Hello everyone!

I've been in DBT since September. I've come a long way. As many of you probably know, one of the core concepts of DBT is mindfulness practicing. And within that practice lies the concept of 'Wise Mind'.

Wise Mind is usually described as the synthesis between our emotional mind and our rational mind. Now granted, DBT is applied to people who need to improve their emotion regulation, so a lot of the times the focus with Wise Mind will be on getting more rational in our day to day lives. However, I sometimes feel like the Emotion Mind gets a bad reputation for weird reasons.

If we're supposed to merge rationality and emotionality, shouldn't we focus on the pros (and cons) of *both* emotional *and* rational thinking? Looking at sources about DBT, it doesn't seem that way. It seems as though we, when tuning in to Wise Mind, are *actually* tuning in to our Rational Mind. And I can't help but thinking "If we, as people diagnosed with emotional dysregulation, are supposed to learn how to better accept, understand, and integrate ourselves with 'normalcy' – we have to look at the state of mind that is already present within, which is usually Emotion Mind, because that's our natural state of being. There *has* to be some positive qualities to it, right?

Whenever I read up on Wise Mind, all I see is descriptors of Emotion Mind such as impulsive; intense; destructive. And when I read about Rational Mind, while it sure has some cons such as being too rigid or out of touch with ourselves, it seems like it has so many more pros than Emotion Mind, such as staying calm, planning ahead, or researching before making a big decision. Emotion Mind, on the other hand, seemingly has more cons than pros, in these very same blog posts, books, or DBT exercise instructions.

Now, what do you think about this? Do you also feel like Wise Mind is too rational? Or do you feel like Emotion Mind actually has more pros than cons? What do you think of the concept in general?