Emotional Intelligence

How important it is to functioning and to relationships

I’m making my way through Dr. Thelma Bryant’s Homecoming. In this book she has a chapter on emotional intelligence. She outlines a few points on what it means to be emotionally intelligent.

I realized, upon hearing this, that I struggle greatly to be in a relationship with someone who is not self-aware or emotionally intelligent.

As she points out, when someone is not emotionally intelligent, this can manifest in many ways, but some of the following include:

—Going from withdrawn to explosive, obviously indicating temperament and rage issues.

Essentially, what this means is that someone can’t properly, reasonably, address their emotions without erupting on and all over others.

I see a lot of men do this, with anger and rage. I saw my father, brother, former partner(s) do this.

But women do this too. Although I think, many times, it looks different than with most men. Sure, women have their temper tantrums as well, but I also think that we tend to say, “We’re fine” or “It’s fine” or “Whatever” or “Do what you want,” when we really don’t mean it. Though, on second thought, I hear a lot of men pull this move too.

Living with integrity—as Martha Beck urges us to do—means no longer saying this crap when we don’t mean it. When we’re mad, or sad, or are feelings are hurt. Own it, Communicate it.

Of course, even naming those emotions and being able to identify them within ourselves is a challenge for many people.

To follow suit from the last post, this frequently happens with those who did not have a secure and safe background, growing up, and were taught that feeling emotions was not okay, or important to discuss. Some of us—especially little boys—are often taught to stuff them down and away.

I admire people like my cousin, Jon, for realizing how damaging this is for many boys as they grow into men and, therefore, he is making intentional moves to raise his son differently. He discusses feelings with his son and asks him to name them and to work with them.

So often toxic masculinity reinforces to men that the only emotion that they are allowed to feel is rage, and perhaps lust and jealousy. But not the sadness and loneliness and heartache. Or, at the minimum, I believe that there is less tolerance for men who exhibit those emotions.

We straight women often don’t want a partner who doesn’t share with us or acknowledge their feelings. And yet, when our men cry over something that is deemed not important enough or they do it too often, we may turn on them. We too often get uncomfortable in their overt displays of emotion.

Being self actualized and in touch with your emotions is so important for a relationship to thrive and to be healthy. If you can’t be in touch with your own and you also don’t understand or process with your own, I firmly believe that then—for many people—their ability to understand and to tolerate their partner’s range of emotions goes down. I see this and have experienced this and observed and heard of this often. It’s an all too common narrative.

Emotional skills—when translated—can also end up as social skills, when communicated, becoming social skills.

I have learned this about myself: I do not do well with people who are out of touch with themselves and running from their own emotions.

Because here’s the thing—we all have them. And if we repress them or fail to name them and deal with them, they don’t go away, they simply resurface in unhealthy ways. Someone explodes, rages. Someone drinks or smokes or has a lot of sex to deal with their emotions through escapism and evasiveness, running from themselves.

To be human is to have emotions. Yes, emotions ebb and flow. But they only do so smoothly when we allow them to just be, to feel them and to float onward, on their merry little way. They get stuck when we repress, when we force ourselves not to feel.

I think about the ways that numbing ourselves emotionally, also means that we don’t feel joy as well as the pain. Numbing ourselves takes place, again through sex and relationships as a distraction, substance abuse, promiscuity, eating disorders and perhaps funneled sometimes through seemingly healthier and more productive means like being a workaholic or exercise-aholic.

Still, I firmly believe that eventually, you have to deal with your emotions. You can’t ignore them, stuff and shove them down indefinitely.

They are like bubbles; they are always going to try to keep rising to the surface. And you expend so much more energy, effort, attention on pushing them down again rather than allowing them to just be and come; even when it is difficult, we must sit with them.

I think that if we trace emotions root causes they can also teach us some pretty challenging truths, our faults and limitations, our backgrounds, if we’re willing to be honest about them.

Only if we’re brave enough to really listen and not try to show them aside and displace blame onto others.

Emotions are what makes us human. To be devoid of them—especially compassion and empath—are part of what defines or categorizes a sociopath…sometimes a narcissist or other mood and personality disorders.