Improving Your Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

When we hear the term IQ (Intelligence Quotient) our minds immediately understand that it is referring to the intelligence that a person possesses. An EQ, or emotional quotient, is very similar but ties to the emotional intelligence that a person possesses. Essentially, each of us has a certain EQ and our ability to understand our own emotions and regulate our lives accordingly relates to our EQ. The nice thing about having an EQ is that we can actually grow and improve our emotional intelligence with awareness, practice, and some effort. 

What does your EQ impact?

The extent to which you understand your emotions can have an effect on four areas of your life which are your self management, self awareness, relationship management, and social awareness. In other words, with yourself, your emotional intelligence impacts how you manage your day to day feelings, tasks, drive to accomplish things, and overall your personal life. 

Your self awareness is tied to your emotional intelligence in how you recognize and identify your own feelings, how those feelings impact your thoughts, how you regulate your thoughts based on our feelings, how you view your weaknesses/strengths and your self confidence/self esteem. 

Emotional intelligence is a big part of how well you act and react within relationships, whether it is familial, friendship, or with work colleagues. Your EQ influences how well you communicate with others, how well you work as a member of a team, your leadership skills, how you inspire others around you, as well as how you deal with conflicts that inevitably arise from being a human being working with other human beings.

Lastly, a person’s EQ influences how much empathy you possess. It affects how well you understand the emotions and needs of others, whether or not you pick up on social cues, recognize social power dynamics of others, and how well you “get” other people’s concerns. 

Obviously the higher a person’s EQ the better they are all understanding and doing all of these things. It is also why emotional intelligence is often a topic heavily covered in student success courses, company leadership retreats, and self-help seminars. Most people get a big “bang for their buck” by investing in their own self-awareness and growing their emotional intelligence. 

Specific Benefits of Increasing Your EQ

While someone may have a very high IQ, they could lack a very high EQ and consequently struggle with stress, social anxiety, and cooperating as a team member. Your emotional intelligence can impact how well you perform at work, school, or even in your home life.

Your EQ can greatly impact your physical and mental health. Understanding and regulating your emotions in such a busy and chaotic world can greatly impact your stress levels, which in turn has a huge impact on your physical and mental health. When stress levels stay elevated your blood pressure also stays elevated, the immune system is suppressed, risks of heart attack and stroke increase, infertility rises, and the aging process accelerates. Yuck! None of those things are good.

As far as EQ and mental health go, uncontrolled stress and emotions can make you more vulnerable to anxiety and depression. The higher your EQ the better you’ll be able to understand, get comfortable with, and manage your emotions. The less able you are to manage your emotions, the less likely you are to form strong relationships with other people, thus making yourself feel more isolated and vulnerable to mental health issues. 

Speaking of relationships, the more you are able to understand your own emotions and how to manage them, the better you will be able to express yourself in your many relationships and understand how others feel. This can be a powerful tool in being successful both at home and in your career.

Increasing your EQ will subsequently increase your social intelligence which will help you to tell the difference between potential friends versus foes, connect you to others, increase your feelings of love and acceptance, understand the social dynamics of complex organizations and overall give you an edge in the social world you live/work in. 

One of the biggest benefits to increasing your emotional intelligence that is also most appealing to my clients is the subsequent increase in their ability to handle their emotions under stress and during stressful times, and then managing their reactions to those emotions and stress in healthy and productive ways. Improving your EQ has the potential to be a game changer in your life and can increase your peace. 

How can you improve your EQ?

• Use your emotions to make constructive decisions on how to manage your stress or act in given situations. A lack of our own emotions and what is triggering them can lead us to react in unthoughtful or inappropriate ways. We have all experienced feelings of anger or frustration which then lead us to say or do something that we later regret. Increasing our EQ can help us to better identify our emotions, what is triggering them, and how to manage our responses. Often simply becoming a way of what is causing us to feel certain emotions is enough to help us make better choices on how to react to that stimulus.
• Practice identifying your emotions, even when you are happy or have pleasant feelings. Getting to know your emotions and accurately being able to identify them will help you also get to know yourself and what makes you tick. This will be especially helpful when you are stressed and feeling overwhelmed with emotions. Having practiced under non stressful situations will make the stressful times easier to manage in healthy ways.
• Remember emotions are simply pieces of information that indicate something about yourself or others. Staying emotionally present and honest with yourself can help you to avoid overthinking and overreacting. By practicing staying emotionally present, you will better be able to learn to receive upsetting information without it taking over your whole being.
• Learn to value your emotions. Some of us put a lot of emphasis on the importance of how we are feeling, while others do not view emotions as important in their lives. The difference between these types of people usually comes down to how we are raised. Some people are raised with their emotions being validated and mattering in their home, while others have been conditioned to believe that their feelings are invalid or unimportant to others. Learning to use emotions as a tool to understand the weather of your body and mind can greatly improve how you handle inevitable changes throughout your life.

Are your emotions turned down?
Try this exercise from HelpGuide on Improving Emotional Intelligence:

Being able to connect to your emotions—having a moment-to-moment connection with your changing emotional experience—is the key to understanding how emotion influences your thoughts and actions.

Do you experience feelings that flow, encountering one emotion after another as your experiences change from moment to moment?

Are your emotions accompanied by physical sensations that you experience in places like your stomach, throat, or chest?

Do you experience individual feelings and emotions, such as anger, sadness, fear, and joy, each of which is evident in subtle facial expressions?

Can you experience intense feelings that are strong enough to capture both your attention and that of others?

Do you pay attention to your emotions? Do they factor into your decision making?

If any of these experiences are unfamiliar, you may have “turned down” or “turned off” your emotions. In order to build EQ—and become emotionally healthy—you must reconnect to your core emotions, accept them, and become comfortable with them. 

• Practice mindfulness. Try to be present when you are around others. Pay attention to their verbal and nonverbal cues. Watch others’ body language and what emotions they may be feeling. It is often easy to tell when someone else is uncomfortable or bored. Recognizing how others are feeling and reacting to us and our shared environments can help us to better understand and communicate with each other.
• Conflict will happen, we choose how we react to it. As HelpGuide puts it: 

  Conflict and disagreements are inevitable in human relationships. Two people can’t possibly have the same needs, opinions, and expectations at all times. However, that needn’t be a bad thing. Resolving conflict in healthy, constructive ways can strengthen trust between people. When conflict isn’t perceived as threatening or punishing, it fosters freedom, creativity, and safety in relationships.

• Find the humor in your emotions and life! We all take ourselves way too seriously. Humor, play, and laughter can lighten our moods, help alter our emotions and help us to see the forest from the trees. Humor can help us to pull back and take a step back from stress. Humans are good at getting bogged down in details and we all have times when the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves is to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. Practice looking at something from several perspectives, it will often make you laugh. 

If you have already had a session with Julie, then you know that often a lot of laughter can occur. Enjoy your own company, which means finding ways to enjoy all of your emotions, or at least be able to laugh at yourself when you don’t understand what is going on yet.

How Posture Can Help :)

There are many ways that Julie at Posture Massage can help you to increase your EQ. During your sessions she will teach you how to talk to your body and brain. She will ask you to describe your emotions as she works on your tissues and to identify them. Identifying where your emotions are located in your body as well as where they likely come from is a big step for most people.

Sessions are designed to help connect your brain to your physical body and tissues. Too often we are so cerebral that a disconnect occurs between our bodies and our brains, causing us to become disconnected from our emotions. Some people are surprised to realize that they even have emotions.

You will be encouraged to self reflect on your relationships and the stresses in your life and how both are affecting your body and brain. Relationships and stress are two things that make up the majority of discomfort that clients experience in their day to day lives. Sessions give you ample opportunity to practice growing your emotional intelligence. By recognizing your emotions and becoming aware of them, you will better be able to choose what to do with them and how to react to the changes and things happening around you. 

Once you start utilizing these tools and increasing your EQ your life will go easier, but remember that therapists, your friends and family, and Julie are there to help you when you need extra help or feel stuck with an emotion. 

Want to work on improving your emotional intelligence and boost your EQ?  Consider bringing up this topic in your next session with Julie at Posture Massage!