emotional self-awareness

Emotional intelligence involves several processes that allow us to make important changes in our lives, but also to influence others, interact better with others and create balanced and lasting relationships. It allows us to resolve daily conflicts in a more creative and objective way. The five pillars or fundamental components to develop emotional intelligence according to psychologist Daniel Goleman are emotional self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills.

Although they are very interrelated and each contains elements of the others, the first of these, which is self-awareness, is the key to moving forward with any emotional intelligence development strategy. It is one of the most important competencies and refers to the need to correctly identify emotions and feelings.

By understanding what is being felt and recognizing moods and how they influence our actions we can attempt to self-regulate and also use this information to self-motivate ourselves and motivate others. By broadening the concept of emotions and feelings and observing how they manifest in people, we can understand the possible reasons behind behaviors, an essential step in developing empathy. And by identifying them we can learn to express and respect them, which helps us communicate better with others and have more productive internal dialogues.

Importance of emotional self-awareness

With self-awareness we can reflect and question what we perceive. We can modify our opinions and beliefs if we deem it necessary.

We discover which resources we tend to use, how we manage our emotions and feelings, and how we express them. By keeping track of their sequence (what causes them and their consequences) we can observe what thoughts they are linked to and where they lead us. In the long run, being aware of how these emotions affect us, facilitates the process of taking control of those situations that limit or stress us and that can harm our health. Knowing more about our emotions and what triggers them helps us not to cling to the past and to be more compassionate with ourselves.

Some actions we can take to start training it are:

• Carefully examine situations that make us feel bad or generate stress to understand the cause.

• Try to connect with emotions when they appear and not repress them immediately, but learn to identify them and see what they become by filtering them, taking note of the thoughts that accompany them.

• To begin to become aware of this inner world there are several techniques. One can be to keep a diary of emotions where all these details are recorded. We can also visualize different situations and try to discover what emotions they would provoke in us. Another exercise can be to remember past situations and what we felt, with what force and the cause. At the same time you can create a list of emotions and in which frame they surfaced.

• To train this competence, patience and perseverance are necessary. Sometimes several emotions and feelings coincide at the same time creating confusing states, which makes the task of recognizing and labeling them much more difficult. But this knowledge is what allows us to refine our self-awareness.

Emotions and feelings

Emotions have proven extremely useful in our evolution and survival. They protect us and help us to correctly interpret environmental threats and act accordingly.

Emotions respond to our five senses and their interaction with the environment. They are spontaneous and immediate responses that produce psychophysiological chain reactions in our organism.

They can also appear as a result of an internal process, triggered by thoughts. It has been proven that prolonged emotional states such as stress, anxiety, anguish or frustration can provoke or aggravate diseases.

Emotions have also evolved along with us to enable us to adapt to complex social situations. They are always with us and that is why it is sometimes difficult to realize exactly what we are feeling and why. They are associated with specific sensations and we can almost feel them physically and locate them in our body, such as the famous butterflies in the stomach or muscle tension.

Although basic emotions are biological responses that tend to precede reason they are not separate processes, almost immediately our cognitive abilities catch up. And even if we are calmly analyzing an issue and reflecting on it, there will always be an associated emotional component.

We respond to our own reality, based on our perceptions, needs, beliefs, experiences and emotions are no exception. Everything goes through our filter and although it may seem that we are only acting according to what we are feeling, our interpretation of the facts is always present. Our expectations play a fundamental role and sometimes we can misinterpret many situations for this reason.

For example, if someone yells at us, our first reaction and emotion might be surprise or fear, but it can quickly turn into anger or rage if we believe we are being mistreated, or into frustration and resentment if we do not express our disagreement adequately.

As we are able to value our emotions, they become feelings. There is a cognitive element that gives them meaning. The fundamental differences between emotions and feelings are:

• Emotions precede feelings, they are intense but transitory states since their main function is to move us to action. Due to their nature they are almost impossible to regulate or control and are difficult to conceal, as they are spontaneous reactions of the organism that are translated into gestures and instinctive body movements. The basic emotions are fear, joy, sadness, surprise, disgust or anger.
• Feelings, on the other hand, are based on emotions. To develop a feeling or a more complex emotion, reason is involved, incorporating an assessment of what is happening. This does not detract from the fact that it is a subjective process based on our own experience. It is possible to intervene and cont