7 Signs That Indicate Your Weak Emotional Intelligence
Growing up, we don't learn much about emotions, how they work, or how to control them well. Therefore, many people have average social or intellectual intelligence but low emotional intelligence. In this article, we present seven signs that indicate weak emotional intelligence.
It is difficult to have healthy relationships with people who lack emotional intelligence. Therefore, you should pay attention to signs of low emotional intelligence in others.
7 Signs for Weak Emotional Intelligence:
Whether you want to establish a business partnership with someone, get married, or hire a coach, detecting signs of low emotional intelligence early is important.
1. Avoiding talking about feelings:
Observe how someone describes their emotions if you want a true indicator of their emotional intelligence.
Some people with very low emotional intelligence refuse to talk about their feelings. They often don't even know how to do this. They frequently describe their emotions with ambiguous or metaphorical language. Sometimes, people complicate their emotions by using abstract, thought-related terms to avoid describing what they're really feeling, like "I'm feeling a little frustrated," instead of using straightforward statements like "I'm a little nervous" or "I'm upset."
On the other hand, people with high emotional intelligence are not afraid to describe their feelings in simple emotional terms, such as “I feel sad,” “I am angry,” or “I feel disappointed and a little upset now.”
2. Blaming ourselves for our feelings:
Many emotions, including fear and sadness, are characterized by pain, so when we experience these emotions, we often think they are negative or that we are bad people for experiencing them. This often happens to people who were punished or ridiculed for expressing their emotions as children.
People criticizing themselves due to painful emotions is a common sign of low emotional intelligence. They think that feeling afraid is bad or wrong, that being sad is embarrassing, and that being angry is a sign of weakness.
Judging yourself for your feelings will only cause you more pain in the long run. Emotionally intelligent people understand that feelings are not always bad just because they are unpleasant. So, they take care of themselves when they feel bad.
3. Trying to control emotions:
People with low emotional intelligence see harsh emotions as problems that require solving. This implies that they try to eliminate them when they are upset or experiencing painful emotions. However, they fail to recognize that treating their feelings like problems always will cause their minds to become accustomed to thinking in this manner. They consequently grow more afraid of their feelings and develop reactions to them later on.
Emotionally intelligent people see emotions as tools, not threats. It doesn't make sense to express your anger at the tool, regardless of how you feel about the message's content. Validating the emotions and letting them resolve on their own instead of trying to control them is the best way to free yourself from painful emotions.
4. Noticing their strong emotions only:
It is very common to experience multiple emotions at once, but people with low emotional intelligence typically only notice their most intense feelings. They might say they are extremely angry when a driver passes them while driving, for example, but they are unaware that they are also afraid.
However, people with high emotional intelligence are sufficiently self-aware of all their feelings, including those that lie beneath their primary feelings.
5. Submitting to their emotions without thinking:
Basing our logical judgment on all the emotions we experience is another clear sign of weak emotional intelligence. Emotions are often useful in enabling us to respond appropriately to certain situations, such as feeling afraid when a fire alarm goes off.
However, they are equally likely to mislead us, such as feeling angry when our partner points out a bad trait in us and asks us to abandon it.
Emotionally intelligent people pay attention to all their emotions but do not blindly trust them. Our emotions are not mysterious. Overestimating and underestimating them can be just as dangerous.
6. Trying to exclude the emotions of others:
You can learn a lot about a person's emotional intelligence from how they deal with other people's painful emotions and moods.
People with low emotional intelligence tend to avoid people who are experiencing painful emotions because they are afraid of them. For example, they immediately start listing reasons why you shouldn't feel the way you feel or they try to change your bad mood. However, these efforts are ineffective since they don't reflect high emotional intelligence.
On the other hand, a person with high emotional intelligence will typically be able to validate other people's feelings and be willing to support them without passing judgment or offering advice.
7. Always pretending to be happy:
Do not trust people who constantly pretend to be happy and who never acknowledge or even display their feelings of sadness, fear, shame, or upset. Usually, insisting on being happy all the time is a sign of weak emotional intelligence.
How to Develop Emotional Intelligence?
- Do you suffer from difficulties at work?
- Do you suffer from deteriorating relationships with your children and wife?
- Do you suffer from difficulties in social relationships?
You must urgently develop emotional intelligence skills if you are experiencing suffering in any of the areas mentioned above.
Emotional intelligence skills help to overcome those difficulties mentioned above. Studies and research have proven that emotional intelligence skills are one of the strongest indicators of success in business and all life aspects. A study conducted by Johnson & Johnson, which was published on the Forbes website, says, “Employees with the best performance levels exhibit high emotional intelligence.” There are several ways in which one can develop emotional intelligence skills, which are as follows:
1. Managing negative emotions:
A person should allow themselves to manage their negative emotions by looking at the situation from different perspectives so that they can make the best decisions.
2. Paying attention to words:
Developing emotional intelligence skills means that a person must pay attention to their words, think about them before saying them, develop their vocabulary to communicate with others, and monitor the results they obtain from their communication.
3. Empathizing with others:
Developing emotional intelligence skills requires empathizing with others by putting oneself in other people's shoes, experiencing their emotions, and viewing issues from their perspectives. All of this contributes effectively to developing and increasing emotional intelligence skills.
4. Discovering challenges:
Developing emotional intelligence skills requires identifying the obstacles that hinder developing those skills. One must face and overcome those challenges.