Emotional Intelligence The Key To Happiness

Join Tamara and Sheena as they talk about Emotional Intelligence The Key To Happiness in this episode of Les Talk About It.

Episode: 4 of 12 of the Relationship Season

In this episode:

• Where Emotional Intelligence started
• What is Emotional Intelligence
• What does Emotional Intelligence allow us to do
• The skills that come with high EQ
• How to tell is someone has high EQ

Listen to this episode here

Les Talk About It Series: Relationships

Relationships are important for humans. We need them to survive, never mind thrive. In this series we delve into relationships and break down some statistics and realities because, let’s face it, most us just muddle through and don’t necessarily have the skillset to rally make a relationship work.

About The Hosts

Sheena comes from a media background and in 2014 she started The Lesbian Review, a website dedicated to reviewing the best lesbian books and movies. In 2016 A podcast channel seemed like a natural progression and so she started The Lesbian Talk Show. 

Sheena discovered lesbian fiction in her late teens and it helped her with her coming out process, something for which she will always be grateful. 

Tamara is a marketing professional and has branched out into design and photography. Her natural love for research and learning meant that she was the perfect podcast partner when Sheena wanted to start Les Talk About It. (Well, that and the fact that Tamara is married to Sheena.) 

You can find all of the Les Talk About It episodes here 

Transcript

please note this transcript has not been edited and is automatically generated meaning certain words will be incorrect

welcome to let’s talk about it I’m Sheena and I’m Tamara and today we’re talking about EQ or IE EI yeah sorry I have no shortening ability apparently okay so exactly what is EQ LDI well EQ stands for emotional quotient which is the more common term for what we’re talking about today but it’s actually the incorrect term what are we talking about is emotional intelligence I always thought they were the same thing they kind of parallel to one another the one is your ability to look within and and understand your own emotions and the other is the ability to look at other people and understand their emotions okay so which ones which you don’t ask me I actually can’t remember which is which we’re talking about both of them combined today it’s a very complicated subject okay so all right so let’s get going lean on e AI or EQ well it’s actually like emotional intelligence quotient or something like that people have combined it into this weird thing but because EQ is just such a thing that rolls off the tongue everybody just talks about EQ okay so for the purposes of this podcast we’re gonna say EQ cool it sounds better rolls off the tongue better it does and it’s kind of a 62 like hey I got high EQ you know what you say it’s high IQ well actually they kind of link to but that’s a whole different topic so let’s talk about the beginning of emotional intelligence this is one of those things where the studies and the papers and so on started to appear in the 60s much like the other relationship stuff that we’ve been talking about the 60s was apparently a roaring time of relationship and an emotional dynamic studies yeah well I think you know you’re coming off the time of Freud and Jung and that kind of a thing man so you know psychology was really in its heyday absolutely and so the first time that the term emotional intelligence appeared seems to have been a paper in 1965 but I did name Michael bailed off and another paper in 1966 by a person named B Luna and I’m sorry if I’m pronouncing these names incorrectly then it sort of you know hung around and whatever it is and in 1995 that’s when it became a real thing because a dude by the name of Goldman published a book the book’s title was emotional intelligence why it can matter more than IQ okay and you can see why that would be a worldwide kind of flak phenomenon right yes because ooh IQs the the thing that we’ve been measuring but what is this emotional intelligence stuff yes so it’s not just about being intellectually smart it’s about being emotionally smart too exactly okay so when you read all these papers and all these books and basically break it down emotional intelligence has been defined as the ability to monitor one’s own and other people’s emotions okay to discriminate between different emotions label them appropriately and use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior okay but are there any people who just can’t do this yes so for the purposes of today’s discussion there are four things that emotional intelligence allows us to do again perceive use understand and manage emotions okay okay so you can sense what they are you can use them appropriately mm-hmm you can understand what’s going on and you can manage them and that’s the key is being able to do all four of those okay and it’s obviously not just within yourself but in other people too well you can’t necessarily manage other people’s emotions but yes you know but you can’t perceive someone else’s emotion that’s correct now there are people who cannot perceive certain parts of emotions like they can’t hear your tone of voice in and match that to whether you feeling angry or sad or okay that kind of thing so this is quite a complicated set of dynamics or it sounds easy because we probably take for granted that we can do at least some of these things I suppose I mean if you just able to do it naturally luck it doesn’t see difficult but if you just don’t have that then you can’t it’s like reading and dyslexia like for some people reading is simple and easy and for other people it’s a much harder thing that needs to be worked on yes exactly but now how does EQ actually manifest in everyday life like if you really think about what does this mean really it doesn’t actually matter right well it kind of does so there’s five really important skills that EQ allows you to have mm-hm and the first one is the ability to manage stress in relationships so you know when you’re fighting and your stress levels high in the relationship if you can’t manage that stress if you can’t deal with that situation you are not gonna survive that relationship okay so stress shuts down our ability to feel and think rationally and to be emotionally available to one person essentially blocking good communication and so both parties feel safe enough to focus on the other one evening okay so it manages stress by being able to what like empathize or someone else or to manage the emotions in the relationship yes the ability to manage stress is part of EQ oh I see okay okay okay so when you’re having a stressful time in your relationship your high EQ allows you to manage that stress pacer than if you don’t have high heat it’s actually strange that I don’t think I ever thought of stress as an emotion but think about it right no it is like what else is it by feeling yes which is you know just it didn’t occur to me until now that’s all is really struggling with I don’t understand what this means right okay so that’s the first thing so it’s the ability to manage stress in a relationship okay okay the second thing that EQ allows you to do is it’s it allows you to recognize and manage emotions they are basic emotions anger sadness fear joy and disgust are the most basic of emotions okay okay now in order to be able to communicate in order to be able to understand where you’re at in order to be able to work through your own emotions you need to be able to recognize them and manage them hmm but also to recognize it in someone else yes because I mean if you think someone is angry because they’re not talking whatever it is your reaction will be very different to if they were sad but if you can’t tell the difference between the two we’ve been something like anger and frustration which are similar but different absolutely because anger is not necessarily something you can fix but frustration is yes if it makes it mhm okay so the third thing is it allows you to communicate non-verbally and this is super important using nonverbal communication is like 90 percent about communication so everything from eye contact to facial expressions even to tone of voice posture gestures how loud you’re talking how soft you’re talking how so if you’re in the next room and you’re feeling angry about something I can sense that you’re angry by the tone of your voice mm-hmm high emotional quotient allows you to do that and you and I can kind of be on the same body we can understand each other well what’s interesting for me is that this is very similar to our podcast on the love languages yes so I mean for you to be able to use something like the love languages you’d have to have a relatively good EQ so that should be because a lot of that is nonverbal communication except for the words of endearment but you know gift-giving touching everything else cause now there’s but like most of it was nonverbal but being able to first recognize that the person you’re with has a specific love language and to be able to you know communicate with them in that way and to do it at the right time yes right so if somebody’s feeling down and you can’t sense that they’re feeling down and need a cup of coffee you were well I really like my coffee it’s like all my examples but when I save in a secret so nonverbal communication is huge and I can’t imagine being in a relationship with somebody who doesn’t get it hmm it must be really difficult okay so what’s the next one the ability to use humor and play in relationships you remember we talked briefly about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the whole relationship like how to fight proactively and all that stuff yes the humor was one of the ways to defuse a situation right so the ability to use humor and play in relationships is actually a sign of how I suppose also using it in the right way yes because I mean like I’ve come across people who will like joke and blend it’s mean and it’s mean or you just don’t know them well so it doesn’t work and you’re just like you’ve completely must read the situation yes right that’s a sign of of lower EQ in that particular area hmm you’re listening to the lesbian talk show the lesbians will choke on your hub of podcast information the first one and the last one in this particular list is the ability to resolve conflicts in relationships so when you’re having a fights your ability to understand yourself and that other person means that you can defuse conflicts hmm now I get it I like when we spoke about this in the four horsemen podcast the ability to still recognize the other person’s point of view and now that they’re having the own emotions which are valid while you’re having a whole tempest of emotions is I think quite a skill even if you don’t agree with the emotions yes but recognizing that there’s still have a point of view even if it isn’t the same as yours okay but it’s all ground and endi to know like how EQ manifests and all that sort of stuff but how do you know if you’re in a relationship with somebody who has a good EQ well I think there are some telltale signs that they have or don’t have good EQ so I think the first one is how they’re able to control the emotions so if someone is not able to control the emotions or regulate the volume of their emotion then they’ve got a low EQ and so what we mean by volume is not loudness or voice but how high are the highs and how low they lows some people I never have a medium sort of reaction to anything it’s always something is the most tragic thing to ever happen or something is the most amazing thing to ever happen it’s never like oh this is cool absolutely yeah so if you’re with someone who is never able to have a middling emotion it’s very likely that they’ve got an EQ deficit yes how about somebody who’s clueless about your feelings well I think that definitely comes into it if you’re not able to tell the emotion of your partner it’s very likely that you have a low EQ and I’m not saying in every single situation because I think sometimes people can hide emotions very well and the ability to in those situations is not on you because I mean sometimes you just can tell but if someone is has all the hallmarks or whatever emotional feeling whether it’s sadness frustration and their happiness but you’re not able to correctly tell what that emotion is then there’s an issue so if other people can tell and you can tell yes there’s definitely an issue yes okay so without a doubt the because this is all about relationships the inability to maintain friendships family relationships any kind of longer-term mmm so EQ is all about your relationship with other peoples through emotions that’s the whole premise of it so if you’re not able to maintain good relationships across the board that’s an issue so whether it’s and maintaining friends staying in peaceful relationships with family members those are all signs that there’s a EQ problem and I mean you get these kinds of people’s I mean you get some people who unless they’re fighting with one family member they’re not happy yeah and you get some people who they’ll be extremely best friends with someone until they’re not and then that person’s dead to them so yeah you know all of that it’s emotion volume it’s the ability to actually maintain a relationship for the long term absolutely and look there are mental disorders yes that’s contribute yes look I’m low EQ can be comorbid were things like borderline personality disorder manic depression or they’re kind of a thing absolutely and you know but having said that this is something that even people without those disorders can struggle with absolutely and it is definitely something that people can work to improve fully yeah and one of the ones that I thought was really interesting is somebody who always has a poker face a buck foot face right so somebody who you find really tough to read and other people can’t always tell what’s going on with him you kind of get uneasy around them beginners quite know like what’s going on there so those people often have a low emotional intelligence it makes me wonder if it’s also part of because they don’t know how to express the emotions correctly either so like the same thing as the volume so but instead of being overly excited or overly sad it’s just like blank because there’s no that maybe don’t know how to translate that into a physical I was very possible yeah but on the flip side of that so if you’re unable to express emotions and you don’t have a poker face you can also it was closer manifest as being inappropriate hmm so this is somebody who can’t cope with sadness who will make jokes at a funeral who will not understand the the sad dog movie and that everybody’s crying about yes yeah so look if you’re with someone who is like this I mean trying to be in relationship with someone who you can’t read they feel who you never know what the reaction is going to be to something because it’s not what you simply typically would have thought that would happen in that situation I mean all of these things impact on a relationship absolutely and interestingly and the last point in how to tell if your partner’s good eat you is they don’t understand the dog they don’t understand the dog right dogs are social animals and they have a wide range of emotions and emotional displays but it’s all physical it’s true okay so they don’t they can talk to you and say I’m feeling sad right now but the the body droops and their tails between their legs or if they’re really happy and the tail is wagging furiously and they try to play with you dogs are extremely physical creatures yes that’s right you know so if you can’t tell how a dog is doing emotionally like you’ll probably have a look you yes there’s definitely something you need to work on Lee I have to say I think this might extend to other animals too like I know with our cats luck especially if you’re not feeling great they will come to you and almost like in empathy like they’re being with you they so yeah I completely get that well animals have to have in high EQ they’re social creatures especially the social animals even than on social animals if you think about it because they have to mate and whatever it is so you have to have to have high emotional intelligence because they have to be able to communicate with each other in nonverbal ways I’m sure all right so now we know how to identify whether you’re your partner’s EQ is not that great yep okay so hardly go about improving it well let’s talk about that next week because there’s exercises you can do okay in the meantime for patrons let’s do a quick exercise to tell if you have high EQ EQ quiz an EQ quiz that’s it it’s awesome so it’s a patient exclusive and if you’re interested you can sign up at the link in the show notes and you’ll get the exclusive quiz right but that’s all for this episode eight you like this episode please share it on social media with your friends your family and you why do you speak – I have low EQ interesting and come talk to us at the Lisbon talk show chat group on Facebook absolutely so we’re gonna tell you do this quiz now yeah okay