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5 Emotional Blindspots Most People Never Notice
Trying To Control Our Emotions
Emotions are not easy to be directly controlled, and in trying to do so, people may make it worse. But the most common advice provided by friends and family is to control one’s emotions or to manage one’s mood.
Accepting your emotions instead of controlling or suppressing them may be painful in the beginning but is a more holistic approach.
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Key Ideas
Avoiding talking about your feelings
People with very low emotional intelligence will refuse to talk about their feelings because they aren't good at it. They may use vague language to describe how they feel, such as "I'm...
Judging your own feelings
Emotions like fear or sadness feel bad. People with low emotional intelligence criticize themselves, thinking it is wrong to feel afraid. Or shameful to feel sad.
People with high emotional intelligence understand that if something feels bad doesn't mean it is bad. They treat themselves with compassion and kindness when they feel this way.
Trying to control your emotions
People with low emotional intelligence think they have to solve difficult emotions. They try to get rid of any painful feelings.
Emotionally intelligent people see emotions as messengers. They validate them even if they don't like the content of the message.
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Strong emotions as a puzzle
Instead of viewing someone’s bad mood as a problem to be fixed, if your perspective slightly and try to see it as a puzzle.
When you shift from problem-thinking to puzzle-thinking, your mi...
Reverse empathy
Rather than putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, try to remember a time when you wore the same shoe.
Try to recall a time when you struggled in a similar way and with a similar set of difficult emotions and moods. It's a powerful way to appreciate someone else struggle.
Get out of the “Fix-it Mode”
Most people struggling emotionally don’t want someone to fix their pain, they went to feel understood.
Use Reflective listening. It means that when someone tells you something, you simply reflect back to them what they said, either literally or with your own slight spin on it.
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Emotional clarity
It means that we have a good understanding of how we feel emotionally.
Label your emotions
Use plain language. The more fluent you are with real emotional language, the more clearly you will be able to think about how you’re feeling.
Clarify your emotions
Get used to the idea of emotional complexity. When we feel upset, we're not feeling one single emotion. We are usually experiencing a blend of many emotions.
Training ourselves to look for and see this emotional complexity is key to better understanding ourselves when we’re upset and moving on in a healthy way.