People with a Borderline Personality Disorder diagnosis can often seem to overvalue their own thoughts and feelings.  In the cognitive behavioral therapy tradition, this phenomenon gets labeled as “emotional reasoning.”  The logic of emotional reasoning goes like this:  what I feel or think with conviction MUST be true because I feel so strongly that it’s true. The problem, of course, is many things feel true that aren’t.  For example, the earth feels flat, but isn’t.  A watched pot may feel like it takes forever to boil, but it always does given the burner works and is turned on. Here’s where it gets complicated.  People with BPD treat their thoughts and feelings as facts because: Caregivers historically have not taken their thoughts and feelings seriously at all (i.e., invalidating emotional environment) The invalidating emotional environment makes sufferers of BPD self-invalidate; this means, they don’t take themselves seriously! Why would someone who doesn’t really believe that their internal world matters treat their thoughts and feelings as factual?  The answer is quite simple: it’s too painful to relive …