Full transcript
Intro
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0:06hey there everybody and welcome to this live presentation on developing emotional intelligence i'm your host dr dawn elise snipes
0:11so let's start out with the basics what is emotional intelligence well let's start
0:16out with what are emotions emotions are neurochemical reactions based on schema
0:22from prior experiences and sensory input from the current experience in the present context
0:28oh my that is a lot of garbledy [ __ ] so let's kind of break it down
Objectives
0:34when we experience something whenever we experience something we form a memory if you will
0:42and that memory serves as a shortcut in the future for what to expect the first time you went to the
0:50grocery store or to church or to the doctor you may not have known what to expect but after that
0:56first time you kind of had an idea about what to expect and it didn't mean that that was always
1:03going to happen but you had a shortcut so you had a little bit of a way to anticipate what
1:08was going on based on that anticipation you may have an emotional reaction so for example
1:17going to the doctor if you had a bad experience at the doctor
1:21then in the future when you get ready to go to the doctor based on that prior bad experience
1:26you might feel anxiety creeping up you might start having that emotion of anxiety
1:32okay well as late adolescence adults we also have the ability to integrate information from
1:41the current experience in the present context so i can go into the doctor's office now and i know
What is emotional intelligence
1:48that i had a bad experience with a doctor when i was about six but my current doctor
1:55is very good at in in this case drawing blood but so i know that in the past that happened
2:04and i still get a little twinge of anxiety when i've got to go get blood drawn i'm like oh this
2:09is going to suck and then i remember hey but this doctor of the office is very good at drawing the
2:16blood so i've never had a problem and my anxiety levels start to decline my brain says hey don't
2:26need to be in fight-or-flight mode there's no threat so let's go on about our business now the
2:31present context is also something to take under consideration because not only are we taking into
2:39consideration we'll use stick with that example this current doctor but we're also taking into
2:46consideration things that are going on with me you know i may react differently on tuesday because
2:53i'm over tired and overwhelmed and over just over it whereas on thursday i may be having a good day
3:02and i can deal more easily with stressors as they come my way and part of emotional intelligence
3:10is being able to recognize you know why do i react differently
3:15did i react differently on tuesday than i did on thursday to something that was very similar
3:22emotions prioritize what we pay attention to and motivate our behaviors happy emotions
3:30like curiosity and happiness and elation and love those cause our body to secrete
3:36dopamine and norepinephrine increase our focus and want us to do it again
3:41because they are pro-survival they're positive behaviors and they produce a a reward of some sort
3:51anger anxiety those emotions are from our threat response system those are from our fight-or-flight
3:58system and they say hey there might be a threat going on there might be a threat to you in this
4:06situation so you need to wake up and pay attention to what's going on so in that case we get our
4:13our glutamate our norepinephrine our cortisol our stress hormones that rev us up and help us be more
4:19alert and more attentive when we're in that frame of mind we pay attention to the threats in the
4:28environment we're not noticing the bunny rabbits that are hopping around on the side of the road
4:33we're noticing the car that cuts us off we're noticing other things that could be a threat
4:40when we're in a positive frame of mind we tend to be more able
4:45to notice the bunny rabbits on the side of the road it doesn't mean we miss the threats
4:51but it means we have a more open attention and we are are able to focus on a wider variety of things
5:00and as i said emotions motivate our behaviors if it's going to bring us pleasure we're likely going
5:05to do it if it's going to bring us pain or threat or harm we're likely going to try to avoid it
5:13emotional intelligence is your ability to identify the emotion understand the emotion
5:20where's it coming from why was it triggered why am i reacting this way at this time in this context
5:27and then to regulate your own emotions so that's actually a lot of stuff that we've got to do
5:34emotional intelligence also includes your ability to identify and respond to other people's emotions
5:43whether it's your children or your friends or your coworker or even a customer at your office
5:49being able to recognize what they're feeling and most cases we're going to empathize in some way
6:00sometimes we're going to need to protect ourselves and sometimes we are going to notice
6:07that somebody's acting and seeming kind of hinky and we are going to feel anxiety and we may notice
6:15that they're extra stressed and it tells us that we may need to take protective action
6:22so emotional intelligence is being able to use those emotional cues to inform our decision making
6:32there's a really i really liked it you may hate it but i really liked the show scorpion and you
6:38can probably find it on one of the streaming services but one of the things that's a running
6:45theme throughout scorpion is that the the main character is a genius but he has zero emotional
6:54intelligence he has zero ability to recognize his own feelings or empathize with others and sort of
7:01the metamorphosis that he goes through trying to learn how to understand understand emotions
7:13so let's talk about developing emotion emotional intelligence the first part is
7:18emotion identification and i'm going to start out with talking about basically what you're
7:24wanting to do and then i'll finish up with some ideas on ways you might be able to do it
7:32the first step in emotion identification is to ask yourself what do the following emotions feel
7:38like or look like for you happiness and elated joyous it goes by a bunch of different synonyms
7:48generally they mean roughly the same thing curiosity that's another emotion and i know
7:57i missed some emotions here there's lots of emotions but i was kind of hitting the big ones
8:02excited now that's different than happy happy is well being joyous excited may mean eager but
8:12interestingly another word that we use for excited is anxious and this can be really confusing to
8:20children to figure out what does anxious mean if they're anxious about santa claus coming if
8:27they're anxious about going to the theme park this weekend how is that different than anxious about
8:34going to the doctor you know how does that how does that work so we do want to clearly define
8:41the words that we're using angry is another one of those words now angry has a lot of different
8:50permutations or shades to it we have straight up anger but then there's also resentment envy envy
8:59is anger at somebody for having something that you want uh it sometimes is also called jealousy
9:06and guilt guilt is anger at yourself for doing something that you shouldn't have done or not
9:12doing something that you should have done but anger is when you are angry with yourself
9:18over something these will look a little bit different when i'm angry at somebody
9:23it looks a little bit different than when i'm angry at myself when i feel guilty about something
9:30anxious can also be called scared worried overwhelmed depressed we have sad blue burned out
9:41some people when they are are depressed they feel just completely burned out they can't they don't
9:48have anything left in them to care anymore they're just they're they're out of gas they're done
9:53hopeless helpless or powerless and all of these are slightly different
9:58and it's important especially as adults that we discover some of the nuances of these for children
10:07you can stick with the main ones you know happy mad glad sad you know the big bullet points
10:14um but as we grow older we want to learn more about these nuances
10:19and then i put grieving here now grief is an interesting one because it's a combination
10:26typically the grieving process goes denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance
10:31now people don't go through it linearly like that but all of those emotions are involved and a lot
10:37of times denial is actually anxiety you don't want to hear it you don't want to believe it because
10:44it's overwhelming it's terrifying to think about whatever it is is going to happen or whatever
10:50it is has happened so denial can be a form of anxiety and then we we all are familiar with anger
10:59and that sense of depression and hopelessness once we realize that the loss is is happened
11:10once let me go back there for a second you have uh what they look like for you and that's the
11:16good place to start what do these things look like for you but then also what do they look
11:21like for others and if you're a parent this can be or a caregiver this can be super helpful
11:28because we are not born knowing how to identify emotions children need help learning how to label
11:36their emotions what is this that i'm feeling right now and as parents we can help them identify that
11:43so what does it look like when junior is scared sometimes kids when they're scared will withdraw
11:52sometimes they will act out sometimes they'll become oppositional it what is it that your
11:58particular junior looks like when when they are scared and these are all things that can help
12:06clue you in to how they're feeling so you can sit with them and say it seems like you're feeling
12:13scared right now let's talk about what that what's going on what is making you
12:21feel scared right now what's what's the threat so we can start opening a conversation
12:28it also helps us understand their behaviors if we can connect their behaviors with
12:35particular emotions we might be able to empathize and better understand exactly what's going on
12:44what's motivating them if they are refusing to get out of bed they're not doing their chores
12:49are they being oppositional because they're angry with us are they being oppositional
12:54because they're going through a phase trying to assert their independence are they being
13:00are they not doing these things because they're plum out of gas
13:03they are depressed and yes children get depressed what's going on and if we know what
13:10these emotions how these emotions manifest in our children it can you know clue us in a lot easier
13:19what's the function so we've identified what they look like in ourselves and in our significant
13:25others in our life what is the function of each of these emotions and this is something
13:31you can talk about with kids a little bit but it's also important to recognize
13:36why do i have this emotion what is it trying to tell me to do remember it motivates us in some way
13:44how does each emotion impact what you pay attention to and your motivation so when
13:50you're happy what's the function of that emotion well guess what the function of that is emotion is
13:56to say awesome you're safe you're empowered and if you just did something that made you really
14:03happy do that again keep whatever conditions are going going because this is a good place to be
14:10if you're curious the function of that emotion is to encourage you to grow to encourage you
14:16to learn more things to say hey you know let me take a look at this excited or eager about doing
14:26something the function of that is to motivate you to get ready to do something you're anticipating
14:32based on that prior learning experience or what you expect to happen you're anticipating having a
14:40joyous time a good time so you get excited about it that's that anticipation
14:46anger and anxiety fight or flee both of these emotions we experience in response to
14:56a possible italicized bold underline possible threat and i think it's really important that
15:07we recognize that not every time we feel angry is there really a threat sometimes we are feeling
15:14we are reacting based on our prior experiences our memories and our assumptions about what's going
15:22to happen our expectations about what's going to happen not the facts in the present moment
15:28and in other videos i've talked about how anger and anxiety are like our smoke alarm just like
15:35your smoke alarm may go off and you know because something dripped off of the uh onto one of the
15:42burners when you were baking or something there's no real threat that's just you know annoying um
15:49your emotions your anger and anxiety are like that smoke alarm they're saying hey
15:55there might be a problem there's smoke you better get up and see if there's a fire
15:59there's you know possibility that there could be a threat to you you need to look in this context at
16:06this time is there actually a threat to you and if not okay you can deal with that if there is okay
16:14you can deal with that anger and anxiety when we feel those emotions our body is dumping copious
16:22amounts of blood sugar and stress chemicals to give us the energy to get up and figure out if
16:29there's a problem our body's not telling us hey there's a threat out there why don't you just sit
16:36there and feel bad about it for a while that's not that energy needs to do something it's trying
16:41to motivate you to protect yourself when we feel depressed that's our body either saying hey dude
16:49you are burned out uh you ain't got any more gas left to give you need to take care of yourself
16:56or this situation you don't have control over and you're going to have to adjust to a change which
17:05most of us don't like accepting powerlessness uh or if you're just
17:12sad or blue or depressed it could mean that you lost something that was important to you
17:20you may not be able to get it back you may i don't know but depression helps us recognize when
17:27something important is gone that way we can figure out how to move through that grieving process
17:35and grief what is the function of that emotion to help us move through to the point of acceptance
17:42where we can adjust our thinking and our lives based on what has happened
17:52and then emotional understanding what triggers each emotion for you so you've
17:56identified what it looks like you've identified the function and what it motivates you to do
18:03now we need to look at for you and for the significant others in your
18:07life what triggers these emotions you know ideally we want to trigger the good and
18:14mitigate the triggers for the bad you can't eliminate the bad you know it's you're going
18:19to have stress triggers you're going to experience depression occasionally unfortunately that's all
18:24part of the balance in life the dialectics the yin and the yang whatever you want to call it
18:31but being aware because you can significantly alter your environment if you're aware of what
18:39triggers different emotions for you what helps you feel happy elated joyous curious eager you
18:47know all those are wonderful what things trigger anger resentment jealousy guilt anxiety depression
18:56grief you know it's important to recognize and it may be stuff in your environment it may be
19:03when certain things happen or certain people treat you a certain way but knowing what triggers those
19:08emotions can help you be more mindful when you're more mindful you can notice when it's getting
19:15ready to happen or when it has happened so you can address it before it bubbles out of control
19:26another aspect to emotional understanding and i mentioned this a little bit earlier is recognizing
19:32your vulnerabilities now vulnerabilities are different than triggers vulnerabilities
19:38are things that make you more likely to have have difficulty dealing with triggers when they happen
19:43so for example if i haven't gotten enough sleep or if i am feeling poorly i have less tolerance for
19:55nonsense for people who are being um aggressive and sort of up in my face that will trigger me
20:03more uh when i'm sleep deprived or not feeling well then it will on a day where
20:10you know i slept well i feel fine and i've got enough energy that i can deal with it
20:18it's important to know what your vulnerabilities are some people can do just fine
20:23with only a small amount of sleep others not so much some people do just fine when
20:28they've got 16 things going on all at once or in big crowds um other people
20:35not so much so what makes you more vulnerable what drains your energy so you have less
20:42left over in reserves to deal with life when you get triggered think about these things for
20:50obviously you but also your maybe your office mate if you share an office with somebody
20:56your housemate whether it's your significant other your spouse your roommate your child
21:04what makes these people more vulnerable especially to the to the um what we're really looking at
21:11here are the distressful emotions you know we're typically not vulnerable to happiness
21:19so what we're talking about is what makes the um the people in our lives and ourselves
21:25more vulnerable to being triggered when faced with triggers for distress
21:34and then emotion regulation so you've identified it you understand it now how do you regulate it
21:40and linahan has a lot of great tools in dialectical behavior therapy hayes
21:47has a lot of great tools and acceptance and commitment therapy and i have other videos about
21:51those things on the on the doc snipes channel but thinking just in general what strategies
21:59can you use to increase the positive emotions in your life and tolerate then mitigate the negative
22:08i didn't say eliminate the negative because we can't do that when unpleasant emotions come up
22:16how can we tolerate them how can we sit with them for a minute then get into our wise mind
22:21and figure out how to improve the next moment how can we mitigate it when it happens
22:27so going through these things is
22:31is important to figure out how we can do that in our lives what do you need to do and this is sort
22:36of a challenge i'm issuing to you what do you need to do in order to increase happiness in your life
22:44one of the things i do and you saw in the in the community i was sharing
22:49videos of the birds that come to my bird feeder i love birds it's one of those things that just
22:54makes my heart happy i love chipmunks but we don't have chipmunks in this part of nash in this part
23:00of middle tennessee so bummer to that but when i want to feel happy you know sometimes i'll go
23:08and i'll watch videos of chipmunks or i'll go out to east tennessee where i can actually see them
23:16emotional intelligence activities now you can start out with the very basics with kids like
23:22getting a chart that has different emoticons on it so they can identify they can point how they feel
23:30and this is really good for elementary preschool aged children who aren't getting super deep into
23:40that yet they're still just trying to identify the basic emotions so that can be really awesome
23:46another thing that you can do and you can do it heck i do it as an adult you this isn't something
23:52that you have to do only if you're a kid but think about animals um or other embodiments
23:57of emotion what else could represent this feeling and that really encourages you to
24:04think what does it look like so for example um characters and a lot of people myself
24:11included use winnie the pooh as a an example tigger is an example of excitement tigger is
24:19bounding with excitement constantly and when i think of being excited i want to be like tigger
24:26piglet is always very worried piglet is very anxious he's wringing his hands
24:31and you can tell in the way he talks he's just he's a very meek he's very timid he's very scared
24:38and then eeyore is depressed he just doesn't see a lot of happiness and stuff he puts one foot in
24:47front of the other he's not you know clinically depressed but he's not a happy happy donkey
24:55i thought about putting rabbit here because rabbit does tend to get angry
24:59quite often but rabbit has so many more dimensions he tends to be a little bit more um
25:09challenging to deal with so when we're talking about just uh personifying a particular emotion
25:16tigger piglet and eeyore they're pretty good for anger you know some people especially older
25:25children adolescents maybe even adults they don't want to talk about tigger but they may talk about
25:32things like trains or automobiles or you know what does anger look like a bullet train
25:39a bullet train is one of those trains that goes super super fast and anger can feel like
25:45that it just barrels right on through you can also relate it to musical instruments
25:54and noting the octave and the pace also impact the feeling so a bassoon can feel
26:02curious but it can also feel um scary or depressed it has it has a range there
26:10the piccolo now that that's the little tiny flute you know that is a much higher pitch so
26:17what feelings does that evoke in you when you hear a piccolo or a trumpet or a tuba or a xylophone
26:24remember the xylophones that we used to have when we were kids obviously the professional musicians
26:31have a much more fine-tuned xylophone but there are there's a big range of what a xylophone can do
26:41you can look at pictures of yourself or others you can back in the day when we had magazines you
26:47could do it online now going through pictures with children and saying what is this person feeling
26:53you look at them what do you think they're thinking what do you think they're feeling
26:58we do this a lot in my house with animals but whatever
27:03you can listen to music for the evoked feeling like listen to peter and the wolf or the
27:08nutcracker when i was creating this presentation i found an amazing site it's stockmusicsite.com
27:16and they have a page where all of the music is categorized by mood how cool is that and
27:24it's i don't know four columns of different emotions there's probably 200 different
27:31emotion words there i don't necessarily agree with all of the feelings that they
27:37associated with different uh with different emotions but that could be an interesting
27:45experiment or exercise to do to pull up an emotion like curiosity and listen to the different tracks
27:52and say you know why do you think that track was put under curiosity or what do you see
28:00in your mind when you hear this tract you can do charades where somebody acts out an emotion
28:06and you've got to try to identify it apples to apples is a board game
28:13where you have to match two things so you can have um an emotion and then you can have for
28:21example a a picture of something and trying to match the emotion in the picture or a statement
28:29it takes a little bit of creativity but you can work it you can do a collage what makes you feel
28:36anxious angry depressed what have you and each emotion gets its own collage so people can start
28:43thinking about all of the different things and i usually start with happiness that make you happy
28:49so you may have birds and bees and flowers and trees i know it rhymes
28:54but and then mindfulness meditation and journaling reflecting at the end of each day
29:02the emotions that you experienced what that looked like what that
29:06felt like when you experienced them what triggered that emotion and why
29:14distress tolerance is another important tool thoughts you want to list distress tolerant
29:21thoughts so you have them on hand so you're not sitting there telling yourself i can't deal with
29:26this what can you tell yourself that is distress tolerant for example this sucks right now however
29:33i will get through it remind yourself of times you've endured distress in the past
29:39address extreme words like this will never end and everything is a total disaster
29:46and that goes back to those
29:50negative statements or negative thoughts that tend to keep people stuck have activities
29:56that you can do to distract yourself if the problem can't be resolved right away
30:02that helps you you don't want to just sit there with your distress
30:06for two weeks if you're waiting for test results or something to come back
30:11you want to be able to identify your emotions and sit with your distress for a second
30:15but then you need to figure out okay what do i need to do to improve the next moment
30:20and sometimes these are activities guided imagery can also be helpful you can envision yourself
30:29tolerating the distress or you can envision the distress as something like a lion with a
30:35thorn in its paw you know that may help you have compassion for whoever's angry because
30:44when they're angry they are reacting from a place of feeling of threat so if you envision you know
30:51their anger as a lion with a thorn in its paw it can help you have a little bit of compassion for
30:57them you know you don't want to get too close to an angry angry lion but you can have compassion
31:03jabberwock is another thing that you can imagine from the poem jabberwocky by lewis carroll
31:10now the jabberwock can look really scary sometimes but when i'm working with kids i encourage them to
31:16we read the story and i encourage them to draw for me what they think a jabberwock looks like
31:22and that can be a nemesis if you will but it's something that they can sort of externalize and
31:30figure out how to deal with and then sensations that are synergistic if you're feeling angry
31:37i know when sometimes when i feel angry i will put on my music really loud and i listen to some
31:43pretty hardcore metal so you know it's synergistic i'm not listening to vivaldi which is antagonistic
31:52it is the opposite of what i'm feeling so sensations can be sounds smells sights whatever
32:03regulation through m beta mindfully notice and accept without judgment your emotion first
32:10you've got to identify it and acknowledge it breathe we've talked about this a lot
32:15breathe slowly to trigger that relaxation response evaluate the facts in context
32:23think about your options and then choose act using the option most likely to help you be the person
32:30you want to be and move toward the things that are important in your rich and meaningful life
32:38and finally when we're working with others you're going to you're going to breathe but present a
32:45presence that's calm compassionate and confident you don't want to go in like a know-it-all when
32:51somebody's already feeling threatened but going in as a compassionate presence that's supportive
32:59that wants to hear that you know wants to help can communicate a lot to a person just from your
33:06nonverbals have an awareness of the situation notice what the words and nonverbals of the
33:12person are communicating if they are speaking really slowly if they're speaking really quickly
33:19what are they communicating and again sometimes this will at this point you'll recognize that
33:24this isn't a safe situation but most of the time you're going to be able to proceed
33:30and recognize remember their feelings are based on their reality and try to be aware of how you might
33:37be triggering them even inadvertently maybe you look like somebody from their past that
33:43you know brings up bad feelings or maybe you represent an organization
33:50that they have had bad dealings with it's not you it's what you represent to them and their schema
33:58right now is triggering that threat response validate the feeling
34:05that you think that they're experiencing this communicates understanding and respect you don't
34:10want to say i understand because you may not but i get the sense that you're angry i get the sense
34:17that you're feeling really hopeless right now that goes a long way because then somebody's
34:21like oh my gosh you get it let me tell you if they feel angry or anxious then invalidation
34:29will likely intensify the perception of that threat so if you ignore them or worse yet tell
34:36them that they're wrong or they're overreacting it's probably going to intensify that distress
34:42once you've kind of met on common ground explore ways to cooperate compromise or synergize
34:50and do this by asking don't assume don't tell them you need to do this or i will do
34:56this for you ask them what is it that i can do to help or how is it that we can make this work
35:05humans are not born with an emotional vocabulary
35:08depending on a person's culture they may not be comfortable with feeling words so metaphors can
35:14be helpful emotions impact our perceptions and our reactions to the world and being able to identify
35:21understand and regulate our emotions can help us not only improve our interactions with others it
35:27also helps improve our health because we're less stressed if we're able to identify those emotions
35:33react and regulate them and it can improve our productivity if we are not stuck in
35:40this angry anxiety stress soup were able to think more clearly and be more productive
35:54you can learn more