E
Emotional Intelligence - Empathy
This glossary is a long-term project that comes in waves and retreats. It’s an ethos/world building description of terms from psychology, philosophy, theology, and social psychology. It’s imperfect and that’s what I love about writing them. I’ve published A through this part of E and will continue for the near future, probably through E and then back to some story telling and then on to F and beyond.
Emotional intelligence
Whoever put these two words together spawned a lasting self-help revolution for the business world. Who would’ve thought that knowing what we’re feeling and being able to deal with it would be important to our professional lives?
Now we’re in the never-ending cycle of quantification and proof-building. We’re touting emotional intelligence as a leadership quality, a management strategy, and bottom-line boosting skill. We’ve made tests and interview questions to assess and score EQ. We’ve built cottage industries to teach and train it.
Good… I guess?
Good that we realize we’re not machines when we punch the clock. Good that we understand the importance of relationships and emotions and feelings as a part of our personal and professional lives. Good that we’re trying… I guess.
Yet, EQ is not a productivity hack. At least that’s not what it’s meant to be. Can it make you more productive, more intentional, better at life? Certainly.
But not the way we apply it today. It’s just not that kind of tool. It’s a skill. It can be trained and practiced. But the end goal can’t just be a better bottom line.
Emotional intelligence is an awareness of the push and pull of everyday life. It’s a way of engaging the world and its myriad relationships meaningfully, thoughtfully, and emotionally.
If we must define it, emotional intelligence is about noticing, naming, and navigating the data of our emotional lives. It’s not who remains calm in a stressful situation, but rather who effectively navigates the stress without damaging their relationships.
When we take it out of the context of a way of being, it’s just a tool we blindly and haphazardly apply everywhere we go.
Emotional intelligence opens the door for emotional regulation; it’s the still small voice in our head that says we’ll eventually be okay if we step through.
Emotions are hard. They’re erratic, embedded, and embodied in all our experiences. Emotional intelligence recognizes the patterns that bring about different emotions. It uses empathy to get curious about ourselves and others.
Naming and claiming our emotions allows room for others to do the same, even when they experience something different. Intelligence validates each different experience without the need for uniformity.
EQ doesn’t make everything smooth and okay. It’s not a veneer of niceness.
It’s a shit just got real recognition with a tentative plan to try and work through it together. It’s hard, courageous, and humbling.
See: feelings, emotional regulation, empathy, embodiment, humility, grace.
Emotional regulation
When I hear regulation, I hear rules. It’s easy to draw a straight between the two words. Regulations might even be the rules that guide or explain the rules. That’s what you’ll find if you look up the word.
And, that’s precisely what I don’t want you to do (which you probably will do because I told you not to).
When we take regulation and add emotional to it, we’re turning a set of rules into a process that is distinct and creative. There is no “one-size-fits-all” version of emotional regulation. There are habits and practices, but their efficacy depends on who’s using them and how.
For many of us, emotional regulation is akin to an off switch. I start to feel something, I shut it down, quick. Honestly, sometimes that’s what’s needed, and it’s okay to do that.
However, ignoring or shutting something down is not the same as regulating it. When we’re able to emotionally regulate, we’re able to name, validate, and respond to the emotions stirring in our bodies.
Let’s put this simply: I experience something > It stirs an emotion > I name the emotion > I validate it (someone else in my shoes might feel the same way) > I respond (rather than react).
Emotional regulation happens in the naming and validating phase because those offer enough of a perceptible pause to respond rather than react.
I have to speak in front of a large group > I feel really nervous and anxious > That’s a pretty normal feeling and I’ve heard a lot of people experience that as well > I think I’ll read over my talking points one more time and get a breath of fresh air.
You don’t need to meditate for hours to emotionally regulate, you just need to find your voice, validate your experience, and put in place the tools that work for you.
Emotional regulation simply allows us to maintain relationship with our experiences. It reframes our emotional life as part of the journey rather than an unwanted intrusion.
See: regulation, autonomic nervous system, emotions, feelings, data.
Empathy
Imagination + emotional intelligence + compassion + listening + just giving a damn about another person = empathy.
It’s nothing more than useful data to help us navigate relationships while expressing care for the person in front of us. Without it, we all suffer, we miscommunicate, we oppress, we lack decency and cannot understand the basic dignity and worth of the person in front of us.
We could write volumes as a testament to its importance and an equal number of volumes about its pitfalls. I hope we can just agree that without it, there is no compassion, no us, no we, no community, no culture, no nations, no progress.
It takes more courage to be empathetic than it does to be an asshole. Let’s try not to be assholes… okay?
See: feelings, emotional intelligence, embodiment, boundaries, compassion, humility.