Emotional Intelligence & Emotional Regulation

Emotions are necessary and important.

They let us know how we’re feeling.

They are the communication between our inner world and our outer environment.

They also allow us to perceive and understand other people’s emotions and experiences.

When emotions become dysregulated, it affects a person’s ability to control their responses to emotional “triggers”.

It also reduces a person’s ability to empathize with and effectively interact with others.

Low emotional intelligence and emotional dysregulation usually occur in invalidating or abusive childhood environments. While most believe that emotional dysregulation is about lashing out, or an inability to self-calm, this is only half correct.

Many who struggle with increasing their emotional intelligence or emotional regulation often report feeling “disconnected”, numb, or being unable to express or feel happiness..

Thus, emotions are on a spectrum, which includes:
Emotional Disconnection <—> Emotional Volatility

Some vacillate between feeling numb while others feel intense anger or sadness. Others, may struggle with expressing more vulnerable emotions such as love.

The benefits of experiencing higher emotional intelligence are that you can read and relate to your own inner experiences, and can empathize with what another person is going through. These goals often include developing empathy, increasing self-awareness, and mastering emotional vulnerability with others.

This means that you’re better able to respond to the needs of yourself and others in a healthy way.

On the flip-side, the goals of emotional regulation include: recognizing our feelings, pairing somatic experiences with emotional experiences, increasing distress tolerance (recognizing and working through emotional dysregulation), anger management, decreasing the frequency and duration of unpleasant emotions, decreasing emotional suffering, and being able to name and deeply understand our vulnerable emotions as they happen in our lives.

By focusing on both of these necessary needs, I help clients build and expand their emotional skill-set while helping them better understand themselves, their motivations, and in taking control of their emotional experiences.