A stable life inside ourselves often relies on recognizing, understanding and handling feelings well. It’s also dependant on responding effectively to the emotions of others. This process begs good cognitive and behavioural skills including motional awareness, expression, regulation, and empathy.
Small wonder then that sometimes we just want to switch off emotionally. Handling our feelings is a complex process that involves not only identifying what we feel but working out what the implications and meaning those emotions have in our lives. But no matter how complicated it may be, emotional intelligence is undeniably crucial for healthy mental functioning and our general well being. It enables we humans to navigate our inner experience, cope with challenges, and maintain harmony in our interpersonal relationships.
There’s no doubt that for many of us, that’s a hefty skill set. Few of us are totally self-aware most of the time. Not everyone we encounter expresses how they truly feel. For some, regulating their nervous system when feelings run high or low is a full-time job while for others managing emotions is as easy and natural as breathing.
If you’ve ever come across someone fluent in emotional regulation, you may have noticed that they are often the ones who remain composed in the most difficult situations. These individuals tend to demonstrate consistent behaviour and place a high value on emotional common sense. Rarely driven by how they feel, they are life’s professional roller coaster riders.
One of the reasons these people are so healthy is because working through feelings often reduces anxiety, depression, and mental health challenge. Research supports this, showing that effective emotion regulation strategies, particularly thinking pattern re-evaluation, are linked to lower levels of anxiety and depression. Thinking pattern restructuring also results in understanding the difference between life challenges and feelings about those challenges. In the long run this helps emotions to complete so that a smooth road forward can come into view and the work on taking action for change can begin.
Like cognitive and behavioural skills, it's believed that emotional regulation is learned in childhood. However, due to the diverse upbringing each person experiences through early social interactions, not everyone becomes proficient in managing emotions by the time they reach adulthood. In fact, for a large proportion of people, handling emotions is a skill that must be learned and refined throughout adulthood. Some may even seek therapy or a skilled professional to address emotional memories and reactions that get stuck in repetitive loops.
But why is being able to fully experience and work through emotions so important? What’s the big deal?
The truth is, our lives are unpredictable. When we’re hit with one of life’s curveballs—whether it's illness, a job loss, or the passing of someone dear—being able to understand and manage your emotional responses effectively makes all the difference to how your life is most likely to unfold. If you can process your emotions, you’ll most likely thrive. Avoid them and your more likely to end up with future struggle, isolation and a tolerance for low level misery.
When challenges arise, effective emotional regulation keeps resilience front and centre making it easier to adapt to life’s ups and downs. The results of the most current investigations into resilience bear this out, highlighting that individuals with elevated emotional intelligence are much better able to adapt and more likely to bounce back from stress and adversity.
Those who manage their emotions well fair better in other areas of life, too. From the job market to relationships and broader social networking, internal state management experts have more success because they naturally inspire trust, credibility and a sense of safety in others.
Perhaps more intriguingly though, any process involving emotional intelligence development has been proven to have profound and life changing effects. Neuroscientific research indicates that learned emotional regulation that results from such practices (for example mindfulness meditation) can lead to functional and structural changes in the brain. Specifically, practices that support deeper self awareness are known to strengthen the decision-making sections of the brain while reducing overactivity in it’s fear and stress centres.
That’s also good news for people with repetitive habits like porn, alcohol, casual hookups or superficial relationship reliance. When they start to learn how to handle their emotions, their lives begin to change for the better because increases in emotional learning create healthier stress coping mechanisms.
Studies on behaviour and higher emotional intelligence have also shown that those who expand their understanding of feelings and how they work become less likely to engage in risky activities like substance abuse and impulsive sexual encounters. Instead, they find solace and balance more in healthier coping mechanisms at times when uncomfortable emotions are running at an all time high.
If you want a better experience of life both on the inside and the out, upgrading your feelings game is a big win. When you becoming a skilled emotional regulator you get access to real choices. You know where best to focus your energy and time. Your gut feelings keep you out of the dead ends in life and peak life experiences are never too far out of reach. And that’s so much more than just a big deal. It’s a real game changer.
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