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.

Developing Skills to Manage Your Emotions With Experiential Therapy

I have been focusing on managing emotions and emotional intelligence in my last three articles (see my articles: How to Develop Emotional Intelligence, How to Manage Your Emotions Without Suppressing Them and Developing Skills to Manage Your Emotions).  Those previous articles include self help techniques.  

Developing Skills to Manage Your Emotions With Experiential Therapy

The current article focuses on how experiential therapy can help if self help techniques don't work for you (see my article: Experiential Therapy and the Mind-Body Connection: The Body Offers a Window Into the Unconscious Mind).

What is Experiential Therapy?

Experiential therapy is a broad range of mind-body oriented therapies, which include:

• Somatic Experiencing (SE): Mind-Body Oriented Therapy: Somatic Experiencing

• EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): Experiential Therapy, Like EMDR, Can Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs

• Parts Work (also known as Internal Family Systems, Ego States Therapy): How Parts Work Can Empower You

• AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy): What is AEDP?

• Hypnotherapy (also known as clinical hypnosis, hypnosis): What is Clinical Hypnosis?

Each of these modalities work in a different way, but what they all have in common is that they use the mind-body connection.

Rather than just talking about your problems in an intellectual way (as is usually the case in regular talk therapy), experiential therapy helps you to make the connection between your mind with your body to get to emotions that are often unconscious (out of your awareness).  

In that way, experiential therapy tends to be more effective than regular talk therapy (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Talk Therapy).

Experiential therapy is also used to help clients to overcome emotional trauma, including shock trauma and developmental trauma.

How Does Experiential Therapy Help to Manage Emotions

Since all experiential therapy works with the mind-body connection, clients learn to identify and manage their emotions.

For instance, many people come to therapy with emotional blocks.  These blocks are often unconscious.  

Developing Skills to Manage Your Emotions With Experiential Therapy

Emotional blocks often occur due to past negative experiences and unresolved emotions, including emotional trauma.

Once they are uncovered, these blocks usually involve negative feelings about the self.  Common examples are "I'm not good enough" or "I'm not lovable" or other similar feelings.

But since the blocks are often unconscious at the start of experiential therapy, clients are unaware of them at the start of them at first.  When they come to therapy, these clients might only have a vague sense that something is wrong, but they don't know what it is.

An experiential therapist attunes to clients and listens for the underlying unconscious roots to the problem.  She will also help clients to develop a felt sense of the problem by asking clients to feel the sensations related to the problem in their body (see my article: What is the Felt Sense in Experiential Therapy?).

Many clients can sense into their bodies to identify emotions, but many others can't.  When clients can't sense emotions in their body, an experiential therapist knows that this is part of the block and works in an empathetic way to help clients to develop this skill.

Clients who are unable to identify emotions often sense a difficult or uncomfortable sensation.  From there, the experiential therapist starts where the clients are at that point and helps clients to differentiate sensations into specific emotions like anger, sadness, frustration, contempt, shame, and so on.

Being able to detect emotions on an experiential level is different from having intellectual insight into these emotions.  It means actually feeling it as opposed to just knowing it in a logical way. 

This is an important distinction between regular talk therapy and experiential therapy because change occurs with the combination of intellectual insight and emotional awareness.

Clinical Vignette: Developing Skills to Manage Emotions With Experiential Therapy

The following clinical vignette which, as always, is a composite of many cases to protect confidentiality is an example of how experiential therapy can help a client learn to identify and manage emotions as well as work through unresolved trauma:

Ed

After Ed's wife gave him an ultimatum to either get help in therapy or she would leave him and take their children with her, Ed began therapy with some ambivalence (see my article: Starting Therapy: It's Not Unusual to Feel Anxious or Ambivalent).

Ed told his therapist that he often yelled at their young children when he got upset and then regretted it later because it frightened them.  He said he tried various self help techniques, like trying to pause by taking a few breaths, but his emotions often overrode any attempts he made to keep from losing his temper.

Initially, Ed was unable to identify the emotions involved when he got upset. He just knew that he felt overwhelmed, but he couldn't identify the emotions involved.

His experiential therapist provided Ed with psychoeducation about experiential therapy and the mind-body connection.

Over time, she helped Ed to go back into a recent memory where he became upset with his children. She helped him to slow down so he could feel in his body what he was experiencing at the time.  

At first, Ed had difficulty detecting physical sensations or emotions in his body, so his therapist helped him to develop a felt sense of his experiences by using a technique known in hypnotherapy as the Affect Bridge (also known in EMDR therapy as the Float Back technique).

One of the emotional blocks they encountered occurred when Ed had a memory of himself at five years old when his father told him, "Big boys don't cry."  There were other times when his father scolded him when Ed got angry or when he made a mistake.  

As she listened to Ed's history with his father, his therapist realized that these experiences resulted in Ed numbing his emotions from an early age which was why he was having problems identifying his emotions.

Using Parts Work, his therapist helped Ed to develop compassion for his younger self.  He could look at his own five year old son and realize just how young he was when his father shamed him (see my article: Developing Curiosity and Self Compassion in Therapy).

Developing self compassion was an important part of Ed's therapy and, over time, feeling compassionate towards his younger self enabled Ed to get to the underlying emotions that had been numbed for many years.

Gradually, Ed was able to detect sadness when his throat felt constricted, anger when his hands were clenched and fear when his stomach was in knots (these are examples of how one particular person experiences these emotions and not universally true for every person).

As he continued to work in therapy on identifying and managing his emotions, Ed realized that when he got upset with his children, he was not only experiencing anger, he was also experiencing fear.  Fear was the underlying emotion at the root of his upset.

By then, Ed was curious enough to question why he felt fear when he was upset with his children. By sensing into his experience using the mind-body connection, Ed realized that fear was related to his childhood experiences with his father.  

He realized that he felt the same fear and sense of helplessness in the present that he experienced when he was a child (see my article: How Traumatic Childhood Fears of Being Helpless Can Get Triggered in Adults).

He realized that, although his father never said it directly, his father communicated to Ed that whenever Ed was sad or angry or made a mistake, Ed was allowing himself to be vulnerable to being ridiculed or worse.  

In other words, what was communicated to Ed was that so-called "negative emotions" or making a mistake was dangerous.  

This was a pivotal moment in Ed's therapy.  He realized that when his children made mistakes, which could mean making a mistake in their homework or getting an answer wrong, this sense of fear and vulnerability to danger were triggers that rose up in him without his awareness (see my article: Becoming Aware of Emotional Triggers).

Underneath his anger and fear, he sensed his intention to protect them, but instead of coming across as protective, he came across as harsh and critical, which was scaring them.

Once Ed learned to detect these emotions, he was able to stop himself from yelling at his children.  Having those physical cues he learned in experiential therapy allowed him to calm himself first so he could respond to his children more empathetically.

After he learned to manage his emotions, Ed worked on his unresolved childhood trauma with EMDR therapy so he was no longer triggered in this way.  

The work was neither quick nor easy, but once Ed worked through these issues, he no longer felt triggered.

Conclusion

Experiential therapy can help you to develop skills to manage your emotions.

Regular talk therapy can help you to develop intellectual insight into your problems, but problems often don't change with insight alone.  Change occurs on an emotional level.

This is an important distinction between talk therapy and and experiential therapy: With experiential therapy you can develop both insight as well as an emotional shift which enables you to make changes.

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

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.