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I know you're talking about rationalizing your own personal problems here, but what about rationalizing a situation you're in, to try and make it work out for the best? For example, if i'm having an argument with someone, I have learnt to stop when I feel that I am about to scream at them, and think about what they are and I am saying. Then I try to work out to the best of my ability why we are really arguing and whether there is something I can say that will be true to my thoughts on the matter, while not offending or hurting the other person. I have come to the conclusion that in general arguments are negative situations that should be prevented and "toned down" if possible. I am true to this "rationalization", for as long as I can make sense of the complexity of the argument/situation. Sometimes it does happen (albeit rarely) that I loose track of how to make peace because it all becomes too complex to work out in the short time the other person gives me to think before yelling at me, and I admit to losing my cool at times, but don't we all.
Some people I know find this characteristic in me interesting and have learned to respond to it quite differently to the usual rant, but others find it very annoying that I am able to keep my cool and rationalize the situation, particularly when I am so calm to the point of being able to tell the other person why they just offended me and why it's unreasonable of them, and how I understand this, in a very calm way. It drives some people nuts! I feel a better person for having learned to mediate conflicts well in my life.
I don't think rationalization in this sense is bad.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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