About emotional intelligence

One of the most important capacities of a healthy human psyche is the ability to sit with one’s emotions. Mental illness, both neurotic and psychotic, is born from emotional overwhelm, from an emotional overload that our psyche, with its current capacity, cannot contain. Defense mechanisms are like walls, dams that the psyche puts in the way of the emotional rush, to prevent complete overwhelm and destruction, but unfortunately these mechanisms become permanent and block our spirit, our feelings and our full access to the joys of life.In our home or school education we learn far too little about emotions. Most of the time what is passed onto us in the family environment is that emotions are a “bau bau” that we should be afraid of and that we should hide under the rug. “Stop crying”, “Don’t cry, you’re making yourself ugly!”, “Go to your room if you can’t calm down!” there are just as many messages that convey to the child that his emotion is not welcome, not accepted and not wanted by the adult world. And when we enter the adult world, we get messages from family and friends like “Don’t worry, it’ll pass.”, “Don’t think about it, it’s just hurting you.” or even worse “Let’s have a drink and forget everything.”

But emotions do not dissapear. Swept under the rug, they don’t go away. As long as we don’t look at them honestly, let them be, or consciously live them to the end, they don’t heal, they just lead us from the shadows, push us into choices and behaviors that hurt us and those around us.

That’s why emotional intelligence is essential. In a simpler definition, we can say that emotional intelligence is the ability to be aware of, verbalize and manage one’s own emotions, and respectively to empathize and contain the emotions of other people.Emotional intelligence involves:

• The ability to feel one’s own emotions

• The ability to identify what we feel and put it into words

• The ability to identify sensations in the body that are generated by certain emotions

• The ability to communicate to other people what we feel

• The ability to direct one’s own behavior by being aware of the emotions we feel

• The ability to feel other people’s emotions (empathy)

In the psychotherapy office, the client is taught to recognize and name what he feels, to recognize the bodily sensations that accompany the emotions, and to verbalize these things to the therapist, and in real life to those close to him. And once emotions are made aware and accepted, they no longer lead us unconsciously and the power of automatic, reflexive behavior is extinguished. Thus the individual changes the power balance between Self and his emotions and becomes able to choose and direct his behavior.