5 Ways Secure Attachment Develop Emotional Intelligence

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this video on how secure attachment develops emotional intelligence. I'm your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. Let's start out by reviewing what emotional intelligence is. Emotional intelligence is your ability to identify your own emotions, to be able to feel something and put a label on it accurately and say, I'm scared, I'm angry, I'm depressed, I'm happy, I'm curious, I'm motivated. There are a lot of different feelings there. It's also your ability to identify your triggers and vulnerabilities for those emotions. What things trigger what things cause you to feel happy, angry, scared, depressed, curious? The list and what are your vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities really apply more to to distressful emotions? What situations like being hungry or sleep deprived or in pain make you more vulnerable, more likely to have a overly strong reaction to something that happens? And normally you would react with a three, but because you were already vulnerable, because you were already under distress, you, you reacted to this situation with a 7, and then you regret it. So people who are emotionally intelligent are aware of their vulnerabilities and they are mindful of them and note them and are able to take steps in order to prevent the possible distress. So, for example, and I, if you wake up in the morning and you've got a migraine and obviously you don't feel well and you've got to go to work, you know probably that you're going to have a little bit more difficulty being patient. You may be a little bit more irritable. Therefore, what steps can you take to prevent yourself from biting somebody's head off at the office? What steps can you take to, to help yourself feel more productive and less hopeless and helpless and angry and anxious? The next component of emotional intelligence is your ability to regulate your emotions and maintain motivation. Regulating emotions is not just about tamping down or avoiding or managing distressful emotions. It's also about increasing positive emotions. How do you increase your motivation, your excitement, your happiness, your curiosity? Those are all things we want to increase. And how do you tolerate distress when it comes your way and then deal with emotions like anger and depression and sadness and grief? People with high emotional intelligence know strategies, have strategies to be able to do that. They are able to sort of alter the temperature of the bathwater, if you want to think about it that way. They are able to turn up the cold and turn down the hot. If you think of cold as being the happy and hot as being the painful, I don't know. But that is something they're able to do. And the third component we're really going to talk about for emotional intelligence is people's ability to identify and respond appropriate appropriately to other people's emotions. You're able to see somebody and get an idea of, oh, they're probably angry, it looks like they're sad, it looks like they're happy. Pretty standard emotions. You know, we don't have to get super down in the weeds with getting incremental in emotions and then ability to respond appropriately. If somebody is displaying sadness, being able to empathize, how do you respond to somebody who's sad? One of the steps that a lot of caregivers use is to say, well, how would you want somebody to respond to you when you're sad? How would you want somebody to respond to you when you're in pain? It doesn't mean that everybody's going to want you to respond that way, but it gives you a starting point. You can empathize. You can ask, what is it that I can do to help you feel better? So how is all that created from secure attachment? Well, you remember my mnemonic for secure attachment is consistency, responsiveness, attention, validation, encouragement and safety. So how does consistency really help the person develop emotional intelligence? When a caregiver is consistent with noticing how their child is feeling, what their child is expressing, then the child is consistently getting feedback. When I start feeling this way, my caregiver says that I'm anxious or my caregiver uses this word. And that helps children start developing that emotional vocabulary and that mindful awareness of the early warning signs of anger, anxiety, depression, happiness, excitement. Those can be very, very helpful as we grow as adults. It's also important for us to be mindfully self aware and securely attached to ourself in order to pay attention to, you know, what are those feelings? Noticing those feelings early now in our childhood, secure attachment, hopefully we learned emotional vocabulary, emotional vocabulary to assign to those feelings. And hopefully our caregiver helped us develop tools to deal with it. But right now we're just on consistency and that's being consistently self aware and mindful. Our emotions, of our motivations, of our triggers and vulnerabilities. That sounds familiar. Of our strengths and weaknesses and our impact on others. People who are emotionally intelligent recognize how they impact other people. They recognize, when I walk into the room, this person kind of shies away or this person gets really excited. They recognize their impact on other people. When children are growing up, they start learning these things because their caregiver responds. Their caregiver says, oh, it seems like you're feeling anxious. It seems like you're feeling disorganized right now. Whatever word the caregiver uses and communicates with the child that I'm noticing how you're feeling, that can really help people develop a sense of self awareness. Responsiveness is the next concept in secure attachment. That caregiver doesn't just notice and go, wow, it seems like you're feeling really anxious. Good luck to you. The caregiver hopefully is able to say, wow, it seems like you're feeling really anxious. Would you like to go on a walk? Would you like a hug? Let's practice chewing gum and blowing bubbles. Something that can help the child get into their wise mind, that can help them tolerate that distress. We're not trying to make it go away, we're just helping them move around until they can let that adrenaline bleed off a little bit and get into their wise mind. So distress tolerance, they learn then impulse control and delay of gratification is another thing they learn. Once the caregiver has said, all right, you have, we went on a walk. You seem to be a little bit calmer now, or you seem to be in your thinking mind. That makes a lot more sense to kids. Let's talk about what's going on. By virtue of interrupting the process, when the child starts to get anxious or angry, the caregiver steps in, identifies the emotion or helps the child identify the emotion, helps the child implement distress tolerance skills. The child is learning impulse control. They're not able to yell, to scream, to hit, to bite, whatever response that child might normally use, which can be really helpful. And then the caregiver helps them identify coping skills. The caregiver is going to respond to the child and say, all right, you seem really angry. What do you think is the best step in this situation? What do you think could happen? They may try to help the child take the other person's perspective. How would you feel if Sammy did that to you? Helping the child process this and then figure out, how do I cope with this situation? Situation, what can I do? What is the best response option in this situation? And motivational skills also kind of come under responsiveness. It comes under a couple places, but responsiveness helps people feel capable when they recognize they can feel something, they can think something, and then they can figure out what to do. It helps them feel empowered, it helps them feel safer, which helps with motivation. It also helps them recognize and be responsive. Hey, I'm not real motivated to do my math homework. What is the best coping skill? What is the best response option for that. Validation is another component of secure attachment, empathy and awareness of others emotions and needs. While maintaining personal boundaries is again crucial and both empathy and awareness of others emotions and needs are part of emotional intelligence. A lot of people have difficulty setting boundaries. They have difficulty validating other people's emotions if they don't share them. Validation can be very helpful. When caregivers are working with children, the child may feel very, very angry or overwhelmed or terrified about something and the caregiver is looking at it going, eh, I don't get it. However, it's important to validate that that child feels the way they feel right then now, then you can move on to responding to it. What can we do in order to improve the next moment? But for children, because they've had so many fewer experiences than we have, what is really not an issue, a non issue for an adult may be a huge issue for a child because they don't have as many things to compare it against. And it's important that we don't invalidate them. It's important that we help help them feel supported and recognize, yeah, this hurt hurts a lot right now and I will help you work through it. And encouragement. This is people's ability to respond appropriately. In a secure attachment, the caregiver has helped the child identify. Caregiver notices, is mindful of early warning signs or early signs of a particular feeling. The caregiver helps the child get into their wise mind if necessary, tolerate distress if necessary, and then understand what caused me to feel this way and what are some possible things that I can do to address it. And then encouragement comes in the form of saying, all right, now you know what you can do, let's go do it. You got this, I have faith in you. And that is also part of responding appropriately. Not doing it for somebody, not telling them that they're wrong or invalidating them, but communicating assertively with them that you recognize how they feel and that you believe they have the ability to take the next step. Which can help with motivation as well. Same thing as adults. When we encourage ourselves, we're increasing motivation. We're saying I can do this or I really don't want to do this. However, I know how to modulate my emotions, I know how to increase my emotions to get it done and how awesome will that be when it's finally finished? Emotional intelligence is essential for secure attachments and secure attachments help people develop emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is developed with self and other interaction. When the caregiver provides consistency, the caregiver is consistently aware of their own thoughts, wants, needs, feelings and can communicate that. They say I'm feeling tired, I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling however you don't have to feel that way but but they're able to acknowledge it for the child modeling that awareness modeling that mindfulness and they're able to help children start identifying early warning signs or early signs of emotions, label them and then understand their triggers, their vulnerabilities and possible coping responses. Responsiveness is when the caregiver can either model if they're experiencing distress or help the child figure out okay how do I get into my wise mind? How do I de escalate so I can think clearly and what are my options here? Validation helps people develop emotional awareness and the awareness that they can have different reactions, different feelings to things than other people do and that's okay. And encouragement helps them develop assertiveness and motivation and learn how to talk to themselves nicely assertively as well as motivate themselves in the future.