Emotional Intelligence

(i originally made this post for Instagram so don’t swipe right just keep scrolling 🧐)

What I’m about to share below is one of my favorite tool I use with clients!

Emotional theory in psychology is teeming with interesting perspectives. Rather than bore you with the top 3 theories, though, I humbly offer you my own conclusion which blends different aspects of the more popular theories.

I believe that our whole bodies are a giant sensory organ for receiving emotions. Just think about how a rejection can knock the wind out of you like a solid gut punch, rage can boil your blood and raise the pressure in your head until you explode, and happiness seems to bubble out of your heart like champagne, opening into an infinite expansion of possibility.

These emotions are messengers. Anger can tell you when your boundaries are being crossed, depression can tell you when you’re not living in alignment with your authentic self, nervousness can tell you that the person you’re with is dangerous, and excitement can tell you when something is really important and aligned to you!

From this perspective, gleaning emotional intelligence is paramount because too often people take their emotions out on others instead of communicating what’s actually going on. Misunderstandings happen, people get hurt unnecessarily, the message embedded in the emotion gets lost and everybody loses in the end.

When we can NAME the undulating waters of our emotional body, we can get SUPER productive about it and start understanding what we’re supposed to do with it! Diversify your emotional vocabulary beyond “mad, sad and happy” and watch what happens.

Next time you’re feeling particularly strongly one way or another, I invite you to sit with these emotional wheels and get to know the emotion you’re experiencing.

What are it’s names? Where is it living in your body? How does it feel, both viscerally as well as energetically? Is it associated with yourself or others? What contexts does it repeatedly show up in? What do you think it’s trying to tell you?

I love you all xo