Much has been written about what emotions are and the ways to cope with difficult emotions such as anger, fear, jealousy, envy, spite, vengefulness and pain. In my experience as a psychotherapist, however, everything written on this subject can be reduced to one simple thing – to imagine these emotions in the form of a small child. And then to interact with that child in the way a loving parent would communicate with them – trying to understand, support and comfort them.
When we communicate with a small frightened child, we don’t scold them or insult them. Instead, we try to understand what they are afraid of, so we can offer our support and comfort. However, if we don’t recognise in our emotional reaction the reaction of our inner child, our mind will respond to our experience with the judgement that we are weak and insecure. This will not only fail to help us cope with what we fear, but will even intensify it.
This is because our emotional reactions come from one and the same place – the instinctive part of us that informs us to what extent our human desires and needs are being met. That’s why the image of the small child is such an appropriate image for understanding their nature – even our strongest negative emotions are absolutely innocent, they truly are like small children. If their need for security is threatened, they become afraid. If their need to be unique and irreplaceable to the one they love most is threatened, they become jealous. If they lose what they have become attached to, they suffer and grieve. If someone has treated them badly, rejected them, betrayed them, they become spiteful, vengeful and angry.
It becomes clear why it’s so important that instead of suppressing and fighting our negative feelings, we do precisely the opposite – make the effort to understand them without judgement. To conduct a dialogue with this instinctive part of us and ask what it needs. And then try to care for that need.
For example, if we feel frightened and insecure, we can tell our inner child that there’s nothing to fear – as long as they have us, they have the most important source of support. That they will be able to cope and survive. That even if they make a mistake, we won’t judge them and will continue to love them. We’ll explain that the path to the new inevitably passes through making mistakes, and that for us, what matters more than perfection is that they learn, develop and dare to venture into new territories. We’ll assure them that even if other people reject and don’t understand them, they will always have our own support and understanding. And if they have us, they have everything.
This is the first and most important step in developing our emotional intelligence – to view all our emotions, and especially the painful ones, as important information about our basic needs.
The second step is to use what we’ve understood about these needs by caring for them. Not to entrust the responsibility for our sense of security and inner worth to other people. This is too important to place in dependence on things in the external world. If you’re a parent, you wouldn’t give your small, fragile baby to another person who also has one of their own (even if they don’t show it), would you?
And so, emotional intelligence is the non-judgemental and understanding attitude of the mind towards the instinctive part of our human nature – our emotional reactions. It is also the primary means of achieving emotional independence, maturity and inner strength by taking responsibility for caring for ourselves. When we begin to view emotions as reactions of the child who lives deep within us, we also find the way to heal the emotional wounds from our past and release the energy encapsulated within them.
Kamelia Hadzhiyska
