For a long time, we have been using the term “emotional intelligence” to refer to how well we can recognize the emotions of ourselves and others, but it turns out that emotional intelligence is not actually a type of intelligence. Any intelligent being would be able to understand many emotions. When you get stuck in a traffic jam, you realize that you are angry. So emotions are more like a natural product of intelligence — this is the reason why humans have so many complex emotions :O
This term might play a part in popularizing the belief that we are able to “control” our emotions. Ever seen a kid being told to stop crying? Or maybe perhaps you’ve experienced like this first-hand. Either way, the belief that supports this logic has never held up to rigorous testing and therefore telling anyone to stop crying will never actually make them stop crying.
I really like what Lisa Feldman Barrett’s view on emotions. If you have “finely tuned feelings,” writes psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett in the New York Times, you’re exhibiting “emotional granularity,” defined in a review as the “adaptive value of putting feelings into words with a high degree of complexity.” And just like like how musicians would hear not only the music but also chords and timbre, we can train ourselves to have higher emotional granularity.
And perhaps that’s all that we need to do about our emotions, since controlling them turns out to be a myth. After all, not thinking about a pink elephant will make you think of one. So instead of saying no to the “bad emotions,” I have personally had a lot of success just welcoming them into my lives.
As for how I learned to welcome all the good and the bad emotions into my lives, that’s another blog post for another time. Be sure to follow my blog 🙂
Mena's Little Corner 