Purpose of Emotions

Emotions are fast-acting cellular signals triggered by an internal or external stimulus and designed to: 1.    Get your attention 2.  Connect the conscious with subconscious mind 3.  Provide you with information 4.  Give you energy to take action 5.  Help you make moral and ethical decisions 6.   Bind your perceptions to your conscious beliefs, making      what you think about seem even more real at the time

Motivators and Interrupters

In addition to at least joy, anger, fear, and sadness, there are some emotional assistants. Motivators—Surprise and Disgust—enhance the strength of the emotions and may surface in combination with any core emotion. Interrupters—Shame and Guilt—are likely learned reactions. They may be helpful and healthy or false and unhealthy / unhelpful). They “interrupt” what is going on to tell you that something you did is resulting in undesirable outcomes. This gives you a chance to take a look at your behaviors and course correct—and/or apologize—as appropriate.

Emotions-Energy

Some say, “Life would be much simpler if we didn’t have to deal with emotions.” Yes it might be simpler, but would that be better? Likely not. Take the clock metaphor: Without an energy source, the clock would not “tell time.” It would be motionless. Well, you would be “motionless” without emotions to give you information and energy. Getting rid of emotions is not the ticket; learning to manage them successful, is. You can experience each emotion and receive the information it provides without emoting (e.g., giving expression to it or taking any action). Sometimes just observing and learning in any given moment is what needs to happen. Then when you next experience a similar situation, you are better able to deal with it effectively.

Core Emotions

Studies have shown that facial expressions registering at least joy, anger, fear, and sadness are inborn and may be seen on the face of a fetus during gestation based on what is happening to the mother. These have been termed “core emotions.”  The fetus knows more than most people would imagine. For example, it appears that the fetus “knows” if it is wanted—and if it is the gender the parents prefer. Remember, however, that EQ is not “emotions” but rather is a method of managing them successfully on a consistent basis. Human beings communicate with themselves, with others, and with nature through emotions. That’s one reason low EQ can be deadly negative to relationships while high EQ is worth 80 percent of your success in life: personally and professionally.

Present-Past Connection

Socrates reportedly taught that the unexamined life is not worth living. Researchers estimate that only about 10-15% of what at goes on in the “mind” comes to conscious awareness. Studies suggest that 70% of relational choices and communication in the present reflect your own past, primarily what exists outside of conscious awareness but impacts everything at a subconscious level. Many people want to “let sleeping dogs lie” and prefer not to connect the past with the present (it is so much easier to blame others); however, you can only deal effectively with and manage well what you can identify, label, and describe.

Brain & Wholeness

Peter Scazzero has pointed out that family patterns from the past are played out in one’s present relationships without the person necessarily being aware of it. When one’s own level of spirituality or emotional intelligence is low, their behaviors will reflect their family-of-origin issues, the spoken and unspoken rules handed to you at birth, your brain function, unidentified and/or unhealed woundedness¾all packaged in layers of behaviors passed on from biological ancestors. Wholeness begins with knowing who you are and what happened to you—and to your biological or adoptive ancestors, insofar as possible. It involves identifying traumas that stopped your emotional growth and kept you from maturing spiritually and emotionally—what you learn may be hard pills to swallow but maturing into high levels of spiritual and emotional growth begins with those pills.

EQ & Spirituality

The human brain is at least spiritual, relational, and sexual (which includes aspects of mental, emotional, and social functions); it needs to “grow up” emotionally and spiritually and integrate those functions. Spirituality encompasses the spirit in which you live life, including ethical/moral choices.  It may involve an inner sense of something greater than oneself, the recognition of a meaning to existence that transcends immediate circumstances, a sense of awe, affiliation, vision, or goals to achieve the highest possible levels of brain-body health and wellness (high-level-healthiness). It may/may not involve affiliation with religion. All families and all individuals are damaged—some more than others—trying to serve from a well of unmet needs is unhelpful to the person, as well as to those whom they are trying to serve, and may do far more damage than good.