Am I skipping some key EQ steps?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

How are you this June morning?

What are you feeling?

Today, I’m feeling really grateful for chosen family, the beach, and summer. I feel sunburned, and happy, and teary, and peaceful. I’m learning that I can hold a lot of feelings all at the same time. Instead of spending so much time trying to keep the “bad” feelings out, I’m able to let in a lot more good. Feel it all.

I’ve come a very long way. :)

I was looking at my slide of the 5 components of Emotional Intelligence that I used with a school recently:

I’ve been teaching this framework for a couple of years now, and I’m realizing how much my experience of these components has changed over time. My awareness went like this:

Self-awareness: N/A. Doesn’t matter. Nothing to see here. All is well!

Self-regulation: N/A. Regulate what? I only ever feel happy and grateful. I only ever think and feel “good” things. I’m in total control.

Empathy: Now we’re talking! Let’s focus on you! What are you feeling? What’s happening for you? These are the questions that matter. My thoughts and feelings are unimportant.

Interpersonal Skills: How can we connect? I have to be self-aware and self-regulated to connect with others, but I don’t know myself or how to regulate my fight/flight dysregulated nervous system, so I can’t connect. I think my version of interpersonal skills was instead: How can I please you? How can I perform to get your approval of me?

Or maybe even deeper:

Am I okay? Do you think I’m okay? Can you accept me and make me feel okay?

I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t approaching other people for connection, I was going to them for validation. I was trying to get from them what I was denying myself.

Who/What/Where/When/Why should I act based on the answers to the first four questions?Because I was only aware of how others were feeling and not honest and aware of how I was feeling, this made decision making impossible. It meant I had to run around and poll the world to figure out what to do and still feel really unsettled about my decision because I was ignoring my greatest source of wisdom: myself and my own feelings.

Essentially, I tried to skip self-awareness and self-regulation.

I wasn’t aware of myself, my thoughts, or my feelings.

I didn’t know how to calm my nervous system. How to feel my feelings without being swept away by them.

I tried to skip my self. I tried to be self-less. But that doesn’t work. I was trying to do everyone else’s emotional work for them and not doing my own emotional work.

I had to go back to steps 1 & 2: SELF. I had to stay still. Go in. Not run away. Pay attention. Feel and deal.

It’s been hard and very worthwhile work. I’m now reaping the benefits of self-awareness and self-regulation and, for me, it means feeling safe and peaceful inside my own body and life for the first time. No small thing.

I would never have had the courage or ability to grow my self-awareness without the safety and connection I felt in my relationship with my therapist. I was too terrified. I could not face myself alone. I needed a trusted guide. Someone who had been on their own journey. Who had done their own work.

When I told the truth about what I was thinking and feeling and felt seen and accepted by my therapist, it transformed my relationship with myself. Maybe I am okay. Maybe my feelings are okay. Maybe I don’t need to be cruel to myself. Maybe I don’t need to pretend or perform.

I’ve been trying for years and years to apply EQ. But I was trying to do it all by myself. By reading, and listening, and researching. By quietly and desperately searching for answers to why I felt so wrong inside. But I needed help. I needed a good teacher who knew more than me about emotions and self-acceptance. I needed the warmth of an authentic connection, not the isolation of a book I could use to diagnose myself. I was such an eager EQ student in need of a good teacher.

I found that teacher in my therapist. And then he gave me the space to find that teacher in myself.

I now know myself so much better. And I know that I am okay. And I trust that I will be okay, no matter what. What a gift.

So if you’re like me, and you’re skipping the first two steps: self-awareness and self-regulation, you might need a guide too. Someone to stick with you and teach you that you don’t have to run away. You can stay and handle whatever is happening within you. If you’re feeling stuck on your EQ journey, that feeling is okay. Maybe it is pointing you toward what you need next. For me, I think learning to feel my feelings is really about learning to let myself have needs and ask for help. Learning to let myself be human.

Where does this land for you?

Who has been your EQ guide? Who taught you how to be self-aware and feel your feelings? Has anyone done this for you yet?
Which of these 5 components would you like to grow? Where are you feeling you’d like a change?
Where have you already grown? Where can you celebrate?
What are your needs right now? Who might be your guide? Your trusted teacher?

Better EQuipped Together, Elizabeth