How does the deregulation of emotions blind us and interfere with our perception of the world?

It may seem strange or unkind to suggest that most of us, when submerged in mental illness, is not able to think. Or nor does it need to be in a mental illness, a good deregulation of emotions already does this service. But that's not how one feels, of course. Inside, our minds probably feel busy and focused on organizing thoughts, do not give us a moment of rest and we are exhausted by the marathons our thoughts run within us. However, we can still want to insist (for the kindest and most redemptive of the reasons) that this intense mental activity does not affect our sanity…

In the intense phase of emotional deregulation, none of the mental faculties works more, but - and that's the real difficulty - we hardly realize what is happening. When we are emotionally sick we get unconscious. It seems that we continue to think the way it has always been - with all the usual intelligence and reliability. Nowhere along the way our minds generously tell us that it began to look at reality through distorted lenses, which - at some point in the day - for all purposes - has stopped working. No bell touches, no danger light starts blinking. The mind simply insists that it is giving us all normal readings and that we objectively enter hell.

However, the truth is that, with the deregulation of emotions, we lose command from our sanity and gather ideas from the traumatizing and perverse aspects of ourselves. It is as if a group of terrorists had dressed white lab coat and were passing on prestigious scientists to draw a set of perverse theories and prognosis. After we have gone through some distorted thinking cycles and recovered contact with reality, we must make us kindly accept that we can lose command of our superior faculties and that there is nothing embarrassing to recognize the possibility and accommodate ourselves To this carefully. We should start to detect better when the disease may be approaching us, what the triggers may be for it. So when we are on us, we should not do and decide anything. We should not send messages, judge people's lives or plan the future. "When in doubt, don't exceed." To avoid harmful conduct as a consequence of these distorted thoughts, we must - as much as possible - to interrupt all mental activity and rest. It can be when listening to music, taking a long shower, watching something on TV that is not harmful…

We grow up with the idea that as long as we are aware, our minds will be working perfectly. But mental illness teaches us a more complicated lesson: our superior faculties (those that give us access to reality) are extremely vulnerable and dangerously likely to close themselves under the influence of our emotional intensities. We must strive to be thinkers who recognize when we are no longer able to think wisely. We are imperfect and everything is fine, the important thing is to be aware of it.

A good possibility of help at these times is to try to connect our brain to someone else's, reliable, to help us with your reasoning. It can be a friend or therapist to whom we can resort at these times and ask if they can calibrate and regulate our thoughts with an injection of wisdom and discernment, care for life.

Text written by the member of the Contextus Nucleus, director of Facefi and Doctor Mara Lins.