Emotional Black Hole: Understanding Your Triggers

Self-justification—we all do it. Being wrong scares us; we ignore blatant evidence when it conflicts with beliefs but cite fragments of ambiguous information when it supports. Five traffic tickets and a few accidents doesn’t shake our conviction of superior driving skills—yet we readily point to the inferior maneuvers of a reckless idiot. Several failed relationships doesn’t give us pause to consider personal deficits but a flimsy long-distance relationship testifies as irrefutable evidence of our lovability. We are biased, making the fundamental attribution error, hopelessly driven by emotion, and blinded by self-importance. We feel, we interpret, and then get sucked into an emotional black hole of stupidity, refusing logic, and rejecting correction—because it’s not our fault.

Thinking Patterns and Emotional Patterns

The interrelation between thinking patterns and emotional patterns is complex and multifaceted. Our thoughts can influence our emotions, and vice versa. For example, negative thinking patterns can lead to feelings of sadness or anxiety, while positive thinking patterns can contribute to a more optimistic emotional state. Similarly, intense emotions can impact our thoughts, potentially leading to biases or distorted thinking patterns. Understanding this interplay can be crucial in managing our emotions and fostering a balanced mindset.

We can establish thinking patterns that motivate and heal. Or, conversely, some thinking patterns support negative self-schemas that drag us down, pulling us into devastating emotional black holes.

Thinking Errors

Cognitive thinking errors, also known as cognitive distortions, are inaccurate or biased thought patterns that can lead to negative emotions and behaviors. These errors can include black-and-white thinking, overgeneralization, catastrophizing, and other forms of distorted thinking. They are often associated with mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, and addressing them can be an important part of cognitive-behavioral therapy and other forms of psychotherapy. Recognizing and challenging cognitive thinking errors can help individuals develop more balanced and realistic perspectives.

Thinking errors alienate us from reality. While we all can occasionally use a buffer from the hard truths, too much escape from reality creates difficulty. We need enough contact with our environments and inner world that we can make accurate appraisals and effective personal adjustments to adapt.

If we find that we are excessively labile in our emotions, than we need a closer look at some of our cognitions. Perhaps, our thoughts keep pushing towards the emotional black holes destroying our lives.

See Thinking Errors for more on this topic

Self-Protecting Cognitions

Changing thinking patterns is extremely difficult. Once we hold an image of self, we overlook opposing evidence. Thought, especially about personal traits, is always skewed by biases. We skim over obvious shortcomings while actively seeking obscure evidence to disprove the blatant. According to Crystal Park, when beliefs are challenged, we feel discomfort because the foundations we use to predict futures is shaken (Park, 2010).

​We can take a deeper look at the belief or discredit the contradictory information—an articulable reason to discredit soothes the discomfort. Our mental gyrations aren’t an exact science. Explainable reasons for events aren’t obvious. Most happenings are a freak combination of many causes.

​A failed marriage isn’t because we lied, or even cheated, but a bundle of subtle and not so subtle contributing causes. By rationalizing responsibility, solely pointing an accusing finger to outside sources, we shift culpability, freeing ourselves from guilt and limiting perceptive control over our lives. In psychology, we refer to this as externalizing.

However, by accepting personal responsibility for the relationship troubles, we are more likely to discover effective actions we could take to keep the romance burning.

See Self-Deceptions for more on this topic.

Faulty Thoughts Inhibit Growth

We become the obstacle to improvement when we constrain helpful information, limiting ourselves only to pleasant evidence. We are sucked into the emotional pleasing vortex.

Others and the Emotional Black Hole of Selfishness

It’s not all our fault, of course. Others play a role; we don’t exist on an isolated island. We live together with others and their actions trigger feelings—pleasant and unpleasant. We can acknowledge their involvement in our experience. The thinking error that impedes is when we blame others as the sole cause of our pain. With this limiting view, others frustrate our plans when they don’t cooperate with our narrowly conceived ideals; we forget our goals are not their goals. Circumstances and others don’t march to our beat. They shouldn’t have to.

Others have their own passions, goals and hopes—that sometime match ours; but sometimes don’t. An intimate partner should be supportive but not at the cost of their autonomy as an individual. In healthy relationships, the individual’s life exists in parallel with their partner’s life, sometimes in unison, sometimes in toleration, other times through negotiated agreements. This is a tall order for the emotionally immature not fully aware of the dynamics of a relationship. When differences spark discomfort, we must look a little deeper, not blindly sucked into the immediate emotional reaction.

We can’t fill our never ending needs by denying partners autonomy. This is a heinous emotional black hole. We must honor, validate, and respect their individuality. We can do this while maintaining emotional integrity over our won feeling experience.

Partner Autonomy

​Is our partner selfish, or are we expressing selfishness, expecting our partner to be a puppet to our emotions? Finding a partner’s character flaws is simple—all partners have a few (many). If we habitually blame, finding a cause from the obvious collection of faults is easy. Blaming allows us to side step the dynamics and complexity of getting along, and relieving guilt with a default cause—the partner’s annoying imperfectness.

When our ego demands bolstering by pointing to a partner’s flaw, we doom our relationship. The blamed partner eventually tires of being the villain and responds protectively by being timid or defensive. Unless we challenge the powerful pull of misguided emotions, the faulty expectations on partners to please our chaotic emotions and bitter accusations, will destroy closeness, magnifying issues, spiking insecurities, and ruining lives. Pointing out flaws doesn’t work. This path never fulfills our emptiness. Externalizing our inability to feel secure is an emotional black hole.

Associated Concepts

• Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis: This theory suggests that frustration often leads to aggressive behavior. This theory has evolved to recognize a variety of responses to frustration and the influence of individual differences and environmental factors.
• Hot Cognitions: These cognitions, also known as emotionally charged thoughts, significantly influence behaviors, decisions, and memory. Initially contested, the theory gained acceptance and is now key in understanding human psychology and decision-making.
• Reactive Aggression: These emotional reactions are triggered by perceived threats, is a natural response, but can become maladaptive. It contrasts with proactive aggression, characterized by unemotional, aggressive behavior.
• Fight-or-Flight Response: This response is a primal reflex deeply embedded in our nervous system, triggered in response to perceived threats. This cascade of physiological events prepares the body for quick action, impacting mental health.
• Primal Panic: This refers to an innate affective reaction to overwhelming fear often leading to maladaptive behaviors rather than helpful solutions.
• Startle Response: This is a complex, involuntary reaction to sudden stimuli, deeply rooted in survival instincts. It involves rapid movements and serves as a defense mechanism. The response varies across individuals and plays a role in conditions like PTSD.
• Emotional Lability: This emotional characteristic is defined as a rapid, intense, and inappropriate emotional shifts, can stem from brain or psychological disorders, as well as medication reactions. Symptoms include extreme emotional swings, inappropriate emotions, and difficulty regulating emotions. Treatments involve medication, therapy, and mindfulness.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

​Instead of building a relationship, the focus is transforming a partner to not trigger feeling. This is an emotional black hole. It doesn’t work. Partner’s recoil from others exploiting their insufficiency; they respond defensively, returning bitter attacks or protectively closing their hearts. We don’t display emotional intelligence with poorly worded, poorly timed advice. Mercilessly attacking character hurts needs to stop.

Next heated encounter, when you feel yourself being pulled into the gravitational influence of an emotional black hole, slow down, recognize this trap, identify the urge to blame, and raise a warning flag and call time out. As we acquaint ourselves to our emotional vulnerabilities, the moments of discomfort are not emotional black holes of disaster, sucking us into destructive behaviors but portals to deeper insights, exposing personal traits and patterns in need of examination and adjustment.

Last Update: November 15, 2025