If you're not making progress in therapy, you might be intellectualizing your emotions. Here are 3 signs, according to a therapist.

The label 'intellectualizer' describes people who analyze emotions, rather than feeling them.

• It's a coping strategy from childhood environments where expressing feelings felt unsafe.
• Intellectualizers often feel disconnected, appear calm but struggle internally, experts say.

The label 'intellectualizer' has taken off on TherapyTok to describe a person who understands their unhelpful patterns, but can't change them.

You could be one if you have trouble accessing your emotions.

According to Trisha Wolfe, a Michigan-based therapist who specializes in developmental trauma, it's a coping strategy that people can develop during childhood in response to an environment where expressing feelings doesn't feel safe.
​
It's known in therapy circles and online as intellectualizing and can lead to problems like feeling disconnected from others, feeling empty, and difficulty feeling present in the moment, she told Business Insider.

Although he never used the term himself, the idea comes from Freud's theory that some people separate their thinking mind from their emotional experience as a defense mechanism, she said.

A child may start intellectualizing their feelings rather than allowing themself to feel them if, for example, they had very emotionally reactive parents whom they felt they had to walk on eggshells around.

It could also be a strategy to avoid being bullied or reprimanded by authority figures or peers by only showing emotions that they deem acceptable.

In essence, it means rather than feeling your emotions in your body, you retreat into your mind to think or reason your way out of them, Wolfe said. You might fixate on understanding why you're feeling this way, why the upsetting situation has occurred, and what you can rationally do to resolve it.
​
Read more on Business Insider.