Log: I have low EQ

A few days ago, I wrote about other people’s emotional intelligence (EQ) which started a bunch of reflection on my own emotional intelligence. I cannot tell you with high accuracy if I have high EQ from the inside looking out, I think only you can tell me if you feel that my EQ is high from the outside looking in. In my personal opinion, I think I have low to average emotional intelligence.

I talked about how artists can also have low EQ, even though society views artistry as emotions-based. Well, I am also an artist aren't I? I have been failing at expressing my emotions in every day life for years and years and continue to be just-okay at it to this day. However, I can express my emotions pretty well through the stories in my video-games. I was hanging out with a group of people who asked me what happened in the past 5 years that caused me to go through so many different changes in my life, and I failed to verbally explain to them what happened. It was easier for me to let them play my game, "And You'll Miss It." Saying something like, "I felt that time was slipping away and I am challenged by my own mortality," wouldn't really encapsulate it enough.

I looked up more about the connection between EQ and artists and found this very interesting answer on Quora, regarding the person dating an artist:

I’ll share what a shrink told me one time when we we in couples counseling: “You realize, Michelle, that it’s likely that the only place your husband will ever be whole is in his art.”

That stunned me at the time, long ago, but I have come to realize it to be a kind of broad truth. Artists work out their lives in their art. They aren’t especially conscious about what they do. We see what we see, and we impute all sorts of things from our own lives and personalities. My former husband is a much more empathetic, loving and spiritual human being in his art than he is in reality. He’s a nice guy, but he’s much nobler in his art. With some artists, the reverse is true. They’re crummier in their art than in reality.

I kind of feel that. Most of my emotional expression exists within the confines of my video-game, and I try and try my hardest to communicate outside of video-games but I continue to fail. I think to be more specific, a lot of my emotional expressions live out in my writing, which is a heavy part of my games.

If you look at the emotional intelligence chart, it's got four different sections. I consider myself a very emotional person, so maybe I have high self-awareness of my own emotions. But at the same time, one of my challenges is that I have no awareness of my own stress. My therapist told me that it's likely that because I grew up in a stressful environment, that I never learned to be aware of stress. So maybe I am just super emotional but can't recognize my emotions well. The primary colors of emotions such as happy, sad and angry are pretty clear to me, but it's the strange and complicated mixtures in-between that are still unclear to me. There isn't a clear body difference between anxiety and excitement – so I confuse the two all the time.

My social awareness, or intuition of emotions, is very average. I can read faces and have the ability to read the room sometimes. Most of the time I will have to confirm verbally with a, "how are you feeling?" I have been learning to read emotions better by taking in a person's body language, and then verbally confirming them with how they feel.

My giant failures are in self-management and social skills, which I am trying to work on more of. Sometimes, in the face of stress, I will keep going and going even though I need to rest. Meditation is the work I am doing to improve self-management. Taking a pause to read my body and then identify what emotion I am feeling is part of this work. Writing is how I am practicing how to succinctly communicate my emotions. Exercise is how I put a low-pass filter on negative emotions. Becoming a better listener and communicator is how I am trying to improve my social skills and build relationships with people.

I want to hang out with people who have better EQ, because I learn so much. If you are bouldering or playing any kind of sport, don't you want to be surrounded by people who are better than you? I think it would be unrealistic of me to expect everyone to always act with high emotional intelligence though because I think high EQ is rare. It’s just really really nice and warm to be around people who are highly emotionally intelligent.

I think I "woke up" to my low emotional intelligence when I was 27. For me, it was like... Okay, my friendships and relationships are fine but they don't feel as deep enough for me. I'm failing at listening to people. I kept cycling through and losing people in life. I'm not looking after my body or taking care of myself. I can't blame the world and other people for not liking me. The common denominator then is me. The past three years have been me trying to be a better person, because I desperately want deep and meaningful relationships in life. I am 30 now but I feel like I have the emotional intelligence of a 24 year old – before, it must have been the emotional intelligence of a 14 year old. I’m not beating myself up though. I believe that self-awareness is the first step to getting better. But I also don't want people to tell me my EQ is super high. If this was rock climbing, I can see clearly that I can only climb V3's – telling me that I am a V7 climber will not help me. I like rock climbing, and I like working on my emotional intelligence, so I'm going to keep climbing until I get better.