Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

The more I learn about empathy, the more I realize that having a good grasp on your own emotions – having good emotional intelligence – and empathy go hand in hand. For example, I don’t think you can truly be empathetic without being self-aware, and I think you can’t have great social awareness without empathy. Today I wanted to talk about how these two things are connected, and some ways we can improve our empathy by improving our emotional intelligence, and vice versa. 

Emotional Intelligence

Understanding that empathy and emotional intelligence go hand in hand won’t help much unless you also understand emotional intelligence. One of the best books I’ve read on emotional intelligence, or “EQ”, is called Emotional Intelligence 2.0 [affiliate link], by Travis Bradberry, Jean Greaves, and Patrick Lencioni. It says that there are four pillars of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and relationship management. In a nutshell, emotional intelligence is your ability to manage yourself, understand your emotions, understand social interactions, and manage relationships with others. Having good emotional intelligence helps you be a better leader, coworker, family member, friend, and parent. 

Emotional intelligence is what allows us to interact and contribute in meaningful ways to the people around us and the environment we find ourselves in. 

So where does this all tie back to empathy? Well, to express true empathy, you need to be self-aware. You also have to manage yourself and your responses. Having empathy helps you be more socially aware. It also can help when managing relationships!

Self-Awareness and Self Management

Although I feel that empathy has an impact on or is impacted by all the pillars of emotional intelligence, I’m just going to focus on self-awareness and self-management, and how they can help you be more empathetic.

When you want to respond to someone empathetically, it’s important that you make the conversation about them, not you. It’s not about how their tragedy makes you feel, or how sorry you are that this happened. It’s also not about your own emotions. It is about being fully present to someone else’s emotions, and you can’t do that well if you either don’t know what your own emotions are, or let your own emotions interfere. 

When you’re not self aware and able to manage yourself and your responses, you end up with what Heather talked about earlier in the theme: too much empathy, a failure to establish boundaries, or empathy fatigue. You also risk alienating the person you wanted to be empathetic to. In an ideal situation, you’re able to respond as opposed to react, and to prevent your own emotions from creating static in the interaction you’re trying to have with someone else. 

Boost Your Self-Awareness

There are lots of ways to boost your self-awareness in general; I’ve listed several reference sites below. When it comes to using self-awareness when being empathetic, the key is to know things like what your triggers are, how you respond when stressed, and how you show up when you’re feeling all the feels. The reason this is important is so that you can identify when you’re feeling those emotions in the moment, recognize them, and save them for later so they don’t interfere with the moment you’re experiencing with someone who needs your presence. 

Here are some ways you can become more familiar with your emotions and reactions:

• Keep an emotion journal or mood tracker. Something that helps you identify how you felt in a given day and start associating the physical feelings that result from your emotions.
• In charged situations, train yourself to respond rather than react. Take a minute to ask yourself how you’re feeling right now, in the moment. 
• As you learn more about how you show up when you’re feeling certain things, use that information as clues to how you’re feeling right now. When you notice your heart beating faster and your cheeks getting red, that could be a clue that you’re embarrassed or angry. Knowing that’s how you’re feeling will help you temper your responses. 
• Take time to reflect. In a quiet moment, think about your triggers. Knowing that certain situations cause you to feel a certain way will help you to not be taken by surprise when those situations occur. 

Additional self-awareness related articles:

• 5 Ways To Become More Self-Aware | Harvard Business Review
• How to Be More Self-Aware: 8 Tips to Boost Self-Awareness | Develop Good Habits
• 10 Steps to Becoming More Self-Aware | PsychCentral

Being Able to Manage Yourself (And Your Responses)

All of this information is not helpful unless you use it. When you are in a situation where you are trying to be empathetic and you are able to notice how your own emotions may be showing up, you need to be able to manage your responses in a way that saves your own emotions for later. Be present to the person you’re talking to now, and work through your own stuff afterwards.

This can be hard to do, especially if we feel overwhelmed by something that the person is triggering in us, or if we are experiencing their emotions to a degree where we can’t think clearly. In these cases, it’s important to have effective ways to respond. 

Self-Management Components

In an article called Increase Your Emotional Intelligence Through Self-Management, executive coach Mike Crompton says that there are nine elements to good self management: 

1. Emotional Self-Control
2. Integrity
3. Innovation and Creativity
4. Initiative and Bias for Action
5. Resilience
6. Achievement Drive
7. Stress Management
8. Realistic Optimism
9. Intentionality

When it comes to responding to situations with empathy, I believe the most critical component of this is emotional self-control. When you’re making a conversation about someone else and not yourself, you have to be able to control your own emotions and responses. 

This is not to say that you can’t show that you empathize by responding with something heartfelt and centered on yourself; it just means you do it with intention and when it is appropriate. When it will serve the other person and not result in them feeling like you’re making it about you, and not them. If you are not in control of your emotions, it makes it much more difficult to respond with intention. 

Increase Your Emotional Self-Control

Daniel Goleman explains what emotional self-control is, in his article called Why Emotional Self-Control Matters, posted in mindful.org.

He asks us to notice that he said “manage”, and not “suppress”. Emotional self-control is not about suppressing your emotions. It is about managing them. Experiencing the emotions while staying calm and clear-headed.

This is probably one of my biggest challenges when it comes to emotional intelligence. I get fired up and passionate about something, and it’s easy for me to allow that to express itself as anger. I have to constantly check myself before speaking, and I’m not always successful. This is one of those things where I have to pay constant attention to it.

Emotional Hijacks

An emotional hijack is when our brains take over due to an interpreted threat of some kind. We tend to default to mechanisms we’ve used in the past to get out of uncomfortable situations – running away, getting angry, going non-responsive. I recognize all of these responses as ways I’ve used in the past to escape uncomfortable emotional situations.

So if you’re like me, what can we do to help us manage our emotions better? In the same article linked above, Mr. Goleman says that if you can recognize when an emotional hijack is beginning, it’s easier to stop it. This means being aware of your body, your responses to emotions, and being able to identify those emotions and physical sensations in the moment.

Then you can use techniques like breathing, talking yourself down from the ledge, self-talk, and other similar techniques to change your emotional temperature and respond intentionally instead of instinctually.

Over To You

I find the topic of emotional intelligence to be fascinating, and I think I’ll do more posts on it in the future. What did you think? Do you recognize signs of emotional hijacking in yourself from time to time? Do you struggle with emotional self-control? What are some ways you’ve found to be effective in helping you regain control over your emotions in the moment? Share in comments!