Why Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is Important For Your Relationship

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is important for maintaining relationships (see my article: How to Develop Emotional Intelligence.

The Importance of EQ in Your Relationship

In this article I'm focusing on why being emotionally intelligent is important in committed relationships.

Why is Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Important in Committed Relationships?

Let's start by understanding the characteristics of emotional intelligence.

As I mentioned in my prior article, emotional intelligence includes:

• Developing self awareness 
• Developing an awareness about your partner with empathy and emotional attunement
• Managing your emotions
• Picking up on social cues from your partner
• Maintaining long term relationships

Now, let's look at each component of emotional intelligence in terms of a committed relationship.

Developing Self Awareness and An Empathetic Awareness of Your Partner: 

Before you even enter into a committed relationship, a high level of EQ helps you to distinguish lust (or infatuation) from a intimate loving relationship (see my article: 7 Signs Your Relationship is Based on Lust and Not Love).

When you love someone, you're no longer focused on the thrill of the chase (see my article: 12 Telltale Signs You're in a Relationship With a Womanizer).

When you have self awareness, you know your strengths and challenges and where you need to improve for your personal growth. 

You also recognize how what you say and do impacts your partner emotionally, physically and mentally. 

The Importance of EQ in Your Relationship

You know how to express your feelings, including uncomfortable feelings, to your partner and you also know how to listen to your partner when they are telling you things that might be uncomfortable (see my article: Improving Communication in Your Relationship: How to Change a Pattern of Defensive Behavior).

You don't allow anger or resentment to fester because you know it will have an negative impact on your relationship. 

Through your active awareness and empathy, you're emotionally attuned to your partner, you understand the impact you have on your partner and where you might need to make changes. 

Your self awareness and emotional attunement to your partner allows you to assess what is and isn't working in your relationship and you're not afraid to deal with these issues with your partner to make changes.

Since you're aware that emotional vulnerability is esssential for emotional and sexual intimacy, you have a comfort level with your partner so you can express your vulnerable feelings (see my article: Emotional Vulnerability as a Pathway to Greater Emotional and Sexual Intimacy).

Managing Your Emotions

You're aware of your emotions. 

You know how to manage your emotions in a health way by neither suppressing your emotions, expressing them in an unhealthy way or by stonewalling.

The Importance of EQ in Your Relationship

You know when you might need to take a break from a discussion to calm yourself before you say or do things you'll regret. 

If you and your partner are stuck in a negative cycle, you're aware of your part in the cycle and you work towards making positive changes (see my article: Breaking the Negative Cycle in Your Relationship).

Picking Up on Social Cues From Your Partner

Picking up on social cues from your partner includes:

• Paying attention to your own and your partner's body language
• Understanding your partner's gestures
• Making eye contact with your partner
• Paying attention to your own and your partner's tone and pitch when you're speaking to each other

Developing a Comfort Level For Change in Your Relationship

Change can be difficult, but a healthy relationship requires change periodically.

The Importance of EQ in Your Relationship

Part of emotional intelligence is knowing when you and your partner need to make changes in the relationship and getting comfortable with working on those changes.

You're aware that for a relationship to thrive and grow, changes are often necessary.

Rather than avoiding change, your courage to make changes with your partner will help to keep the relationship healthy.

Getting Help in Couples Therapy

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a skill you and your partner can learn.

Getting Help in Couples Therapy

As a couple, if you have been struggling on your own, seek help from a licensed mental health professional who has an expertise in working with couples. See my article: What is Emotionally Focused Therapy For Couples (EFT)?

By working on your relationship with a skilled couples therapist, you can have a happier, more meaningful relationship.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing, EFT and Sex Therapist.

With over 20 years of experience, I have helped many individual adults and couples to overcome the obstacles to their happiness.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Managing Your Emotions While Working Through Psychological Trauma

I have been discussing managing emotions and emotional intelligence in my last several articles:  

How to Develop Emotional Intelligence, How to Manage Emotions Without Suppressing Them

Developing Skills to Manage Emotions

Developing Emotional Management Skills With Experiential Therapy).

Managing Your Emotions While Working Through Trauma

In the current article, I'll be discussing managing your emotions while working through psychological trauma in therapy.

What is Emotional Dysregulation?

Emotional dysregulation refers to problems controlling or regulating emotional responses.  

Common Symptoms of Adult Emotional Dysregulation 

Emotional dysregulation can include some of the following symptoms:

• Crying for seemingly no reason
• Abrupt shifts in mood
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Shame
• Anger
• Problems calming yourself
• Problems soothing yourself
• Intense emotional reactions that are out of proportion to the situation
• Feeling easily overwhelmed
• Problems coping with stress
• Conflict in interpersonal relationships
• Impulsive behavior
• Substance misuse
• Compulsive behavior, including gambling, overspending, eating

Unresolved Childhood Trauma 

As I mentioned in a prior article, when childhood development goes well, children learn to manage their emotions with the help of their caregivers.  

However, when there is childhood neglect or physical, emotional or sexual abuse, this is traumatic, and if children don't get help from their caregivers, they often experience difficulty managing their emotions.

How a History of Unresolved Childhood Trauma Affects Adults

Without assistance, traumatized children often grow up to be traumatized adults who have problems with emotional dysregulation.

When this occurs, these adults have problems dealing with adversity in their personal or work-related relationships because they feel easily overwhelmed.  

Some people become so overwhelmed that they experience a trauma response of either fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

Clinical Vignette: Managing Your Emotions While Working Through Trauma

The following vignette, which is a composite to preserve confidentiality, illustrates how clients in trauma therapy learn to prepare for processing trauma by developing coping skills and strategies beforehand:

Sara

When Sara began experiential therapy to work on unresolved childhood trauma, she was told by her therapist that there is a preparation phase for doing trauma work.

The preparation phase consisted of helping Sara to develop the necessary coping skills and strategies to help her with any uncomfortable emotions that might come up during a therapy session or between sessions (see my article: Developing Coping Strategies in Trauma Therapy Before Processing Trauma).

At first, Sara felt a little disappointed to hear that she and her trauma therapist wouldn't delve right into her traumatic memories.  She had waited a long time to come to trauma therapy for the unresolved trauma which affected her ability to trust in her partner.  She wanted to overcome her unresolved trauma as soon as possible. She didn't want to wait.

However, her therapist provided Sara with psychoeducation about emotional triggers that could come up during or between sessions and her therapist wanted Sara to be prepared to deal with those triggers if they came up.

Sara was familiar with triggers because she often found herself reacting to stories on TV or in movies where someone was being assaulted.  Those scenes brought back painful memories of being hit by her father.

The first resource her therapist helped Sara to develop was the Relaxing Place Meditation (also called the Safe Place meditation), which allowed Sara to shift her awareness from any difficult emotions to a calm place so her mind and body would be soothed and she could deescalate from anxiety or any other uncomfortable emotions.

Her therapist also helped Sara to develop a resource called imaginal interweaves, a concept from Attachment-Focused EMDR therapy, where Sara named people in her life that she felt close to whom she could imagine as nurturing, powerful and wise figures if she felt the need to imagine them during trauma processing.

Sara also developed other coping strategies on her own, including attending yoga regularly and working out at the gym for stress management.

When Sara began processing her childhood trauma with EMDR therapy, she was glad her therapist prepared her beforehand with resources because she used all of those coping strategies to manage her emotions between sessions.

She also found many of these coping strategies useful during her daily life when other everyday stressors came up.

Processing the trauma with EMDR went a lot smoother because of the preparation, and Sara learned valuable emotional regulation skills to use in her daily life.

When to Seek Help in Trauma Therapy

If you have attempted to deal with emotional dysregulation and unresolved trauma on your own and you haven't been able to overcome your problems, you could benefit from seeking help from a licensed mental health professional who is a trauma therapist.

Managing Your Emotions While Working Through Trauma

Remember: Your unresolved trauma and emotional dyregulation don't define who you are (see my article: You Are Not Defined By Your Psychological Trauma).

Working with a trauma therapist can help you to develop the necessary skills to manage your emotions and work through unresolved trauma (see my article: Experiential Therapy, Like EMDR, Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I am a trauma therapist who works with individual adults and couples (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

How to Manage Your Emotions Without Suppressing Them

Everyone experiences emotions. They are a normal part of everyday life whether you feel sad, angry, frustrated, happy, disappointed or any other emotion.

Although everyone expects to feel emotions, some people have problems regulating their emotions.  

How to Manage Your Emotions Without Suppressing Them

Often this is because they never learned emotional regulation.  But the good news is that you can learn to regulate your emotions by developing emotional regulation skills and strategies.

What is Emotional Regulation?

As I mentioned in my article,  How to Develop Emotional Intelligence, emotional intelligence involves:

• Developing self awareness
• Managing emotions
• Picking up on social cues
• Maintaining relationship

Emotional regulation is the ability to control the intensity of emotions.  With emotional regulation, not only do control the intensity of your emotions, but you also know how to express your emotions.

For many people this can be especially challenging with difficult emotions.  

Emotional regulation doesn't mean avoiding or suppressing emotions.  On the contrary, avoiding or suppressing emotions often makes them even more intense.

Emotional regulation is the extent to which you stay calm and collected when you experience difficult emotions.

People who have a high degree of emotional intelligence are good at regulating their emotions. They are aware of their internal experience as well as the experience of others.  

These people experience distressing emotions just like everyone else but, over time, they have developed emotional regulation skills and strategies so they can regulate their emotions.

What is Emotional Suppression?

Emotional suppression occurs when someone pushes uncomfortable emotions out of their awareness.  Rather than dealing with these emotions, a person who uses emotional suppression either distracts themselves or pushes these emotions down.

Some people suppress emotions by distracting themselves by watching TV, participating in online activities, watching pornography or other distracting activities.  

Others numb themselves emotionally by drinking excessively, using illicit drugs, overeating, gambling compulsively, overspending, engaging in sex compulsively and so on (see my article: Changing Maladaptive Coping Strategies That No Longer Work For You: Avoidance).

Why Do People Suppress Emotions?

Many people suppress uncomfortable emotions like anger, sadness, fear, disgust and contempt because they don't know how to manage them.

It's often the case that these people never learned to experience uncomfortable emotions when they were growing up.  Usually this is because they grew up in a household where their family discouraged any signs of discomfort around difficult emotions.  

Under healthy conditions, children learn to tolerate uncomfortable emotions in an age-appropriate way with the help of their caregivers.  

For instance, a child, who has to leave the park with her mother when it's time to go home, feels upset, but she is soothed by her mother (or father) so that the child's emotions don't become overwhelming.

Over time, this same child learns how to soothe herself, which is called self soothing so that she develops this emotional regulation skill over time.

But a child who has no one to soothe her or, worse still, is told, "Don't be a baby!" or "Stop crying!" or "You have no reason to be upset" doesn't learn how to regulate emotions. 

This is a form of childhood emotional neglect which is traumatic for the child (see my articles: What is Childhood Emotional Neglect? and Overcoming Your Unresolved Childhood Trauma).

That child suppresses her emotions because she's being told that these emotions are uncomfortable for the parents. This is the only way for this child to survive in a dysfunctional family where uncomfortable emotions are suppressed, numbed or expressed in inappropriate ways.

Emotional suppression becomes the way this child continues to deal with uncomfortable emotions when she becomes an adult.  This often results in problems in personal relationships as well as problems at work when she can't deal with uncomfortable feelings.

What Are Some of the Consequences of Emotional Suppression?

As previously mentioned, emotional suppression can also result in emotional numbing with alcohol, drugs and other forms of abuse which creates its own problems.

Emotional suppression can also result in medical problems due to the mind-body connection. This is because, even though the difficult emotions might be out of someone's conscious awareness, they're not gone.  So, it's possible to develop headaches, stomach problems, elevated blood pressure and other related medical issues.

There have also been studies that reveal that over time emotional suppression can shorten a person's lifespan.

The Benefits of Managing Your Emotions

It's important for your own well-being, your personal and work-related relationships, and your health to learn to manage your emotions.

Whether you do this on your own or you seek help in therapy, most people can learn to manage their emotions.

Next Article:

In my next article, I'll discuss useful strategies you can learn to manage your emotions.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT, Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to learn how to manage their emotions and overcome unresolved trauma (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.