"You know why you do the things you do, and yet you can't seem to make a change. From the outside, intellectualizing can look responsible, thoughtful, and even wise, yet for many, it can start to feel like quicksand. The harder you try, the more stuck you feel. This isn't because understanding is useless, but because analyzing is taking the place of being present in your life."
"This isn't a moral failing or a habit to be managed. It's an adaptive response from a nervous system that learned early on that feeling was too much. For many people who grew up in unpredictable, critical, or emotionally flooded environments, going up into their heads became a safe place. If you could understand, analyze, or explain, you could create some sense of order and control."
Intellectualization operates as an avoidance strategy that uses analysis to move away from uncomfortable situations, sensations, and emotions. Analysis often becomes an adaptive response when early environments made feeling overwhelming, providing a perceived sense of order and control. Over time analysis can activate automatically and become the default doorway, requiring feelings and experiences to be scrutinized before they are allowed to exist or prompt action. When thinking becomes a shield, access to bodily signals and awareness of wants and needs diminishes. Knowledge and insight alone do not produce change when they replace present-moment emotional engagement.
Read at Psychology Today
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