Hidden Signs of Emotional Intelligence & The Mental Health Impacts | MedCircle LIVE Panel

good evening med circle youtube viewers i'm kyle the host here at med circle happy mental health month if you've not taken advantage of some great offers that we have going on for mental health month check the description below this video i hope that many of you will not just join us here on youtube in the future but also over at medcircle.com and watch.medcircle.com where we do a lot of uh interview styles like the one you're about to watch or listen to right now today's topic is on emotional intelligence personality types and the mental health packs and mental health impacts they're in we're starting with two people who i'm sure you've seen if you've watched any amount of med circle neuropsychologist dr judy ho all the way out in california's joining us and dr dominic sportelli psychiatrist out in new jersey all the way on the east coast dr d dr dom welcome both of you it's so great to be here what's up dr judy i'd love to start with you to get a uh definition of exactly what emotional intelligence is well emotional intelligence is as we've learned over research and with time and experience something that is just as important as the traditional iq and may even have more far-reaching applications so emotional intelligence or eq is the ability to understand use and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress communicate effectively empathize with others overcome challenges and diffuse conflict so who can't use more of that right yes no question uh you and you just mentioned the eq there this is we'll refer to it as shorthand throughout this video dr dom do you have anything to add to your definition of eq judy hit the nail right on the head as usual of course um but yes i'll tell you what's fascinating about emotional intelligence is that so many people focus on what iq intelligence and what we've realized over the course of decades is that there's so much more to intelligence and when i say intelligence i mean like the ability to be successful and the ability to be happy and the ability to live your life to the fullest and um emotional intelligence as dr judy explained and and how she defined it is so incredibly important but here's the best thing about emotional intelligence really quick is that it can be a learned skill so it doesn't necessarily have to be something that you're born with although some people you know have a little bit of an easier time with their emotions and understanding their emotions but it's a skill so you can practice it and get better and ultimately live a better life well let's talk about exactly how to do that um in order to understand this a little better can we give some examples on how increasing someone's eq could help them with their own mental health challenges dr dom let's stay with you yeah sure so so let's think about something for a second and i'm going to give you an example uh from a medical perspective what if someone has pain right generalized pain and they go to the doctor or they're just sitting there and they're saying i have pain what does that really mean we know that they're hurting we know that they have some physical discomfort but how can we address that how can they address that it's pain right it's unbelievably vague and generalized now if they say i have pain it's sharp it's shooting it's in my lower right quadrant in my abdomen then we go hey listen appendicitis let's work on that let's fix that so my analogy is going to carry over to emotion and and mood right so what happens when people are depressed they go i'm sad i'm down i'm bummed out well what does that mean you know let's pay attention to that and emotional intelligence allows us to think deeper about what that even means what does sadness mean does it mean that you're frustrated does it mean that you're angry does it mean that you know you're truly you know mourning something is there grieving what is happening exactly so what it allows what it allows you to do is create a label for exactly what you're feeling so you can fix it i think there's some old cliche out there somewhere that says if you don't know what the problem is it's impossible to fix it right and a lot of mental health is just that it's like i'm sad i'm depressed well let's learn how to identify the exact emotions that you're experiencing and then let's let's address them and studies have been done and i'm sure judy has seen these as well fascinating studies where they look at people that have inability to understand their own emotions and they do have a higher depression rate they do have a higher anxiety rate unfortunately they do have a higher suicide rate right because they can't really understand what they're going through specifically and it just feels too overwhelming so um so we do know that when someone's suffering with a mental illness like an affective disorder or a mood disorder being able to really understand and label and we'll talk later about you know the specific steps but labeling is one way of doing it of identifying that exact emotion really great um it's also so great to talk to the two of you because you're not only experts in your field but you're also parents doctor judy a brand new parent here dr graduations that's right yeah little baby luca um so what if um what would you look into as a parent and a neuropsychologist dr judy to see if your child is really working and developing their own eq great question and i look at my baby all the time and i'm like this kid he is definitely not shy about expressing his emotions um but i actually think that that's a good thing right that way i know what to do if he looks upset and like okay great let me go through my checklist of what to do to help him feel better if he's happy i'm like great i'm going to do more of what i'm doing now of expressing emotions and allowing your child to express a range of emotions and not necessarily shutting off a specific type of emotion i think a lot of times when you see your child in pain um expressing any kind of negative emotion sadness sometimes you want them to stop because it hurts you right to see them in me and so it comes from a good place but it actually then teaches them that certain emotions are not okay and good eq means access to a variety of emotions knowing that they all serve a function their evolutionary place there for a reason and encouraging that expression without judgment and so a lot of what you're looking for in your child is do they know how to use emotion words and you can teach them those emotion words you can ask them questions so they can get at what emotion they're feeling and then once they identify their emotion you should really encourage that as opposed to say well you feel sad well you shouldn't feel sad everything's going amazing right now like yeah just say okay you feel sad mommy understands that you're feeling sad right now can you tell me more about that right ask more probing questions get them to explore get them to really understand their own emotional states and how to talk about them and then teach them to ask for help well what can mommy or daddy do to help you feel better now that you've told us that you're feeling sad today right um what dr dom says is right on when people can't identify their emotions very well and there's this very clinical term that we use in our field called alexithymia it can come from all different kinds of reasons but one of the causes of alexithymia for some people is growing up in a environment where emotional expression was not encouraged so we want to do whatever we can to start letting our children express a wide range of emotions and not shaming them for having negative emotions because they're allowed to and we are allowed to too so sometimes i think when parents are trying to shut that down that might also be some of our own upbringing maybe you grew up where they didn't want you to express negative emotions um so really thinking about that and checking that um and just also recognizing that sometimes you do it and it comes from a good place you just don't want your child to hurt but the hurt will be over much quicker if you let them express it and then you problem solve it together yeah really well said it echoes a lot of the same sentiments that dr lam and i talked about earlier today on youtube uh really phenomenal dr judy uh dr dom all that made sense what dr judy just said but then one day these little cute little kids who are just learning their emotions are going to turn into 14 and 15 year olds and then they're going to have a way different way of expressing their emotions how does the emotional intelligence change in an adolescent and what can parents do to navigate that time oh my goodness and as dr judy has familiar out familiarity with a newborn i have one of those i have one of those 14 year olds so so again as as we're talking you know as fascinating as this is clinically i do have my own examples as well so when so first and foremost teenage years are challenging they're really really hard for teenagers for the most part because of identity issues and and that's sort of when we're fostering our identity we're learning who we are we're we're trying to on purpose become independent and as parents sometimes we see that as rebellion we see that as you know kind of being difficult but it's actually important that they do that and and become more independent because that's how they're going to grow so while teenagers can be kind of difficult sometimes um actually part of that growth in independence is important right so you do have to give them some space so first and foremost allowing them to grow with some space but what i would say is as a parent in order to develop emotional intelligence with your kids i i think probably one of the most important things out of all the lists that i know of clinically is live by example make sure you set examples um and what i mean by that is express your own emotions let your child know that it's okay to talk by expressing your own emotions to them i mean of course you're not using your child as a therapist what i mean more is be open about how you feel right be open about how you feel with your kids so they know they can come to you if they have a problem or something like that so not only share emotions on the negative side but i think it's important to also share enthusiasm and share the positive things try to verbalize what you're experiencing when you're having amazing times in life and you know when you appreciate things and when there's gratitude and when there's love and like i said it's okay to show that you're afraid or that you have you know fears or some sadness or grieving for example um but what i would also do is help them sometimes face hardships because they don't have the coping skills so what a lot of teenagers might do is avoidance behavior so if they're afraid or they're anxious or they're uncomfortable they'll isolate so i encourage parents to help their kids sort of push through that threshold by facing hardships and then sharing the feelings about what they're feeling by facing those hardships so get them to talk to you about what it is that's happening what it is that's deeper than just i really don't want to go to school today or i really don't want to go to that dance or that prom or you know what i don't want to see my friends tonight there's so much more to that let's talk about what's happening what are the feelings right is there fear is there anxiety is there shame is there guilt try and work those things out so share have them share those feelings and then you know a couple of other things is when i say live by example i also mean allow your children to see that you can see other perspectives and discuss other perspectives right so that's very very important that's dinner table talk that's late night talk that's after school discussions but when something comes up whether it's whether it's like current events or the news make sure that you're allowing them or even pointing out to see other perspectives right so just make sure that they're thinking 360 and full circle other things that i think we do as parents sometimes too much but is make sure that they understand body language and the power of body language but not in a critical way not like sit up you know sit tall get your feet off the table that's not what i mean i mean you know have them understand that you know when they stand up tall with their shoulders back it exudes confidence and if they're hunching over you say you know it's kind of like a posture that seems like you're a little bit uncomfortable right so i'm a big believer in in body language and helping them understand that as well so a lot of tips with teenagers number ones live by example set um a discussion to make sure that they see other perspectives help them face hardships and avoid avoidance if that's kind of ironic right but help them kind of tackle and break thresholds by understanding exactly what they're feeling and not just bottle it up and avoid it so those are some good tips i use all those tips with my kids it's definitely challenging and it takes practice but good stuff yeah no question thanks dr dom and for those of you watching live in fact for those of you watching live or the replay if you're on your phone there's a little share button when you click it it'll give you the opportunity to text or message it to people it is a great i think this video and this uh this panel discussion is a great thing to share especially because it is mental health month because it touches on such a variety of topics that will help you no matter where you or your loved one are on their mental health journey plus i would really appreciate it if you would share our amazing doctors with your friends and family close to you um i want to hear from each of you how as adults we can cultivate higher emotional intelligence and i also want to understand what it will look like if i'm successful at this cultivation i mean really what is my behavior how does my behavior look if i'm like rocking the eq uh dr judy why don't we start with you and by the way dr judy when when you were speaking last night you said uh good eq and i thought you said good eq like goody queue video dr judy's rap name over here good eq so good eq we'll go to you all right so eq well first we've been talking about this concept a lot but this idea of cultivating self-awareness so really having this ability to recognize and understanding your own emotions and also not just knowing how to label your feelings but actually being aware of the effect of your actions your moods and your emotions on the people around you so to become self-aware the way that you work on this is really monitoring your own emotions not being afraid to check yourself and say what am i feeling right now recognizing your reactions and then after that thinking about if i was to act on this emotion urge what would that do to my situation the people around me what's the effect right um it's also important to really understand your own strengths and your own limitations with regards to your self-awareness so again sometimes we're aware that we are frustrated when we have to wait in line for a long time but you're not quite there in terms of being able to actually modulate that frustration like you know you're like standing in line waiting for your coffee and you're like sighing really loud and rolling your eyes and it's hard for you to control that um and that's okay like just recognizing that's an area you need to work on is a good beginning step you might not always nail not knock it out of the park and that's okay but just even knowing okay i tend to do this when i'm in this situation and this is something that i need to work on um sometimes it can be scary but you should ask for constructive feedback from people you really trust so family members good friends when i did this the other day like how did that make you feel you know it's important because otherwise you're just guessing at what your impact is in terms of how you're reacting on other people and so tap into the people that you really trust get that constructive feedback that's going to really help you develop your self-awareness skills um i also think that it's really important to learn self-regulation coping strategy so when you do know that you're in a negative emotional state and when we're in negative emotional states we tend to react more than act proactively um we can do things that later on we regret um messes that we have to clean up because maybe we lashed out verbally as somebody that we really care about or somebody we work with and so we have to learn how to monitor and manage our own negative emotions when they come up and so i think a big part of that is really learning different types of coping strategies when you have negative emotions you guys um probably have heard me talk about this because this is one of my favorite emotion management skills which is to physicalize your emotions so pretend your emotion is a physical object in front of you give it characteristics describe what it's like this does two things one it takes that emotion away from you knowing that it's not you you're having the emotion but it's like a completely separate entity from you so you don't have to be identified for whatever emotion you're having and secondly anything in the physical world has a beginning and an end so then everything feels like it's much more manageable rather than when it's inside your body in your head where it just kind of feels like it's amorphous and it's going to go on forever and ever and ever and another piece that's really important to work on is your empathy skill so empathy is the ability to understand how other people are feeling this is absolutely critical to emotional intelligence and it's really all about using active listening truly being interested not talking defensively or reactively um really being open-minded and actually being there just to hear what the person has to say rather than already preparing your own statements and then just being able to put yourself in that person's shoes and understand where they're coming from and then from that very genuine place that very caring place deciding what action you'll take next so building empathy is really all about practice you've got to practice active listening giving people your undivided attention and really really having a conversation not to speak but to hear yeah dr judy held a med circle workshop that i was a part of and you had us uh i think draw out our anxiety or stress or depression or whatever it was and then it was in a piece of paper and we had to crumble it and honestly y'all i was i just thought okay i gotta do this whatever so i'm doing all these activities and i felt the relief i felt the uh the change i felt the change from doing this activity even with the mindset of all right i just gotta you know kind of do this these are really powerful techniques and they do require practice but even more than that they just require you to do it at all some people will listen to you guys for hundreds of hours and then they don't do any of the things you guys suggest and it makes me um frustrated because i feel frustrated rather because i these these tools do work and that's what's so great about um what you're saying uh dr dom i'd love to hear from you we do have some questions um to get to as well and i know we're limited on time so let's go into uh your your uh tips on developing eq and then we'll go to some viewer questions sure yeah you know i want everybody to remember something that i think is really important you know emotions influence so much about our day and about just just all of our experiences the way we perceive our reality right so we know for certain with with research that our emotions will absolutely affect our attention our memory our learning our decision-making all of these things are affected by our emotions so if we can regulate our emotions so many of these those things can improve and as i stated earlier if you can regulate your emotions we do have data that shows that there's improved academic performance improved relationships improved marriages um decreased anxiety depression so so we can't discount how important it is to sort of regulate our emotions right so as i said before sort of having a vague understanding of what you're feeling kind of makes us feel more lost so what i tend to use with clients when we're working on things like this i'm sure dr judy is very aware of this a man by the name of dr bracket from yale university developed something that's used in schools very often and it's called the ruler it's like an emotional emotional intelligence sort of skill set and ruler r-u-l-e-r is an acronym right so it gives it's like an easy way to remember these skills and the first r in the word ruler is recognizing right so that just means wait a second pay attention as judy was saying before i was thinking about it right and and i'm definitely the guy that sits in line at starbucks sometimes and i roll my eyes and i might and then i have to say wait a minute hold on pay attention what's going on here why am i feeling this what am i feeling yeah why do i feel frustrated so first and foremost recognize what's happening identify that emotion in yourself okay then the u stands for understanding so once you realize what the emotion is try to figure out in your mind and again it's just paying attention to yourself and you might not have these answers immediately and it takes work but working through understanding the you the cause and the consequences of those emotions right so i'll just keep going with this whole standing in starbucks then standing line in starbucks i'm frustrated and i say okay hold on what am i feeling i'm feeling frustrated okay that that's that's the emotion let me understand this okay i know why i'm feeling this because i'm in a rush and i know that i'm stressed and i know that i have to get back to work but if i feel this way right now the consequences of that are i'm gonna feel irritable maybe i won't treat people way well maybe i won't be able to concentrate maybe i'll forget things right so understanding the cause and the consequence of what you're feeling and then the l in the word ruler is labeling so labeling is actually interesting because what i do with clients is is fascinating in the sense that we can look up emotional definition like there's emotional lists like emotional word lists and literally when you look at it you wouldn't even believe it it's like four or five pages long of words that describe what you're feeling and when i show a client this and i say you know what you're telling me you're sad but i want you to go down this list and i want you to pick exactly what you're feeling so label it give it a word right and now you can communicate those feelings better and when you can communicate those feelings accurately you're going to feel better and it's also going to help you in another aspect where you're going to understand other people better and that's why this helps with relationships right so so far we have recognizing understanding and labeling then the e in the word ruler is expressing so now what now that we're up to the point where we've labeled it we understand it you know all this how do we express it and how do we express it in the right way so i'm standing line at starbucks i can get angry i could yell at somebody or you know i can do it in a more productive way where i can use it in a social situation skillfully right and then i want to model that acceptable social behavior to my kids as i said before as to other people in our relationships things like that and then finally the r in the word ruler r-u-l-e-r is regulating so regulating is basically coping strategies right be more effective in feeling that emotion regulating it as as dr judy said there's various techniques to do that but that's the final goal because we're going to experience emotion we're going to explore positive emotions and negative emotions but if we can regulate those emotions by expressing them by labeling them by understanding them and of course by recognizing them we're going to do so much better overall and briefly too i think i want to touch upon something that you said before kylie said you know when people have good emotional intelligence like how does that affect their life in in a positive way right so again we see self-esteem increase people are more assertive they can manage their emotions they can self-regulate so much better so they're better in groups but these people tend to work better in groups which means they're more productive at work they're not impulsive they make better decisions and get this they lead a healthier lifestyle so people that can regulate their emotions actually are more physically healthy so there's so much to this both medically and psychologically um so you know you guys can look that up it's a gentleman by the name of dr brackett he's out of yale it's uh the acronym ruler of the emotional intelligence coping strategy i i really love this ruler method and i want to point out to our viewers as well one really fabulous thing that you've not heard any of the doctors say is well don't feel angry or you're not supposed to feel that way our feelings are our feelings and they come and they go these are strategies to identify them label them i don't need to belabor or reiterate what they said but no one was saying well why are you angry being at starbucks you might be angry being at starbucks you're allowed to be angry being at starbucks you can do whatever you want uh let's go to some questions from viewers please this one's for dr judy acceptance and commitment therapy therapy question how can someone with ptsd or other debilitating mental health conditions with triggers use self as context what a question dr judy yeah so you know again i think selfless context is really about your self this part of yourself that has seen you through all the trauma all the stresses of your life and is still completely whole completely intact pure the essence of that is a continuous essence as opposed to what a lot of people when they've experienced traumatic events will say that they feel like their self is discontinuous like it's kind of jar jumbled all together and that there are times when they don't have that intactness with the sense of self so one of my favorite analogies for selfish context is to imagine a chess board and the chess board is witnessing hundreds if not thousands of games being played on the chessboard right there's different players they use the pieces and every single chess battle has an outcome but then it's the next chess battle with the next set of participants and the chess board throughout all of these different uh chess games is still the same chessboard it's witnessing all of these games sometimes one side wins more than another side on a given day sometimes certain chess battles are more intense than others but the chess board is the one that witnesses all of it and it's not changing or it's not taking sides it's just there to witness everything that happens and no matter what happens on the chessboard the chess board itself remains intact and so that's a good analogy for your selfless context a part of yourself despite all the different stressors and traumas you've been through it is still whole it is not attached to a specific outcome or an event and it's that part of yourself that you can go back to whenever you're feeling the trauma well up again and thinking about yourself as maybe somebody who's broken or who needs fixing you can go back to this analogy another quick analogy that might work for people who want an additional analogy is sort of thinking about when people are watching the show or a play so we have the actors on the stage they're obviously very invested there's the narrator who's narrating everything that's going on and then there's the audience and the audience is like the selfless context so you're interested in what's going on you're watching the story but at the end of the day it doesn't have to be the only story you can watch another play the next day and you're an audience member witnessing all of it and observing it but not passing judgment really well said and now i love a good analogy dr judy and you gave us two dr judy has a fabulous series on act i i i i don't know how many times i've said that exact sentence dr judy has a fabulous series on act but she does we'll link to it in the description go watch it literally go watch it it's the best i don't even want you to leave but if you did leave this live stream to go watch it i'd be like well that makes sense uh dr uh dom i bet we have a question for you let's go to that dr dom can you please share an effective method of stopping negative worried thoughts as they come up oh boy yeah so this happens often right and all day yeah all day right so this is this is natural and so they're going to happen these negative thoughts are going to happen and the fast the interesting thing about negative thinking is that when you try to avoid negative thinking it actually pops into your head and there's that old there's that old story of saying okay don't think of a pink elephant right now well you probably just thought of a pink elephant even though i told you or if if i say you know don't think of the plane that you're on crashing that's what you're gonna think of right so we what we have to do is sort of understand and this was kind of what you were saying before kyle how we're not telling people not to feel emotion what we're doing is allowing them to feel the emotion understand it process it label it and just put it aside just let it go just kind of work let it go kind of let it fall through so there are various things that we can do when we have negative thoughts popping into our head now one again dr judy's a pro at this is like a cognitive behavioral therapy approach where you're recognizing exactly what that thought is what is that thought right what is the bad thought that just popped in right and what i like to tell clients about is the cognitive behavioral therapy approach so when that thought pops into your head realize it identify it try to think about it in a cognitive framework where you're saying you know is this thought really valid am i doing something like over generalizing or jumping to conclusions or doing a black and white type of thinking or catastrophizing so i always tell people in our minds we have the judge which is your own sort of ego and mind and you have that prosecuting attorney who's always thrown those bad thoughts at you but we don't have a defense attorney there we just don't have anyone as a defense attorney to sort of stick up for the bad thought to stick up against those bad thoughts so pretend that you have a defense attorney so the bad thought pops in and you say okay i just got this thought this is uncomfortable what exactly is this thought i'm identifying it and then the defense attorney is going to say you know i object this is why this thought is probably invalid this is why this is probably not going to happen this is probably why this is an overvalued idea this is probably why you're jumping to conclusions right that defense attorney and this is a process and this is also practice this is another skill that you have to sort of practice over time with a cognitive behavioral framework and i often use the analogy you know psychiatry and psychology is not much different than physical health like going to the gym i can preach to you all day about how to get six-pack abs and have a great body and lose weight but if you don't do the activity it will never come to fruition so you have to practice these skills so i would use a cognitive behavioral therapy approach as one approach of course if you're practicing something like mindfulness where you have the ability to allow a thought to come in recognize it but don't attach to it and let it sort of flow so things like practicing mindfulness learning cognitive behavioral techniques i think that's incredibly helpful for when those bad thoughts pop in yeah no question i can attest to that as well let's go to another question please this question is for dr judy looks like we've already had this one can we have a different question for both of you guys we'll start with you dr judy do you have any advice for how to not take on other people's emotions and feelings i feel like i'm too empathetic empathic and i deeply absorb and embody others emotional state yep really great question and so i think this comes on the heels of a lot of research that we know now that there's such a thing as vicarious trauma when we're a little too empathetic especially when we're often in a giving role either professionally or personally or both and this idea of empathy is an important one because we still want to be able to be there for the people that we love and care about and maybe the people that we're helping to serve if this is part of your career but we don't want to take their emotions all the way home so that they become our own problems because that actually takes away from your ability to be able to do your best so there's actually two different types of empathy there's emotional empathy and there's cognitive empathy and people sometimes don't recognize that so emotional empathy is generally what we're talking about when we talk about empathy we say well we want to know what it's like to be in the other person's shoes we want to know how they're feeling but sometimes especially if you're somebody who might be more sensitive by nature in terms of just your emotional sensitivity um you're gonna adopt too much of that person's emotions and do exactly what this viewer is saying it feels like you're taking on everything in their entire world so this might be a good time to actually transition and be flexible between this idea of expressing emotional empathy or cognitive empathy instead at different times so cognitive empathy is also known as empathic accuracy there's a lot of different definitions of this but one definition is having more complete and accurate knowledge about the content of what another person is feeling and thinking so i love that definition yeah so this is more about like understanding their emotional state rather than like putting yourself in their shoes that you feel their emotional state right and since we've been talking about eq this whole time this is part of eq so if you are able to accurately identify what it is that they're talking about in their experience you're still able to help them in a very personalized way but then you're not putting yourself in their shoes and saying wow let me try to imagine if i lost my job and i've been applying everywhere and it's been a year and i still haven't gotten a job wow if i really put myself in that position i really imagine that that makes me feel so depressed right but positive empathy would just say okay i understand what this person is telling me i can see how that could be devastating but i'm not putting myself emotionally in their position because sometimes when you do that you're actually less able to help them yeah and and the the two types of empathy you just discussed because i have not heard of this cognitive empathy and emotional empathy yes really great thank you dr judy i can use that uh dr dom any thoughts on that question yeah you know it's it's it's interesting that you guys that that question was brought up because there's there's actually something that doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists can experience and it's actually called compassion fatigue oh yeah yeah it's it's a very real thing and and we noticed this a lot with coronavirus unfortunately at the hospital with a lot of some of the devastation that we've seen and you know i work in the emergency department so we see a lot of a lot of challenging things and and there's also in psychology the term counter transference where you know we can sort of take on other people's feelings and sort of be affected by it so most importantly i think it's it's important to sort of educate yourself on understanding when you start to become affected by other people's sort of emotions and that compassion fatigue starts affecting you negatively so so make sure you're paying attention to that and you know listen that can be symptoms yourself of feeling sort of burnt out or feeling like you're starting to lack empathy or feeling like you know you're not feeling anything anymore or even just just um feeling even physically sick you know things can change in your life when you when you're dealing with so much empathy interaction right yeah so first of all educate yourself on it understand what that even is understand what the signs of that sort of empathy burnout are but i think more importantly is understand boundaries so boundaries are very very very important and just because you have boundaries and because you're looking to help someone from an objective standpoint it doesn't mean that you need to absorb exactly what they're feeling sometimes being supportive to someone doesn't mean that you even have to understand what they're feeling right so you know there's various ways of talking to people and allowing them to speak and be supportive without letting it hook you and sort of draw you in emotionally right so just understand boundaries and look at things a little bit more objectively instead of subjectively because what we tend to do and as judy was saying is that we tend to relate everything to what we've experienced so if i'm listening to someone who's going through a challenging time my mind wants to recreate something that i've experienced to sort of bring myself into that and feel it as they're talking and say oh my god i know exactly what you're talking about this is what i felt and and it sort of starts to become about you as well and now you're sort of drawn into it and kind of enmeshed in it a little bit so understand that you can be objective you can sit back without feeling it yourself in the sense of without trying to sort of think of a way that you can relate you don't have to do that you know supportive psychotherapy in general is is is validating what someone's feeling and just listening and making that those boundaries remain so you know educate yourself on compassion fatigue educate yourself on the symptoms of compassion fatigue and understand that it's okay to have boundaries and it's okay to not enmesh your own feelings and your own experiences all the time with what someone else is saying to you in order for them to feel understood well said and we have a great series on compassion fatigue featuring dr judy uh it's in the comment section of this video and if you are a professional and uh of any kind we do uh we have a number of professional discounts to med circle that is med circle's separate than youtube we do have a great youtube channel but we also have a membership which a lot of professionals use so if you would like to claim that discount go to support medcircle.com or email support medcircle.com dr dom dr judy fabulous to see each of you dr tom it's late where you are you're probably close to bed and dr judy end of the day for you thank you both for being here i appreciate it always a pleasure guys great to see you all right bye bye often when we talk about mental health we put a focus on what's wrong what's going on in our life that is bad or isn't working or what feelings are we experiencing that don't feel comfortable or good and there is a lot of value in asking those questions and getting to the bottom of it but there is also value in asking the question what is going right and what are some of your strengths person-centered therapy is a therapeutic approach that dr romini and i discussed and we have a wonderful clip from that discussion for you right now now we're talking today about person-centered therapy this is something i've not heard of so why don't we start with what that is so person-centered therapy comes out of the work of carl rogers carl rogers was a humanistic psychologist and interestingly to sort of frame it in modern times person-centered therapy was really the forerunner to positive psychology carl rogers at the time it really was quite revolutionary what he was doing he really was pushing back on the sort of dysfunction-oriented perspective of psychology and was really wanted to ask the question instead of asking what's wrong with people he's like let's focus on what's right so huma person-centered therapy is exactly what it sounds like it's not about technique it's not about the therapist being the authority it's very much setting conditions of growth and that the person is the focus not the wisdom of the therapist but the person and that the this is a form of therapy where it's more in the in the being than it is in the doing so the presence of the therapist in a very specific sort of way that's that that certain presence that the therapist learns that's actually believed to be what creates the the conditions of growth and and carl rogers believed and as do any anyone who's a humanistic uh psychologist or therapist believes that all human beings have within within them the capacity to sort of do them to take care of themselves and to grow and to be their best version of themselves so again it's a very positive person-centered therapist not as authority model so when i hear that i feel like it could treat nearly anything or be used for anything is there anything that it's not great for you know i would say that if somebody is having an acute psychiatric crisis so for example they're experiencing really debilitating depression or they're experiencing psychotic symptoms they're dealing with an active substance use disorder or they're in the in their um experiencing pretty significant eating disorder because there's so many acute issues in those cases i might argue that it becomes important to make sure that the client is medically stable and functionally stable and then once you get them to that point of stability i do think that there's a lot of utility for a person-centered approach keep in mind too though kyle the person-centered approach isn't a technique like i know on med circle you've talked about things like dbt or motivational interviewing those are techniques person-centered therapy is really about how the therapist is present in the therapy so i do think that a person-centered model if you will could be combined with any therapeutic approach sort of out there as sort of how the therapist is but ultimately i do think when there's an acute crisis you do have to get the client safe and functional and so but but a person-centered therapist would argue i am still going to draw from those those critical conditions of therapy unconditional positive regard congruence empathy all of that like i'm going to be present with this client that's a condition of therapy i don't know and i think a lot of humanists would argue person-centered therapy is not a technique it's just sort of a state of being as a therapist so i could be a cbt therapist but overlay a person-centered style with it you know you could i think that a lot of cbt here's the problem cbt and person-centered therapy in some ways are sort of at odds with each other a little bit and what i mean by that is that the cbt therapist is very directive there is a presumption of authority right the cpt therapist is giving homework and they're saying do this and i know this i gotta tell you kyle it's really interesting in the person-centered model you really are taking the stance of you know you better than i know you but in io i've often and since graduate school i've often viewed person-centered therapy as a very much a a parental model like that where the the therapist is actually being what a parent should be which is present available non-judgmental providing unconditional positive regard approaching the person with genuineness so it's creating this kind of the only you know what like the way i would describe it is like if you're a painter and you're preparing the canvas to get the paint right so you're doing all this work so you can finally make your beautiful painting the therapist is almost preparing the canvas then they're saying to the patient paint they wouldn't even call them a patient carl rogers would never use the word patient it's too medical they use client and and then it really has gotten elevated to person because even client implies a transactional relationship and sure person centered therapists ain't doing this for free so sure there's a transaction but by calling someone a client it still implies that you're in very different roles in that room now what is rogarian therapy if i'm even pronouncing that right so rogerian therapy is person-centered therapy so remember carl rogers who actually back in the day practiced right here in santa monica california he was um so it's that that entire humanistic focus came out of the work of folks like carl rogers ahead of carl rogers actually came someone named abraham maslow which is a name that many of you may remember from an undergraduate psychology class remember that pyramid that hierarchy of needs where at the bottom of this period was like water and then at the very top of the pyramid of self-actualization that concept of self-actualization is actually sort of the goal of humanistic sort of attainment maslow set that rogers and then sort of took it from there into this sort of person-centered model at the time kyle frankly it was quite revolutionary because the psychoanalytic model was all about unconscious conflict the analyst as the expert in fact you weren't even looking at the analyst in orthodox analysis you were in a sofa looking the or a couch looking the opposite way and the therapist had their back to you the analysts had their back to you so that was a very very different model the person-centered therapist is very warm present genuine positive again believing in the growth capacity of the client i'm sure this will uh become more clear as we continue on but when you say all those things that sounds like almost every therapist i've ever had they're naturally warm and compassionate is is this something that we are there notes of this that we see across most therapists or most good therapists so i'm going to respectfully disagree with you and say that you've actually had a wonderful experience then or hey maybe it's just me uh painting the history with brighter colors who knows yeah perhaps so because i have to say not all therapists are warm some therapists are actually quite remote and it really and some of this comes down to theoretical model some of this comes down to individual differences between therapists some therapists are incredibly directive some therapists are very critical some therapists are very judgmental none of that's going to work in this model i agree with you when we look at these sort of the essential ingredients of what a therapist is meant to be in a humanistic or rogerian or person-centered model i'm going to be frank with you that's what i think a good person is yeah you know that's really i whenever i read rogers i'm like this is what we should all be and if we were all like this wouldn't this be a wonderful world but so the fact that rogers laying this out as a theoretical model and it almost feeling groundbreaking really speaks to up to that time which is about the 50s 60s 70s that that think of how therapists were remember therapy was not normative at that point people in the 60s and 70s you were seeing the beginning of people getting into therapy in the 60s but it was really only super affluent people it was very much a disease model therapy like how do we fix what's broken but we're still there kyle i mean the way insurance companies work and all of that it's like we got to have something to fix we ain't we're certainly not paying for you to get self-actualized you know that is not on the menu and so that the the way we sort of manage health care in our country is never about growth or improvement if in that case then um insurance companies could then pay for personal trainers or exercise classes frankly they should be because that'd be a great way to keep people out of the hospital yeah yeah um you mentioned humanistic psychology at the top of this interview can we go into more in depth on what exactly that is and how it relates to this so humanistic the humanistic model of psychology is a very sort of positive view of humanity this sort of belief that people all people at their core are trustworthy that they're resourceful they're all human beings have an inherent sense of insight and that they can be self-reflective that they're able to that everybody actually has the inherent capacity to figure themselves out without a therapist but a therapist is often there to help them sort of bring down their own defenses like this idea of anxiety anxiety is sort of a defensive approach to a world that has puts conditions of worth on people so what a humanistic approach believes is we all have this potential to be these really really self-actualized evolved human beings and the thing that blocks us from getting there is usually society telling us we're wrong we're bad we're not good enough putting conditions of worth on us so the humanistic model is is actually an incredibly like i said it's a very positive view of human beings it's very again very growth oriented in that we're all oriented towards growth so that's the whole focus of that model like i said it's the forerunner of what in about the 80s and 90s people like martin seligman ran with and started calling positive psychology don't you just love dr ramani really really great to listen to her that workshop is available to med circle members that you can access at watch watch.medcircle.com we have two more incredible doctors joining us for the second half of this panel interview we have dr christie lamb you might have seen her earlier today on our youtube channel psychiatrist out of southern california oh there she is dr lam nice to see you i believe we also have uh dr thuslam hey everyone oh we do hello hello it's so great to see both of you um i'm gonna ask you both this question because it's one of my favorite topics it's on resilience how does someone's resilience whether they have a lot of it or they're lacking in the department how does that impact their emotional uh intelligence their eq dr lam why don't we start with you sure so when we think about resilience um we're talking about the capacity to kind of stick with something even in the face of adversity um there are multiple different characteristics of people who are considered resilient there's uh resilient there's people who have grit that lets them kind of stick with it even when it's hard um but i would suggest that people who have long-term resilience know when to you know pull out the grit card and really push through and also know when they need to take a break and we talked about this in one of our earlier talks about resilience and so i think that in order to have sustained resilience we really do have to have an emotional intelligence to be able to um it's kind of like meta process to meta understand what's happening um what when our feelings are coming up what's happening um when our anxiety gets high or when the energy in the system has dropped that we have an attunement to ourselves and i think this is a core characteristics of people who have a high emotional intelligence they understand emotions they don't fear them and they understand their purpose and utility and then can you then use them to um decide do i need to pull out the grit card and really push through on this do i need to rest restore so that i can be resilient for the long term so i think they go hand in hand that i would suggest that emotional intelligence is a core capacity that's necessary for long-term resilience i love the teasing out of grit versus resilience i think i have been mistaking grit for pure resilience when there was probably some nuances there uh psychologist dr thuslam all the way up north in canada any response yeah i would 100 agree with dr lam i think emotional intelligence is an essential component of resilience we really do need to understand our emotions we need to understand what to do with our emotions um and when we can do that that's how we are able to be resilient so like as dr lam was saying being able to figure out what do i need in this moment do i need to push harder do i need to um you know kind of stand back do i need to do i need a hug do i need to go have a night out what is going to allow me to not only kind of maintain myself and sustain this level but what's going to allow me to overcome any kind of obstacles that i experience and if we don't have the ability to at least that kind of first component of emotional intelligence which is really about the self if we don't have that then we don't know how to take care of ourselves or at least it becomes a lot harder to do that in an effective way which then makes it so much harder to be resilient effectively as well dr thousand i'd like to stay with you you work with patients and clients who have experienced trauma and i'm curious to see how developing a higher eq if that's even the right way to put it while also recovering and coping and dealing with this trauma how those two things play together at once yeah it's a great question kyle you know i think part of a lot of um a lot of mental health struggles is not really knowing what's going on within us and so many people have um what we call like a a blunting or an avoidance approach to their emotions especially the uncomfortable ones but when we're emotionally intelligent we're much more likely to think about our emotions to process our emotions to see our emotions as healthy and helpful and when we do see our emotions as healthy and helpful we're much less likely to experience significant and severe symptoms of mental illness it doesn't mean that we won't but our ability to recognize that no matter what we're feeling it's part of our human experience makes that suffering just a little bit less and so when we're talking about that within the scope of trauma research actually tells us that when we are emotionally intelligent we're actually less likely to develop symptoms of ptsd because we're using that kind of approach processing um strategy for our emotions rather than the avoidance strategy which usually leads to or can contribute to symptoms of ptsd and the likelihood of developing ptsd so that's kind of from like the perspective of developing ptsd now if we talk about someone who has ptsd or is experiencing symptoms of some sort of trauma disorder um if we're building our emotional intelligence part of what we're doing at least again from that kind of self perspective is we're learning about our emotions which means that we're kind of deciding okay i feel scared right now i feel nervous right now i feel hesitant right now i feel concerned right now um and the more labels we can put on it the more signals we can understand within our body the more we know how to respond to them and how to respond effectively i think the other really nice thing that happens when we're building our emotional intelligence is we're learning to connect with others and being able to connect with others allows us to feel less isolated and we know that mental illness can be such an isolating experience and so when we're able to understand what others are going through when we're able to build healthy relationship dynamics with others we're less likely to feel isolated we're less likely to be consumed by shame or by fear and so that emotional intelligence and working on our emotional intelligence is also likely to contribute to less suffering when we're experiencing a mental illness like ptsd really fabulous and i love how you ended that you put your hands down like boom where's your answer kyle okay so uh dr lam who i go for in all things anxiety how can there are some of us who are just more anxious okay i have friends who are just a little more you know they're a little more anxious and i have friends who are not anxious at all how can our level of anxiousness uh impact our ability to develop higher eq great question yeah um and i would say that um it can be bi-directional um meaning that first and foremost if i'm really anxious often my brain is going to kind of go offline and it's hard for me to metacognize to think clearly about what's going on to be able to be present with what's going on to do all of the things right that were just talked about in regard to ptsd how do i understand what's happening um normalize my feelings embrace what's going on and make sense of what i've been through if i'm flooded with anxiety i'm not going to be able to do that and so high levels of anxiety can make it very difficult for people to process um be present with and notice their feelings um and so i would suggest that there's the effect on of anxiety on being able to be emotionally intelligent around our feelings and then in order to navigate our anxiety we need a level of emotional intelligence we need part of that is just straight psycho-education in my in my view emotional intelligence there are certainly some people who kind of come out of the womb you know understanding certain things and empathizing in certain ways but i do think that a lot of this is very teachable which i think is hopeful for for those of us who who may have come out with you know other strengths um and so the idea being that if i can learn about how my nervous system operates so if i can understand um what my feelings are how they would notice them in my body how what they are telling me anger lets me set a boundary guilt helps me repair it all the things that our feelings are the data that it's giving us it can be incredibly helpful but we can't always access that when we're in a high anxiety state and for those of us that are i say us as i am in this group of the kind of higher anxiety folks um before we can get to the feeling piece we actually have to have an emotional intelligence around our anxiety so understanding when i'm anxious noticing in my body what that means getting an understanding of how to regulate my anxiety depending on how high or low it is what i need so that i can then be in the state to do that deeper work of getting clear about what i'm feeling and why and so i think anxiety plays a huge role in our capacity to engage with building our emotional intelligence very interesting if you have a question for dr thessalon or dr dr christy lam please submit it below and we'll try to get to as many as possible um here's a question for both of you can we leverage our emotions well i already know the answer we can so how can we leverage our emotions in order to build eq dr judy and dr dom gave us some uh interesting uh feedback for this for a similar question i'd love to get your responses as well um dr thousand why don't we start with you what can we do how can we manage and feel our emotions to develop better eq yes it's it's a hard thing so let me darn it well then never mind if it's too difficult let's not do it not too difficult but it takes motivation and i think that's one of the underlying factors with emotional intelligence as well right we have to be motivated to engage in this process and i think for so many of us we grow up learning to shut our emotions out learning that our emotions actually get in the way of our goals instead of learning that our emotions facilitate our goals our emotions are essential for survival our emotions are beautiful and so when we sound like dr lam uh dr thuslam you're in good company yeah yeah you guys you guys must have had a conversation before this okay sorry keep going we're on the same wavelength which is nice um but i think i think if we can start to pay attention to what our emotions are telling us um that's that's kind of that that really baseline um step of developing emotional intelligence and so some of the things that we can do as dr lam was just talking about is paying attention to what's going on in our bodies um and so being able to notice and and i kind of call it like when your body is screaming at you or when your emotions are screaming at you right paying attention to when your heart is racing or um when you're noticing your body getting warm and being able to just pause and say hey something's happening here what is it and what what is my body what is my brain what is my spirit trying to tell me right now um i kind of think of emotions as little soldiers and the soldiers are there to to warn us and to protect us but if we don't listen to the single soldier that comes the whole army is going to come and then we're going to feel the impact of the entire army and so being able to start when the whole army is there and at least paying attention to that and that will build the awareness so that even when we're at if we think about a scale of like 0 to 10 when we're at a 1 or a 2 or three we're starting to notice hey i'm feeling a thing right now let me pause and think about what it is that i'm feeling um and so that first kind of noticing and pausing is really helpful then i like to pull out my emotions wheel um which i think we've talked about here before but it's it's an image um it kind of goes through the basic emotions and then it expands to give us more vocabulary to allow us to describe the nuances of our emotional experience and so if we don't have those emotions learning to use that wheel helps us figure it out and sometimes it might just be like i don't know and that's okay the more we practice the more we pull it out the more familiar we get with it so i think that's that's the next thing and then i think maybe the third thing which i find really helpful and i talk about with my clients is to figure out if you think about that scale of like 0 to 10 again in terms of intensity what does an 8 in anger look like what does a 7 in frustration look like what does a 3 in sadness look like what does you know a 5 in joy look like and being able to notice what our emotions look like at different intensities also helps us understand ourselves better because sometimes my joy at a ten looks like my sadness at a seven um the tears are there oh there you go um and if i'm not pausing to pay attention and i'm just looking at what my body is doing i might actually get confused about what it is that i'm feeling and so really being able to understand uh the nuances of our own emotional reactions and then lastly i think uh if we have no idea how to do any of this watching others can be really helpful so um if tv is the best access that you have watch people on tv watch what it looks like when they're happy when they're sad when they're angry um and notice what they're saying notice what their bodies are doing um notice what they're choosing to do and how to behave and that information might start to help you figure out what you do you might notice some similarities you might notice some patterns um and so if nothing else learn from others and use those as benchmarks to help you figure out what's going on within you you know reoccurring theme has come up twice during this panel dr dom mentioned a a packet of vocabulary words that described a variety of emotions and he said most people are very surprised that there were this many words to describe our feelings and emotions and then you just mentioned this emotional the motion wheel and i'm somebody who talks to way more psychologists and psychiatrists than i even need to um and i don't describe my emotions more than oh i feel good or i feel down that's pretty much the breadth of what i disclose which is um i i could do better and i'm not i'm not coming after myself this isn't the bully this is this is me going hey what an opportunity to dig down a little deeper and when instead of waking up and going oh i kind of feel sad today or i feel down i can go well let's really get in there and see how i'm really feeling this is very good i really appreciate this insight um dr lam a similar question for you but wherever you want to take it yeah i'm i think so many important points um just to to re-highlight i think the first point that was made that is so important is the notion that most of us learned that our feelings are a problem that they're kind of this messy um inconsequential thing that kind of gets in the way and um as you know kyle i feel like it's kind of my life's mission to destigmatize not only mental health but also feelings all feelings equal opportunity feelings that if we can see that our feelings are actually this really important data set that we learn to ignore we learn to instead get anxious or avoid that if we can start to harness this the if we can start to pay attention to those little soldiers coming in they're there to protect us to give us information to tell us how we feel about our environment on a way that's pre-conscious so our feelings come up inside of us before our conscious mind is actually aware of what's happening or what we're really feeling we can't we may not even put a label on it yet but our body is going to start to react now most of us learn to shut that down and just get anxious like immediately before we have heat in the chest that might come up with anger anxiety comes in and shuts it down immediately so it is a process of welcoming these feelings back in and that can be again a difficult process but so useful when what the information and the sensations that are coming up in our body are not to be feared are not a problem but are actually this really beautiful extra information that help us navigate the world and so i just i so appreciate that comment about the notion that that this is very different than how most of us were raised and being explicit about the fact that we are saying your feelings are not only allowed or okay they're actually wonderful and they're super useful information and this is so important and so kyle i think you also brought up i'm touching on point i was like these are such great points i'm touching on a couple of things that really hit me the other thing was what you said kyle that i think is really important as we're talking about this notion of labeling our feelings getting really clear about what's going on so we can use that information to the best of our ability to make healthy actions to to choose what we want there's two parts one is can i know me and the other is am i willing to let other people see me so there's looking in and saying do i know what i'm feeling and sometimes that part in and of itself is very difficult and that's dr lam can you can you repeat that one more time those two questions yeah so can i know me and what i'm feeling and can i let you see me and what i'm feeling so in certain types of psychotherapy we can call this the cellar door and the front door so some people may come into therapy and they may know that they're pissed at their wife or right they may have some sense of this so the seller door is open they know what's in their cellar but they're not gonna let me in because they would never say anything bad about their wife they love her but how could i ever deal with this conflict and know what these feelings mean because i'm not allowed to have feelings in front of someone else wow so there's getting to know what we feel and then can i share this with someone else because often it has been in relationship that we've been asked to shut down our feelings i may know i'm mad but mom and dad can't tolerate it so i shut that down and i'm fine i'm good i'm a little upset but it's fine so i think there's two big pieces to emotional intelligence and that is getting to know ourselves and then how do i communicate effectively with others and i often i think people misconstrue the notion that sharing my feelings with others means letting them see me in a feeling letting them see my physiology when really that's the information inside of me for me i need to know what i'm feeling and then i can speak about it in any way that i want i might be able to say i might not have to be sobbing and but be able to tell my partner you know i'm just really sad today i just can't believe what's going on and i just have been really moved by it i can speak about it and ask for what i need with anger often people feel the need to show people that they're angry the other person doesn't need to know that they're that you're angry what the person who needs to know you're angry is you that's cellar door i'm angry front door may be a communication that says hey i love you but i need to let you know this it really is making me angry that you keep you know showing up late or you know whatever the case may be i can communicate about my emotions and this is where that emotional intelligence shifts into what we might call social intelligence there's my emotional intelligence about understanding feelings and then social intelligence about how i then use that to connect with others and to build community and in my work relationships and my interpersonal relationships i i i love that i love that i it really makes me well it makes me feel more able to be with my feelings i don't know if that was the goal or purpose of it but that is what that analogy metaphor did really really fabulous dr lam um dr thousand were you about to say something i don't want to it was thanks for reading my face um you know as dr lam was talking one of the things that came to mind um because it seems like we we inspire each other um what is the concept of dialectics right that there it is possible for two realities that seem to be opposing one another to co-exist right i can love you and i can be mad at you my mom can make the best lasagna and today's lasagna can suck um it's it's allowed they're allowed to coexist but i think sometimes it feels as though we have to choose sides we have to choose one narrative and we have to stick to it but that's not the case at all we are allowed to have we are allowed to have multiple realities coexisting at once i i love this partner and i know that they are bad for me and so being able to recognize that we can feel a lot of different things at once we can have beliefs that seem oppositional but are allowed to be real for us just gives us the space to acknowledge it because if we if we force ourselves to choose one we're ignoring and dismissing and invalidating so many other things that we're thinking and that we're feeling um and so i think it's just really important to recognize that we can have multiple realities and that's that's really one of the the big foundations of dialectical behavior therapy is recognizing that we can have multiple realities much like we can have multiple feelings i can be really excited and really sad and really happy and really angry all at the same time and it doesn't have to be one or the other it can be all of them and they're all valid yeah uh i know we got to get to viewer questions but i just want to ask this selfishly yesterday i was i went to yoga with a friend and then we started talking about breath work which i've never done and he said yeah i went to this one breath work class and uh like three or four people started crying and i said yeah i've heard the same thing and i said if i was doing breath work i don't know if i would cry if there were other people there i think i would be reserved and closed off so my question to both of you or either of you is is that bad or is that just my i forget which door is which but is that just my is that just my front door or whatever yep yeah sounds like your front door and and again this is all of these things are completely individual and that everyone actually gets to decide how they want to operate in the world so some people don't want to look in their cellar and don't want to let other people in and they actually get to choose that it may result in some symptoms it may result in closed off relationships but everybody gets to decide and so it really is it's you know kyle you've heard me say this a million times but um in in individual therapy when something comes up i will often ask is it a problem and is it a problem you want to work on because if it's not a problem for you i have no right to tell you you need to change something you need to let everybody see your feelings or communicate it's really up to the individual as to whether or not it's a problem and if it's causing dysfunction in their lives or suffering or isolation those kind of things and only then can we start to look and the hope is that when we look and see that something is a problem that it's without judgment that it's not um a way to punish ourselves but to say curious i wonder why i do this and can i figure out maybe why and is there a different way that might be more adaptive all right well hey thanks for the free therapy appreciate it um let's go to some viewer questions please whoever we got dr thessalon you're up how can you find a partner that has a high eq yeah too bad that's not a tinder option or at least what are the signs of a partner with a high eq i have a hard enough time finding a friend that has this depth let alone a partner question of the decade doctor i mean if i mean if we could all just walk around being able to read each other's emotional intelligence i mean life would be so much easier although all those who have a bit of work to do in that area might find themselves feeling a little more isolated so maybe it's not a good thing um but i think if you're if you're looking for a friend or a partner recognizing someone who is able to kind of connect with you hear what you're saying someone who you feel validates your emotions is probably one of the easiest ways to recognize whether someone has emotional intelligence or i guess we all have emotional intelligence but higher emotional intelligence as dr lam was saying that person may not necessarily express their emotions or share their emotions in way that are ways that are very visible because that is their choice but someone who's able to communicate their needs to you and who's able to even kind of take a step back and pause to think about what their needs are is also a really helpful sign to tell that someone is um aware of their emotions and their emotional needs enough to be able to express those to you so someone who you feel can you know hear you and validate you and your emotions and someone who can express their needs to you i think would be a good place to start so i can already hear uh some people who have had a narcissist in their life saying well yeah but they showed me all those things you know on our first two dates and that was not really who they were is there is there anything you could point out that might exhibit authentic high eq rather than performative high eq dr lam you're shaking your head but dr thought some of you have anything yeah you know it's a really good question i think i think i i if dr lam has a better answer i will let dr lam answer this but i think part of recognizing true high eq is also looking at the dimensions of respect and mutual consideration and so if you're being manipulated or deceived you're probably not hearing that part of the self that's coming up right so you're probably not hearing needs being communicated respectfully and effectively you're probably not hearing um that support in in a really true way but i will throw it to dr lam who probably has a better answer but no i love you 100 yeah no i would agree exactly with what you said and i think that it is about respect and i think there's also a piece of this that is individuation that um we are working to be together but also to be individuals and so that means that i want to high emotional intelligence understand that you have a different mind that you have different feelings and that that can be okay and i was smiling because i will often um the the quiz that i will give my couples is can you tolerate hearing when your partner is angry with you so it's not just being able to share our emotions but emotional intelligence also means being able to receive others emotions so if somebody immediately gets defensive when you tell them hey this thing that you did made me angry right we're talking about can i share my anger on the receiving end it's really helpful and you know you have a partner with a high eq if they can say wow i hate that that made you angry i want to hear more i want to know what my role was um i have a different perspective are you open to me sharing that with you so it's i think that the the question about the narcissist is about it's not just about being able to share emotions but also receive emotions and that's the piece that we often miss i want to be able to talk about my feelings can i also hear and receive love from someone can i take that in and actually feel gratitude or feel warmth can i take in when someone's angry and not just get defensive and care and want to understand and respect the difference of our opinions or perspectives and be able to create space for that yeah really fabulous add to that if that's okay um i think that was that was fabulous dr lam and i think one of the things that we often get caught in is that kind of initial reaction right and so um when we tell our partners or we tell anybody um you know it hurt me or it made me feel angry when this thing that you did happened um our partner may initially be defensive um but that's human right and so even if that's their initial reaction being able to have them come back to us and recognize that they um reacted defensively and to take the time to really want to process that out with us want to hear the feedback and want to grow as an individual and as a couple dynamic i think also is really good to pay attention to and so if the person is kind of you know put off in that initial interaction i think a lot of us are going to see that because a lot of us again are socialized to be uncomfortable with our emotions and so giving the person a chance to hopefully come back and and figure that out with us is also helpful yeah really fabulous let's go to another question while we still have the time here this question for dr lam how can trauma and epilepsy impact or influence emotional intelligence interesting question yeah um you know i'm certainly not an epilepsy uh expert but um their epilepsy in and of itself can really create a history of medical trauma for people um that um if we are talking about grand mal seizures in social environments there can be a ton of feelings that come up around this um and and again a ton of anxiety that comes up around this so i'm not sure with this question if we're talking about medical trauma in regard to having um a seizure disorder diagnosis um but i think that anything that we have been through in our lives that is difficult that has challenged us can become part of our story that we integrate and allow us to more deeply understand our feelings for better or worse most of the deepest most insightful emotionally intelligent people that i know have been through a ton and they've had to have something to push against to work on to get to know gosh this thing is coming up and um all i'm doing is getting anxious i haven't i have to really work to kind of fit work through these feelings allow myself to open up to this again and so i think that initially a big trauma can um have us want to avoid have us want to kind of numb but if we can make that choice of deciding to do the work it really can become the nidus or the source from which we can really grow our emotional intelligence because we've got a clear um emotionally laden event and lifelong diagnosis in some people's case of having to navigate this and having to kind of really start to pay attention not only to physical cues but also emotional cues and this can go hand in hand for growth or we can kind of shut down and so the hope is that when we have something that has been traumatic in our lives that if we can have support and we can engage with ourselves in a way that allows us to use that as um again a source of growth and a source of okay this from this place forward i can learn about how i'm feeling i can learn about my body and i can start to integrate this story into my life mm-hmm um really great we're going to get to one more question i do want to thank the 135 of you who pressed that little thumbs up button it helps us spread this video to more people all of your support really means a lot to me and it really does not only do the doctors work very very hard to bring us this great information and insight but there are a lot of people behind the scenes who are all on this live panel right now but you don't see him we got wave work in the camera we got bridget monitoring comments we got mandy taking your questions um we thank you for helping us spread this information we can only do it if people watch and you help spread this to more people to watch let's go to our final question this question is for both of y'all i'm looking for a better term than resilience to help my colleagues with wellness and mental health at work it seems to have become a bigger trigger word for it's your fault ah i've tried using the term quote individual internal factors that help you manage stress and sometimes that goes over better any other ideas how to address this topic dr lam why don't we start with you and then we'll go to dr hussell sure um so if i'm hearing the crest question correctly kind of ways that we can describe what it means to be resilient within the workplace without putting blame without putting um a stigma or or telling people just to push through um and so i think that we are if we're not building resilience skills um i think that this topic of the talk is actually a perfect way to talk about this that we want to um build our emotional intelligence we want to build our capacity to engage with each other in an effective way so very often when people are squeamish around mental health terms or or even kind of catch phrases that are popular right now we want to get clear about what we're actually talking about doing and so being really specific can be helpful about that to be able to say what are the skills or what is it that i'm talking about and what how is this going to serve us as we move forward often people who start to start these conversations in the workplace can get mired in people who maybe their front door is really closed and locked and they don't want to talk about emotions they don't want to talk about feelings they don't want you to go woo or talk anything so they're right they're going to be we're going to need to use a different type of language and so this is where our own emotional intelligence can can be very helpful because if i'm talking to a bunch of um accountants right i'm going to talk about calculating the different factors that are coming i'm going to use the word calculating i'm going to use language that's going to help them see in their own train of thinking why this would be useful to them and so we have to find the hook if we're trying to help people understand if i'm talking to a physician who's really kind of science-based i'm going to use analogies that have to do with bacteria or you know we want to open the abscess so that the healing can happen so that the person can actually relate and doesn't feel stigmatized or feels like they have to open up in any way that they don't want to so it's really important that we use the right language to meet the people where we are so i don't have enough information about this specific situation but in a work environment working towards positive goals what we want to get out of this may be made way more well received then we're doing this thing really badly and you're part of what's doing it badly people will start to get defensive so if we talk about hey we all want to make this workplace a healthy thriving environment i learned about this thing called emotional intelligence where we can start to kind of use some tools to communicate a little bit better make sure we're setting our boundaries you can you know what your boss or your hr department what they care about and these things fit in the in that in those pathways but we have to find the language that help can and that helps connect to the desired outcome yeah i mean i i'm not making the correlation completely here with what i'm about to say but when i used to i used to be an animal trainer and when i would explain animal training techniques to people i would first want to know what their job was because i was like i've got to use something that's in your wheelhouse and honestly if you if you're going to try to explain something to me you got to know something about me because i need the metaphor the analogy the vocabulary it really is helpful dr thuslam anything to add on that yeah you know when i heard the or when when i heard you read the question kyle one of the things that i thought about is the accusation that sometimes happens right you need to be more resilient you need to come at things like it's the the fact that you're upset about this or you can't handle the stress is a you problem um when when so often it's not right and so i think that it could also be a reason why the term resilient becomes a bit of a trigger word in a workplace because if people are you know using it in an accusatory way it can be really harmful and without or they think and dr i've interrupted you a lot tonight and i do apologize for that but um you just get me excited about stuff or they think when they hear resilience they hear their definition of resilience is grit and they go well i've been gritting it for 18 months i can't grit anymore and so we being clear with what we do mean by resilient would be critical for me to understand that if i was the employee getting this feedback okay sorry dr go ahead that's okay yeah i think you're absolutely right kyle i think when when we're talking about resilience having that common understanding of what it is and because it's so popularized now i think a lot of people do think about it as like the suck it up and keep going kind of resilience when that's not really what we mean most of the time when we're talking about resilience and so i think and again i don't know the context of this in this particular workplace but i think being able to talk about mutual respect and collaboration and trust within the workplace helps us identify where there are opportunities for learning where there are opportunities for better communication and and those exercises help build the emotional intelligence of a team right it's it's really exploring that relationship dynamics part of emotional intelligence and why while that requires people to be motivated to engage in that process um switching the language to more hr type language might give a bit of an opportunity to really explore um if it is coming from an accusational perspective where those accusations are coming from is it um you know a person who's using their power and privilege to to bully others is it someone who is misinterpreting what's going on in the workplace but if we don't pause to have those conversations if we don't have trust in the workplace we don't have respect in the workplace then terms like resilience can be used to further marginalize further belief further isolate thank you both so much for being here and sharing this earlier today i had a a youtube live with dr lam and i think during that video i said or somebody made the point of saying something like so and so always makes me feel this way and i brought up that i don't really love it when people say someone makes me feel this way so i can't say you two make me feel good about doing my job but i will say that i feel good doing this when i get to speak with people like you so thank you both for being here it's just fabulous it just helps my life i just had 90 minutes of just fabulous insight and education so thank you so much both of you always a pleasure kyle thanks so much for having us thank you and as for all of you thank you we went to a 135 to 199 of those little thumb up things that's pretty good so thank you all who have supported this video in this channel in med circle over the years we have a few more days of mental health month left we have some great offers and specials over on medcircle.com or watch.medcircle.com or on the med circle app so there's plenty of ways to access more of these types of q and a's with doctors educational series and more thank you all for being here i so appreciate you i wish i could look at every single one of you in the face and say thank you but i'll just look right at this camera instead and say thank you remember whatever you're going through you got this

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 114,674

Keywords: emotional intelligence, emotions, eq, emotional intelligence skills, emotional intelligence leadership, developing emotional intelligence, high emotional intelligence, psychology, feelings, how to master your emotions, empathy, how to control your emotions, self improvement, personal growth, self awareness, personality, personality types, mental health, mental illness, dr ramani, judy ho, domenick sportelli, medcircle, kyle kittleson, youtube, video, interview, depression, anxiety

Id: vbKR7LDRWdw

Length: 92min 36sec (5556 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022