I've been passionate about understanding as much as possible about how emotions and feelings form and how I can learn to identify them as they come up. I started extensive research that led me to write down this summarized article and share it.
Our lives are primarily influenced by emotions and subconscious patterns, despite the fact that we like to think that we make day-to-day life decisions based on our rational thinking. I was listening to Katharina Kuehn on the "The Science of Us" podcast and she talks with scientific evidence that show how our lives are frequently governed, led by our unconscious habits and unprocessed emotions. We are tempted to purchase, eat, and consume even though we are aware of the negative consequences of doing so.
This insight allowed me to investigate this topic more thoroughly. I observe how highly intelligent people sometimes limit their much-desired freedom by making irrational, unconscious decisions based on unaware emotions in their daily lives.
I found that focusing on developing emotional intelligence (EQ) rather than IQ (intellectual quotient) prepared me better for my quest to understand, take charge of, and maximize my soft skills and live the life I always wanted but didn't know how to reach.
Both are important, but as I got older and had to make difficult decisions in life, I found with evidence that cultivating emotional intelligence was more helpful.
One important aspect of life that I want to connect with all of my research is sexuality.
It gets challenging if one isn't open to feeling or identifying their emotions. Empathy can be limited due to a lack of emotional awareness, resulting in the difficulty of really connecting in a relationship. Creating a safe space for emotions can increase awareness, help in understanding needs, and make people you care for feel like they are being seen, heard, and understood. This is a challenging but essential component of true intimacy that leads to a healthy expression of sexuality.
I want to share a few observations about my understanding of Emotional Intelligence.
I am the youngest of four siblings in my family, and a significant age gap exists between us.
My arrival was marked by an unusual age for childbirth—my parents were 43 years old and 50 years old. I thrived as a cute, healthy baby despite the circumstances. But like most eighties kids, I never was able to get over the feeling that my birth was not part of my parents' original plan as I grew up (I can hear the cheers from same generation people). Actual facts: Abortion was illegal in Romania during the communist era (you should watch the 2007 film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days).
As I reflected back on my childhood during my psychological therapy and my own self-work, I identified the imposter syndrome as the underlying cause of my recurrent need to stay low profile, feeling very unconfortable being in the spotlight, getting help, or asking for advice. I make myself self-sufficient and super independent so that I can never rely on people.
The base feeling is that my birth was not anticipated; I was not supposed to be here, a feeling that I shared with many individuals since I stared freely taking about our Eastern Europe culture & transgenerational wounds.
This insight, one of many to come, was part of learning how to correctly identify feelings as they come up, making me aware that I subconsciously act as if I wasn't meant to be here, occupying space and living my life.
In reality this feeling was translated as a career choice, I had become a full time freelancer in order to avoid being with groups of people and made solitude a lifestyle.
The act of avoiding triggers doesn't make you address the wounds; you just learn to hide them better, only to find that they will repeat forever unless you work to acknowledge them.
I learned that you can start to heal only by exposure to different contexts, observing with curiosity what triggers you, and actively using tools for changing patterns that do not serve your life vision.
Doing the actual work based on my findings has allowed me to rewire this part of my subconscious and begin to take up space as I move forward in life. In my mid-30's, I started to enjoy diversifying my work and personal life and getting used to being seen.
This is one small example of how reflecting on your emotions can genuinely change your perspective and the course of your life. It takes courage to look; sooner or later, they will find a way out. Sometimes unproccessed emotions can build up and transform into a middle-aged crisis.
Exploring and improving my emotional intelligence took effort, as I was also highly sensitive. It required extra dedication, like all highly sensitive individuals have to put out, in order to not get lost in helping others.
Being highly sensitive and possessing high emotional intelligence can sometimes coexist, but they are not synonyms.
It is possible to be highly sensitive without also being emotionally intelligent, and vice versa.
Though some people may possess both qualities, high sensitivity can raise emotional awareness, which can add in the growth of emotional intelligence. In the sections that follow, I'll try to break down emotional intelligence, explain how it works, and show you how to either identify it or cultivate it.
Key Elements of Emotional Intelligence
Researchers have proposed four distinct levels of emotional intelligence:
1. emotional perception (self awareness);
2. emotional reasoning;
3. emotional understanding;
4. emotional regulation.
How you perceive emotions: You need to aim for accuracy, but how can you tell if you are accurately understanding your emotions? Well, when feelings come up, you can recognize them and give them names. This exercise was actually the hardest for me, I had to learn to identify a great spectrum of unknown emotions while being an adult. Most of us didn't had a safe space to be and express our most authentic self.
You are aware of the bodily sensations that correspond with your feelings and feel a connection to it.
Studies indicate that the brain's ability to quickly process information based on prior experiences may be connected to gut instincts or intuition. This causes your subconscious to evaluate the circumstances and decide what course of action to take, this is the gut feeling we hear about.
You give your emotional reactions to various situations some thought and you take time to react.
What are you concentrating on, what gets your attention? Since we often react emotionally to stimuli that grab our attention, emotions play a part in helping us prioritize our attention and responses. We selectively perceive, hear, and observe only the things present an active interest.
Recognizing feelings: There are several ways to interpret the emotions we observe. It becomes important for the observer to decipher the underlying cause and possible meanings when someone displays signs of anger. People frequently believe that if they see sadness or anger in someone, it must be because of them. In actuality, though, we are rarely the source of another person's feelings. We must avoid internalizing the subjective responses of others if we want to maintain our emotional health.
Self-control and emotion management: Effective emotion management is the pinnacle of emotional intelligence and a critical component of it. Emotional management involves controlling one's own emotions as well as reacting appropriately and addressing the emotions of others.
Self-regulation is an essential key to maintaining stable relationships and also learning what to ask from every single person in your life.
One person cannot provide what a whole community can provide.
Understanding emotions, both your own and others' (social awareness) can assist you in comprehending other people's viewpoints (empathy), their decisions, and the potential effects of your own emotions on other people (accountability).
Ways for developing emotional intelligence
You can use emotional intelligence in your daily life in a variety of ways.
recognizing the real reasons behind your actions.
avoiding having a critical, judgemental mindset toward other people.
displaying the capacity to take accountability and accept criticism.
demonstrating your capacity to say NO when it's needed.
demonstrating active listening abilities.
effectively bouncing back from an mistake, and apologize.
openly communicating your emotions to other people.
using methods for solving problems that are advantageous to all parties.
developing compassion/empathy for others.
How can you elevate your emotional intelligence?
Even though emotional intelligence may be inherited in some cases, it is a skill that can be developed and refined with deliberate practice and regular application.
Don't be afraid to put yourself in social situations, even if they make you uncomfortable.
Make a commitment to truly listening to the person in front of you.
Put yourself in their position and think about how you might feel or respond in a similar circumstance to help you develop empathy. Lastly, continue to consider your relationships with other people. Take note of the emotional dynamics at work and watch how other people react to what you do.
This is a useful exercise to see if you can reflect on your life as it is at this moment, to see if your relationships are still going strong, and to determine whether your current job is the right one for you.
Watch how by exposing to new situations your emotions change or shift, affecting the way you act and behave. This is a great indicator of inner state, just be curios not judgy with yourself.
You will eventually discover that handling different circumstances with greater emotional intelligence comes naturally to you.
Why even bother?
Improving our emotional intelligence not only benefits us individually and in all aspects of life, but it additionally benefits others.
Making the decision to pay attention to our feelings or observe ourselves in circumstances can be challenging; it's easier said than done.
However, it's a way to elevate both our individual and collective consciousness.
Being aware of our feelings allows us to fully embrace our freedom, find the right opportunities, connect meaningfully with others, and make better decisions.
We will live our lives auto-pilot, driven only by our most pressing, urgent feelings and desires, if we are unaware of our emotions and desires.
Emotions are wise, they show you how much simpler life can be if we go right through them, this is a gift and a natural advantage.
In conclusion, rather than suppressing our emotions, the real understanding of our emotional spectrum arises from acknowledge them, create space for them to arise and exists.
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