Emotional intelligence, or EI, is the ability to identify, understand, manage, and utilize emotions effectively. We often hear about emotional intelligence in the context of professional success or effective communication, but having high emotional intelligence also gives you the ability to heal more quickly from past hurt or traumas.
Let’s take a look at the different aspects of emotional intelligence…
Self-Awareness: Step One In Healing
If you’re ready to heal, it’s important to become self-aware. Being self-aware means recognizing your emotions and understanding how they’re affecting your thoughts and behavior. When you have self-awareness, you can identify the feelings or emotions that need to be healed as a result of previous traumas, current life stresses, or deeply ingrained habits. This awareness is the foundation for addressing and healing emotional wounds.
Self-Regulation: Managing Your Emotions
To heal, you have to be able to manage and regulate your emotions. This is about using mindfulness to ground yourself before reacting purely on your emotions. In difficult times, self-regulation helps prevent you from being overwhelmed by negative feelings which is crucial in creating an environment that is stable enough for healing. This is probably one of the hardest parts of strengthening your emotional intelligence, but with the right tools (which we’ll discuss in a bit) it’s a skill you can learn.
Empathy: Connecting and Understanding
Empathy allows you to understand and share the feelings of others. More importantly, it helps you extend that understanding to yourself. By being empathetic toward your own experiences, you can approach your healing journey with compassion and patience. Acknowledge that healing is a process and can take time. Having self-compassion allows you to overcome self-criticism and creates a supportive internal environment for healing.
Social Skills: Building a Network
Strong social skills allow you to build and maintain supportive relationships. Your network is important during the healing process, providing emotional support and encouragement. Sharing your journey with others who understand and support you can significantly accelerate your healing time. Emotional intelligence helps you navigate these relationships more effectively, ensuring you can manage conflict, build bonds, and give and receive support in a healthy way.
Motivation: Commitment to Heal
Internal motivation drives you to pursue your healing goals with determination and resilience. This motivational force helps you stay dedicated to your healing process despite setbacks or when the healing process feels too painful. Working on your emotional intelligence is one of the best things you can do to work on yourself, but it’s not easy, so stay motivated and remember why you’re doing it.
Steps to Work On Your Emotional Intelligence for Healing
Now that you understand the different aspects of emotional intelligence, let’s put the tools in place to improve on it.
Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness practices like meditation and deep breathing can help you become more self-aware when you feel like your emotions are getting the best of you. This could be overwhelming feelings of grief or bursts of anger and frustration.
Try using the 4-7-8 deep breathing method to ground yourself. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold it for 7, and breathe out for 8. Not only does this help you skip a beat before you have a reaction you’ll regret, but it also activates your parasympathetic nervous system, promoting a state of calmness and reducing stress levels.
Acknowledge Your Emotions
Take a few minutes each day to reflect on your emotions. Journaling is a great way to do this. Write down your feelings and consider what might have triggered them. Research proves that expressive writing can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. Getting your feelings down on paper allows you to process what you’re feeling which helps you be more self-aware and strengthens your ability to self-regulate your emotions.
Invest in a nice journal and keep it by your bedside. Pick a time of day when you know you can be consistent. Write what you’re feeling as if you’re talking to your best friend. Don’t worry about holding anything back, it’s just you who is ever going to read it.
Seek Feedback and Support
Reach out to a trusted friend, family member, or therapist to gain different perspectives on your emotional state. Their feedback can help you understand how your emotions influence your interactions. Let them know you’re working on your emotional intelligence to cope with difficult feelings you have.
If you find it uncomfortable to speak to someone, start by preparing a few questions ahead of time. Ask for feedback on how they perceive your emotional reactions or if they notice any patterns in your behavior. Practice active listening and don’t be defensive.
Set Personal Goals
Set specific, achievable goals related to your emotional intelligence. This could be learning new coping skills, improving your communication with others, or dedicating time to self-care activities. Achieving your goals will boost your motivation and contribute to your overall healing.
Remember that emotional intelligence is like a muscle. First, you’ve got to build it up, then you need to continue to use it to keep it strong.
Action Step
It’s time to start putting the plan into action. This is going to take some deep reflection. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but take it step by step and know that working on this part of yourself is one of the best things you can do for your health, healing, relationships, and even your career.
It really is that important of a skill!
While emotional intelligence won’t erase the hurt and trauma of the past, it can certainly make the healing process more manageable. And it’s not just for healing…
Having a high emotional intelligence will improve every aspect of your life. Everything from learning to have healthier relationships to being more assertive at work without coming off as aggressive will improve by focusing on raising your emotional intelligence.
I hope this new skill you’re learning brings you everything you want out of life. I want nothing but healing, growth, and happiness for you!
