Emotional Intelligence Applied To Anxiety Management
Anxiety problems are a constant in the lives of many people, but because they are common, they are no more inevitable. The truth is that human beings have a non-negligible capacity to manage their emotional states, and with adequate preparation, it is possible to suffer much less under the effects of excess anxiety.
Yes, it is true that no one can fully control the emotions of the here and now, nor even predict their appearance with 100% reliability. But between nothing and everything there is a healthy middle ground that we must be aware of, and that shows us that through the skills associated with Emotional Intelligence, it is possible to influence what we feel and how we feel it.
Therefore, throughout this article we will see some of the keys that make Emotional Intelligence very useful when it comes to managing anxiety
Let’s start with the most basic: what is Emotional Intelligence? As can be seen from its name, it is a set of psychological skills that allows us to adapt to the different situations that life presents us with, many of which are new and therefore we must solve them without always applying the same strategies or solutions. Thus, as occurs with the concept of “intelligence” simply, Emotional Intelligence goes hand in hand with the notion of flexibility, the ability to vary our behavior patterns depending on what is happening.
However, unlike what happens with intelligence in its more conventional meaning, Emotional Intelligence It is not expressed through the recognition and manipulation (in our mind) of ideas and concepts expressible through language and/or mathematics, but its contents, what it works with, are feelings and emotions. And anxiety is one of those types of content.
On the other hand, everything indicates that Emotional Intelligence can be trained and, consequently, improved through experience. This is very important, because it means that certain learning processes allow us to reinforce our emotional management skills in a consistent and stable way over time, just as would happen with someone who learns a subject at the University and from that moment on is able to Take advantage of that knowledge for years to come without having to start from scratch each time.
Emotional Intelligence: this is how it helps us manage anxiety
These are the ways in which Emotional Intelligence helps us manage our anxiety levels.
1. Helps recognize anxiety
Firstly, people with a good level of Emotional Intelligence are capable of distinguish between discomfort caused by anxiety and other types of discomfort This is more important than it seems, because one of the most problematic aspects of excess anxiety is that it is not always easy to understand that it is the source of the discomfort we feel in the first place. For example, it is relatively common for people to confuse anxiety with hunger, which means that cases are not rare in which someone who is not hungry goes to the refrigerator over and over again to try to “cover” what they feel by tasting food. .
In Emotional Intelligence The skills of recognizing one’s own emotions are combined with those that have to do with recognizing those of others This allows, for example, to remain calm when someone confronts us but at the same time we can notice that that person is more nervous than we are. The more information we have, the less likely we are to fall into fear or anxiety where these emotions are not necessary.
3. It helps us reduce our anxiety “from the outside in”
Most of the ways in which we can reduce the strength of anxiety in those cases where it is excessive, do not come from within our mind. That is, private and subjective psychological processes do not reach through introspection. On the contrary, they come from outside: through the way we interact with the environment, causing it to affect us in one way or another. Emotional Intelligence helps us exploit this potential.
For example, if we feel bad because we have not yet started writing a project, that same anxiety may paralyze us, leading us to postpone the moment of getting down to work to try not to think about what makes us feel bad. But by adopting certain strategies for interacting with the environment, we are able to break this vicious circle of anxiety. For example, removing from the room any element that could distract us or provide an excuse to postpone our responsibilities: our smartphone, bags of snacks, etc. Emotional Intelligence leads us to detect risks and opportunities in what surrounds us, when it comes to affecting our experience of emotions.
