I think you can intellectually know things and still have emotional difficulty understanding it. Take a ptsd reaction: you can intellectually know something is not likely happening again in the moment but still have a difficult time regulating emotions around it. I get physical flashbacks. I can look and see the event is not currently happening, but it doesn't charge the emotional reaction to the memory of it (at least not yet).
intellectual awareness helps, but it doesn't necessarily make it easy to change.