Most people tend to think with emotions over reason because even though humans pride themselves on being intelligent and logical, we’re still highly irrational and prone to our emotions. This can lead to a subjective decision-making process driven mainly by our current emotional state.

That’s also why I think we need to learn to think with reason over emotions and to learn and balance our intuition with our logic.

Think of it this way, the conscious mind consists of reason and logical thought, while the subconscious mind comprises our emotions and feelings.

Our emotions are a primal force and are leftovers from an ancient time. They serve as powerful motivators to regulate and, more importantly, initiate behavior.

Hunger

For example, feeling hungry will initiate the behavior to search for food. Before, in the hunter-gatherer society, this would lead to hunting animals and gathering berries and other edibles to satisfy our hunger and thus, survive as a result.

In our modern, peaceful times, we simply go to the fridge or cook a delicious meal to satisfy that craving. But, the intention remains the same. That feeling of hunger triggers a deliberate action that allows us to survive as individuals and as a species. Because without food and water, we don’t last long.

Fear

Another powerful emotion is fear. And while we generally dislike fear because of the anxiety, uncertainty, and overall unpleasant vibe it induces, it can serve a real survival purpose.

An innate fear of snakes and spiders, for example, is a remnant of an important survival function. In the wild, before our modern-day society was established, poisonous spiders and snakes were a large and significant cause of human deaths.

This unconditioned fear made us weary of the fact that these animals could be deathly to us. As a result, we stayed away from these wild animals or were at the very least much more cautious and attentive of these animals that could kill us. So again, fear can serve a vital survival function.

Once more, emotions can be a viable way to keep us alive. They do have an indispensable function. But sometimes, our emotions entirely take over our rational thoughts, which can be a detriment at times. Especially since times have changed a staggering amount compared to before.

Fear of the unknown

Let me give you another illustration.

Fear of the unknown might have saved us from dangers before and kept us alive as a result. But these days, life is much safer. There’s less burglary, rape, and murder, and people generally live together much more peacefully and cooperatively than before.

If we avoid what is unknown, then we can’t grow from these life experiences. If we want to make progress in, let’s say, science, then we must do that by venturing into the unknown to be able to make new discoveries that can improve life and our health as a result.

Anger

Another instance is the emotion of anger.

Before let’s say in the Stone Age, when someone angered us, we would typically fight to subdue that person, often killing them in the process. Of course, this was a never-ending cycle, and tribes would often fight against other times regularly.

Today, we have learned to use our rational thoughts to temper and override our anger and willingness to harm others to maintain a peaceful and cooperative society.

Just imagine how our society would look like if we would constantly act upon our feelings such as anger and vengeance. Life would be chaotic and much less safe than it would be now.

So sometimes, these emotions can have a negative impact as well. And our higher cognitive functions such as our rational thoughts are necessary to “override” these feelings.

We can conclude that sometimes, thinking with logic over emotion is beneficial and even necessary to counteract our subconscious mind.

On another note, internalizing a lot of these negative emotions for an extended time wreaks havoc on our emotional and physical well-being. They’re not healthy emotions, certainly not in the long term, to say the least.