Day 5: Developing Your Emotional Intelligence

	I never miss an opportunity to cry, because I know my tears are washing the windows of my soul!

Hello again! Welcome back! This is a very important day in your emotional healing journey, because today you're going to learn one of the most valuable lessons in this entire course. You will probably need to come back to today's lesson over and over, because it's not something you can master in only one session or one day. It's an emotional healing process that you will need to practice again and again to become proficient with it, but over time you'll learn how to do it very quickly and easily.

So, are you ready? Great! Today I'm going to teach you the beginning skills for developing your emotional intelligence. Let me explain. I'm sure you're all familiar with the term “IQ” which is your intelligence quotient. We've always understood the importance of intelligence in our culture, but it's only recently that we've also become aware of the importance of our “EQ” or our emotional intelligence.

Growing up in dysfunctional families makes it very difficult for us to have a high “EQ” because our parents didn't encourage us to express our feelings or our needs, so we never had the opportunity to learn how to recognize them or express them appropriately. Remember that our parents also came from dysfunctional homes, so they probably didn't know how to teach us about expressing our feelings. Generally they weren't able to role model healthy communication or healthy conflict resolution either. If our dysfunctional families expressed any feelings at all, they were usually expressed inappropriately with arguing and fighting.

Developing emotional intelligence after growing up in a dysfunctional family is a healing journey that happens little by little over time. It requires first of all that you learn to identify and express your feelings and your needs, and secondly that you also learn to express and release them. When you've spent most of your life denying your feelings and needs or expressing them inappropriately, learning to name them accurately and express them honestly can feel overwhelming. You'll need to be very patient and kind with yourself in this process.

Resolving and releasing the feelings can be equally challenging. I'm sure you've heard the term ‘catch and release' that fishermen use, especially those who enjoy the process of fishing but don't want to eat the fish they catch. Releasing your feelings is a somewhat similar experience. You'll want to catch and name the feeling, learn what you need to learn from it, and then toss it back into the ocean to be swallowed up in the waves of life. The good news is that by learning to express and release the feelings, you can avoid spending years of your precious life stuck in the pain of what happened in the past.

So let's talk about you. If you were raised in a dysfunctional family, chances are you're not very good at recognizing and naming your feelings. Maybe you know you feel bad, but you don't know what the feeling is or what you can do to release it and feel better. I understand how that feels because I had the same experience years ago. When I first started working through my feelings, my therapist would ask me what I felt, and I had only two words for my feelings. I either felt “good” or I felt “shitty.” It was definitely a limited vocabulary, but later, that experience taught me how to help my clients who don't have words learn how to express their emotions more clearly.

I have learned in working with my clients that there are six basic feelings; they are angry, sad, scared, hurt, happy, and peaceful. If you want to learn to recognize your feelings and name them accurately, that process is often like playing detective on yourself. If you feel bad and you didn't know why, you can go down the list and cross off the ones that don't fit. For example, you could say, “Well, I know I'm not happy or peaceful right now, and it doesn't feel like I'm angry or scared, so I must be sad or hurt.”

In order to clarify why you are feeling sad or hurt, you can ask your-self “When did this feeling start? Was I feeling sad when I woke up this morning? Was it there at lunch or dinner yesterday?” It's like retracing your steps to find something that you lost; sometimes you have to think about what happened in the last few hours to see when your feelings changed. When you can clarify when the feeling started, then you can ask your self “What was happening around that time? Who was I with? What were we talking about? What was I reading or watching on TV? Did that experience remind me of something in my past?”

When you know when the feeling started, then you have some clues as to what it's about. Then you can ask yourself to finish the sentence “I'm sad that…” or “It hurts me that…” and see what comes to your mind. Don't ever worry about having the wrong answer with feelings. Feelings are like water; they can change directions or wash away in a moment. You just have to start somewhere and then let them grow or change along the way.

In working with my clients, I learned that specific feelings relate to tension in specific parts of the body. For example, when your back or your arms are tense or tight, you are often angry or frustrated about something. If your chest is tight or tense, you are generally hurt or sad. When your stomach is tight, it's often related to being angry or scared. If you pay attention over time, you'll learn to distinguish whether the tension in your stomach is from being angry or from being scared, because the feeling is different. When your body is completely relaxed and you have an overall feeling of well being, you are happy or peaceful.

In order to resolve and release your feelings, you have to let yourself really feel them and express them in some way. Sometimes just writing about what you feel in your journal will be enough to help you understand the feelings and let them go. Sometimes you will need to talk with another human being who can listen and care about what you are feeling, so that you feel validated and understood.

It's important to know that feelings are not just in our minds, they have a distinct physical energy in our bodies. Sometimes just talking is not enough and you need to express your hurt by crying, or release your anger by pounding on a pillow to release the physical energy from your body. Sometimes we have to physically release our feelings by working out, or running, or doing some other type of physical exercise so that our physical bodies feel relieved. When we physically feel lighter and freer, then we can move on to being that lighthearted, happy person we want to be.

There are a couple of things you will want to avoid in working with your feelings. One thing you'll want to avoid is to believe that a feeling you have about yourself is the truth about you. For example, if you feel ‘less than' a friend of yours, it's important to remember that the feeling of being ‘less than' your friend is just a feeling. It's not the truth about you. Feelings are not the truth, they're just there to resolve and release.

Another thing you'll want to avoid is to believe that your feeling about someone else is the truth about that person. Just because you feel hurt by something someone has said or done, doesn't mean that person has really “done you wrong.” When you feel and release the feeling, you may find that the person who hurt you in the present was only the trigger for a deeper feeling you need to resolve and release from the past. When you resolve and release the old feeling, you will probably see the present situation much differently.

Also remember that releasing your feelings does not need to involve talking directly to the person who upset you. In fact, often it's a good idea not to talk directly to that person, especially if your feelings are strong or intense. When you first begin releasing your feelings, the backlog of anger and hurt can be intense and overwhelming, because you've been holding it inside for a lifetime. As you continue resolving and releasing the feelings over time, they generally become easier and less intense.

So, please keep in mind that releasing your feelings is for your own benefit right now, not anyone else's. Later I'll teach you how to express your feelings appropriately to the people who matter most to you. For now, just do this emotional healing work for your own benefit.

I do have a very important secret I want to share with you today before we finish. I hope you'll take it to heart and memorize it for a lifetime. The secret is that all feelings when expressed and released will bring you back to love and peace. So, when you do the emotional work it takes to resolve and release your feelings, the unconditional love you have for yourself and others will be the payoff for all your time and effort.

Pause and Reflect - Click here to download the questions below in a word document.

1. Start this process by taking some big deep breaths. Breathing deeply helps you release the feelings from your body, not just your mind. Then ask yourself, “What am I feeling in this moment?" Are you angry or sad? Are you scared or hurt? Are you happy or peaceful? Maybe you have several feelings at once. If so, write them all down.

2. Now, beginning with your strongest feeling, please write "I'm angry that..." or "It hurts me that..." and finish the sentence with whatever comes to your mind. For example, you might say, "I'm sad that I'm alone," or "It hurts me that my partner left me," or "I'm angry that my kids don't want to see me." Write anything you want to say about your feeling right now.

3. Now think about who you want to talk to about this feeling. Is it your spouse, your parent, or your boss at work? If you could tell this person what you are feeling, and you did not have to worry about their response, what would you say? Write your feelings here using their first name, just like you'd say it them to them in person, starting with "Mary, I'm really angry that..." or "John, it really hurts me that..." or "Bill, I'm scared that..."

Be clear and specific and keep writing until you feel some relief, like "Wow, that..." or "what I have needed to say all this time!" You can say anything you want to say in your journal, but please don't go talk to him or her in person right now. We have more work to do before you are ready to do that!

4. If you're not feeling a release from the feeling, please write about what you could do without hurting anyone to release this feeling. Would it help to cry? Would it help to get outside and exercise? Sometimes walking or running helps to release the feeling. Could you talk to someone you trust about the feeling without hurting anyone? If you are angry, would it help you to pound some pillows or get some physical exercise to release the anger?

Remember that it's never okay to hurt someone with your anger. What we're doing is simply learning how to release the feeling and let it go, so that you can come back to that incredible feeling of love and peace inside you. Trust me; you'll absolutely love it when you get there!

When you believe that you have successfully released the feeling, check inside your body and notice if there is any part that still feels tense or tight. Tension is a signal that you have not completely released the feeling. When the feeling, is completely released, your body will be totally relaxed and you will be feeling a sense of relief. If you're not there yet, just go back and do the process again until you honestly feel better

5. When you get to that feeling of love and peace, it's such a relief! It makes you feel lighter and freer, like there's hope for your life and hope for humanity! Write a few paragraphs here about how you feel after doing your homework today.

Please remember that if you need professional help to get through these feelings, it’s totally okay! It helps to find a psychotherapist who’s open to emotional healing. Just explain to him or her what you’ve been working on and where you need help. Whatever you do, don't give up! There's always a way to heal the pain if you simply stay persistent in finding the help you need.