Episode #148

How To Improve Your Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence can be a powerful tool in improving your mental health, your life goals, and your relationships.

What is emotional intelligence?

Why does it matter?

How can you change or improve your level of emotional intelligence?

Join me, Dr Julie Osborn, as I share with you some powerful ways to help you improve your emotional intelligence.

Click to listen now!

Full Episode Transcript

Hi, it's Dr. Julie from My CBT Podcast. I'm a Doctor of Psychology and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I'm here to help you bring the power of CBT into your own life.

So thanks for being with me. I hope your holidays are going all right. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But I wanted to first share an email someone sent to me because a lot of people ask me how to find a CBT therapist if I can't work with them myself. And so I thought it's always good to share this information with you guys.

So I got an email and it said,

“Hi, Dr. Julie,

“I'm a long-time listener of your podcast and want to thank you for providing help and hope. The tools I've learned from listening to you have been in reliable, but I feel that I need additional help, so I'm ready to ask if you have a CBT therapist you can refer me to who will accept my insurance. I've used my insurance app as well as some other therapist finder, websites to find therapists who specialize in CBT and accept my insurance.

“I do as much research as I can to see which therapist might be the best fit for my personality, but when I contact them, I never receive a response back despite each being labeled as accepting new clients. It's threatening. I'm not sure if I should be listing all the issues I'm struggling with, so I'll leave it there. Any help or referrals you can provide are greatly appreciate it.

“Thank you.”

So thank you to my listener for reaching out and all of you guys that send me fabulous emails. So me personally in the United States, I am licensed in California, newly in Arizona, Washington State, Colorado, and South Carolina. So if you live in those states and you wanted to work with me, I can work with you. If you live somewhere else, whether it's the United States or anywhere in the world, the referral I would give you to look up is feelinggoodinstitute. Com. Feilinggoodinstitute. Com. So on that website, you'll see at the top, it'll say, Find a Therapist. And all you're going to do is put in your zip code and therapists in your area will come up. I don't know if they accept insurance.

I don't know specifics about them. But this is my connection with Dr. David Burns, who wrote Feeling Good, Feeling Great, one of the gurus of CBT. And I'm connected with that group, I'm on there as well. But if you want to find somebody in your area, that's the place to go to to find definitely a trained CBT therapist. As I've shared with you guys before, if you're looking for a CBT therapist, whoever you talk to, ask them if they specialize in it, a lot of therapists will tell you they do CBT, but they really don't. And once you get into the therapy, you realize that's not really what they're going to teach you, and it's frustrating. I've had many clients that have come to me that just said, I'm going to come see you, even though you're not in my network because I just want to get really good CBT therapy, and I want to find a specialist. It's definitely worth the time and effort. So this information is on my website as well under my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy feelinggoodinstitute. Com. So again, that's just a referral. Again, you can always reach out to me if you're having a hard time.

If there's anything else I can try to do to find somebody for you, I'd be more than happy. But the feelinggoodinstitute. Com site has therapists literally all over the world, so you should be able to find somebody that can at least work with you, even if it has to be telehealth through video, that they can at least work with you where you live. So the licensing This seems pretty strict, at least here in the United States. I know organizations are working on having just one license for us to be able to see anyone in the United States because we were able to do that during COVID and it worked, but it's pretty frustrating, and I feel bad saying no, but I have to stick with those guidelines. So just wanted to educate you guys on that so you get a better understanding of how to reach out. So as I'm recording this, I know that you'll hear this podcast a few days after Christmas. You'll be in the middle of Hanukah, and New Year's will be right around the corner. So I hope your holidays have gone well. I know it can be a really challenging time for many.

I think because of social media and commercials and all that stuff, everybody assumes it's a happy time. It can be a happy time, and it can be a happy time. And I mean, that's what we hope for. But I understand it can bring up a lot of issues. If you don't talk to family members, it's a reminder of that. If you've lost people, if you have grief in your life, it can bring that up. If your memories in the past were really difficult, maybe especially as a child, it can bring that up. So we just want to be sensitive to each other, not assume that the holidays are fun time and fabulous time for one another, but just the fact we do get to spend time, hopefully with people we do love and care about and creating new friendships, that we can start our own traditions at any time in our lives. There's no right way to do the holidays. And if you don't want to do the holidays at all, you don't have to do the holidays at all. So whatever you create, I want you to celebrate the holidays the way you want to, where you can find some meaning.

And again, if it's not the specific holidays you celebrate, maybe just bringing in the new year, having a little extra time off to go travel or see people you don't normally see, just gives us that opportunity as well if you have some extra time off for work, and others do, too. And it's a good time to get together. So don't compare yourself. Again, don't do the shoulds. Remember the underlying, the root word for should is sculled. So you want to be sculled in yourself that you should be happy, you should want to do things, you should want to be around people. Don't do that to yourself. Give yourself some grace and some self-compassion if it's a hard time, and just make it what you want to make it. I would encourage you to be around some others. I don't want you to isolate, especially if you're dealing with grief and depression, you want to find some resources that are out there. And one that comes to mind, I just want to share with you. That was in my last podcast, is a group called Tender Hearts. You can find them online. And David Kessler runs those, and those are really fabulous.

But I do have some older podcasts that you can always go back to and listen. So I have a few. One's called The Holidays in CBT. I have one called Surviving the Holidays in CBT. I also have one called Help for the Holidays. And last year, it's called New Year's Resolution. And I did a different spin on what New Year's Resolutions can look like, and a lot of people really to them. I gave some different categories. You might want to pick one just to work on, but it just sounds like, Oh, I'm going to do this this year, but it was being more specific in ways that you really want to focus on yourself and get better. Those are some other podcasts to look up. I got a lot of them out there now, but just some easy ways to get to ones that might be helpful right now. Or again, always sharing with others, if you know somebody that's struggling with the holidays, and maybe they will be open to just listening to my podcast and starting to learn some tools. That might be a good way to help someone else at this time.

We want to be mindful of each other during, again, the holidays and having us reflect on ourselves and our lives and our relationships, Again, how we can reach out to each other is really special. So I thought for my last podcast of the year, it'd be good to think about all of us working on our emotional intelligence. So I don't know if you've heard that term before, and it's something to understand. It's something you can work on. It's not you have it or you don't have it. Some people have more of it. Some people, emotional intelligence comes a bit natural, but it's definitely thinking Things you can learn. Again, tools like I talk about. What is emotional intelligence? How can I create emotional intelligence in my life? And what do I do to work on that? There was an article, because I always like to give people I don't want to use their information, right? That's important. In Psychology Today, it's a magazine I get, and they talked about emotional intelligence. So a few things that they mentioned that I just wanted to share and how it relates to what I teach you guys. And I'm going to give you some pointers also.

But this whole history of emotional intelligence started about 34 years ago. And some researchers We're talking about what is that? And they were saying that it's really a set of skills for you to be able to accurately identify what your emotions are in yourself and others, and to effectively regulate your emotions, again, in yourself and others. And they found out that feelings can be harnessed to motivate yourself and also to achieve things in life. So five years after that, there was a psychologist whose name is Daniel Goldman, and I mentioned him because he wrote a book called Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Super popular book. You may have read it yourself or heard about it, but that's where people really started talking about what is emotional intelligence. So some interesting information that I've just learned is even headhunters now, if you're looking for a job, they actually pose different questions to assess if the applicant has emotional intelligence. Intelligence, right? Because they found out that the skills of having emotional intelligence really do matter, and people tend to be healthier, happier, more effective, even more productive in their day and at work.

Right? And so those are things that headhunters are like, Okay, what is this person like? If they have emotional intelligence, then they can assume from that that you're going to be productive and a good problem solver and be able to read your own emotions and others and be able to really be positive for a company in that way. The research also shows that the more readily you can recognize and label your own emotional responses when life gets difficult, right? The better you're going to be able to address those feelings when you do experience them so you don't get overwhelmed. If I can identify my emotions, when I am feeling overwhelmed or life throws me a curve, then even in other situations when it's not as difficult I will definitely be able to identify my feelings. Remember with CBT, I know I talk all about our thoughts, but the goal is to feel better by changing the way you think. So we got to figure out what are we feeling. That's still super important because we want to feel better. And so that's what that emotional intelligence talks about. Let me give you a little more background, too.

The research, I should say, Also, so is that individuals who could differentiate their emotions, again, while they were in really intense situations, were less likely to be in any harmful or I should say, do, self-harmed things to themselves. Your coping strategies would be better, and you wouldn't be resorting, say, to, say, drinking or drugs, lashing out at other people, or even hurting yourself. You're not going to be so reactive. You're not going to go from the mood to a behavior, which I talk about how a lot of people live their life that way. They feel something and they do it. And that's why most people don't get better. Because then what they did, say you binge drink, Oh, that was good. I didn't have to deal with anything. Or I do even some self-harmed. That took the pain away. But it doesn't fix anything. So when people have emotional intelligence and they can say, Oh, I'm feeling this. Why am I feeling this? What am I thinking about? What can I do about that, you're going to have better reactions to situations. That's where the research is saying having that emotional intelligence can also help in that way.

They also talk about when you can describe your mood and label your emotions, more specifically, you're going to have less severe episodes of anxiety and depression. And that goes to the mood list that I talked to you guys about. So if you're using the Mind Over Mood book in chapter 4, Identifying and rating your moods. There's a small mood list. I say small because there are hundreds of moods. And you can go online and just look up mood lists. Just Google it. You will get a much larger mood list. But the mood lists are really important because we tend to get caught up in, say, as I'm talking about, depression, anxiety, depression, anxiety, right? But there are so many more moods. And the more specific you can identify your mood, that's really going to help you understand what's going on, and then be able to also help you really get to those underlying hot thoughts, the thoughts that aren't 100% true, because it's going to be specific to that mood. If our thoughts create our mood, then identifying our moods can also help us identify our thoughts. If I'm feeling anxious, what else is going on?

Maybe I'm feeling overwhelmed, maybe I'm feeling insecure, maybe I'm feeling spare. Those are more specific moods that we don't always identify. So I always tell my clients, don't just get stuck on a couple of moods that you think you feel all the time. Look at the mood list. It is another tool to help you identify how you're feeling. I don't know if you guys have seen, we usually use them with little children or young kids, but it's a mood list and it has all different emoji faces on them. And the faces show happy, sad, glad, angry, whatever your moods there. And then you would have the kids just say, How are you feeling? And they would point to the picture. As an adult, you can use that as well. And again, we tend to see that with kids. But that's also whatever works for you to identify your moods so you can say, Why am I feeling this way? And identify your thoughts, your thoughts, whether they're facts or hot. You want to be able to identify those. So that's where the tools that I've taught you guys really come in helpful here with the emotional intelligence.

And As I was saying, the more accurately you can describe your emotions and the emotional experience and why it's happening, the more information we have to decide what's going on will also help us. The neuroscience suggests that labeling your emotions can decrease activity in your brain, areas associated with negative emotions. So everything's connected, right? I know I have a really great podcast where I interview Dr. Victoria Smith on the psychology and CBT, where we talked about what is going on in your brain when you are anxious. So that's another one you might want to listen to. But this is why the emotional intelligence is really important, because just like all the CBT research and everything I've shared with you guys, it really is all connected and you can handle life better and feel better and do better. So again, the mood list I talked about, I want you guys to... If you don't have the mind over mood book, just look it up on the internet and get a mood list for yourself. I would print it out. I would stick it somewhere in your house. You can look at it, maybe at your vanity.

So when you're brushing your teeth every day, you can check in and see how you're feeling. But because the mood list is going to, again, help you be more specific to how you feel. And the more specific you are, the better it's going to help. I work with clients all the time and they'll come in and say, Oh, I felt this mood or that mood when we're working on, say, a fall record. And I push them and I'm like, Let's look at the mood list. They're like, Oh, yeah, I have all this other stuff going on. There's other moods that I'm not even identifying, and that really explains why I was struggling so much. So although emotional intelligence and CBT are too distinct but complement humanitarian concepts in psychology, I want to break them down, and then I'm going to overlap like I have been on how they can both help you get into a better place. So again, let's talk about the emotional intelligence first, is that it refers to the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and influence your own emotions and the emotions of others. It involves several key concepts. So one is just having self-awareness.

You want to recognize and understand your own emotions, your strengths, your weaknesses, and how they affect others. Because we affect others, others affect us. Another really key important aspect is self-regulation. That's the ability to manage or redirect disruptive emotions and impulses. So you want to think before acting. I have people all the time say, Oh, I wish I thought about that more. And I'm like, You didn't really think about it all, you just acted on it. So you want that self-regulation so you don't do that, so you're not reactive. You also need to be motivated. You need to have a passion to work through, for example, internal reasons, just beyond, say, money and status, such as the pursuit of goals with energy and persistence. So you want your passion for work not to just say, again, I'm going to reach this goal, and I'm going to have all this money, and I'm going to have this title, but it's more about really understanding yourself and going towards your goals. You also need empathy. So that's understanding the emotions of others and responding appropriately, right? And you need some social skills. So managing relationships to move people in the desired direction you want, navigating some social complexities, and also fostering positive interaction.

So it's not easy, right? As I break it down, you're like, That sounds like a lot. I don't want you to get overwhelmed, right? And again, there's steps to learn to do this if you feel like it's not one of your strengths, but it's really important to do. Because individuals with a high emotional intelligence can really navigate social environments more effectively and have better mental health outcomes because you can manage your stress and your interpersonal conflict with greater resilience. So I have pretty good emotional intelligence. I think it comes with being a therapist. But I pick up on things that when I'm with my family, they're like, What are you talking about? And I'm like, Oh, yeah. I'll pick up on a word. I pick up a lot on my environment, the energy, body language. I'll be with the client and they'll be talking for, say, a few minutes, and I'll pick up on one and I'll go back and they're like, Oh, I'm glad you picked that up. I'm glad you picked up on that. It comes to me pretty easily. I feel grateful. I mean, it's something I always want to be working on, but a lot of people just don't catch stuff.

I don't know if they're trying to or a lot of people, I think, are just wrapped up in what's going on in their life, and they just don't notice the world around them. So you want to take some time and work on your social skills and be more empathetic because that means you're really listening to other people. The self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, social skills. That's what breaking down of what the emotional intelligence is. Then we know what CBT is. It's a therapeutic approach to focus on your connection between your thoughts, your emotions, your behaviors, your physical reactions, the environment you're in. The main idea is that our negative thoughts or our cognitive distortions can really lead to a lot of distress in our lives and maladaptive behaviors. We always talk about the changes we can make. The CBT tools I teach you guys are going to help you identify and challenge your distortions to change your negative patterns. We know that happens. We know it works. I hope we're all using it. I use it every day. For those of you that might be new in my podcast, just to go over some of the key principles is, one, is cognitive restructuring.

So what that means is you want to identify your rational or unhelpful thought patterns and replace them with more balanced or realistic ones. So again, not positive thinking, but more balanced. You want what they call behavioral activation. That's It's just a term that talks about, I try to encourage you guys to have activities to reduce avoidance or withdrawing from situation, which happens a lot when you're depressed or anxious. You want to use mindfulness tools and grounding techniques. I have podcasts on all of this stuff. If you guys are new to my podcast, this will help you stay present and prevent you from over generalizing negative events in your life like, Oh, this always happens or things will never change. Then a really important part of CBT is exposure therapy. That's where you gradually face your fears in a controlled and supportive environment. Say you're afraid to go on the elevator, to have somebody there with you saying, Okay, maybe I'm going to go up with you a couple of flights, go down with you, and then I'm going to step out. I'm going to be right here. You're going to go back in, expose yourself to that fear until it goes away.

And that works. I'm saying it very simply, but just to give you an idea. And we know CBT, I know it's not like it's the golden ticket, as I would say, but it really does treat any mental health issues that are going on out there. And there's other good therapies, but this is what I specialize in because I love it and it works. Let's talk about how emotional intelligence and CBT can complement each other. The self-awareness and the cognitive restructuring helps you develop emotional intelligence because it improves your self-awareness. The more emotionally intelligent you are, you're going to be more self-aware, which is really crucial in the CBT. When you're aware of your emotions, you're better equipped to recognize and helpful thoughts that trigger those emotions. That's how they can complement each other. They also can implement each other with the self-regulation and coping strategy. Both emotional intelligence and CBT can encourage emotional regulation. Though they approach it differently, the emotional intelligence teaches you more long-term emotional management skills. With CBT, I teach you guys some short term strategies for coping with emotional distress, but you can use them all day, every day, forever. So the CBT can be like, Okay, right now, what do I need to do?

The more emotionally intelligent I can get, it will help me not just with myself, but with others as well. Another way that they complement each other is the empathy and improve relationships. So if you're emotionally intelligent, it's going to help enhance your interpersonal relationships. And in cognitive therapy, we address relational issues by talking about your relationship with others and how you can improve that through communication skills, listening techniques, all different things, being able to express your thoughts to someone versus your emotions. Another way that they complement each other is the mindfulness and the grounding techniques I spoke about because it's going to help you stay present and prevent you from over generalizing, again, the negative things that might happen in your life. So it's really worth taking the time by improving your emotional intelligence and using your CBT skills to give you even more tools to better understand and manage your own emotional experiences, which can help change your cognitive thinking, right? Your cognitive process and making changes in your behavior. So from the psychology today, you guys can look up this magazine online, and the cover says, The Truth About Emotional Intelligence, Why It Matters and How to Raise Yours.

And it is from April 2024. So the last thing in the magazine I thought be fun to go over with you is I'm going to ask you some questions. For you, it's a quiz that says, How emotionally intelligent are you? So you wanted to take a quiz. It helps determine how well you understand, label, express, and regulate emotions. So I'm just going to ask you these questions, and you can keep score, write it down, and get a feeling for where you're at. And if you need to work on it, if you feel you got it down, if you want to get better, it's all up to you. So the first question says, I usually pick up on verbal and nonverbal cues to how someone is feeling. So That's important with emotional intelligence. Are you able to do that? Number two is I don't judge myself for experiencing negative emotions like anger. So that's really important, right? That if I'm angry, I can accept that and I can say, What am I thinking out that's causing me to feel angry. Number three is when making a big decision, I try to consider both how I feel now and how I might feel later.

That is a big thing I do when I am making a decision. I'll say, If I do this or if I don't do that, how am I going to feel about it? I usually come up with that answer. I think you will, too, be able to say... It's like my mantra where I say, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel. I don't ever tell anybody what's best for them because I believe we each know what that is. So that's this question here, right? If I'm going to make a big decision, I try to consider both how I feel now and how I might feel later. That will help you make a decision. Number four is, I'm comfortable expressing both positive and negative emotions to others. That's a biggie. Those people-pleasers, you people-pleasers out there, you tend to just express the positive. You want to be able to do both. Number five is I can adjust my emotions and behaviors when the situation calls for it. So that means you're not being reactive. Number six is I can remain poised when another person expresses strong emotions. That's a toughy, but that's something to work on.

Number seven, I can name what I'm feeling and express it to others. So that's where the thaw record that I teach you guys is if I can be aware of what I'm thinking, which is causing me to feel a certain way, I can communicate that effectively to others, and that can be really important. I'm not just expressing my emotions like I'm pissed off I'm angry. It's like I want to be able to say, because I'm thinking this is why I'm feeling this towards you and I want to talk to you about it. Number eight is I can adapt to most situations relatively easily. Nine, when an interpersonal conflict arises, I'm usually able to find a solution. Ten, even when I'm angry or sad, I can behave rationally. That's something a lot of people need to work on, right? And not just impact. Number 11, I work well in a team. Number 12, I can look back on my past emotional experiences and learn from them. So important, especially when you've gone through anxiety and when you have anxiety. I talk to my clients all the time. When you tend to be struggling with anxiety, you'll look at each situation on its own, and you don't give yourself credit for what you've gone through in the past.

And you need to do that because they're all building blocks, and you want to learn from them, which will make it a lot easier for things you have to deal with right now. So do not pooh-pooh away your past experiences. They're all there for a reason. And you want to be able to use them when you're in the moment to show yourself like, You know what? I can't handle this because I dealt with these other things in the past that were as difficult and maybe even more difficult, so I can do it. Number 13, I share my appreciation for my loved ones and other people I feel grateful for. Tell people you love them. Say thank you. Let them know what they mean to you in your life. Let them know what it means to you or what it meant to you when they helped you out. That's really important. Number 14 is I'm good at validating how others are feeling. Number 15, last one, I can handle rejection, hurt feelings, and other emotional setbacks with grace. That's a tough one, right? I know a lot of my clients avoid life just to avoid rejection.

They don't like hurt feelings. They want emotional setbacks. It's a real struggle, and that's normal. Again, most of us don't have tools, right? I'm hoping that's why you're here, to learn tools, because you're going to be rejected. You're going to reject people. People are going to reject you. You're going to have hurt feelings, and you're going to have other emotional setbacks because that's life, right? Life can be messy, and all of our feelings are here for a reason. All All of our feelings are here for a reason. If you're hanging out on the holidays and you got time to watch Inside Out 2, you can probably stream it. Watch that movie. I know you might think it's a kid's movie because it's animated, but it is for adults. And one of the main messages in that movie is all of our feelings are important. We're not here just to get rid of negative feelings. Cbt teaches us, sometimes we may just get rid of certain feelings, but mostly we want to just manage them. I want to be able to manage my anxiety, my worries, my fear. Because by cognitive reframing them, it shows me all the wonderful and awesome things about me.

I have a podcast on cognitive reframing your thoughts, it is called. And it says how your negative emotions really say all the fabulous and wonderful, loving things about you. Why do you worry about your loved ones? Because you care about them, because you're a thoughtful person. You're not just thinking about yourself. You will hope that they have a good life. You hope that they're safe. Like I've said before, I'm always going to worry about my kids, but I don't want it to be enough for them up at night. But I'm never going to just not worry about them. So all of our emotions serve a purpose. And having that emotional intelligence, you can handle rejection, hurt feelings, and other emotional setbacks with grace. So again, none of us are perfect, right? It's progress, not perfection. This quiz I thought was fun just to share with you. Again, it's in the magazine, and it'll give you an idea of where are you with your emotional intelligence. And is this something you want to spend a little more time on? Read the books that are out there about it. Use the CBT tools. But all of us, I think, Well, not that I do think, but I also know that all of us can work on our emotional intelligence because nobody's, again, perfect.

In all areas of life, some of us do some things better than others, and we learn from each other, but we want to know about ourselves, something for the coming year. What are the things that I want to work on for myself? And maybe my emotional intelligence will be one. But I am always working on my emotional intelligence. I don't feel like I feel pretty confident in it, but I want to still get better. I still want to get better, right? Because I'm always... I'm a work in progress. I don't want to be done. I'd be boring if I was just, Okay, I'm done. I've reached my personal growth, and I don't know what else to do now. I love growing. I love learning. It just gives me a lot of good energy. It makes me feel good about who I am. It improves my relationships. I know it's good for my health, all of these things. So again, there's a lot more to read on emotional intelligence. Again, giving credit to the Psychology Today magazine. I wanted to go off some of that. Obviously, I share with you guys just some information I know, wanting to explain to you the difference between emotional intelligence and see A, B, T, but they definitely, again, overlap because our brain is always working and we all have thoughts and we all have emotions that are going on all day long.

So let's start figuring them out and understanding ourselves better. And now reacting off of our emotions and being able to connect better with each other and being able to identify, what am I thinking that's causing this distress in my life? And is it even true? And let me balance it out. So Again, I wish you a happy holiday season. I'm going to keep it generic. I wish you a very happy New Year going into 2025. I just wish for all of us good health, more happiness in our lives. I hope you can find the motivation for yourself to grow and take care of yourself, self-care, mind, body, soul. So important. Again, I love hearing from all of you, and I always appreciate you being here. I don't know if you saw, I posted. It was pretty exciting. A few weeks ago, I had over 750,000 downloads. I was like, wow, wow. This podcast is reaching people and it's making a difference, and I'm so grateful. Again, that's been my intention from the beginning.

So as always, please share this with those that might benefit from talking about emotional intelligence in any of my podcasts.

Again, you can find me on my website at mycognitivebehavioraltherapy.com.

You can also find me on Instagram under MyCBTPodcast and under Dr. Julie Osborn on Facebook.

Please keep sharing your thoughts, your concerns, your questions. I love hearing from you and getting your feedback.

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And as always, make decisions based on what's best for you, not how you feel.