Tag Archives: mental-health

A Mobile Crisis Clinician is a Mental Health Professional:

A Mobile Crisis Clinician is a mental health professional who goes to the person experiencing a psychiatric or behavioral health crisis, rather than requiring the person to come to a clinic or emergency department.

What may the mobile crisis clinicians do?

They typically respond to situations involving:

Suicidal thoughts or behavior

Psychosis, paranoia, or severe disorganization

Severe anxiety, panic, or emotional dysregulation

Aggression or escalating behavioral crises

Substance use and abuse related psychiatric crises

Severe depression or mania

People experiencing homelessness or otherwise unable to access traditional services

Family or caregiver crises involving mental illness

Their goal is generally crisis stabilization and the least restrictive appropriate intervention, not automatically hospitalization.

What happens during a mobile crisis response?

A clinician may:

Establish safety and rapport

Conduct a mental status examination

Assess suicide, violence, self neglect, and grave disability risks

Evaluate substance use, medications, medical issues, and environmental factors

Determine whether the situation can be safely managed in the community

Develop a crisis/safety plan

Connect the person with outpatient, substance use, housing, or other services

Coordinate with family, law enforcement, EMS, hospitals, or existing providers when appropriate

Arrange follow up or stabilization services

When legally justified, facilitate an emergency psychiatric evaluation or hospitalization

Who may be a mobile crisis clinician?

Depending on the program and jurisdiction, the team may include:

Licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs)

Marriage and family therapists (LMFTs)

Licensed professional clinical counselors (LPCCs)

Licenced Clinical Psychologists (LPSYD, LPHD)

Psychiatric nurses

Other qualified behavioral health clinicians

Peer support specialists

Case managers

Often, the clinician may work as part of a multidisciplinary mobile crisis team, sometimes alongside a peer specialist or medical professional.

Mobile crisis vs. 988 vs. 911

These are related but different:

ServicePrimary function
988Crisis counseling, assessment, support, and connection to resources
Mobile Crisis TeamGoes into the community to assess and stabilize a person
911/EMSEmergency response when there is an immediate medical, safety, or life threatening emergency
Emergency DepartmentMedical/psychiatric evaluation and treatment when a higher level of care is needed

In California, mobile crisis services may also intersect with 5150 evaluations, but a mobile crisis clinician may or may not automatically place someone on a 5150 simply because the person is experiencing a psychiatric crisis. The statutory criteria and the clinician’s authority/designation matter.

An important distinction

A mobile crisis clinician may essentially a mental health professional bringing crisis intervention to the person, rather than waiting for the person to enter the mental health system voluntarily.

The underlying philosophy is often:

Engage…Assess…Stabilize…Determine the least restrictive safe intervention…Connect to continuing care.

For someone interested in crisis services, 988, 5150/5250, CIT, and forensic mental health, mobile crisis work sits at the intersection of clinical assessment, crisis intervention, risk management, legal/ethical decision making, and community behavioral health.

Shervan K Shahhian

Collective Guilt could be the feeling of guilt experienced by a group of people:

Collective Guilt could be the feeling of guilt experienced by a group of people because they identify themselves with, belong to, or feel connected to a larger group that is perceived to have caused harm.

Simple definition

Collective guilt: “My group did something wrong, and I feel some responsibility or moral discomfort because I am part of that group.”

Importantly, collective guilt msy not necessarily mean personal guilt. A person may feel collective guilt even though they personally did nothing wrong.

Examples

National: A person feels guilt about atrocities committed by their country in the past.

Religious: Someone feels responsible for harmful actions historically committed in the name of their religion.

Organizational: Employees feel guilty about unethical conduct by their company, even though they weren’t involved.

Family: A family member feels responsible or ashamed because another family member harmed someone.

Social group: A person feels guilt because members of their broader social group have discriminated against another group.

Collective guilt vs. Individual guilt

Individual guilt Collective guilt

“I harmed someone.” “My group harmed someone.”

Based on one’s own behavior Based on group identification

Usually involves personal responsibility May exist without personal responsibility

May motivate personal repair May motivate collective repair or reconciliation

When collective guilt is healthy

Collective guilt may become constructive when it leads to:

Recognition…responsibility…repair…prevention

For example, acknowledging historical wrongdoing, learning from it, supporting victims, and helping prevent similar behavior in the future.

When it becomes unhealthy

Collective guilt may become psychologically problematic when someone assumes personal moral responsibility for something they did not do, particularly when it produces:

excessive shame

self-punishment

chronic helplessness

resentment

identity based shame

compulsive attempts to “make up” for something

hostility toward members of another group

difficulty distinguishing historical responsibility from personal responsibility

A useful psychological distinction may:

“I am connected to this history” is not the same as “I personally caused this harm.”

Collective guilt vs. Collective shame

This distinction is particularly important.

Collective guilt:

“Our group did something wrong.”

Collective shame:

“Our group is fundamentally bad.”

Guilt tends to focus on behavior and may therefore motivate corrective action. Shame focuses more on identity and may produce defensiveness, withdrawal, humiliation, or hostility.

There may be a related concept called collective responsibility, which asks a different question: Even if I didn’t personally cause the harm, do I have some responsibility now to help address its consequences?

That distinction, personal guilt…collective guilt…collective responsibility…collective shame, is especially useful when examining historical trauma, politics, religion, racism, nationalism, family systems, and group conflict.

Shervan K Shahhian

Pattern Recognition are the ability to notice meaningful relationships, repetitions, structures, or connections:

Pattern Recognition are the ability to notice meaningful relationships, repetitions, structures, or connections among information and use them to understand what are happening or predict what may happen next.

It could be one of the mind’s fundamental sensemaking abilities.

Examples

  • Social: Recognizing that someone repeatedly becomes defensive when receiving criticism.
  • Emotional: Noticing that anxiety tends to increase after particular situations.
  • Clinical: Recognizing a recurring cluster of symptoms that may suggest a particular psychological condition.
  • Behavioral: Seeing a repeated cycle of conflict…withdrawal…reconciliation…conflict.
  • Financial: Identifying recurring patterns in a company’s revenue, debt, or stock behavior.
  • Learning: Recognizing the underlying rule behind several examples rather than memorizing each example.
  • Parapsychology: Noticing recurring features across reports of unusual or anomalous experiences while distinguishing a recurring observation from proof of its cause.

Strong pattern recognition involves

  1. Observation: noticing relevant details.
  2. Comparison: identifying similarities and differences.
  3. Categorization: grouping related information.
  4. Association: connecting events that may be related.
  5. Abstraction: seeing the underlying structure rather than individual details.
  6. Prediction: using the pattern to anticipate what comes next.
  7. Verification: checking whether the perceived pattern actually holds up.

Pattern recognition may be both powerful and dangerous

The mind could be extremely good at finding patterns, even when a pattern may not be actually there.

This creates an important distinction:

Pattern recognition asks, “What seems to be repeating?

“Critical thinking asks, “Is the pattern real, meaningful, and causally related?”

For example, seeing that two unusual events occurred close together are pattern detection. Determining whether one caused the other requires additional evidence.

Pattern recognition vs. Intuition

They overlap, but aren’t identical.

Pattern recognition: “I’ve seen this configuration before; these elements tend to occur together.”

Intuition: “Something about this situation feels significant, even though I can’t yet explain why.”

Experienced professionals may develop remarkably sophisticated pattern recognition because they have accumulated many examples. A clinician, for example, may recognize a familiar interpersonal or behavioral pattern very quickly without initially being able to articulate every step of the reasoning.

The major problem: false patterns

Humans may experience:

  • Apophenia: perceiving meaningful connections among unrelated things.
  • Confirmation bias: noticing evidence that supports an existing belief while overlooking contradictory evidence.
  • Availability bias: giving excessive weight to memorable examples.
  • Clustering illusion: interpreting random clusters as meaningful patterns.
  • Hindsight bias: believing an outcome was more predictable after it occurred.

Therefore, excellent pattern recognition requires excellent error correction.

A sophisticated pattern recognizer doesn’t merely ask:

“What pattern do I see?”

They also ask:

“What evidence would convince me that I’m wrong?”

That second question is what helps distinguish genuine pattern recognition from pattern seeking.

Shervan K Shahhian

Narcissistic Gang Stalking may not be a formal psychiatric term:

Narcissistic Gang Stalking may not a formal psychiatric. It is a phrase sometimes used to describe a perceived pattern in which a person believes that a narcissistic individual or a group influenced by that person is deliberately coordinating harassment, intimidation, surveillance, social exclusion, or reputation attacks against them.

How the concept may be usually described

A person using this term may describe:

  • Smear campaigns: spreading damaging stories or accusations about someone.
  • Triangulation: recruiting other people into an interpersonal conflict.
  • Flying monkeys: a popular term for people allegedly enlisted to support or enforce the narcissistic person’s agenda.
  • Social isolation: encouraging friends, relatives, coworkers, or community members to distance themselves.
  • Intimidation: repeated hostile interactions, threats, or provocative behavior.
  • Digital harassment: unwanted messages, online impersonation, monitoring, or coordinated social media activity.
  • Provocation: repeatedly doing things intended to elicit an emotional reaction.

The important distinction

There could be two separate questions that may not be automatically collapsed into one:

1-Is there objectively verifiable harassment or coordinated behavior?

2-Is the interpretation of apparently connected events accurate?

Real coordinated harassment may occur. At the same time, when someone is under prolonged stress, trauma, interpersonal conflict, or hypervigilance, may cause sever psychological and some medical issues: the victim(s) should consult with a medical doctor and a therapist.

A psychologically careful approach may therefore:

Validate the person’s distress without automatically validating an unverified explanation for it.

For example, instead of saying “Yes, the narcissist has organized people to stalk you,” a clinician might say:

“It sounds frightening and exhausting to feel that multiple people may be targeting you. Let’s separate what you directly observed from what you believe those observations mean, and look for independently verifiable evidence.”

Narcissistic abuse vs. “Gang stalking”

There could be useful conceptual distinction:

Narcissistic/interpersonal abuseAlleged coordinated stalking
Can be objectively documentedMay be difficult to independently verify
Often involves identifiable relationshipsMay involve strangers or loosely connected people
Smearing, manipulation, intimidation, triangulationSurveillance, following, coordinated harassment
Can occur without a large conspiracyRequires actual coordination if the claim is literal
Established concepts in psychology“Gang stalking” is not a recognized psychiatric diagnosis

From a clinical perspective, hypervigilance, trauma responses, confirmation bias, threat perception, and pattern recognition may all influence how ambiguous events are interpreted. That may not mean that every report of harassment is imaginary; it means the evidence needs to be evaluated independently of the interpretation.

If there are concrete threats, stalking behaviors, property damage, or identifiable harassment, the appropriate response is to document specific observable events, preserve evidence, establish safety, and use appropriate legal and law enforcement channels rather than trying to prove a broad theory of coordination by yourself.

Be ready to Legally defend yourself, your family and your property.

Shervan K Shahhian

Parapsychology; Mind to Mind Communication:

Mind to Mind Communication may generally refer to the idea that information may be transmitted from one person’s mind to another without relying on ordinary sensory channels such as speech, writing, gestures, or electronic communication.

It may mean different things depending on the framework:

Ordinary psychological communication

People continuously infer each other’s thoughts and emotions through facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, context, and learned patterns. This may feel almost instantaneous, but it still involves sensory information.

Telepathy

In parapsychology, mind to mind communication may often be used as another way of describing telepathy: the purported transfer of thoughts, images, emotions, or other information between people without known sensory mediation.

Empathic or intuitive communication

Someone may accurately sense another person’s emotional state without consciously knowing how they obtained the information. Psychology may explain many such experiences through unconscious perception, pattern recognition, emotional attunement, and inference. A parapsychological interpretation might consider psi as an alternative hypothesis when ordinary explanations appear insufficient.

Altered states and hypnosis

Hypnosis, meditation, dreaming, ganzfeld procedures, and other altered states may have been investigated in relation to unusual forms of interpersonal information transfer. These areas may particularly be interesting to parapsychology because they may reduce ordinary sensory distractions.

The key distinction

A useful conceptual distinction may be:

Communication…information is exchanged through an identifiable channel. Telepathy…information appears to be exchanged without an identifiable sensory channel.

For example:

Person A thinks intensely about a particular image. Person B, isolated from Person A and unable to obtain the information normally, reports the same or substantially similar image.

That would constitute a telepathy hypothesis, not automatically proof of telepathy. A rigorous investigation would need to exclude coincidence, sensory leakage, prior knowledge, cueing, selective reporting, and other conventional explanations.

In parapsychology

Mind to mind communication may be closely related to the concepts of:

Telepathy…ESP…psi…anomalous information transfer

It may be useful to distinguish telepathy from psychokinesis (PK):

Telepathy: purported mind…mind information transfer

Clairvoyance: purported information about an object/event without ordinary sensory access

Precognition: purported information about a future event

Psychokinesis: purported mind…physical system influence

One of the longstanding questions in parapsychology is whether these phenomena represent different abilities or different manifestations of a more fundamental psi process.

Importantly, mainstream science may not or does not want to established telepathy as a demonstrated mechanism of human communication. Parapsychological research continues to investigate anomalous information transfer, while conventional psychology emphasizes known mechanisms of perception, inference, memory, social cognition, and coincidence.

Shervan K Shahhian

The Art of Adaptation is the ability to adjust, without losing your core values or sense of self:

“Consider Alternative Interpretations and Strategies.Changing your strategy without abandoning your principles.”

The Art of Adaptation is the ability to adjust your thoughts, behaviors, strategies, and expectations when circumstances change, without losing your core values or sense of self.

In mental health, adaptation could be closely related to resilience, cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation, and problem solving.

Flex Without Breaking Down

A simple formula

Adaptation: accepting reality, learning from it, adjusting your response, continuing forward.

It may not mean simply “going along with everything.” Healthy adaptation involves knowing what to change and what not to change.

Five elements of adaptation

  1. Awareness: Recognize that circumstances have changed.
  2. Acceptance: Stop fighting the reality that may not be changed.
  3. Flexibility: Consider alternative interpretations and strategies.
  4. Action: Change behavior based on what you have learned.
  5. Integration: Incorporate the experience into your future decision making.

Adaptation vs. Rigidity

RigidityAdaptation
“This is how it has always been done.”“What does this situation require now?”
Resists new informationUses new information
Repeats the same strategyChanges strategy when necessary
Sees change as a threatCan see change as information
Protects certaintyTolerates uncertainty

An important psychological distinction

Adaptation may not be the same as conformity.

A person may adapt while maintaining strong boundaries and principles.

For example:

“I cannot control what happened, but I can control how I respond to what happened.”

That is adaptive thinking.

But:

“I must change myself to keep everyone else happy.”

May represent people pleasing, fear, or loss of identity, rather than healthy adaptation.

Adaptation under stress

Under significant stress, the mind may become less flexible. A person may enter a survival-oriented mode characterized by hypervigilance, avoidance, emotional shutdown, impulsivity, or rigid thinking.

Effective adaptation therefore involves learning to ask:

“Is my current response helping me deal with the situation, or is it a response I learned in an earlier situation that no longer fits?”

The deeper principle

The strongest adaptation may not be changing who you are whenever circumstances change.

It is:

Changing your strategy without abandoning your principles.

That is why adaptation may be closely connected to resilience and psychological flexibility: bend without breaking, learn without losing yourself, and change without becoming ungrounded.

Shervan K Shahhian

Chauffeur Psychology may be a useful metaphor for a psychological pattern:

Chauffeur Psychology may be a useful metaphor for a psychological pattern in which a person controls, directs, or carries another person through life rather than helping that person develop their own capacity to navigate independently.

It may be understood in several ways:

1. The “chauffeur” as a psychological role

A person may repeatedly:

  • Make decisions for others
  • Solve problems before the other person tries
  • Give constant advice or direction
  • Protect someone from consequences
  • Take responsibility for another person’s emotions
  • Become indispensable to the other person’s functioning

The underlying message may become: “I know what is best for you, so let me drive.”

2. The psychological payoff

Chauffeur behavior may not be necessarily malicious. It may satisfy important psychological needs, such as:

  • Control: “If I’m driving, I can prevent things from going wrong.”
  • Significance: “People need me.”
  • Identity: “I’m the helper/rescuer.”
  • Anxiety reduction: “If I take over, I don’t have to tolerate uncertainty.”
  • Avoidance: Focusing on someone else’s problems can distract from one’s own.
  • Self-esteem: Being needed can temporarily reinforce a person’s sense of worth.

3. The danger may be: learned dependence

If the chauffeur continually takes over, the passenger may gradually become less confident in their own ability.

This may produce a cycle:

Anxiety…chauffeur takes over…passenger avoids responsibility…passenger becomes less confident… chauffeur becomes even more necessary.

This overlaps with concepts such as codependency, enabling, Overfunctioning/underfunctioning, rescuing, and learned helplessness, although those concepts may not be identical.

4. Healthy alternative: “teach rather than drive”

A psychologically healthier approach may be:

“I can support you without taking over your life.”

Instead of saying:

“I’ll handle it.”

The helper might say:

“What do you think your options are?”

or:

“Would you like advice, or would you rather I just listen?”

That preserves autonomy, agency, and competence.

A particularly interesting distinction

There may be a major difference between being a chauffeur and being a navigator.

Chauffeur: “I’ll take you where you need to go.”

Navigator: “I’ll help you understand the map, but you’re still driving.”

In psychotherapy, the second model may be more consistent with empowerment and client autonomy. The therapist provides expertise, structure, and guidance without unnecessarily assuming control over the client’s decisions.

In one sentence: Chauffeur psychology describes the tendency to manage another person’s journey instead of helping them develop the confidence and skills to drive their own life.

Shervan K Shahhian

Compulsive Shopping, loss of control and the function shopping serves:

Compulsive Shopping, also called compulsive buying or buying shopping disorder, is a pattern of repetitive, difficult to control purchasing in which a person continues to shop despite negative emotional, financial, relational, or occupational consequences.

It is less about how much someone buys and more about loss of control and the function shopping serves.

Common cycle

Emotional trigger…urge...shopping…temporary relief/excitement…regret…distress…renewed urge

For example:

Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger, or low self-esteem…intense desire to shop…purchase…temporary mood improvement…guilt or financial stress…another emotional trigger.

Common characteristics

  • Preoccupation with shopping or purchasing
  • Strong urges that feel difficult to resist
  • Buying things that aren’t needed
  • Shopping to regulate emotions
  • Spending more money or time than intended
  • Hiding purchases or financial activity
  • Repeated unsuccessful attempts to stop or reduce shopping
  • Financial problems, debt, or relationship conflict
  • Buyer’s remorse after the purchase
  • Feeling temporarily better immediately after buying

Compulsive shopping vs. Normal shopping

Normal shoppingCompulsive shopping
Usually intentionalOften driven by an urge
Purchases serve a purposePurchases may serve an emotional function
Can postpone buyingDifficulty resisting
Little distress afterwardGuilt, shame, regret, or anxiety
Spending generally remains manageableCan cause financial or relational harm
Behavior is flexibleBehavior becomes repetitive and difficult to control

What may drive it?

Psychologically, shopping may become a form of emotion regulation. A person may unconsciously learn:

“When I feel bad, buying something makes me feel better.”

The anticipation of purchasing may itself produce excitement and reward. Over time, the mind may develop a strong cue…craving…purchase…relief/reward pattern.

Common triggers include:

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Loneliness
  • Stress
  • Low self-esteem
  • Boredom
  • Trauma related distress
  • Interpersonal conflict
  • Feelings of inadequacy or lack of control

Is it an addiction?

There is debate about terminology. Researchers have proposed conceptualizing it may be a behavioral addiction, an impulse control problem, or an obsessive compulsive spectrum condition.

Importantly, compulsive shopping may also occur alongside other conditions, particularly mood disorders, anxiety disorders, ADHD, OCD spectrum problems, and bipolar spectrum disorders. Excessive spending during a manic or hypomanic episode, for example, it may have a different clinical meaning than chronic compulsive buying.

Treatment

Treatment may generally focuses on:

  1. Identifying triggers and maintaining cycles
  2. CBT to modify thoughts and behaviors surrounding purchasing
  3. Developing alternative emotion regulation strategies
  4. Delaying or interrupting urges
  5. Reducing exposure to shopping triggers
  6. Creating financial safeguards and spending limits
  7. Addressing underlying depression, anxiety, trauma, loneliness, etc.
  8. Treating co-occurring disorders when present

A useful clinical question may be:

“What emotional state are you trying to change when you feel the urge to buy something?”

Shervan K Shahhian

Irrational Thinking; interpretations are not adequately supported by available sound reasoning:

Irrational Thinking is a pattern of thinking in which conclusions, beliefs, or interpretations are not adequately supported by available evidence or sound reasoning. It may feel completely convincing to the person experiencing it because emotions, assumptions, biases, or previous experiences may strongly influence how information is interpreted.

Common forms of irrational thinking

Pattern Example

All-or-nothing thinking “If I fail once, I’m a complete failure.”

Catastrophizing “If this goes wrong, my life will be ruined.”

Mind reading “I know they’re judging me.”

Fortune telling “I already know this will end badly.”

Emotional reasoning “I feel unsafe, therefore I must be in danger.”

Overgeneralization “Everyone eventually betrays you.”

Personalization “They seem unhappy, so I must have done something wrong.”

Confirmation bias Looking mainly for evidence that supports what you already belive Magical thinking Believing that thoughts, rituals, or unrelated events directly cause outcomes without evidence of a causal connection.
False certainty Treating an assumption as an established fact.

Irrational thinking may not be necessarily “crazy”

Everyone engages in irrational thinking sometimes. Stress, anxiety, fear, anger, grief, trauma, sleep deprivation, and strong emotional states may make reasoning less flexible.

A useful distinction may be:

Thought…Interpretation…Belief…Action

For example:

“My friend hasn’t responded.”

“Something must be wrong.”

“They’re angry with me.”

“I should confront them.”

The initial fact is observable. The subsequent conclusions may or may not be accurate.

Rational thinking may ask different questions

Instead of asking:

“How do I feel about this?”

Rational thinking adds:

What do I actually know?

What am I assuming?

What evidence supports my interpretation?

What evidence contradicts it?

Are there alternative explanations?

Am I confusing possibility with probability?

What would change my mind?

Am I reacting to the present situation or to something from my past?

An important clinical distinction

Irrational thinking exists on a continuum. Ordinary cognitive distortions are different from severely impaired reality testing.

For example:

Cognitive distortion: “My boss didn’t smile at me, so maybe she’s upset with me.”

versus

Fixed false belief: “My boss is secretly transmitting messages into my mind through the office lights.”

The second example raises a substantially different clinical question because the belief involves reality testing, evidence evaluation, and potentially delusional conviction.

A useful principle is:

A thought may feel true without being factually true.

That distinction between subjective certainty and objective evidence is central to rational thinking, critical thinking, and psychological reality testing.

Shervan K Shahhian

The Illogical Mind; the Reasoning Contains a Flaw:

The Illogical Mind could be a way of describing thinking that reaches conclusions that may not follow reliably from the available evidence or reasoning. It may not mean a person is unintelligent. Some may think illogically under stress, fear, strong emotion, social pressure, or uncertainty.

Common forms of illogical thinking

PatternWhat happensExample
Emotional reasoningFeelings are treated as facts“I feel unsafe, therefore I am unsafe.”
Confirmation biasEvidence supporting a belief is noticed more than contradictory evidence“I knew this would happen; look at this one example.”
Black and white thinkingComplex situations become two extremes“Either I’m successful or I’m a failure.”
CatastrophizingA possible negative outcome becomes an assumed disaster“If I make this mistake, everything will be ruined.”
OvergeneralizationOne event becomes a broad rule“They rejected me, so nobody likes me.”
Mind readingAnother person’s thoughts are assumed without evidence“She didn’t say hello because she dislikes me.”
Post hoc reasoningSequence is mistaken for causation“I thought about the storm, and then it happened, so my thought caused it.”
Magical thinkingThoughts, rituals, or symbols are treated as directly influencing external events without adequate evidence“If I don’t perform this ritual, something bad will happen.”
Appeal to authorityA claim is accepted primarily because an authority says it“It must be true because an expert said it.”
Self-deceptionInformation threatening one’s preferred belief is avoided or distorted“I don’t have a problem; everyone else is overreacting.”

Illogical may not necessarily mean irrational

There could be an important distinction:

Illogical thinking: the reasoning contains a flaw.

Irrational thinking: the belief or behavior is poorly supported by evidence, disproportionately driven by emotion, or inconsistent with the person’s goals.

A person may have an understandable reason for an irrational conclusion. For example:

“I’ve been betrayed several times, so I assume everyone will eventually betray me.”

The conclusion may be understandable given the person’s history, but the evidence doesn’t necessarily justify applying it to everyone.

The logical mind vs. the illogical mind

A useful conceptual distinction is:

Logical mind:

“What evidence supports this? What evidence contradicts it? Are there alternative explanations?”

Illogical mind:

“It feels true, therefore it must be true.”

The goal may not be to eliminate emotion. A psychologically healthy person may use emotion as information while using reason and evidence to evaluate what the emotion means.

A powerful question

When you notice an intense belief, ask:

“What do I know, what do I believe, what do I feel, and what am I assuming?”

That separates reality, interpretation, emotion, and inference, one of the foundations of good critical thinking.

Shervan K Shahhian