic. Powerful order of words at the end. “But instead coming within. Remembering. Remembering in the body. Feeling. Grieving” I’ve centered there before and forget the potential for being back there with every waking moment. Thank you for reminding me.
*"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” - Plutarch* (we see and understand the world around us through our own perception, however our perception is deeply affected and shaped by both the world around us and within us) _Intellectualization results from you/us finally getting over yourself/ourselves...and realizing that the universe doesn't revolve around you/us and your/our feelings._
I suffer from intellectualizatio to small degree as well as isolating myself from people and hyperindependence as my coping mechanisms. Coping from what? From the fact that nobody actually listens. People either ignore or pretend to listen and pretened to undertand but nobody actually listens and cares. I feel like a pile of shit when i share something about me(not necessarily trauma-related) with people and they just ignore it like i never said it. It hurts.
Find people who value principles and not just material gain or social advantage. The world system doesn't condition people to care about each other (or even themselves, essentially) so you need to associate with people who have values based on higher principles... granted that you are that kind of person, because you may need to demonstrate that first.
I love the serenity of your videos so much, just a breath of fresh air and a warm voice. No unnecesary overstimulation, sense of spontaniety because the videos arent overedited and the simplicity brings such authenticity to it, just a raw experience. Keep making more vids !
This is poking in to a cache of pain.. I know what you're saying means a lot to me.I am viewing places of pain in my self . I'm taking a taxi ride through the psychological me, and driving by pain centers, some neighborhoods are repaired nicely and some frightening run down poor blocks of houses ..perhaps needing resolution or attention (!). Thank you so much for even bringing this topic uP! You've hit a nerve, a live wire and I'm going to make it work for good in my some how -😅 Thank you !
My case is interesting here. I have had extreme childhood trauma involving prolonged confinement, poisoning, sexual abuse (rape), daily beatings including having wine bottles smashed on me, severe psychological abuse, cyclical starvation, and I had pretty much no normal psychological and emotional development. As an adult I have minimal social skills, I have the life skills of a young teenager, I live in isolation alone in a flat and rarely go out or interact and I'm on disability benefits for multiple conditions including foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and global brain damage caused by my mother's drinking throughout pregnancy and her infectious disease she harboured when she gave birth to me, I don't have normal life responsibilities because I don't have the life skills and my friend manages my bills and banking because i don't know how to do it. I was taught only academics as a kid, nothing else. I couldn't cook or use a washing machine or iron when I was taken into supported housing away from the abuse at 19. In supported housing I learnt skills 12 year olds learn but because I never had the childhood exposure to anything but academics and abuse (I didn't socialise), I couldn't learn much and now I'm registered severely socially impaired on the council archives register. To this day, I don't feel my trauma, I absolutely have no sexual abuse trauma just a history. I have half of PTSD as I'm missing loads of the emotional symptoms. I intellectualise my life, my life is run by science and maths. I am too far gone to consider emotions. Trust me. My emotions only come out when I lose my sanity acutely and have public freakouts and get arrested (~60 times in 10 years now). I'm flagged on my local police station and they auto respond with 6 cops. I insisted to my therapist that she does implant emotionality in case I end up with life imprisonment and she agreed not to do that. I'm too far gone and I don't want emotions, they are a threat to me.
@@janetbeatrice9505 thank you. I can honestly say nobody displayed true love to me in my life. My mother obviously didn't love me and didn't show any but the inverse, my dad was away on business for 10 months a year total throughout my childhood and although he said he loved me he didn't show much emotion and wasn't overly involved in my life and was oblivious to a fair amount of the abuse because he wasn't there to see it (if I told him my mother would respond with the same punishment she used when I told my school a bit about it and that's suffocating me with a pillow until I passed out and had a seizure). I've never had a relationship in my life just friendships. I don't know what love is though. I don't understand the emotion, I don't know what it involves and what the experience is like. I also have never felt love for another. I am currently just used to DIYing my life and asking a friend to do the stuff I have no life skills for like managing my bills and utilities. I live my life in science and my only emotions are contentment, rage, happiness, anger (in place of sadness) and hatred. I don't know of any others.
@@AntimatterBeam8954 I wish I knew what to say to help. I wish I knew how to heal severe trauma. How sad to be so severely abused by your own mother. Sending virtual hugs, for what it's worth.
@@janetbeatrice9505 thank you. Don't worry I'm doing a lot better in severe isolation from human life, I'm much less over stimulated now so I've had time to respect myself better. Also I've been estranged from my mother for over 5 years now and I live in a place she doesn't know the address of. I took myself off the electoral register and other things etc but I still have some fear she will find my address. But for 3 years living here she hasn't found me. I'm in a different borough now in London and she doesn't go to this borough. I have felt much more at peace knowing I'm estranged from her properly.
My father was disgusted by all of my emotions growing up but always encouraged me to intellectualize unless the consequences of that intellect went against him. I remember being upset that the other kids didn’t like me and I didn’t fit in when I was seven years old and he told me that “they’d all be working for me someday”. This is part of the reason I had no friends in middle school.
Hey, I would love to see you explore an idea: that intelectualization, well directioned, can be a great tool to help reduce itself in intelectualized individuals. the curse can become its own antidote.
Sitting here I'm making some connection between my breathing particularly deep extended exhaling at the end of my breath is where possibly I might be releasing/processing emotions?
OMG this is so true! Thanx for sharing this. I studied to become a psychologist and I was shocked realizing how many of the teachers and professors teaching psychology and therapy stuff were so dissociated from their true inner selves and genuinely afraid of talking about emotions and inner wounds. It was stunning to see how so many people, whilst working in that field, still cannot handle their own and others emotions in a healthy way. They were using defenses like intellectualization and projection a lot and were also treating their students in an emotionaly abusive and humiliating way - not understanding how this was affecting the students. Just want to say there are good therapists out there too, who are empathic, connected to themselves, warm and loving, but I was shocked realizing how many emotionally immature intellecutals are working even in the field of psychology - which I find somewhat contradictory since the main goal of psychology is to understand people and help them feel better. That would include learning to understand and heal one self. But I think some psychologists and therapist use their intellectually learned coping strategies for what I would like to call "Intellectual Bypassing" (might be the same as intellectualizing) where they use mind-techniques to intellectually "cope" with their trauma (which on a deeper level allows their trauma to continue running them) rather than to dive deep into their emotional wounds, process and integrate their emotions and from that place finally be able to genuinely heal themselves at a core level.
When you separate your thinkers and doers, you have your laws made by cowards and wars fought by idiots. And a lot of people settle for being a coward and an idiot, so evil will run rampant without enough resistance until a few smart brave people get fed up with it. I'm getting pretty impatient at this point.
It's all about equilibrium and balance between intellectual cognitive activity and emotional embrace, feeling and acceptance. I think that something is definitely boiling under the surface these days and great changes are coming in our lifetimes as they already have been. You can feel the tension on the ground level, and history seems to repeat itself time and time again.
This explains why people like Ben Shapiro act the way they do perfectly. I use to admire him as a child because the way he spoke made him seem so intellectual but as I got older I realized he would say so much to really say nothing at all.
Some people's biggest fear is coming across someone who can beat them at their own intellectual games, but don't even feel the need to because they're already secure in who they are, and don't need that sort of challenge to feel content.
My mind is fixating on the stain on your curtain, trying to defend me from connecting with your video, but I won't let it 😊 Thank you for this video, it does resonate with me personally.
2 years into my career as a psychologist after 7 years of study/placements, and yep, the academic competitiveness and need for over-complicating simple phenomena in the world of psychology. Intellectualising is a huge challenge for me nowadays. I have learned to 'feel' more than think when I need to these days. That's fine, and I'm glad I can do this. But, oh boy, my clients who intellectualise are the clients that I struggle to make progress with. Its a fascinating challenge. Loved this video.
This is a great conversation. Obviously we need rational thought to formulate concepts in which to convey our feelings so that we can bridge the gap between our individual emotional landscape so that we understand each others emotional needs. My question is; When does intellectualization go to far in abstracting, or painting a picture of this landscape for another. I notice that sometimes having this type of conversation is productive up to a point. Then it spins out and kind of loops back on itself. This seems like an avoidance of actually sitting and feeling the actual emotions themselves, which are not words.
This is such a great topic! Struggling with this with someone I’m close to and don’t know how to approach or tell them about their intellectualization seems to be used to compensate for how much they dissociate and disconnect from emotional states.
Fortunately, I was able to use my intellect and reason so exhaustively, to ultimately ended up realizing it was all paradox. You can't be logical down your very core; logic dances to the songs of our emotions. The universe is paradoxical, and having realized that -- one simply learns that true knowledge comes from embracing the heart.
The reasons I don’t share my feelings isn’t to avoid them, but because OTHERS can’t handle the immensity of my trauma. People can’t/don’t want to deal with other’s suffering
I've been on the receiving end of this several times...I'm considering myself a good listener, and I love it when people entrust me with their feelings. I can handle most people's feeling but not those of narcissists and people who are too antagonistic and constantly defensive and negative...I've tried my utmost to help those..but unforyunately, it is at the expence of my own health, so I've had to let those people go...I just couldn't help them the way they needed :/
I don't think it is reasonable to put that on other people unless they were the ones who traumatized you or they are emotionally available and you trust them obviously
"I'm not responsible for your feelings," "don't cry," "that must be hard for you," etc., are bandied around alot nowadays. I think it's more that ppl lack the necessary skills of setting emotional boundaries with themselves and others and are often confused, unsure if they're intruding, being played, taking on too much, lack the capacity, or believe they're crossing some line when another's emotionally upset. You learn this from family, with peer pressure and society to "suck it up buttercup" and we all too often respond to others as we've been treated ourselves. Those who've been bullied tend to bully for example. Those who've cared to much may have endured compassion fatigue to the point they have nothing left to give. It will vary with the individual's experiences. There needs to be a balance worked through of facing and feeling the feels to heal so we can respond better to our own emotions and accordingly with those of others. As within so without.
I really resonate with this, and I've always thought about it. Although I've found a different reason for it. You know when you mentioned the arrogance part, I really think these people often act intellectually just to feel superior, like having more complex opinions makes them stand out from the rest, it makes them feel special. You really can't show me a humble intellectual, and if you think you've found one they're just good actors, just like old philosophers, they like to think of themselves as different to everyone else because society also has this conception that culture equals intelligence and their fragile ego's are visible if you look deeply.
This is unrelated to whether it comes from blocked trauma or not.. but the way I tell the difference between someone who's intelligent versus a tool is if they understand nuance. Someone can regurgitate their way through a program but not know how to dissect ideas, school doesn't necessarily teach a person how to think. What I look for is if I can adjust the properties in a part of their understanding about a thing and if they can follow the global ramifications of adjusting that single presupposition, this shows me whether or not someone can think critically. I'm not impressed by people boasting of their education, or usage of technical jargon. Rather, these are things I expect from an educated fool; cultures and individuals that look up to these outward appearances are in my mind low-tier in terms of intelligence. They don't understand what it is so they try to imitate what it looks like. Real intellect tries to simplify ideas and break them down, not obfuscate them behind unnecessary complexity.
Intelectualization really describe me. I dont remember much about my childhood. But i think i have some trauma. I've date with girls but i remember i dont "feel" anything. I dont know how to flirt or treat them. So my relationship doesnt go anywhere. I also wants to look "smarter" in front of everyone. From primary and goes on until college. I dont necessarily smart. I just want to talk smart and look smart. It is painful. I dont know how to understand basic emotion from my friend sometimes. I envy people that can feel others emotion. In the end, im stuck with this intelectualization with no solution.
Sometimes you come across content that connects directly to something deep inside. This video did that for me, framed the inner workings of my psyche and defense mechanism in a very clear way. For me, my feelings have to pass through a filter of intellectualization to gauge whether the feelings are justifiable for me to feel or not. Everything is over analyzed, even just the thought process of feeling, which isn't even a thought process. It's supposed to be intuitive. Emotions become threats. I implode periodically because of this too. But i wouldn't have the sheer insight i have without this level of intellectualization. Intellectualization creates such a tangled psyche, layers upon layers of complexes that've developed as a result of coping with repressed emotions. Then the confused sense of self as a compounded effect of being highly agreeable in conjunction. The dissociation makes the self feel alien, like it needs to be organized and always ready to face threats rather than telling the pain body that it's okay to feel, emotions are not facts, they are messengers. And when grounded in deep self-compassion and love, the act of feeling feels more like an act of grace and innocence, connecting us to the unified experience of being human. Which at a deeper level, is the core of spirituality; unity. Healing it strips back the defense mechanism of intellectualization and makes you realize that; We are never as far removed from the emotional level of a child internally, especially in conjunction to trauma. So don't overcomplicate emotions. Never blame, always resolve. Also think of the analogy of the inner child, would you be cruel to him/her? would you punish him/her just for needing to feel? You are your own best friend, treat yourself like it. Know that the person in the mirror really knows you, he/she knows everything you've gone through, look at where you're at now. This is how i've learned to feel properly; Acknowledge the emotion and its placement in the body, mine are usually in the throat area. After which i need to make a conscious effort to deactivate my defenses and let the feeling expand like a wave up through my head and throughout my body and breathe into the feeling without judging it. Essentially mindfulness. Then i look at "what does xyz feeling/emotion wish to communicate to me?". I listen to it and implement the change. Something which helps tremendously too is the Jungian concept of shadow integration. To get rid of the stigma around negative emotions. There is no absolute good nor evil. Without acknowledging your darkness, you are not a complete person. "To the degree that you condemn and find evil in others, you are to that degree unconscious of the same thing in yourself." Instead of judgement; understanding. Instead of condemning; understanding. Instead of neurosis; flow. "The point of view where one sees conflict, which at first seemed absolute, as resting upon a primordial unity. Thereby attaining a profound unshakable peace of the heart, which can nevertheless contain conflict. Not a peace that is simply static and lifeless, but a peace that passes understanding." The darkness in you seeks love, that's what it needs, that's how you heal and transmute it. But you learn to provide it yourself, to yourself. There is nothing wrong with you; it's about what happened to you and how you are relating to it. It's all understandable.
Probably my favorite ever video of yours. I've noticed over the past several years that I've done this for a lot of my life and often still do automatically. Though now I am aware of it. A lot of it was barely under my conscious control and comes in the form of what I now see as intrusive thoughts. I have come to hate them. I will be trying to feel my feelings and get clarity and relief from processing them...and in swings this wrecking ball of minimizing, rationalizing, over-analyzing, dispassionately pragmatic and condescending lectures. All absorbed from adults for my entire childhood and then everyone else for the rest of my life. It is disguised as "reason" and follows a certain logic but it is the furthest thing from reason. And it boils down to "you should not have strong negative feelings about things".
00:04 Intellectualization is using logic and reasoning to avoid dealing with emotions. 01:09 Intellectualization as a defense mechanism against emotional connection and trauma. 02:07 Intellectualized people can become uncomfortable with emotional truth and can become even more defended. 03:52 Intellectualization can make people think they are intellectual even if they are not 04:48 People who intellectualize their pain may have underlying emotional wounds. 05:45 Using academic jargon to confuse and distract others 06:46 Connecting with feelings and healing through grieving Intellectualization is when people use their intellect, logic, and abstract reasoning to avoid dealing with their feelings. This often stems from childhood trauma and emotional disconnection. Intellectualized individuals can become uncomfortable with emotional truth and may exhibit arrogance and snottiness. Intellectualization is using logic and reasoning to avoid dealing with emotions. - Many academics use intellectualization as a way to discuss complex ideas and use fancy language. - The speaker experienced this in college, where professors used intellectualization to make sense of their own ideas. Intellectualization as a defense mechanism against emotional connection and trauma. - Allowing intellectual expression but blocking emotional expression. - Observations of people with intellectualized behavior linked to childhood trauma. Intellectualized people can become uncomfortable with emotional truth and can become even more defended. - Intellectualized people often struggle with expressing and processing their emotions. - When confronted with emotional truth, intellectualized people can become even more defensive and intellectualize even further. Intellectualization can make people think they are intellectual even if they are not - People who use intellectualization as a defense may not actually be intelligent - Intellectualization keeps people dissociated from reality and their true abilities People who intellectualize their pain may have underlying emotional wounds. - Intellectualizing pain is often used as a defense mechanism. - Sometimes people are forced to drop their intellectual defenses and reveal their emotional pain. Using academic jargon to confuse and distract others - People sometimes use academic jargon intentionally to make it difficult for others to understand what they're talking about. - This concept is often used as a strategy to prevent people from challenging their ideas or actions. Connecting with feelings and healing through grieving - Facing and reliving the horror of painful and ugly experiences - Not intellectualizing, but sitting still and quiet with the pain - Remembering and feeling in the body to process and grieve
My father would tell me all the time "to be realistic", "to be logical"; never showing weakness. But he was the most temperamental, irrational and absurd person I ever met.
in ''energetic Medicine'' provided that the ''perfect Condition is Balance'', then when one displays an ''Excess'' on a certain given Level or Part of himself, herself, this also ''indirectly'' shows a ''Decifit'' on another given Level or Part of himself, herself, such as someone who wears ''fashionable, almost rich Clothes'', this shows some ''inner Poverty or Indigence'' also in Term of ''neglected Child''; on the other Hand one's ''Profession'' is habitually ''very telling'' concerning one's endured past Experiences or the Experiences endured by oneself, during one's Childhood. ''Salve'' in Latin and ''virile Intellect together with gracious Affection to generate Beauty, original, active'' to everyone.
From a chinese medicine perspective you are some correct - overthinking is considered to be a spleen organ system (hpa axis) system dysfuncion. The physical presence of stress hormones controls the functions of many cell lines, so the consequences are as non negotiable on mood and cognition. These things alter the medical structure.
Something I found really interesting happened with my therapist. He easily recognized I have a tendency to intellectualize but pivoted completely around trying to help me with it. That happened when I expressed I actually take pride in intellectualizing, and I can list a myriad of positive stoic like attributes it gives me access to. I think just as we shouldn't look down on feelers, we also shouldn't look down on intellectualizes. They're just different modes of being with their own rewards and drawbacks.
I don't think they are different modes of being at all and viewing them as such is needlessly dividing. Emotional and logical abstraction are simply two prominent skills of many which our brain posesses. Misapplying these skills can cause problems. As this video points out, there are emotions which you cannot argue away, you simply have to feel them and process them, irrationally.
@@lukasobi Beautifully explained. "Balance" helps most things. "Intellectualizing" may pull in the reins of overdoing emoting. And intellectualizing, may help calm you ( a call to reason). "I don't have to punch that guy in the mouth. He's carrying his bad attitude everywhere and everyday. Let some other person do the work."
I used to study math as a way to dissociate since having to solve math problems occupied so much of my brain that I didn't have enough working memory to experience my emotions
Interesting concept, it makes me think about how many people get into psychology because they are trying to intellectualy figure out their own trauma while training to help others. Ive met a couple strange therapists.
Very much appreciate this episode! I have suspected, for a long time, that my dads entire political interest is one huge intellectualization. It is his way of coping with the world and life in general. I believe it makes him feel sort of in control of things in life. "At least I know politics and history" (when he fails to understand it from a psychological point of view). I have also understood that I myself have this tendency and I'm nowadays very wary of it.
I have to get up and live each day I’m alive. How I feel about that and what I do about that are not in concert, but my commitment as well as obligation allowed me to ignore my feelings so I can get through it once again. Feelings are fleeting and life is a temporary yet permanent fixture of your perceived reality. I will jargon my way through this till the end.
I wonder if there’s a link between burying emotion in fancy words and psychopathy. This seems like such a big problem today maybe diagnosing it in a way that can be healed would benefit us all.
I think it’s more of a defense mechanism that the empathetic are attracted to using. Psychopaths generally don’t experience negative emotions as frequently as the average person-that’s sorta their deal-because the empathetic can not just hurt for themselves but for others. When psychopaths experience negative emotions they’re typically quick and decisive about responding (be that dressed up in words or by force) because they lack an inhibition, and they are also typically attracted to unintellectual, gruesome things they indulge in their spare time as catharsis (which opposes intellectualism). When I picture a psychopath/sociopath, behavior shying away from their own emotions does not come to mind. But intellectualization can drive empathetic people to act consistently ruthless or cold, which we colloquially call psychopathic, and I agree that ‘socialized psudopsychopathy’ is gonna continue to be a huge problem especially in young people-thanks, Internet!
I don’t agree with the total condemnation of intellectual life being made here. The intellect is one of the most beautiful things about human beings, and we have a lot to thank great intellectuals of the past for. Newton, Darwin, Pasteur, etc. probably seemed to be speaking in incomprehensible jargon to people outside their fields. For me, abstract thought is something that brings a lot of joy to my life, full stop. There are many things in my life that are both highly emotional and highly intellectual: books, music, relationships with certain people. I don’t deny that the dynamics you’re describing are real or uncommon. I just don’t think they’re universal.
Not everything can be intellectualized or understood, some things just need to be felt, experienced, understood and accepted
no no there is a truth to be attained in every field, existence is infinitely nuanced, but that truth process requires emotional intelligence to learn the infinite nuance about themselves, experience their own truth events, and self actualize for real.
Everything we can think about, can be thought about
I think everything in terms of that can be explained with neuroscience, but I think you cannot logic your way out of feelings they are two separate things in the body and you need to cry to self regulate etc but you cant do just by thinking and using logic. I think the most logical thing u can do is feel ur feelings bc in terms ur helping ur body heal and the mind and the body are very interconnected.
"Defining the meaning of life is like trying to capture the essence of a river in a bucket." (not verbatim) It’s impossible, because you’re just left with water in a bucket. The same can be applied to language as it is merely an easier way to communicate. It is fixed. The words can never express what e.g. "love" truly means. It’s something to be felt through all your senses.
This was from one of Alan Watts books, I think "Wisdom of Insecurity."
Life is much better when intellectually understood and mastered.
Feelings may give you a sense of being alive. Yet so does thinking and creating
I left high school suffering from extreme amounts of trauma, both from my home and an abusive boyfriend. I attended an elite college and stuffed down my trauma, and I certainly intellectualized. Until I had a massive breakdown my senior year. I couldn't push myself anymore and my feelings hit me like a thousand trucks. No one cared.
Yeah, when it finally comes out the people around you, who all bought into that type of mentality, might not recognize it as natural or justified. I'm very sorry that happened.
@sb1206 Yea, this will happen. Sorry you went through it alone. I hope you are healing and understanding what happened to you. When I started delving into why this happened to me, I realized pretty late in life, when I awakened (figured it out) that my father was a covert narcissist. I'm thinking sociopath as well, as he never could connect with ANYONE, EVER. Which I then started analyzing my mother's behaviour growing up, and she was co-dependent. Answers so many questions I had. So I hope you find the answers, I'm not even sure if you're looking to find out but much love and peace to your journey. : D
@@loanicastillo3327 Who said I haven't already?
@@loanicastillo3327 NOPE!... I found REAL FREEDOM from the teachings of THE BUDDHA the reason you believe in JC is because you're 100% full of fear, yea? YOU ARE EXACTLY what he's talking about, yea? I dare you to research BUDDHISM, and I know you won't because you are full of fear, yea? Oh, by the way, I went to a Christian school where I learned and experienced HELL, yea? "EVERY WISH FULFILLED" E.T. .......................................................
Care for yourself. It’s the best love you can get❤
Let's not forget that intellect is also rewarded in our society, while emotions are seen as negative.
So true! You can see it early on in school, emotions are seen as unnecessary adjuncts to life, wrong, weak and are often medicalized away so people can preform and be efficient and rational (normal)
Intellect in a way, even when it’s very abstract, is still a more understandable process than trying to live with emotions.
That’s probably why our society accepts intellect more often.
Thats a trauma in itself, people reaction to your feelings as if its a virus to be caught.
yeah, great point@@MrDontcareify
It is not about accepting but more of what can turn into action and give results.. I think we need that proper balance
Intellectualization is helpful when you are a still a child, or a teenager, and cannot escape your abusers. Classical music (playing the violin, including in an orchestra, which enabled me to spend time away from 'home'), spending time in nature (which included birdwatching and trying to identify flora), and schoolwork (especially Mathematics and learning Latin and foreign languages) really helped me through those years of Hell.
Concrete activities😢yes
It really is a way to protect the heart. True wisdom comes from the heart, true healing comes from the heart, true connection and conversation comes from the heart. I can fall into this
I love this quote from a poem by Anne Sexton:
"Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth."
Love Anne Sexton ❣
"The heart" is a euphemism for the core combination of thinking and feeling (intellect and emotion). Just in the interest of health and wholeness for everyone... overromanticizing is as dangerous as overintellectualizing.
"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" -Jeremiah 17:9
The only thing your heart tells you is about your heart; it tells you nothing about the world outside your heart, which is most of reality.
But the LORD said to Samuel, “Don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”@@stevedoetsch
In that passage from the Bible, it then talks about how the Lord searches each man's heart and "gives to every man according to his ways." I believe there is a way to live from the heart in a way that honors the divine within. That would be then the ultimate intelligence, an intelligence or 'consciousness' that only few beings have ever reached. That consciousness is what is talked about in Jesus Christ's and also many of Buddha's teachings. In is a consciousness generated from compassion, empathy and connection with the entirety of humanity. Those feelings could not exist without a heart filled with love. I find having empathy for those with the least is a direct connection to reality and not the opposite. The quote you referenced is talking about how human beings are inherently sinful and I agree with that. Much of the Bible then talks about how the heart can be purified, changed for the better and made clean. I believe that making choices, finding and building a purpose from a (healed) heart - from a place of love is the most powerful & emotionally intelligent thing a person can do@@stevedoetsch
The message I got from my family:
* My feelings reveal a lot of my real personality which then can be used to shame me and hurt double time.
* My feelings are often to be mocked.
* My feelings reveal vulnerabilities which can be used against me.
* My feelings are wrong.
* My sad/hurt/painful feelings are often a source of pleasure for others (which hurts even more, therefore best not to express them or better yet, not feel them).
* My feelings are not even talked about or paid attention to. And when I do, they are minimized, poorly explained or made sense of. It makes them confusing and me not even aware of what I'm feeling (alexythimia)
This didn't leave much space for feeling. Without realizing it I became a much more logical "in your head" type than emotional person. Now undoing this is a pain in the ass
I think truly undoing the pain can be done in presence of people who allow you to feel.
All of this. 🎉 A lifetime of surgical emotional undoing and putting bandaids on every unproductive, critical parent thought that passes.
I believe when people mock you feelings sometimes its because they dont want to have to feel bad for treating you shitty so they just mock your feelings because then they can keep feeling ok with themselves because it is not thier behavior that is a problem but its your fault your too sensitive... "It wasn't even that bad, you shouldn't feel that way" . which is just them lying to themselves usually because they absolutely would get offended or mad if they were treated the same way..
It seems as though when people try to control your emotions they are usually trying to limit themselves from having bad ones.
Same. Meditation is healing me.
Okay, you got me. But, and forgive me for intellectualizing this, you overlooked a key reason. Intellectualization is not just avoidance, it’s control. I am a professor and I absolutely have a ton of blocked trauma. A literal ton.
Not only could I attempt to fill a deep hole with academic accomplishments and avoid anything emotional, I could also control a room because I was/am the smartest one in it. The feeling is almost one of desperation; a desperate need to control outcomes in our adult lives, because we couldn’t do it as children. And I am a female. I can’t even imagine how it must be for male academicians. But I do know they have the same type of desperation. As long as we are one step ahead, at all times, we can impose order on our environment and feel in control of it. It also allowed me to be kinder and more understanding of the vulnerability of my students.
But, yeah, wtf is an emotion? I wasn’t allowed those. My dad would mock us if we needed to cry. We are all, my siblings and I, really screwed up, now. I’m aware of it and deal with a lot of hopelessness. My siblings are still pretending.
Control. In academics, we have control for the first time, of our environments.
Nicely said! Thank you for sharing this. Daniel
No, you control that room because you maintain your social role. You invested in that role and dont want to lose it.
Goddamn man, I need to comment a little of my story here.
When I was in middle school/high school, I took a lot of my personality cues from sheldon cooper (big bang theory). I wanted to be so smart that I could intellectually fight anyone. I hid my emotions, I was too smart for them, maybe. In private I knew girls didn't like me, I knew I didn't have any friends, the friends I did have wanted to be smarter than me!
When I went to college, I wanted to keep it up, my degree was in math, I wanted people to be impressed by how smart I was. I could think about stuff that no one had ever thought about. Then I took that to social sciences and I knew everything could be explained, even more I knew it could be explained by me if I tried hard enough.
During college I had a hard time finding friends bc I was so annoyed by people like me but I never understood why no body treated me like a friend.
...
By the end of college, I had so much depression and anxiety adding up from situations and from school that I turned to weed heavily. A girl broke my heart, my roommate was disrespecting my emotional bandwith, I felt so alone, but at least I felt a little better with weed. One day the weed induced a panic attack, I felt like I was stuck like this forever, I was dying, I was falling into my head and I couldn't get out.... The next few weeks I had heart palpitations, feelings of being violated, feelings of being afraid of my own head. Everything was triggering. The panic attacks subsided after a few months but then came back again more extreme during covid, fear of death and dying, fear of my family's health. I couldn't move, I was frozen, i couldn't eat or look at my family members. I began to take medication to help me back to normal.
Eventually I found spirituality as a means to mitigate. Now two years later, I realize the way I used spirituality was a way of "spiritualizing" instead of "intellectualizing" -- kind of like I now had bigger and better answers and I could outsmart my feelings this way.
...
Cut to, about six months ago, spirituality isn't working any more. I'm desperate for help, anxiety meds and spiritual books don't help like they used to. It took me up until about two weeks ago to realize that I needed to feel everything. Don't be smarter than it, don't science it, don't think it thru until there's a logical end. Just feel it. Feel the fear, the dread, the isolation, feel it all. Break down. SUFFER.
I'm reminded of the girl I used to be in love with, we dated for about 3 weeks (haha) and it took me 9 months of grieving and crying and being mad and being depressed to feel like I was even close to normal again. But I never let myself feel fully what was happening. I smothered that pain with weed, I smothered covid/death pain with medication, i smothered the depression of having no friends or girlfriends with school.
...
But I promise, if you've gotten this far, life has not a single answer. And all you need to do to be at peace with anything is feel it. Its trying to make you grow, its trying to make you better in some way. Let go of the FEAR of feeling it, it cannot hurt you, let go of the DESIRE to NOT feel it. Its absolutely necessary to be emotional.
An exercise I've been doing recently is I've been letting my mind come up with one thought, allowing the emotions to come, and then saying okay brain, I need you to pause, I have to sit with this one. I focus on the feeling, I breathe, I let it in. It feels painful sometimes, it can make you break down, it can make you realize things you've never before realized. But understand that avoiding the emotion is not the answer. Let it break your heart. Broken hearts, just like broken arms, heal with time and love, not by ignorance.
Hope you've enjoyed my story up til now.
This is so true and resonates with me and what I've gone through too
Yeah, nothing should be used as a band-aid. Even if the things you intellectually or spiritually discovered were true it doesn't mean the dysfunction miraculously disappears. Nor should they be pursued as an avoidance or distraction. I do think, however, that access to those things can help you understand, submit to and endure the process towards a clearly defined goal of wholeness, to whatever degree you might attain it. Thanks for sharing your experience.
It's funny, your experience sounds very similar to mine just now.
Thankyou for sharing your experience. ❤
Wish you all the best with your healing process, and no, there is no single answer to life's problems
Your videos in our today's stupid and highly traumatized world are like breeze of enlightening fresh air. I am usually a disagreeable and critical person, but when I listen to you, there is absolutely nothing I can disagree with or criticize, I almost 100% agree with everything you say and truly enjoy listening to you. Thank you for being you.
Ive been thinking about this a lot. To me it seems that there are two mechanisms by which people become smart. One is out of love and i consider that curiousity. The other is out of fear (wanting to understand things to have a sense of control with the external reality) and i consider that conditioned intelligence. One path opens up possibilities, creativity and joy, thr other grows the sense of alienation and dissatisfaction. I work in both modes and try to be aware when i fall into the latter so as not to crush the pleasure of learning.
Interesting
There are absolutely some people who try to get knowledge so they can have power over others and make up for a feeling of inadequacy.
Precisely! My ex-boyfriend was bizarrely obsessed with emotion VERSUS logic. As if they were antithetical, mutually exclusive forces that fought one another. He put "logic" on a pedestal, more than I've even seen in today's bizarre "facts don't care about your feelings" war. Emotionality was something he deeply shamed me for, and he talked a strange amount about being "logical".
The funny (or perhaps sad) thing is, he was EXTREMELY emotional - he was explosive. And he was deeply, deeply illogical, that most of his views and statements were wacky and extreme. I'm pretty certain he had BPD, and intellectualization was his way of trying to suppress his violent storm of emotions - and miserably failing. He was constantly crying, screaming, smashing things, and yet he would scoff at people for being emotional and said things like "My goal is to be a robot that only engages in logic, because emotions are disgusting.".
This is insane, it reminds me of Onision entirely! I looked up to the guy for years and yet this was all he did!
@@AmazingRebel23 - Oh wow. That checks out, actually. I never followed his content, but I literally remember seeing a clip of him saying "When you disagree, you're disagreeing with logic - which makes you wrong.". Also, I saw him have a meltdown. Very much like my ex, and very much the type of thing my ex would say.
He would make the most extreme, bizarre statements, and just claim that he is logical, and everyone else is disgustingly emotional. He had very little self-awareness, so I genuinely don't think he could see how crazy he was.
Damn this kind of reminds me of myself when I started loosing her. I remember being extremely depressed but tried to keep myself busy with this useless shit. I felt her slipping away from me and I just went off the rails contantly, making it worse. I was extremely emotional, unstable in general. I just wish I could have helped myself and saved a great relationship. But only a literal fucking break up could get me to actually get better. Jeez. I hope your ex got his shit together too.
And here you are on the internet shaming him for his emotions. Just like a woman. Hypocritical and cruel to the end. I bet you believe you are being the goddess of balance of both emotions and logical reasoning with this scornful hit piece. You're unfit for any relationship.
The more someone is trying to force cold logic into everything and suppress emotions, the more they tend to be driven by them. They try to suppress them in the first place because they have unhealthy relationships with emotions and see them as useless, undesirable.
But they cannot successfully rid themselves of their emotions. And they just become less aware of what is driving them and how to healthily respond.
Well... If you have suffered trauma, conceptualising and abstracting helps to understand what's going on, reframe, and (if ongoing or if the respective people are still in your life) develop a plan to make changes. While you need to stay in touch with your feelings for alignment, just indulging and acting on them mindlessly likely won't improve the situation or make it worse
Completely true. For example, if one is rejected, the natural inclination is to connect such rejection with self-value., however, the intellectual researches and comes to realize that rejection is protection from a future with someone or something that isn’t good for you. Secondly, rejection is projection of the other person. Not you. Understanding the logical theory actually helps with healing. :)
And also, it helps us to understand what we are feeling, and helps us to keep grounded in reality and not be biased on our beliefs.
Very true. Pete Walker ('Complex PTSD') warns that people should do 'self work' in very small doses, and Dr Judith Hermann ('Trauma and Recovery') warns that people's first priority should be to establish safety, i.e. leave their abusers and make sure they cannot get to them, which usually means getting a job so that you can pay for housing.... I've been homeless on and off my entire adult life and part of the reason is that my past makes it difficult for me to find work, especially as I am always asked personal questions, and because I am good looking, people always assume I must be in a relationship, i.e. that I don't need to work for a living, and when I explain that I am single and I am the only one paying the bills, they wonder what's wrong with me and often suggest that I find myself a rich husband or boyfriend.
@@RamadonPiano I find your comment interesting, can you explain further about how the rejection is projection of the other ? Thank you ☺️
@@naghamibrahim1373 I couldn't find the ted talk but I think I can quickly summarize the message. Rejection is protection from a future with someone or something that is not good for you. Even though you may like them, that job, etc. it is not good for you to be with someone or something that is unable to see your value. Relationships like that simply do not work. Reasons don't really matter. Fact of the matter is they'll never see your true value. That will always be based on their lense in life. Those that see your true value will stick around and give you the world. Consider it a blessing. Another facet of this is that rejection is projection. Again the reasons don't really matter. It could be a busload of reasons they are choosing to not move forward. This can be internal with them or based on something that may not even be true. Fact of the matter is they'll never see you or your value. Your best option in life is to quickly ascertain whether or not someone is wasting your time. Quickly get the answer. If it is rejection then that is a good thing. You can move on to someone or something that'll yield better benefits. Trust me there definitely is someone or something out there that will. Hope this helps!
The culture encourages this
What culture? Certainly not the one I'm in. Many adults I know are monosyllabic, unintellectual mental infants, and they're certainly not less traumatized than the degree-holding pompous emotional infants that Daniel describes.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJr
I live in Sweden. My experience and observations present with a duality of the anti-intellectualism you describe and also cerebral-narcissistic pseudo-intellectualism. I think it's a fork in the road in the development of the false self for the traumatised child: somatic or cerebral false self. The mutual features are trauma and dissociation/fantasy defense and the ensuing distorting and bias-forming rationalisations of their own character. An effort to destroy the misperceived (as bad) true self, as modelled and internalised by early-life perpetrators.
I guess they have a hard time tolerating eachother because in the end they are essentially the same and they rejected themselves.
@@3nrika Good observation. I think Daniel might see your wording as the kind of "intellectualization" he was talking about here. And I appreciate that you're using Vaknin's idiom to honestly describe your own genuine observations. If anyone is a perfect example of a "pompous intellectual," it's Vaknin, and Sam himself would probably be forced to agree with that assessment.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJrI see this too.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJr Thank you, appreciate your recognition there. To be clear, you're right I have been influenced by Vaknin's thinking. And another yes, he would probably be a strong contender. 😁
Found your comment amusing as I was self-conscious about giving off the impression of the cerebral bend.
In defense of tempered intellect, it might be worth acknowledging that cerebral narcissism is an imitation of something real. ✌
You’re genuine. You’re authentic. You make it easy to relate
Well said. I read so many books about self improvement and psychology it just helped me to rationalise the issues and try to find the spots. But instead when I simply tried a practice of daily prayer & gratitude I felt much much better.
Hi Daniel, I’m from Russia
I am so glad that I’ve learned English to understand you. Thanks for your videos, watched them all. Very very helpful. Take care
Спасибо!!!
So I had a therapist who was convinced that I was doing this - Intellectualizing as a way of bypassing difficult emotions, traumas etc. But by that time I was already super committed to this path of healing, feeling my real feelings, going to every difficult place in myself. But I was speaking a ton in this session with this therapist and had a lot of ideas and thoughts I was sharing. Which is attributed more to having been silenced for so long and now I wanted to speak the truth and own my power. And the therapist was putting it into this little, constructed box and denying my perspective. I think it just illustrates how problematic the therapy relationship can be.
Same. Extremely problematic when any of my questions/disagreements are met with unfalsifiable allegations of "resistance", "defense", "intellectualization" when I really just have unanswered questions. I'd rather them tell me "idk" than basically tell me "I think too much". Therapy is really a secular religion.
I can relate to your comment @nick… I had the rather humiliating experience of a young therapist, making a clinical note that I certainly wanted to talk a lot! Little did he know that I was like a freshwater spring on a mountain and having someone available to listen, was turning me into a little geyser.
Every line of your comment rings with me. I totally resonate with it.
@@rakshit_arora01 Glad to hear it, my friend.
This happened to my ex best friend sadly. She is currently studying to become a psychologist and became too intellectualized, to the point where if someone tells her about their fears of disability or dying (very real human fears), she starts recommending books on how they are wrong to feel that way. She can't just let people be anymore.
woah... accurate
So true, I myself had been this way for a long time (as was everyone else around me) and it stinks. I hate how I didn't listen to people's emotions (and mine own)
I want to train to become a psychologist; I empathize with those fears I’ve had them.
I think you shouldn’t be a therapist unless you’ve lived it and healed otherwise you can’t empathize. Too many privileged people become therapists. I’ve been abused by therapists.
Damn, she should not be a therapist.
Did she have parents that didn't get along or weren't happy?
This is me for sure. I got so deep into the daniel mackler rabbithole, i watched like half of ur videos, they re great!
His videos are like crack
@@pod9363 i knowww right?🤣
@@pod9363 and more people seriously should check his content
Gosh, how clearer things seem now.... Thank you so much, straigth from the heart!
And this is how and why; the higher a persons education level, the less effective they are as a human being... THIS is why govt mandates that you have at least a bachelors degree to get a govt job, because the degree indicates the level of disassociation that you have, and you are therefore NOT a threat to the system and will look the other way when morally questionable stuff takes place.
I think that's more a consequence of faulty academic institutions and decadence of society than it being a fault of the entire idea of using the intellect in life. You're taking "education" to mean "adherence to dogmas" when it could just as easily mean "freedom of thought."
Love ". . .the degree indicates the level of dissociation that you have . . ."
Stormtrooper bootcamp
Based! 🤣🖖
Aaaaaaaaand you missed the point. 🤦♂️ just because some people use education as an armor to hide their feelings, doesn’t mean that every educated person is like that. And it most surely DOESN’T mean that uneducated people would run governments better. Try running the economy without a degree in economics, some countries tried it and it ended very poorly. You have to know how things work to get stuff done. The point is, education should give you knowledge without dehumanizing you.
agree with this. I went from a cold, intellectual therapist to discovering my own inner screaming baby. My therapist hated the fact I was feeling things all over. Left therapy and spent the last few years connecting to the original trauma though first cranio-sacral therapy and then my own 'unwinding' breathing and body movement. Allowing all the feelings to be what they were. My body language is very powerful, face contorted, sobbing very deep. It's all about embracing all. The pain is awful, it's very scary, but it's the truth. It's helped me change my self-defeating habits, but it's a long job.
Thank you for sharing this. It gives me hope. I would like to try the same.
hope you find the key for you, cranio-sacral was mine, but there are plenty of others somatic techniques worth trying. @@keylockwood9487
Maybe it's equivalent but i prefer using words like "educated" or "cerebral" compared to "intelligence". From my experience in academia, you see a lot of very educated people but not very smart outside their small area of expertise. Especially when it comes to emotional intelligence that is very rare.
I think you've hit something in why i find staying in academia and research almost repulsive emotionally. All of these abstract stuff paired with people who kinda have to be cerebral because if the job, makes me wonder what us the point in all of this in regards to the real world and the human experience.
Obviously there's an element of taste and interest, together with the field and its community, but overall it does feel like a distraction even if so much scientific advancements comes from it (like computers or modern medicine).
Knowledge, intelligence and wisdom are different traits. An intelligent person can be unwise and thereby act very foolishly in the world. Or an intelligent person can be un-knowledgeable in a subject they are not interested in. Or a knowledgeable person who has done a lot of studying can show a poor result on an IQ test. Or a very wise person could be neither knowledgeable or intelligent, but spend all their time doing no harm, meditating on the few truths they grasp like an ascetic yogi or something.
I would love a video going more in depth about confronting buried feelings and undoing intellectualization.
❤
Timely video Daniel. I just reconnected with a family member I hadn't spoken to for 20 years. She is a globe trotting university educator and after the call I made notes about how drained I felt from our conversation. I find her difficult, hard work to connect with and I don't feel at ease to speak freely. Just observations....but your video has given me food for thought. Thanks
We over-intellectualize to avoid painful feelings, and also to feel and appear strong and in control. (Am I doing it right now?) Anger and aggressive dominance is sometimes part of it, too. Angry aggression can masquerade as intelligence, especially in men.
Also, intelligence or intellectual achievement gets confused with worth, value, and worthiness of love. This can get passed down the generations in families, creating pain.
There is a very deep and ancient tradition of using the intellect to "remember" one's true nature in order to let go of traumas and to come into a fullness of being, an awareness of cosmic unity and the soul's presence in that field. Children are innocent and pure. But, like it or not, most adults have accumulated a level of mental sophistication at the same time that they've acquired some traumas simply by living (or sometimes being neglected/abused), that mental complexity which generates naturally as a consequence of growth requires some "intellectual" untangling for most people. I don't think a return to calmness, to centeredness, to thankfulness and happiness is necessarily a return to infancy, you can't go backward in time. We have to work on ourselves, who we are today.
I do this. When I was a kid, I was very sensitive and cried easily. I was also bullied by my peers and abused by some of the adults around me. I had to grow a thick hide, and my intellectualization is a result of this. It may not be healthy, but I have to maintain it. Otherwise, I would probably end up killing myself.
i believe this is a key component of why i have felt very out of touch with the stem portion of my undergraduate degree and schooling in general. people who were good at high level math or logical thinking were emotionally cold and distant. to be involved in my career path i do find myself having to suppress my emotions or feelings in order to have a sense of belonging
the comment on parents also being intellectualized is also something ive noticed. so many future engineers with engineer parents, or in general parents who went to college; i compare it with myself whose parents barely finished high school, very different emotional worlds
it almost makes me angry to think that some people inexperienced with academia look up to it and believe it to be highly rigorous and credible. i don't want people to feel less capable or less qualified about themselves because they didn't attend college. the intellectuals are not all that they seem
To accept everything with you is to expand your freedom.
@peterh beautifully said
Absolutely true
I've been a very emotional person all my life and trauma therapy has taught me about logic. How I wish I'd learnt years ago my life would've been so different. We need both ❤
We need both 👍
I tried to make sense of my own mind for over 20 years to try and understand my emotional trauma. It created all sorts of other pathways in my mind around the problem itself.
As always you collect this subject superbly. I had a father who was a teacher and struggled exactly as you describe. Information and knowledge was both armor and weapons. Only interesting people, knowledgeable people, had worth. Emotionally capable and educated is a definite issue for many. Thank you Daniel. It's like having a good friend and brother how looks out for you listening to your vids. 👍🏻
❤
Daniel, thank you for a spot on video about trauma that many have suffered with for decades even through therapy.
❤
TY for being here. I always wanted a sibling & you are what I would wish for as a brother. I appreciate your passion you share to help us heal & understand each other better. Bro hero.🙏❤️🔥🥰
This is soooo true. It took me a long time to really process my emotions in a healthy way. To feel the feeling - to confront it. Thank you. ❤
What did you do? What helps? I’m journaling but I still get so mad at people
❤
@@mariahconklin4150 For me it helped to practice mindfulness. Either thru long walks or meditation on my own. Writing down your feelings helps immensely so. The simple question goes of 'why' goes a long way: Why Do I get angry at people? Is it because they are not respecting my boundaries, is it because I have short temper, is it because I have natural tendency to react in manner that is anger? Whatever the reason may be - it's your responsibility to act accordingly. To act as if you are interacting with yourself. Because at the the end of the day - we are all one.
But beware of over intellectually analysing the issue. Be sure to feel the feeling.
I wasn't allowed to show feelings. I should always be reasonable.
It was hell for me. 😭
being reasonable and showing feelings are not mutually exclusive
@@Concentrum You're right! Instead of showing feelings, I should have correctly said, expressing feelings and emotions!
I very strongly believe from own experience that suppressed anger and rage are a key factor.
In my childhood I was punished for being angry when I felt mistreated. But I come from a very intellectual household. So thinking and rationalizing was always around me. It is like you grow up in a household where smoking is a thing. So you start smoking and feel "hey! That makes my pain go away!" so you smoke more. Intellectualizing was for me like smoking. Thanks god I never started real smoking!
Today I feel relatively indifferent to horrendous things because I can so quickly rationalize/relativ...ize (?) them. It is almost like a reflex. But I don't feel really alive anymore and that is to me more frightening than to feel the pain, anger, disgust etc. one is SUPPOSED to feel for what's going on in the world right now!!!!
Hi google! Here you go, have another bit of info about my psyche so you can cluster me into some group. You're welcome! 🖕🏻
oh I feel the same way. It helps me perform under pressure though
@@tomzeroonezero it is a survival strategy. Nothing less, nothing more.
This one has really helped me. I saw after watching it how strong of a defense intellectualising is in me. I get these insights as I’m sitting quietly with myself and run with them because they seem so important. But I can see now I’m using that as an excuse to not feel something, maybe many things. It’s ironic that I realised this and am now writing about it, I know. But I just wanted to say thank you for the video, and all your videos, they really are helping guide me towards growth
it's dangerous when you got intellect combined with emotionlessness and lack of empathy or consideration. because you got someone just trying to unnecessarily complicate things without thinking about humanity and putting humanity first. there's a reason why narcissism has gone up so much in today's world to the point where it's normalized. because narcissism wins, and to make a change we should stop indirectly encouraging narcissism and allowing it to win. cause we're not seeing each other organically as humans from a humane perspective, we're seeing each other in a more robotic way and as if to "one up" each other through outsmarting. we should remember today what it means to have some real empathy and consideration for people.
because a lot of things don't need to be explained through words or intellectually, they can be felt in other ways.
a musician doesn't need to understand frequency synchronizations and the physics of sound waves to know what harmonies work well and how to become pitch perfect. it can be learned in many other ways, that doesn't make him dumb. in fact, if he tries to unnecessarily dig into those things, it may drive him to anxiety to the point where he can forget and lose touch with the strong instinct of melody and rhythm that was there before.
it's like in the movie A Beautiful Mind, what John Nash says. when we're babies and for many people out there who are more empathetic and kind, it's frankly straightforward that love comes first and love is life's first priority, it doesn't need to be explained to them. but in his case, It takes him a lifetime of intellectualization, downs and ups, from facing schizophrenia to become a nobel laureate, to come to the same conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is.
The intellect is one of three parts of our mental awareness
Are basic mental awareness is energy and energy is 30% of a feeling
Spiritually, there are feelings deeper than energy
Our spirit is love and love is a Feeling
In our basic mental awareness, we can be conscious of our feelings initially only on an energy level of consciousness
Then there is the Trance mind
The mind will separate from awareness of the physical body and go into a trance state when a person begins to use their visual brain to fabricate an illusion in their mind and imagine they're doing some thing that they're not really actually doing for real in the moment, and this is also called fantasy and of course many people fantasize when they pleasure themselves and imagine they're having an intimate experience when really, they're all alone and lonely
Then there is the intellect, and the way someone gets to the intellect is through repeated practices of going into a trance, and going into a daydream on purpose by fantasizing
The intellect has zero feelings, yet someone living in the intellect believes that they are feeling and actually they're not feeling at all and they can easily be indifferent or have no sympathy
Stressing out the body physically, can also cause the mental awareness to separate into the intellect due to excessive physical trauma, such as going through Boot Camp in the military, and this has been documented that the excessive physical training in the military produces the results of the men and women being more separated from their feelings and instead just observing from their intellect
It seems to me that the intellect abhors vulnerability and sees a connection with feelings as weakness
Grief is the feeling that opens the heart
Yet the depth of devastation and despair that a person can experience when they allow themselves to grieve, authentically can feel like TRAUMA to someone who is used to being separated from feeling anything
We have both basic feelings and elements of feeling, and they all exist for a reason, and have a purpose to allow us to become more conscious
Intellectualization.. TBH, I've never known the def of this word until now. I am sometimes like this, didn't know it was hiding emotions. I've been treated so badly my whole life by my caregivers that I have no clue when someone is even being rude to me. Since awakening I see it so clearly now, but still act the same way. It's hard to break out of this "what I think is normal" attitude b/c it was my environment for 45 years. We are a work in progress. Integrating our wounded inner child with our adult self is so important. It's painful at times with the crying and grieving but crucial to my healing and growth as a healthy human. Daniel, your topics are always so interesting and informative. TY
I was shamed for expressing my worries, fears, and panicking growing up. I was ignored when talking. I wasn't looked in the eyes as a sign of respect. I was told I was a baby when I got angry. I was shown laughter when I couldn't get a ride somewhere, I was blamed and not talked to really for 8 years. And then I was manipulated into thinking it was all my fault. That I was intentionally avoiding my parents. That I didn't talk to them and I'm a bad kid. I was lied to saying that "I used to ask you how it's going, and you just said you're good. Well of course-I learned any other emotion other than I'm good, whatever that means, will be met with boredom or rage. Anything other than being quiet wasn't acknowledged. Emotional expression was mocked. Now I avoid sharing parts of me out of fear. The fear of being left. Because even back then, it was better to be around people who weren't engaging me, than to be alone. Better to be mocked, laughed at, discarded, any other relationship other than alone. I had tried for 35 years to explain this away to myself. But the real truth is being alone is the answer, the way out for me. I can be alone now and not worry about others needs all the time. Or if they'll call me to yell at me, or if they're enjoying their lives while I'm not. That hatred, bitterness, and anger. Going towards the emotions and state of "i'm all alone, what now"? is a great way for people with abandonment and fear of rejection issues. Coupled with "these are safe people, these are people I can be myself with". Some relationships will end, or in a way change. I've changed as I no longer deflect responsibility for my choices. Nor do I go into deep shame cycles and beat myself up. I just learn, have new insights daily, and keep moving on. The best way to get valued, security, and love from your parents-who you're looking for out there.....is to turn the finger around on you. Be brave, you have a self-too, and its worthy anad valuable of getting its needs met. Need for safety? Give it to yourself. Need for connection? Connect to yourself. Then go out and be that way with others, knowing you have a physical and emotional home to return to. Start looking for ways to validate yourself, parent yourself, and love yourself. Then you can get into a relationship with others.. It's not indepedence and I need no one else attitude.....it's practicing non-neediness.
Thank you for sharing🌸
This is fantastic. Powerful order of words at the end. “But instead coming within. Remembering. Remembering in the body. Feeling. Grieving” I’ve centered there before and forget the potential for being back there with every waking moment. Thank you for reminding me.
*"The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” - Plutarch*
(we see and understand the world around us through our own perception, however our perception is deeply affected and shaped by both the world around us and within us)
_Intellectualization results from you/us finally getting over yourself/ourselves...and realizing that the universe doesn't revolve around you/us and your/our feelings._
From my own experience I can completely agree with this! 😭
The film, "Shadowlands," about how Joy Gresham cut through C.S. Lewis' intellectualization and made him feel is a great example of Daniel's point.
I suffer from intellectualizatio to small degree as well as isolating myself from people and hyperindependence as my coping mechanisms. Coping from what? From the fact that nobody actually listens. People either ignore or pretend to listen and pretened to undertand but nobody actually listens and cares. I feel like a pile of shit when i share something about me(not necessarily trauma-related) with people and they just ignore it like i never said it. It hurts.
Find people who value principles and not just material gain or social advantage. The world system doesn't condition people to care about each other (or even themselves, essentially) so you need to associate with people who have values based on higher principles... granted that you are that kind of person, because you may need to demonstrate that first.
I love the serenity of your videos so much, just a breath of fresh air and a warm voice. No unnecesary overstimulation, sense of spontaniety because the videos arent overedited and the simplicity brings such authenticity to it, just a raw experience. Keep making more vids !
This is poking in to a cache of pain..
I know what you're saying means a lot to me.I am viewing places of pain in my self . I'm taking a taxi ride through the psychological me, and driving by pain centers, some neighborhoods are repaired nicely and some frightening run down poor blocks of houses
..perhaps needing resolution or attention (!).
Thank you so much for even bringing this topic uP!
You've hit a nerve, a live wire
and I'm going to make it work for good in my some how -😅
Thank you !
Your channel is what saves me
Great video with an eye-opening insight. Keep going 👍
I'm grateful to found you on UA-cam, I really liked listening to you. Helps me better to understand myself. Greetings from Germany!
My case is interesting here. I have had extreme childhood trauma involving prolonged confinement, poisoning, sexual abuse (rape), daily beatings including having wine bottles smashed on me, severe psychological abuse, cyclical starvation, and I had pretty much no normal psychological and emotional development. As an adult I have minimal social skills, I have the life skills of a young teenager, I live in isolation alone in a flat and rarely go out or interact and I'm on disability benefits for multiple conditions including foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and global brain damage caused by my mother's drinking throughout pregnancy and her infectious disease she harboured when she gave birth to me, I don't have normal life responsibilities because I don't have the life skills and my friend manages my bills and banking because i don't know how to do it. I was taught only academics as a kid, nothing else. I couldn't cook or use a washing machine or iron when I was taken into supported housing away from the abuse at 19. In supported housing I learnt skills 12 year olds learn but because I never had the childhood exposure to anything but academics and abuse (I didn't socialise), I couldn't learn much and now I'm registered severely socially impaired on the council archives register. To this day, I don't feel my trauma, I absolutely have no sexual abuse trauma just a history. I have half of PTSD as I'm missing loads of the emotional symptoms. I intellectualise my life, my life is run by science and maths. I am too far gone to consider emotions. Trust me. My emotions only come out when I lose my sanity acutely and have public freakouts and get arrested (~60 times in 10 years now). I'm flagged on my local police station and they auto respond with 6 cops. I insisted to my therapist that she does implant emotionality in case I end up with life imprisonment and she agreed not to do that. I'm too far gone and I don't want emotions, they are a threat to me.
I'm so sorry❤. It's understandable that you cannot handle your emotions after such severe trauma. You deserve so much healing and so much love.
@@janetbeatrice9505 thank you. I can honestly say nobody displayed true love to me in my life. My mother obviously didn't love me and didn't show any but the inverse, my dad was away on business for 10 months a year total throughout my childhood and although he said he loved me he didn't show much emotion and wasn't overly involved in my life and was oblivious to a fair amount of the abuse because he wasn't there to see it (if I told him my mother would respond with the same punishment she used when I told my school a bit about it and that's suffocating me with a pillow until I passed out and had a seizure). I've never had a relationship in my life just friendships. I don't know what love is though. I don't understand the emotion, I don't know what it involves and what the experience is like. I also have never felt love for another. I am currently just used to DIYing my life and asking a friend to do the stuff I have no life skills for like managing my bills and utilities. I live my life in science and my only emotions are contentment, rage, happiness, anger (in place of sadness) and hatred. I don't know of any others.
@@AntimatterBeam8954 I wish I knew what to say to help. I wish I knew how to heal severe trauma. How sad to be so severely abused by your own mother. Sending virtual hugs, for what it's worth.
@@janetbeatrice9505 thank you. Don't worry I'm doing a lot better in severe isolation from human life, I'm much less over stimulated now so I've had time to respect myself better. Also I've been estranged from my mother for over 5 years now and I live in a place she doesn't know the address of. I took myself off the electoral register and other things etc but I still have some fear she will find my address. But for 3 years living here she hasn't found me. I'm in a different borough now in London and she doesn't go to this borough. I have felt much more at peace knowing I'm estranged from her properly.
@penderyn8794 thank you, thank you for this, I appreciate this
i needed this like fifteen years ago.
Daniel I seriously hope your thinking becomes mainstream my friend:-)
❤
My father was disgusted by all of my emotions growing up but always encouraged me to intellectualize unless the consequences of that intellect went against him. I remember being upset that the other kids didn’t like me and I didn’t fit in when I was seven years old and he told me that “they’d all be working for me someday”. This is part of the reason I had no friends in middle school.
Hey,
I would love to see you explore an idea:
that intelectualization, well directioned, can be a great tool to help reduce itself in intelectualized individuals.
the curse can become its own antidote.
This would be gangster, I hope it happens.
Sitting here I'm making some connection between my breathing particularly deep extended exhaling at the end of my breath is where possibly I might be releasing/processing emotions?
Inhaling to now actually
OMG this is so true! Thanx for sharing this. I studied to become a psychologist and I was shocked realizing how many of the teachers and professors teaching psychology and therapy stuff were so dissociated from their true inner selves and genuinely afraid of talking about emotions and inner wounds.
It was stunning to see how so many people, whilst working in that field, still cannot handle their own and others emotions in a healthy way. They were using defenses like intellectualization and projection a lot and were also treating their students in an emotionaly abusive and humiliating way - not understanding how this was affecting the students.
Just want to say there are good therapists out there too, who are empathic, connected to themselves, warm and loving, but I was shocked realizing how many emotionally immature intellecutals are working even in the field of psychology - which I find somewhat contradictory since the main goal of psychology is to understand people and help them feel better. That would include learning to understand and heal one self.
But I think some psychologists and therapist use their intellectually learned coping strategies for what I would like to call "Intellectual Bypassing" (might be the same as intellectualizing) where they use mind-techniques to intellectually "cope" with their trauma (which on a deeper level allows their trauma to continue running them) rather than to dive deep into their emotional wounds, process and integrate their emotions and from that place finally be able to genuinely heal themselves at a core level.
Sometimes the intellectualization is needed, as it provides a defense against being gaslit about one's pain.
Thank you for helping me understand myself. It makes so much more sense now why I always felt comfortable in college more so than anywhere else.
Yet this over emotional society we are living in is destroying our future and no one wants to accept that fact.
When you separate your thinkers and doers, you have your laws made by cowards and wars fought by idiots. And a lot of people settle for being a coward and an idiot, so evil will run rampant without enough resistance until a few smart brave people get fed up with it. I'm getting pretty impatient at this point.
It's all about equilibrium and balance between intellectual cognitive activity and emotional embrace, feeling and acceptance. I think that something is definitely boiling under the surface these days and great changes are coming in our lifetimes as they already have been. You can feel the tension on the ground level, and history seems to repeat itself time and time again.
This explains why people like Ben Shapiro act the way they do perfectly. I use to admire him as a child because the way he spoke made him seem so intellectual but as I got older I realized he would say so much to really say nothing at all.
Another genius video. It would be very much worth doing another part and expand on the topic. Massive thanks.
you are my favorite youtube. speaking from the heart. thank you so much.
Some people's biggest fear is coming across someone who can beat them at their own intellectual games, but don't even feel the need to because they're already secure in who they are, and don't need that sort of challenge to feel content.
Robert Sapolsky is an example of a smart but emotionally present and compassionate academic.
absolutely!!!
I've recommended that guy so many times, but no one seems impressed. Underrated giant.
Thank you Daniel. 😉
My mind is fixating on the stain on your curtain, trying to defend me from connecting with your video, but I won't let it 😊
Thank you for this video, it does resonate with me personally.
2 years into my career as a psychologist after 7 years of study/placements, and yep, the academic competitiveness and need for over-complicating simple phenomena in the world of psychology.
Intellectualising is a huge challenge for me nowadays. I have learned to 'feel' more than think when I need to these days. That's fine, and I'm glad I can do this. But, oh boy, my clients who intellectualise are the clients that I struggle to make progress with. Its a fascinating challenge.
Loved this video.
This is a great conversation. Obviously we need rational thought to formulate concepts in which to convey our feelings so that we can bridge the gap between our individual emotional landscape so that we understand each others emotional needs. My question is; When does intellectualization go to far in abstracting, or painting a picture of this landscape for another. I notice that sometimes having this type of conversation is productive up to a point. Then it spins out and kind of loops back on itself. This seems like an avoidance of actually sitting and feeling the actual emotions themselves, which are not words.
You are such a treasure for humanity! Thank you!
This is such a great topic! Struggling with this with someone I’m close to and don’t know how to approach or tell them about their intellectualization seems to be used to compensate for how much they dissociate and disconnect from emotional states.
Growing up in that environment can imprint a perception of "stupid people bad." Hanging on to that sentiment can make for a rough go.
Fortunately, I was able to use my intellect and reason so exhaustively, to ultimately ended up realizing it was all paradox. You can't be logical down your very core; logic dances to the songs of our emotions. The universe is paradoxical, and having realized that -- one simply learns that true knowledge comes from embracing the heart.
The reasons I don’t share my feelings isn’t to avoid them, but because OTHERS can’t handle the immensity of my trauma.
People can’t/don’t want to deal with other’s suffering
I've been on the receiving end of this several times...I'm considering myself a good listener, and I love it when people entrust me with their feelings. I can handle most people's feeling but not those of narcissists and people who are too antagonistic and constantly defensive and negative...I've tried my utmost to help those..but unforyunately, it is at the expence of my own health, so I've had to let those people go...I just couldn't help them the way they needed :/
I don't think it is reasonable to put that on other people unless they were the ones who traumatized you or they are emotionally available and you trust them obviously
"I'm not responsible for your feelings," "don't cry," "that must be hard for you," etc., are bandied around alot nowadays.
I think it's more that ppl lack the necessary skills of setting emotional boundaries with themselves and others and are often confused, unsure if they're intruding, being played, taking on too much, lack the capacity, or believe they're crossing some line when another's emotionally upset.
You learn this from family, with peer pressure and society to "suck it up buttercup" and we all too often respond to others as we've been treated ourselves. Those who've been bullied tend to bully for example. Those who've cared to much may have endured compassion fatigue to the point they have nothing left to give. It will vary with the individual's experiences.
There needs to be a balance worked through of facing and feeling the feels to heal so we can respond better to our own emotions and accordingly with those of others. As within so without.
I do, I want to
@@darwindeeez "Do or do not, there is no try" ~ Yoda ✨🖖✨
I really resonate with this, and I've always thought about it. Although I've found a different reason for it. You know when you mentioned the arrogance part, I really think these people often act intellectually just to feel superior, like having more complex opinions makes them stand out from the rest, it makes them feel special. You really can't show me a humble intellectual, and if you think you've found one they're just good actors, just like old philosophers, they like to think of themselves as different to everyone else because society also has this conception that culture equals intelligence and their fragile ego's are visible if you look deeply.
This is unrelated to whether it comes from blocked trauma or not.. but the way I tell the difference between someone who's intelligent versus a tool is if they understand nuance. Someone can regurgitate their way through a program but not know how to dissect ideas, school doesn't necessarily teach a person how to think.
What I look for is if I can adjust the properties in a part of their understanding about a thing and if they can follow the global ramifications of adjusting that single presupposition, this shows me whether or not someone can think critically.
I'm not impressed by people boasting of their education, or usage of technical jargon. Rather, these are things I expect from an educated fool; cultures and individuals that look up to these outward appearances are in my mind low-tier in terms of intelligence. They don't understand what it is so they try to imitate what it looks like. Real intellect tries to simplify ideas and break them down, not obfuscate them behind unnecessary complexity.
Intelectualization really describe me. I dont remember much about my childhood. But i think i have some trauma. I've date with girls but i remember i dont "feel" anything. I dont know how to flirt or treat them. So my relationship doesnt go anywhere. I also wants to look "smarter" in front of everyone. From primary and goes on until college. I dont necessarily smart. I just want to talk smart and look smart. It is painful. I dont know how to understand basic emotion from my friend sometimes. I envy people that can feel others emotion. In the end, im stuck with this intelectualization with no solution.
I feel like some of this applies to me and it's something to think about :D great video, daniel
Thank you for great inside about myself
Thankyou so much for the video ☺️
Sometimes you come across content that connects directly to something deep inside. This video did that for me, framed the inner workings of my psyche and defense mechanism in a very clear way. For me, my feelings have to pass through a filter of intellectualization to gauge whether the feelings are justifiable for me to feel or not. Everything is over analyzed, even just the thought process of feeling, which isn't even a thought process. It's supposed to be intuitive. Emotions become threats. I implode periodically because of this too. But i wouldn't have the sheer insight i have without this level of intellectualization. Intellectualization creates such a tangled psyche, layers upon layers of complexes that've developed as a result of coping with repressed emotions. Then the confused sense of self as a compounded effect of being highly agreeable in conjunction. The dissociation makes the self feel alien, like it needs to be organized and always ready to face threats rather than telling the pain body that it's okay to feel, emotions are not facts, they are messengers. And when grounded in deep self-compassion and love, the act of feeling feels more like an act of grace and innocence, connecting us to the unified experience of being human. Which at a deeper level, is the core of spirituality; unity.
Healing it strips back the defense mechanism of intellectualization and makes you realize that; We are never as far removed from the emotional level of a child internally, especially in conjunction to trauma. So don't overcomplicate emotions. Never blame, always resolve. Also think of the analogy of the inner child, would you be cruel to him/her? would you punish him/her just for needing to feel? You are your own best friend, treat yourself like it. Know that the person in the mirror really knows you, he/she knows everything you've gone through, look at where you're at now. This is how i've learned to feel properly; Acknowledge the emotion and its placement in the body, mine are usually in the throat area. After which i need to make a conscious effort to deactivate my defenses and let the feeling expand like a wave up through my head and throughout my body and breathe into the feeling without judging it. Essentially mindfulness. Then i look at "what does xyz feeling/emotion wish to communicate to me?". I listen to it and implement the change.
Something which helps tremendously too is the Jungian concept of shadow integration. To get rid of the stigma around negative emotions. There is no absolute good nor evil. Without acknowledging your darkness, you are not a complete person. "To the degree that you condemn and find evil in others, you are to that degree unconscious of the same thing in yourself."
Instead of judgement; understanding. Instead of condemning; understanding. Instead of neurosis; flow.
"The point of view where one sees conflict, which at first seemed absolute, as resting upon a primordial unity. Thereby attaining a profound unshakable peace of the heart, which can nevertheless contain conflict. Not a peace that is simply static and lifeless, but a peace that passes understanding."
The darkness in you seeks love, that's what it needs, that's how you heal and transmute it. But you learn to provide it yourself, to yourself. There is nothing wrong with you; it's about what happened to you and how you are relating to it. It's all understandable.
Probably my favorite ever video of yours.
I've noticed over the past several years that I've done this for a lot of my life and often still do automatically. Though now I am aware of it.
A lot of it was barely under my conscious control and comes in the form of what I now see as intrusive thoughts. I have come to hate them.
I will be trying to feel my feelings and get clarity and relief from processing them...and in swings this wrecking ball of minimizing, rationalizing, over-analyzing, dispassionately pragmatic and condescending lectures. All absorbed from adults for my entire childhood and then everyone else for the rest of my life.
It is disguised as "reason" and follows a certain logic but it is the furthest thing from reason. And it boils down to "you should not have strong negative feelings about things".
00:04 Intellectualization is using logic and reasoning to avoid dealing with emotions.
01:09 Intellectualization as a defense mechanism against emotional connection and trauma.
02:07 Intellectualized people can become uncomfortable with emotional truth and can become even more defended.
03:52 Intellectualization can make people think they are intellectual even if they are not
04:48 People who intellectualize their pain may have underlying emotional wounds.
05:45 Using academic jargon to confuse and distract others
06:46 Connecting with feelings and healing through grieving
Intellectualization is when people use their intellect, logic, and abstract reasoning to avoid dealing with their feelings. This often stems from childhood trauma and emotional disconnection. Intellectualized individuals can become uncomfortable with emotional truth and may exhibit arrogance and snottiness.
Intellectualization is using logic and reasoning to avoid dealing with emotions.
- Many academics use intellectualization as a way to discuss complex ideas and use fancy language.
- The speaker experienced this in college, where professors used intellectualization to make sense of their own ideas.
Intellectualization as a defense mechanism against emotional connection and trauma.
- Allowing intellectual expression but blocking emotional expression.
- Observations of people with intellectualized behavior linked to childhood trauma.
Intellectualized people can become uncomfortable with emotional truth and can become even more defended.
- Intellectualized people often struggle with expressing and processing their emotions.
- When confronted with emotional truth, intellectualized people can become even more defensive and intellectualize even further.
Intellectualization can make people think they are intellectual even if they are not
- People who use intellectualization as a defense may not actually be intelligent
- Intellectualization keeps people dissociated from reality and their true abilities
People who intellectualize their pain may have underlying emotional wounds.
- Intellectualizing pain is often used as a defense mechanism.
- Sometimes people are forced to drop their intellectual defenses and reveal their emotional pain.
Using academic jargon to confuse and distract others
- People sometimes use academic jargon intentionally to make it difficult for others to understand what they're talking about.
- This concept is often used as a strategy to prevent people from challenging their ideas or actions.
Connecting with feelings and healing through grieving
- Facing and reliving the horror of painful and ugly experiences
- Not intellectualizing, but sitting still and quiet with the pain
- Remembering and feeling in the body to process and grieve
My father would tell me all the time "to be realistic", "to be logical"; never showing weakness. But he was the most temperamental, irrational and absurd person I ever met.
in ''energetic Medicine'' provided that the ''perfect Condition is Balance'', then when one displays an ''Excess'' on a certain given Level or Part of himself, herself, this also ''indirectly'' shows a ''Decifit'' on another given Level or Part of himself, herself, such as someone who wears ''fashionable, almost rich Clothes'', this shows some ''inner Poverty or Indigence'' also in Term of ''neglected Child''; on the other Hand one's ''Profession'' is habitually ''very telling'' concerning one's endured past Experiences or the Experiences endured by oneself, during one's Childhood. ''Salve'' in Latin and ''virile Intellect together with gracious Affection to generate Beauty, original, active'' to everyone.
From a chinese medicine perspective you are some correct - overthinking is considered to be a spleen organ system (hpa axis) system dysfuncion. The physical presence of stress hormones controls the functions of many cell lines, so the consequences are as non negotiable on mood and cognition. These things alter the medical structure.
You're right. It could become harmful to your emotional life, but I think that's a choice in life you make. What are your priorities?
Something I found really interesting happened with my therapist. He easily recognized I have a tendency to intellectualize but pivoted completely around trying to help me with it. That happened when I expressed I actually take pride in intellectualizing, and I can list a myriad of positive stoic like attributes it gives me access to.
I think just as we shouldn't look down on feelers, we also shouldn't look down on intellectualizes. They're just different modes of being with their own rewards and drawbacks.
I don't think they are different modes of being at all and viewing them as such is needlessly dividing. Emotional and logical abstraction are simply two prominent skills of many which our brain posesses. Misapplying these skills can cause problems. As this video points out, there are emotions which you cannot argue away, you simply have to feel them and process them, irrationally.
@@lukasobi Beautifully explained. "Balance" helps most things. "Intellectualizing" may pull in the reins of overdoing emoting. And intellectualizing, may help calm you ( a call to reason). "I don't have to punch that guy in the mouth. He's carrying his bad attitude everywhere and everyday. Let some other person do the work."
Thank you for this talk Daniel!!
I used to study math as a way to dissociate since having to solve math problems occupied so much of my brain that I didn't have enough working memory to experience my emotions
U can be a good theorist but also a good healer tho, just that the transposition between the two is very nuanced.
Interesting concept, it makes me think about how many people get into psychology because they are trying to intellectualy figure out their own trauma while training to help others. Ive met a couple strange therapists.
Damn Daniel, you got this
I’ve met so many people like that and They do make people who aren’t like that feel lesser than
Very much appreciate this episode!
I have suspected, for a long time, that my dads entire political interest is one huge intellectualization. It is his way of coping with the world and life in general. I believe it makes him feel sort of in control of things in life. "At least I know politics and history" (when he fails to understand it from a psychological point of view). I have also understood that I myself have this tendency and I'm nowadays very wary of it.
I have to get up and live each day I’m alive. How I feel about that and what I do about that are not in concert, but my commitment as well as obligation allowed me to ignore my feelings so I can get through it once again. Feelings are fleeting and life is a temporary yet permanent fixture of your perceived reality. I will jargon my way through this till the end.
I wonder if there’s a link between burying emotion in fancy words and psychopathy. This seems like such a big problem today maybe diagnosing it in a way that can be healed would benefit us all.
I think it’s more of a defense mechanism that the empathetic are attracted to using. Psychopaths generally don’t experience negative emotions as frequently as the average person-that’s sorta their deal-because the empathetic can not just hurt for themselves but for others. When psychopaths experience negative emotions they’re typically quick and decisive about responding (be that dressed up in words or by force) because they lack an inhibition, and they are also typically attracted to unintellectual, gruesome things they indulge in their spare time as catharsis (which opposes intellectualism). When I picture a psychopath/sociopath, behavior shying away from their own emotions does not come to mind. But intellectualization can drive empathetic people to act consistently ruthless or cold, which we colloquially call psychopathic, and I agree that ‘socialized psudopsychopathy’ is gonna continue to be a huge problem especially in young people-thanks, Internet!
I don’t agree with the total condemnation of intellectual life being made here. The intellect is one of the most beautiful things about human beings, and we have a lot to thank great intellectuals of the past for. Newton, Darwin, Pasteur, etc. probably seemed to be speaking in incomprehensible jargon to people outside their fields. For me, abstract thought is something that brings a lot of joy to my life, full stop. There are many things in my life that are both highly emotional and highly intellectual: books, music, relationships with certain people. I don’t deny that the dynamics you’re describing are real or uncommon. I just don’t think they’re universal.