Possessing strong emotional intelligence can greatly enhance your relationships. It enables you to grasp others' perspectives, acknowledge the impact your actions have on them, and deepen your empathy. Having these skills can make you a better parent, romantic partner, friend, boss, and coworker.
The way we typically learn about emotions is by having someone teach them to us when we’re young. Just as we learn how to speak by listening to the sounds of our parents’ voices and associating them with objects, we learn an emotional language and vocabulary by listening to what our parents said about our feeling states. When we fell down, a parent would show concern on their face and say “Oh you have a boo boo, you got hurt” or when we had a tantrum because someone took our toy they would say “Oh, you’re really angry that he took your toy.”
However some children had parents who lacked the ability to speak an emotional language so it’s not a language that everyone speaks. As a result, many adults successfully hold down jobs, are married, contribute to retirement plans but have no clue what they are feeling at any given moment. We also live in a culture that values thinking over feeling and logic over emotion. And yet, many people when asked, would say that they want happiness and satisfaction from their relationships. In a romantic relationship that might look like feeling connected, understood, and valued. In order to have a satisfying relationship that consists of these qualities, it would be important to know about your emotions as well as others’ emotions.
Here are 4 simple ways to get more connected to your emotions
1. Check in with yourself throughout the day
If you’re an ambitious and driven person you probably spend most of your time focusing on external goals such as the tasks you need to accomplish, getting a promotion or pleasing your boss. You might not spend very much time checking in with yourself. What does it mean to check in with yourself? It means to pause during the day, become present and begin asking yourself, how am I feeling in this moment? What’s coming up for me right now?
You could become aware of what you’re thinking or you could feel sensations in your body. You could sense a heaviness behind your eyes, a tingling sensation in your hands, or a feeling of expansiveness in your chest. Don’t worry about labeling the sensations correctly or doing this perfectly. In the beginning, nothing might come up for you or you might feel blank. Try not to judge whatever happens but just notice it.
2. How to Journal
Journaling can help you become aware of what you are thinking and feeling which helps you to get more connected to yourself. A simple way that I recommend journaling is from the book The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Get a notebook with lined paper and start writing whatever is on your mind until you fill up 3 pages. Once you start to write, don’t stop moving your pen across the page. If you don’t know what to write next, just write “What’s next, what’s next, what’s next?” until the next thought pops up and write that. We have about 60,000 thoughts per day so it shouldn’t be a problem filling up 3 pages worth of thoughts!
3. Expand your Emotional Vocabulary
One definition of intelligence is that it is a measure of the number and quality of distinctions you have in a given situation. For example, the Inuit have more than a dozen words for the word snow whereas someone who grew up in San Francisco probably knows one word for the word snow.…snow.
Increasing the number of words to describe your emotions or emotional states can increase emotional intelligence. Many people when they feel something positive about a situation will say they feel good. However, there are many other words to more accurately describe what they’re feeling such as hopeful, connected or excited. There’s a tool called a feelings wheel that breaks down general emotions like happy, sad, and mad into more nuanced and distinct emotions. The ability to know and describe exactly what you are feeling can help you communicate your internal state more clearly to others. Here is an example of the feelings wheel.
Our emotions are often felt as sensations in our bodies so doing an activity where you actively focus on your body such as yoga, dance or meditation can get you more attuned to your body. People often get overwhelmed at the idea of meditating because they think that the goal of it is to stop thinking. Getting your brain to stop thinking is like getting your heart to stop pumping blood. It’s not something that we can control.
Meditating is a way to slow down and place attention on your body. If you’ve never meditated or done a mindfulness practice before, a good place to start is through an app. I recommend Insight Timer because there’s different guided meditations to choose from and some are as short as six minutes. Eventually when you’re more skilled at meditating, you can try it without a guide and can just focus on your breath, which places more attention on your body than on someone else’s voice.
Another way to become emotionally intelligent is by going to therapy. Many therapists are well versed in emotions and therapy can be a safe place to slow down and feel your emotions. It’s hard to learn about your emotions without actually feeling them and if you’ve been out of touch with them for awhile, it could be difficult to get a sense of them on your own. Your emotions can be subtle, quiet or confusing at first. A therapist can act as a guide to help you become more aware of them, which would help you get more connected to yourself. If you’d like to know more about how I can help you, get in touch today.
