Written by: Bob Brotchie, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Do you want to boost your life and business? If so, you'll need to start using emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of and understand your own emotions and the emotions of others. It's also about being able to regulate your emotions, respond effectively to emotions in others, and create positive relationships.
Emotions are beacons for our behaviours
It is true to say that our moment-to-moment emotions help us navigate our entire lives. Our relationship with our emotions can determine whether we perceive we are having a reasonable and full life. Helpfully, emotions are also lifesavers and speedier than thought, which is useful when we need to go ‘instinctive’ to avoid danger!
There are tangible benefits, too.
There are many benefits to emotional intelligence, both in your personal life and in your professional life. When it comes to relationships, emotional intelligence can help you build stronger, more meaningful connections. You're better able to understand and relate to others, which can lead to more satisfying relationships. Emotional intelligence can also help you manage stress and communicate effectively.
Incidental emotions
From the moment we wake in the mornings our emotional weather system for the day is already heavily influenced by dreams we can recall, and those we are less aware of.
When our emotional developmental period is negatively created…
Whatever we missed out on or received that may have emotionally harmed us in this developmental period, will usually manifest in adulthood. And it is these (often) subconscious deficits in our emotional and bio-psychosocial education that we assign and blame emotions for. “I am hopeless, stressed, unworthy, unhappy, dependent, addicted, angry, and a host of other positions that we might identify with due to any emotional neglect in childhood” [1].
Your inner child is for life!
The truth is the child whose emotions and beliefs were created and conditioned back then – remains in us the adult for life if left to the unconscious!
When there is dysfunction and emotional turbulence in the adult and his relationships, look to the child.
Which emotions – and associations made about these are felt contribute to any limiting beliefs – and how I actualise myself?
The child of the past will have an altogether separate view of their childhood today and given that we begin to be influenced in the womb, and in later preverbal stages, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we cannot recall what was available – and what was not?
People-pleasing is a learned trait
For the child, it must survive and in this elicited example feels it needs to please (comply with) the primary caregivers and avoid conflict. In doing this though the child may also take responsibility for the caregivers’ behaviours because the alternative could be (perceptually) sensed as catastrophic!
Without expression, we find suppression
This ‘adult-in-training’ may also learn that to express themselves, including their times of anger, is futile, shameful, or at the very least, of little value. So, they learn to ‘swallow’ emotions, time after time until in adolescent and adult life their body become psychologically and physiologically diseased and distressed [2]
Take me to the garden of numb!
In early adulthood, we will also commonly set about finding ways to dampen what is felt via numbing, safety behaviours, busyness, overperforming, and perfectionism. Anxiety and depression among a host of other distressing states become the norm unless the child-now-adult learns what it is to fully experience emotions, without all-or-nothing negative judgment – and to find expressiveness along with the associated rewards of emotional regulation.
There are no ‘bad’ emotions!
All emotions have a purpose and that is to serve the host organism with data in various forms to indicate what has been sensed, internally or externally. Emotions may arise ‘sloppily’ and when this happens, and with training, we can re-cognise what is being felt, in response to what, and if important and accurate enough, we can express and then regulate before chronic toxicity and negative regretful behaviours become evident [3].
Putting out the small (emotional) fires via a non-judgmental assessment and acknowledgment makes emotional wildfires almost impossible, so rage doesn’t arise, numbing is less desirable – and emotional stability can calm any temporary storms.
Second Wave Emotions
We have a great deal of influence over which emotions are available as second wave emotions. These are emotions created in response to meaningful images I create in my mind such as, “ugh, what if the boss wants to see me because I’ve messed up, or worse?”. In choosing a negative position around this, and when imagined vividly enough, my emotional brain centres will instinctively send out a call for some emotional stimuli that can be felt in case you need to take emergency action. This may result in what can be observed to the trained eye as ‘fight, flight, freeze, or fawn because of my relationship with anxiety, which is always a future based and imagined experience’.
Emotions are truly lifesaving!
In the optimal version, whereby emotions serve us more often and more accurately, a genuine and present threat is sensed, such as if the host was to mindlessly cross a busy road while looking at his mobile device only to hear a loud horn and tyres screeching; that would be a ‘startle’ response in alignment with instant fear which is separate from imagined future events that kindle anxiety; an obvious lifesaver and the reason why emotions arise more rapidly than thought!
Homeostasis
Emotional regulation and equilibrium are crucial behaviourally but also vital for physiological wellbeing. World-renowned authority, Gabor Mate, shares quite explicitly how when homeostasis (bodily equilibrium) is lost for prolonged periods, ergo, chronically; dis-ease, and our propensity for life-limiting diseases increases [2].
Begin to Label Emotions
The power we do have is to become once again connected to our felt experience. Research shows that simply labelling what we feel can reduce the emotional intensity felt, and the duration it is experienced. I educate both counselling and coaching clients to build mindful attentional awareness for their inner states, because if we are unaware of something suboptimal to change …
Adopting a more mindful approach
Acknowledging the emotion and having the power to accept what is felt, even if just for now, or to take a positive action to ameliorate the feelings is a choice when we are awake and aware. After all, when we think of hunger and thirst as emotions it is, for those of us fortunate enough to have easy access to food and water, simple enough to act on the feelings and eat or drink. The feelings of hunger and thirst dissipate. If I’m sad, I can reach out and talk, or otherwise connect with a trusted advocate.
Many of us are triggered by…
A caveat to that above is if we are triggered emotionally by psychological trauma, abuse, or neglect.
In these cases, many will suffer heightened acuity to the felt body which can feel intolerable. Sadly, there are many, many obvious sufferers diagnosed or suspected of having Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who are not like me, a former paramedic, and others who have a career that can become traumatising. PTSD is available to all in society, regardless of position, and is choiceless.
It is a lack of self-compassion to avoid seeking guidance
If you are always or frequently emotionally charged and hypervigilant to things that may go awry, or are experiencing limiting beliefs about your capabilities, especially when you have success in other areas, please do seek guidance. You may not even be consciously aware of trauma or experience that has injured you, but with knowledge and suffering comes opportunities to heal, grow and finally evolve out of the past that sometimes only the body sensorily recalls.
Bob Brotchie, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Bob Brotchie is an educational consultant in human mindset and emotional intelligence. He has worked with individuals of all ages helping them to develop a better understanding of themselves and the people around them. Brotchie's tough start in life left him with a deep passion for understanding what makes us who we think we are. He believes that emotional and relational suffering are some of the most powerful motivators for personal growth, and he is driven by a need to share the methods and strategies that have helped him overcome his own struggles.
References:
[1] Running on Empty – Jonice Webb Ph.D
[2] When the Body Says No – Gabor Mate
[3] Permission to Feel – Prof Marc Brackett
