Stephanie Westerinen 2/22/21 Stephanie Westerinen 2/22/21

2021

Logic and emotion lie on opposite ends of a spectrum. Logic can be called “using one’s head,” and emotion can be called “using one’s heart.” Sometimes logic and emotion work together with each other, and sometimes they are at odds. Both the “head brain” and the “heart brain” are very important pieces of life. We use logic, combined with our emotional experiences, to make decisions, to plan, to parent, and to interact with each other.

Everyone lands somewhere on this spectrum. Usually (there are many exceptions, of course!) women land more towards the emotional end, and men more towards the logical side. Where we fall depends on our inherent personality, our upbringing, our life’s experiences, and possibly our background of study or training (for example, someone who works in a first responder job may have had to learn to set emotions aside and look at a situation logically, even if it’s not how that person was “wired” to begin with).

A husband and wife are driving on a back road at dusk, and a deer runs out into the road in front of the car. Despite his quick reaction slamming on the brakes, he slams into the deer. The car grinds along to a halt, and they both get out of the vehicle. She immediately runs to the deer to see if it’s still alive (it’s not), he immediately runs to the front of the car to survey the damage. She bursts into tears to realize that the deer is dead, and he starts muttering about the damage to the car.

Is it okay to feel bad for the deer? Is it important to get the car functional again? The answer to both of these questions is YES! In the moment, however, she is frustrated with his concern over the car: “All you can think about is the car! Do you even care that we just killed a deer?” He is mystified with her reaction: “Don’t you understand, we don’t have a vehicle to drive if we don’t get this running!”

In our own family, we had this experience: One of our children was quite ill with an upper respiratory issue. He was probably about 10 months old, struggling to breathe, and feverish. We had been at the doctor earlier that day, and his oxygen saturation was right on the border of whether he should be hospitalized or not. The doctor was comfortable letting us go home, knowing that I have experience with breathing issues, both with myself and with other of our children, and that we have a nebulizer and the appropriate medicines at home. I was warned to rush him to the emergency room if anything changed for him at all.

That evening, my husband reminded me that he was leaving to go help his brother-in-law with a house remodel project. I was horrified and burst into tears. All I could think about was, what if I had to rush to the hospital? What would I do with the other children? Just taking care of an extremely miserable 10 month old can be exhausting, never mind that we had other small children to care for.

He literally COULD. NOT. UNDERSTAND. why I would be so upset that he was leaving. “I told him that I’d be there tonight! This has been planned for a long time. I can’t NOT show up!” He was so puzzled and overwhelmed by my reaction and my inability to see his logic that he actually laughed. Not that he found it funny, but that he had so many conflicting things going through his head and that was how it released from him.

This is a perfect example of how we can get into conflicts with those near to us when we land on different parts of the logic and emotion spectrum. I was so overwhelmed with the stress, fear, and anxiety of the situation that I couldn’t see anything beyond my own struggles; he is a man of logic and of his word, and in that moment, he couldn’t see anything beyond that he had promised to help a friend.

There are plenty of situations where I have been very thankful for his logical approach to life. I don’t think of myself as a super emotional person, but it has been a blessing to have someone so grounded traveling this journey next to me, especially when it comes to parenting, when women can (more easily) get bogged down with the emotions involved in child rearing.

Both emotion and logic are very important pieces of any life puzzle, but our differences in how we see a situation can lead to conflict in any of our relationships and friendships. It is easy to get frustrated with someone close to us when we are on significantly different parts of this spectrum. Being able to understand that we land in a different place from each other is the beginning of freeing ourselves of negative thoughts towards the other person.

In a marriage, in a group of friends, in a household, in a family, we can share our strengths with each other. Each viewpoint is important and valid. Where one is not strong, often another one is.

Each of us have our gifts, our strengths, the inner workings of our mind, and we are most successful when we use them to help each other.