For my entire life, I've always relied on the cognitive emotional bias called "motivational reasoning," which means that I make justifications that suit my own opinions, rather than based on facts known or unknown based on evidence.

Basically, I make decisions based on my first emotional reaction. I know this is due to childhood trauma of having emotionally neglectful parents that caused me and my siblings to walk on eggshells, and hyper-react to our parents' emotional roller coaster parenting styles that conflicted with each other.

Obviously, the advice is: stop making decisions based on your emotional response. That's what Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy say in response to counter act "motivational reasoning" responses to life's events. And trust me, I've done DBT and CBT to no avail. I'm STUCK in emotional response mode, like my brain's reasoning computer chip is burnt out or wasn't installed properly, to use a weak analogy.

For example, today there was a package addressed to the previous tenant of my apt. in my building's lobby. So, instead of taking the package up to my apt. first, I chose to take photos of it with my phone. Then, I emailed the photos to the previous leasing company who owned the building, b/c I knew the previous tenant had stayed with that leasing company as a renter. So, they reached out to her and she emailed me.

We had planned for me to take her package up to my apt., where she could pick it up this weekend. Now here's where my motivational reasoning knocked that even keel scenario into chaos.

I went upstairs to use my bathroom. When I came back downstairs, the package was gone. INSTEAD of checking with the neighbor whose girlfriend watches the hallway like a hawk and takes in other tenant's packages for safe keeping, that she likes to have her boyfriend deliver to the tenant later - to see if she took it, I let my motivational reasoning take over.

I assumed someone had stolen it. So, I messaged the previous tenant "your package was stolen, sorry!" She responded "ok, thanks for trying." Then I contacted the leasing company who manages my apt. bldg and sent them the photos accusing the tenants in the bldg of stealing this previous tenant's package. Talk about jumping over a cliff of assumptions.

Then, 15 minutes later, common sense returned and I checked with the woman and her boyfriend to see if they had the package. They did. They gave it to me to hold on to for the previous tenant to pick up.

I had to back track and contact both leasing companies, and the previous tenant, and apologize for jumping to the conclusion that her package had been stolen by one of the tenant's in my bldg.; that I had it because another tenant grabbed it for safe keeping, and the previous tenant thanked me, and came and picked up her package.

I'm really upset that I still let my emotions control my responses. I know it's the reason people put up walls around themselves emotionally; to protect themselves from my "overpowering" energy. It's just frustrating to know that no matter what CBT or DBT I try, I can't change. It's just not possible. And it's the reason my life is the way it is.

Can anyone relate? At all?