320 - Growing Our Emotional Intelligence

Welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast, helping you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. Happy Tuesday, or whatever it. Whatever day I guess it is for you. I'm your host, Trevor Windsor, and you're listening to episode 320 of the Pure Desire podcast. Here joining me as always. Okay, real quick, I didn't have a stroke, but here joining me as always is my co host, Nick Stumbo, who's.

Your friend who likes to play Bing Bong. Bing Bong.

Yes.

His rocket makes you yell hooray. Bing Bong, Bing Bong who's the best in every way and wants to sing the song to say Bing Bong, Bing Bong.

Inside Out. Bing Bong, who is just a great. One of the best scenes in Inside out is when Sadness goes over to Bing Bong and he's crying because he's crying Candy. Right? I don't know if you remember that, but his tears are candy. All these different kinds of candy. It's awesome. And Sadness sits down with Bing Bong and says, I'm really sorry about how you're feeling. It's the first time Joy sees the purpose of sadness in that movie. So great. That's great. That's so good. Let's talk about why you said, why Inside Out? Why Bing Bong specifically? Today we had Heather Colbon, who's our content manager, and we talked about emotional intelligence. Really? The idea of how to grow in our emotional intelligence.

Yes. Well, not only is Inside Out a great movie and Bing Bong a great character, he's the imaginary friend that she had growing up and would play all her games with. And I think a lot of what came out in today's conversation is that as children or when we see children, there's a lot of freedom to experience emotion, to have emotion. But many of us as children learned that those emotions weren't accepted in the adult world or were treated as weak or inappropriate. And we didn't get great training of how to recognize and utilize emotions towards growth and health in our life. And so today's conversation about emotional intelligence is, I think, reattaching kind of to our childhood selves of I feel a lot of things, and that doesn't mean I have to yell or shout or act like a child, but it means I can experience emotions and then in my adult world, know what to do with them, know where they're coming from, and really utilize them as part of my healing journey and the relational health that I'm trying to develop around me. So I love the conversation. And we do mention it in the episode if you need a little help with emotional intelligence, maybe go back, watch Inside Out a couple of times and through this lens of what did I learn about my emotions? There's great insights in there. So absolutely. There you go. Bing bong away.

That sounded weird. But anyways, this episode is super good. And one of the things I think that you don't think about it this way, but when you join a pure desire group or a recovery group, or even a healing from betrayal group, you don't think, oh, I'm gonna learn emotional intelligence. But that really is part of the process and we talk about it today. And one of the things that we offer people is online groups in order to give them that opportunity. So maybe kind of connect those two for people.

Yeah, it is a bigger part of the process probably than most people expect. I remember when I was first being encouraged, aka required by Dr. Ted Roberts to do a group, that my feeling was, why do I need this group? It's like 10 months long, two hour meetings a week. Like what could possibly take that long to figure out how to stop looking at pornography? Isn't it just changing this bad behavior in my life? But then I go into group and you start to unpack all of this stuff that you've been feeling and not really aware of and see how it's been driving your life and not just into that unhealthy behavior or into sin patterns, but into all the kind of stuff that was driving me. And when I saw that, it was like, wow, okay, group is way more than I expected. And so if you've not experienced a pure desire group, that's a dynamic that you're going to encounter that's going to be life changing in ways you didn't anticipate. And so we'd love for you to be able to join a group in your church, but we recognize that a majority of people don't have a church near them that's running groups right now. We hope one day that everyone does, but until then, online groups are a great option where you can experience a pure desire group with people from all over the country that are in the same place. You are of wanting greater health in their life, whether to overcome that problematic behavior or to overcome the trauma and betrayal you felt because of someone else's behavior. Those groups are very, very powerful experiences. And yes, emotional intelligence is gonna be a big part of one. So it's worth the journey when you're ready for it.

Yep. So if you wanna check out the groups that we have listed and join one. You can go to PureDesire.org groups. Subscribe to the podcast. We're on all the major platforms. Also, follow us earedesirepdmi and with that, here's our time with Heather Kolb on growing our emotional intelligence. Heather, glad to have you back. Thanks for being here.

Thank you for having me back.

So if you've been on the healing recovery journey for at least a few minutes, you know how important emotional awareness is. But included in that is this thing called emotional intelligence. And I think that that's something that's been a buzzword for a while now, but today we're gonna look at what it is, how to grow in it, and why it's important in our healing journey. But again, because, and this is what I've found is things that are buzzwords can oftentimes sort of be ambiguous. It's like, well, yeah, I think I kind of heard it once here used this way. What exactly does emotional intelligence mean?

So this is the idea that we basically are able to perceive, recognize, identify, and live in an emotional state which then helps us to navigate life and relationships better. And even within that umbrella, that this is not only an emotional awareness, it's a self awareness of me being able to recognize and identify my emotions, be able to manage my emotions in a way that is healthy, which contributes to what motivates us as people. It contributes to our ability to have empathy. So being able to recognize another person's emotional state and then also use all of this kind of as information to navigate life and relationships.

Yeah. If we think about the difference between awareness and intelligence, I can have an awareness that that's an algebra problem in math. But intelligence would be actually knowing how to solve it and understand the equation.

I hate intelligence.

And involves algebra, by the way. Well, when it comes to our emotions, I think many of us maybe stop at awareness of man. I'm angry. I realize I'm really angry. But if we can't unpack, well, okay, what triggered it? How might that connect to ways that we've often become angry? And where in our past or our trauma history might we have a soft spot that creates triggers of anger around that? And then also some idea of what do I do in a healthy way when I'm feeling this? What can I do to manage this emotion in a way that won't cause hurt or pain or destruction to others? Well, now we're talking about intelligence. So just being aware of our emotions is certainly healthy and it's a starting point. But if I can't ever go any deeper in the equation than awareness, I'm really not gonna get very far. And so it's looking at how does awareness translate to being proactive to utilize or recognize emotions in a way that creates continued health and growth for me and for people around me.

Yeah, I feel like intelligence is really properly using information. And so I feel like that's where it's. I can input all of what's going on emotionally. And then with that information, I know what to do with it. I know what steps I need to take. Because I know for me, growing up in an information equals transformation perspective, that doesn't actually work. And so it's not just to your point, not just an awareness thing or not just the information, I do have emotions or this is how I feel. It's also knowing what to do with it after that, for sure.

So for a lot of people on the recovery journey, they're looking to stop a behavior or maybe to stop the pain that they're feeling because of their spouse's behavior. And they maybe haven't put together. Why would emotions and emotional intelligence be part of that recovery journey? So that's the question. Why is emotional intelligence important on the recovery or healing journey? What significance does it have for us in that process?

I really love this question because if you know anything about people who end up in recovery, so people who struggle with maybe an addictive prone personality, a lot of times they got to where they are because they had an experience or they had emotions that kept coming up. And their method to avoid those emotions or get away from that feeling came from their acting out behavior. And in the same way somebody who has experienced betrayal, then they're dealing with all of these emotions, maybe emotions that they've never really felt before and an emotional overload. And so I think that when you look at those populations of people and understanding how emotional intelligence could benefit them, I think that there's a lot to explore here. And especially because if you look at the way that we almost naturally want to avoid emotions that are uncomfortable, that just seems to be something that's innate in our human experience. And yet we're all emotional and we all have opportunity to not only feel emotion, but then to express that in a way that contributes to relationship, then I think that understanding emotional intelligence becomes really, really important. Even though it's probably going to be a slow process no matter where you are on the continuum of just being able to first off raise that awareness, which often comes from being willing to sit in the discomfort of sometimes emotions that are overwhelming. And it takes a lot of practice and a lot of time. But then again, it's worth it because it not only helps us to understand ourselves and maybe where those emotions come from or why it is that I tend to run away from or avoid these emotions, but then also to just recognize that, okay, if I know this about myself, then how is that going to help me in the future when it comes to maybe challenging relationships or even just relationships in general.

An illustration I've heard before is that our emotions inform us the way that the icons on the dashboard in our car inform us that, okay, there's something going on here. There's something else that's at play. And I think that I like the analogy because that tells me that there's something going on that is gonna need some attention. Like, someone's gonna need to look at something like the check engine light. Oh, my gosh. Just. I hate that freaking light. Or the maintenance. My car, for whatever reason, has a maintenance required. You look in the manual, it doesn't tell you what maintenance required means. And so it's like, okay, do I just take my car in and just, well, do maintenance? You know, I think that that's a good. That's even a good word for it, is that there is some emotional maintenance that needs to take place. God, that was a great illustration. I walked, right? But I just think that that's really important to view it that way. Having emotional intelligence is being able to identify, okay, there's something going on that needs some effort and some work here. And a lot of that has to do with our wounds and the pains that we have and the experiences that have shaped who we are, both good and bad. Because you know what? I love the way you, even at the beginning of your answer, had that. It's emotions that are uncomfortable for us, not negative emotions. There are non negative emotions. There are emotions that we can perceive as negative, but we still need to process that because they're telling us what's going on inside.

Well, unfortunately, a lot of us treat negative emotions or emotions we perceive as negative. The way we treat that check engine light in our car, we get that little piece of black tape and we put it over the light so we don't have to see it anymore.

How do you reset that light?

Ignore that. Let's avoid it until it causes in our cars a drivability problem. They're like, oh, well, the car's not working. I better get it checked out. We can dismiss the light because we don't understand it. We're tired of seeing it. And I think we treat emotions that way at times. If we haven't understood them, it's just like, I'm going to push that down. I'm going to ignore it. And yet the truth is, something's still going on. And we've used the illustration in a lot of our materials of the iceberg that behaviors are really the above the waterline part of our life. They're what can be seen. It's what we're experiencing. But that's not the only thing going on. And when we talk about emotional intelligence, it's that invitation to go below the waterline of our life, to look at what's driving my behaviors and to see that my behaviors are a response or an outcome to things I'm feeling and experiencing in a deeper way. And as I gain an understanding of what my emotions are, where they're coming from, what's driving them, now I'm developing an intelligence that will inform my behaviors. And so when it comes to the recovery journey, especially if someone is newer listening to this podcast and you're totally focused on changing that behavior, we get it, and we want to help you change that behavior. But if you don't go below the waterline and look at what's driving it, where it's coming from, you're not going to have much success changing that behavior long term. And so that's why emotional intelligence is just absolutely critical in the recovery journey for both the struggler and the betrayed side as well.

Yeah. So what are some of the reasons then that we lack emotional intelligence in you guys experience? What have you seen as potential hurdles that get in the way of us growing in emotional intelligence?

So I think that sometimes if people are not raised in an environment where emotions are an accepted part of the behavior in the home, the church.

Oh, sorry.

Well. Or if it's just something where people are not given the opportunity to express emotion or dig into that, I think that that for a lot of us, ends up being something that we then, as adults have to learn on our own, that what is this supposed to look like? Is it okay for me to have these feelings? Is it okay for me to say this out loud? But I think that also the hurdles are the emotions that become so big and so overwhelming and so constant that the work required to get to the other side of it or the work required to explore it or have it even have more meaning to a person, sometimes that just is too much. And it's like, I don't even know where to start. And I know that for me personally, this was something that I had to learn when I was in counseling. So for my eating disorder, and my marriage was a mess, and I had gotten so used to just, like, shutting off emotion that then my counselor was like, okay, we're gonna explore this, and we're gonna. You know. Cause you need to feel these things for you to be able to recognize it and then heal from it. And so then she was like, I just want you to give yourself the opportunity to feel things this week. And so, of course, then I was like, okay, I can do that. But then it was like someone had turned on this faucet and a floodgate. And I had so many emotions at one time, and I couldn't process anything, and I was scaring my kids because I was just crying all the time. And so then I had to go back and say, okay, you broke me, and you need to help fix me. But it was more of just having this idea that, okay, it's not good for any of us to feel all of the emotions all at one time, because that's not productive. And so she. At this season of my life, she just kind of trained me to say, okay, so if you can isolate one feeling, and then, like, you were taking a jar off a shelf that has that feeling, so hold that and just for, like, three minutes, and then you can put the jar back on the shelf and then be done with it for the day. And that was helpful for me and my temperament to just allow myself to feel it from. For a few minutes and feel the discomfort of it, but then not carry the discomfort for the rest of the week. And so that tool, for me, was really helpful. But a lot of times I think that, especially if we're in a situation where discovery has just happened or we've just had this big traumatic event that the feelings, they just all come and happen at one time, and we don't know how to sort through them or make sense of them. And we also don't know where to go to get help for that. So I think that those are some of the things that happen just naturally as part of our life experience.

Yeah, I would just echo that. That many of us grew up in environments where emotions were not welcomed or celebrated, and we may have learned a pattern of ignoring them or stuffing them down, even to the point that we maybe feel like, well, I'm not really an emotional person, when the truth is we do experience emotions. We've just so become adept at ignoring and stuffing them. We don't really know how to feel them. And so this might be a process. It might take time to relearn and unlearn patterns that have been there for a long, long time. And that doesn't mean, I think another dynamic of this is if we grew up in environments where being more stoic was celebrated, kind of that stiff upper lip environment, or maybe we're in a profession like the military or medicine where being kind of non emotional is necessary for doing our job. I would just point out we're not saying that to have emotional intelligence means that now you just become this overtly emotional person, that everywhere you go you're, you know, your emotions are hanging out. They're like, it's okay to, in general, if you value, I like being kind of a stoic, non emotional presence in a room, that's okay. But being aware you still have the emotions, you're still experiencing them, even if you don't need to or want to verbally or publicly express them to still develop that intelligence of I'm feeling something, I'm experiencing something, where is it coming from? What do I do with it? You can still function in non emotional ways with emotional intelligence. And so if that has been your environment, you grew up. Emotions are not seen as a positive thing. It doesn't mean changing the way you do life externally. It just means changing the way you understand what's going on inside of you so that you can move towards greater health and I think living in the kind of ways you really want to.

Yeah, I'm going through a program right now called Positive Intelligence. And just this morning, the guy, his name's Shirzad, he was talking about how we oftentimes want to control things. And he uses this illustration of like, instead of being a controller, be a surfer. You can't really control the way, but what you can do is you can ride it. And I think one of the things that we oftentimes, I think experience or feel or fear is that our emotions are gonna last forever and they don't. If you get angry, kind of allow yourself to feel that and ride that wave and then, you know, it'll subside. Like you're not gonna be angry for three weeks straight. I mean, maybe I don't know your life, that sounds stressful, but I think that looking at it that way and I think we have that misunderstanding. And I know for me a hurdle was not hearing emotions talked about in the church. So they're bad. So I have to control them, I have to put my hands around them, I have to push them down and knowing that it is okay to ride the wave of my emotions because God created me to do that. He literally gave me the ability to feel these emotions. And so I think that's a hurdle. Excuse me, a hurdle for me that I know a lot of people have experienced is the way that the church did or didn't talk about emotions. I remember a mentor of mine, I've said this before, but a mentor of mine was like, you say I feel a lot. Stop saying that. Say, I think. And for me, I was like, okay, got it. No more feeling. No more feeling. No more feeling. And a lot of my life was shaped by that. And so I'm kind of trying to lean back in. Don't just think, feel, do both.

Yeah, it can be giving ourselves permission.

Totally.

So, like in many topics, Heather, it can be helpful when we think about how something impacts not just us, but people around us. So talk a little bit through that lens of emotional intelligence. In what ways does our emotional intelligence impact people around us? Positively or negatively? Or a lack of emotional intelligence? Maybe we could put it that way. Yeah.

So this is a great question. And I think it goes a lot to the self awareness piece of this model or of having a higher level of emotional intelligence is just recognizing that what I have going on in my life is gonna show up in what I do and what I say to the people around me. In the same way that you can think of it almost like reciprocal interaction, is that when we see somebody, especially somebody that we're familiar with, when we see them with kind of a frown on their face or a sad face, we will have a tendency to mimic that face or mimic that emotion. And I think that there's a. To a certain extent, emotions tend to be kind of contagious that way. And so. And so the people that were around all the time, right. If somebody in your home comes home and they're in a bad mood, you can almost like clockwork, see how long it takes for that mood to then trickle through the entire family. And then everybody else is in rare form. Right. Whereas then the same thing happens if somebody comes home and they're excited or happy about something, then that becomes contagious. And spreads. And so just even having that level of awareness to say that if I have something going on internally with me that I'm processing some kind of feelings, then how am I going to not only use that information, but also communicate that information to the people that I'm around? And so I know that for me, I have a tendency just with my personality type to. When I am in a funk about something, I go in my head. But yet you can still tell by my expressions or my lack of.

She does this a lot. Hmm.

And my lack of communication, you know? And so then. But then my husband will say, are you okay? Are we okay? Did I do something? And it's like, nope, sorry. I'm just. In my head, I had this other thing happen. And so I'm just processing that. But even just being able to recognize that, okay, I'm in a funk about something, but I don't necessarily want this to trickle down to all the people that I'm around. So how am I going to responsibly manage my emotions, take responsibility for my emotions, and do my best to make sure that it's not gonna land on the people around me.

And you, I will say this. We were working together for six years, and you do that consistently, even here at work. Well, you will say, hey, I'm in a funk right now. I don't really know why. So if I come off that way, just know it's not towards you. I've got something going on. And we're all just like, okay, let's do it. I'm glad she's working from home today. No, but I think that that's totally true. And I think. And one of the other arenas is parenting. I think of just my kids. Like, my lack of emotional intelligence can spew right out onto them. I remember listening to Kurt Thompson was on a podcast called Dadville, and he was talking about this. That specifically a dad. A father, when he walks into a room, can completely change the emotional dynamic based on his mood and his. And he was even talking about it at, like, a biological neuroscientific level. And. And I think that that's something that we need to consider, that our limitations are going to affect the people in our lives, specifically our kids. I remember growing up, I saw my dad cry one time. And if you were to look at my life, I cry a lot less than I bet everyone else does. I really, like. I really. There are days where I wish I could cry. I really. Well, it's actually most days I wish I could cry, but I have a really hard time with it. And I think a lot of that.

I think I'll help you with that. Okay, cool.

I'm gonna scoot this way. Okay. So I feel threat, but I think that that was a learned behavior, though, that I didn't see it in my house. I saw it from my mom. So it felt like something that was feminine, but I didn't see it from my dad, so I didn't feel like it was something that was masculine. And so I think that our kids pick up on that stuff. So to be aware that our emotional intelligence, or lack thereof, can really impact them and their trajectory as kids.

Yeah, we talk about it in another session at our conferences about mirror neurons that we've got that part of our brain that I'm picking up from you, how I should act and behave, especially with those that I trust am in relationship with.

With.

And I think that's a humbling, challenging part of life, parenting especially. But really, any marriage or relationship, close friendship is like, I am part of creating the environment around me, whether I intend to or not. And if we see that our behaviors are byproducts of our thoughts and feelings, those deeper things, then I'm always impacting others by my either emotional intelligence or lack thereof. And I think parenting is a great example. Prior to my pure desire journey, I know that I would get busy and overwhelmed and I'd get short with my kids or critical or sarcastic, and I would just excuse it till I'm really busy. But I've learned that, well, it's not just busyness. There's usually a fear that's creating my overwhelmed feeling, either a fear of failure, fear of not being ready, fear of not being good enough that now drives the anxiety I'm feeling and pushes it onto other people and being able to recognize it. And like you've talked about, Heather, at times, say to my kids, like, I'm sorry for the way I treated you because it wasn't about you. And it's not just that I was busy. It's that I'm worried about this, and I'm letting that worry kind of consume me, and it's making me react in ways that are not very positive. Well, I could never do that before because it's like, well, I'm busy. What do you expect? Like, leave me alone. And almost justifies bad behavior because of my circumstances. And yet it was never truly the circumstances. It was always the emotions underneath it. So I just think that's an invitation. Here is the healthier I get in terms of emotional intelligence, the better I'm going to get at relationships. And I'm not saying that perfection is the goal or performance is the goal in relationship, but I think we all want healthy relationships. And that's a byproduct in my opinion of emotional intelligence.

Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's really clear already from just our Sharing the three of us, that it is possible to grow in emotional intelligence. But how do we do that? What does that look like?

I think that it starts first with that awareness, that self awareness piece is that if we haven't invested in ourselves enough to learn emotion, be able to label it, be able to call it what it is, and even in the layers of emotion, that that really has to come first. And especially with like we've talked about with children, that's a great opportunity because children tend to maybe, obviously, let me see. Children tend to be dysregulated emotionally more often than adults in an obvious way, but it's a great opportunity. I do too. That's why I was being kind of careful about that in general.

Okay, got it.

I guess the adults are better at masking what they're feeling. And so. But children don't have a tendency to not do that. And so when they're feeling emotional about something, it just comes out. And it's a great opportunity to sit down and have that conversation. Because a lot of parents, just because it can be unnerving, will say, are you hurt? Well, if you're not hurt, stop crying, you know, and it's like, well, it's not really that easy because it has to do with internal pain, not always external pain, you know, and so just being able to sit down with your kid and say, you know, hey, buddy, what's going on with you? What are you feeling? What are you, you know, what are you thinking? What's. Because we'll investigate a lot and will invest a lot in that relationship when we take time to learn that. But we can't ask somebody else in our life to have emotional intelligence when we don't have it, you know, and it just is us being aware, us being able to manage our own emotions and then through that process, being able to be empathetic. So when you talk about how do we, when you talk about how do we actually develop emotional awareness, part of it comes from just being willing to sit and listen to somebody else talk. Like, have no agenda, not even in your head, but just eye contact, listening, fully invested. I think that that is one of the best ways that you can start to develop emotional awareness.

I think that's so great. And I've recognized conversations where I need to do that mid conversation, and I can ask internally that question, like, why am I feeling maybe really upset or bored or distracted, and if I can name it, and then sometimes it's appropriate to bring it into the conversation like you have done in your meetings. That Trevor brought up of saying, I'm sorry, I'm just really concerned about a meeting after this. And so if I appear distracted, I apologize. I'm really trying to be present, but, man, my brain just keeps jumping to that. So I apologize. It's just helped me understand why am I not able to really engage in this conversation. So I really recommend that. I think we've got a few tools at our disposal that have helped a lot. We talk around here about the faster scale quite a bit, and the faster scale really is an emotional awareness inventory that can lead to emotional intelligence. Because every phase of the scale, we're asking the question, how do I think and feel? And I know for a lot of men in group, in particular, early on, you ask, how do you feel? Say, I don't know. And I've told people it's okay to just guess. Like, guess, what do you think you were feeling angry? Because 90% of the time you're going to come pretty close to, I think I was feeling overwhelmed by this choice or this fear. Like, that's a great. I was feeling very anxious because of this. Okay, you're starting to. Even in guessing, because if we've been so attuned to pushing emotions aside or ignoring them and someone says, well, how do you feel? Like, I don't know. And that can be an honest answer. Well, start to take a stab at it. What would a reasonable person in this circumstance likely to be feeling? What would you guess it is? You're probably going to come closer to what you were feeling than you thought. But one other tool that I've used, and I think has been in our Christian heritage for centuries, is something called the daily examine. And it's a practice of just at the end of your day or the beginning, looking at the last 24 hours and asking the question of consolation. The fancy spiritual words are consolation and desolation. Consolation meaning, what was the high point of my day? Where was my day the best? Or in spiritual language, they would ask me, where did I feel closest to God, most connected to him? And then saying, well, why? What about it? In that moment, what was I feeling and experiencing that made it such a great moment? And the desolation of where did I feel most distant from God? Or what was the low part of my day? What was my worst moment and why? What was I feeling then? And becoming aware of our highs and lows actually then gives us kind of a framework to see the rest of the day. And if we're doing that in a regular daily exam and Kind of wait. And this could take five minutes, you know, so we don't have to get. For those that don't like journaling, this doesn't have to be a 12 page, you know, dissertation of our day. It's just a quick like, boy, it was when I was hanging out with this friend. That was the best part. Well, why? Maybe it's realizing I felt so accepted. I felt seen, I felt affirmed. Like, well, now you're putting language to what you felt and over time that really can develop emotional intelligence.

Like anybody who knows me knows. I'm just going to say journaling, that's like the best way that I've learned because it's a place where I'm not burdening someone else. I'm really unburdening myself onto a page and I'm allowing how I feel in the moment, what I'm anxious about, whatever. And it's in a nonjudgmental way too. Cause the culture I grew up in, in the church, it's like I'm feeling really anxious. It's like, well, you know what the Bible says about being anxious, right? And it's like. And maybe someone didn't outright say that, but that's the response I would get, like, oh, totally. But like, let's pray or why don't you like go read this book? Or why don't you like blah, blah, bl. And so I hear the good heartedness of that. But at the same time, if I'm journaling, I'm not gonna get that response. The page as I'm writing, I'm really anxious is gonna be like, well, you shouldn't actually feel that way. It's just gonna be raw, real emotion. And the nice thing is when I get it out sometimes and I'm able to actually acknowledge what it is, I feel free. Like I have taken this burden of these emotions that I've been carrying, set them down. It's like, oh, okay, I can see what that is. I can see. I've been able to process some of my day and it set me up for a lot better emotional state.

And honestly, just go watch the movie inside out, you know, Disney, Pixar, they'll help you figure it out. So good, because it's based on a deep awareness of emotional intelligence. So legitimately, like, go watch it through that lens of what can I learn here. Heather, here's another question. Is emotional intelligence like riding a bike? Like, once we've got it, we've got it and we're always going to have it or Is it possible that we could actually kind of backslide and lose some of our emotional intelligence if we're not paying attention?

I don't know if I would use the word backslide, even though I know what you're talking about. But I think that it is.

There's a question. Sorry.

I know, I know. Not your word, Trevor.

What a dumb question.

I didn't call you out. Don't throw yourself under the bus.

But I think that there is. There could possibly be times or seasons of life or even circumstances that are beyond our control that cause us to become a little bit stuck or stunted in our ability to move forward in our emotional intelligence. And the only thing that's coming to mind right now is that my parents are still living and they're 82. And even in the last couple years, I've noticed a decline in some of their functions and different things. And I think that I've already had the conversation with my husband and my sons is to say, when my parents die, I'm gonna be a mess. And I don't even know what that's gonna look like. But I'm just telling you right now that this is gonna throw me into something that I've never experienced before. And so I already have enough awareness to say that this is a big life event. So it could be even my parents or any of my siblings or my children or, you know, that kind of thing. Cause I've never really had the death of a family. But I just know that that's gonna be something I've never experienced before. And so. But today, you know, I do things that help me to be proactive, like you talked about, and help me build resiliency in my emotional awareness, to just know that this is gonna be a time where I'm going to, on purpose, allow myself to grieve whatever that looks like, for whatever time that that takes. Because I know that from an emotional intelligence standpoint, that that's going to help me in the long run to be able to maintain close relationships even during that most difficult time. And so I think that if you look at it that way, that life sometimes just happens and we have to just go through life in forward motion without all of the best tools. And so the other thing is then we have, you know, people in our lives, our support people, and these other things that will help us. But I think that there are times where we just emotionally are thrown off guard and we just. I don't know that there's no way that we can actually prepare for that. Fully, because I've never experienced. But I've never experienced it. But how can I today be proactive in making sure that I'm gonna have the best chance of getting through that in a healthy way?

I think you can learn how to manage a specific emotion in one context, but then when another one presents itself, it's like. It's as if I've never done any work. Anger before. Like, you know, an anger is the one like, you know, we're talking about inside out. Like, I mean, anger.

We're friends.

I like him a lot. But what I've learned is like, I. As I became a parent, I all of a sudden became angry. Or that's what it could seem. And it's not. It's. I had learned to manage my emotions in a specific way in a certain context of not having kids. But now that I do have kids, it comes up in different ways. It's poked in different ways. And so I think that it's not that there's a backslide either. Dumb question. But I think that there are new opportunities to work on the layers of that emotion. And I think for me, one of the best ways is just to never stop learning. I mean, therapy has been unbelievable for me. There are times where I walk into a session, I'm like, I don't really know what we're going to talk about. And then he's like, well, why don't we start here? And then 45 minutes later, we're still talking about the same thing. And it's like, oh, well, I guess it went okay.

Okay.

But group the same thing. I mean, that's what you're talking about with other people, is giving people the opportunity to help me make sense of my story, to help me make sense of what I'm feeling, and help me connect some of the dots. And a lot of that comes from too. When people share their story, you start to see things. Light bulbs. So I think that it's. Yeah, I would just. The way I would frame it is we're not taking steps back in emotional intelligence. We are just given new opportunities in life to develop that emotional intelligence. In other contexts.

You need to stop saying I think, and you should really say I feel. You keep using I think. Truth be told, I really like the word backslide. So kudos to you, Trevor, because you.

Probably wrote this question now.

The more I think about it, maybe someone did. To me, backslide implies I've unintentionally moved away from something that used to be important and found myself in a different place than I meant to be. Now, I know we talk about Christians backsliding. It might not be unintentional, but I think backsliding just implies I've moved away from something I used to do. And I think it's entirely possible in our emotional intelligence. And like, for me, I notice it when I'm just getting busy and I'm kind of running full speed and got a lot going on. I'm just not as aware of what's going on and can kind of revert to some old patterns of coping of just self, you know, trying to figure out. I'm just trying to manage today. I can't think ahead, and I can lack emotional intelligence in those moments. So I do think we also see it for men and women that have maybe done group for a season or for a year or two and then choose to disengage because they feel like they're in a better place. And they may be, but over time, we find them coming back in a year or two saying, I've gone back into some unhealthy patterns. And it's not just that the behavior came back. It's that escaping emotions probably came back or not dealing with what they were feeling and going back towards technology or their phone or whatever behavior became the way of managing that emotion. So I do think it's possible, because if we're not, it's kind of like our physical health. Can we backslide from our physical health? Absolutely.

I hate it so much.

Yeah. If you're not eating well or exercising or doing what you should, your body goes, all right, well, I guess we're going to gain weight again. Cool. And you can put on a whole bunch of weight and you in that sense have backslidden away from health. And so I think the same is true that emotional intelligence is like a muscle. And the more we work it out, the healthier it stays. And so just pay attention to how you stay healthy emotionally.

Okay, so the next kind of question out of that is, is it possible to teach emotional intelligence? So kids, our family, our spouse, maybe our community, like, is it possible to transfer what we've learned about emotional intelligence and teach people how to do it?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it comes with a lot of different tools. Like you can get the feelings wheel. I know that they even sell like a poster size of that ash will.

Help you get it on a pillow, too.

It's awesome.

Ornament a sticker.

Yeah. They even have these signs that you can purchase that have the little emoji with the feeling word next to it, to help children learn.

I've seen that with a magnet, you can move the magnet onto what face describes you.

For kids, I wish people had magnets on their chest, which told me exactly how they feel today.

Yeah. But I think that there's a lot that you can do with that. I think, even with adults, that there's a way that you can use emotional intelligence to help other people around you develop that as well. I know that there have been times with. In my marriage with Michael that he'll be in a funk about something. And for the most part, I pretty much let him, you know, go through whatever. Yeah, whatever that's gonna look like. And I don't take it on. But there have been a couple times where I'll just flat out say, you know what? You're choosing to be in this mood and you like the way it feels, but it is rubbing off on the people around you, and it's not helpful or healthy for you. And so a better approach might be this, this, or this. And because I don't know, how do you tell somebody that you don't get to feel what you feel? It's not that as much as it is after that window of feeling time has happened, and somebody's in a point where they like how it's making them feel and they're almost gaining energy off of it. But it's in an unhealthy, unhelpful way to be able to say, maybe you need to go for a run. Maybe you need to go lift weights. Maybe you need to, you know, some other way to process that rather than it coming out spewing on the people.

Around you over, like, probably days and weeks, if not processed for sure.

Because there has to be this balance that comes from that awareness. Being able to sit in the discomfort and at the same time, be able to recognize in an emotional, intelligent way to say this. Now this feeling is harming me. It's harming the people I love. And I need to do something different with it because I'm so dysregulated by it that it's not helpful. You know what I mean? So I think there's all kinds of things that you can do, like that. That one, like, with another adult. You have to be careful with that one. So I don't think that it's like, depending on the relationship that you can come home and say, well, I think you're dysregulated and you need to stop it. You're a beast. That's not What I'm is that recognizing that if we know that an emotion is taking place and it's there for a reason, how am I going to proactively manage that so it doesn't hurt the people around me? Those kind of things.

That was my thought. Like so many other things. It's key how we come across. And if we think teaching others means, well, I am so emotionally intelligent. Let me tell you how unintelligent you are. Like, like, that's not going to be received well in any context. But if emotional intelligence is walking into that situation aware, wow, there's something going on here. What could I do to help support them or bring that out in a way that could be redemptive for them and not accusatory or critical. And it's like with my kids, it's using phrases just like, hey, bud. I mean, it seems like you're feeling something. Are you able to explain what it is? Can you describe what's going on in your head right now? You know, I'm here. I just love to. To process or listen. And sometimes they say no, and sometimes they say yes. So I just was thinking about one of those with my son that turned into a lot of surprising emotion from. He's not always good at expressing his emotions. So once he did, it was like, wow, there was a lot going on there. And it just came, I think, because I was able to sit and let him at first be very silent. Could tell he was thinking really big things and I wasn't pestering, come on, what's going on? Get over it. Or it was just like letting him at his pace, start to share. And when he did, then it was like the fountain kind of opened up and I got to be there for that. And it was like, oh, that was really cool. I don't think I could have done that earlier in life and learning with my wife, like many of us do, to just come in and be like, what's wrong? Is not a good opening question. And sometimes I still do that. But trying to take a different approach of saying it seems like something's bugging you. Do you want to talk about it? And if she's like, no, cool, I'm going to take a breather. And you'll walk away from that circle back to that one. But sometimes she will express like, this is really bugging me. It's like, oh, yeah, I kind of knew that. And then I can figure out how to respond. So I think in those moments, without saying, I'd like to teach you emotional intelligence. You're inviting people to be in touch with what they're feeling and when it's appropriate. If there's a conversation that happens, I think they're learning from that. And also, as in so many areas of life, when we're being honest about what we're learning and humbly expressing, boy, here's an area that I missed it. Here's what I've learned. When we share about what we're learning in our own emotional intelligence, that's actually teaching people about emotional intelligence because their brain is translating like, oh, that happens for me too. And, oh, maybe I need to think about how I'm responding. And so without ever telling them, well, I hope you do this too. Who we're teaching by what we're modeling.

I think it's interesting that Nick said he was going to make me cry earlier and he made himself cry. No, and I appreciate the emotion. I mean, it shows that this is a very live and active thing that happens every day. And one of the things that we do, and I can't even remember why we started it, but I just remember starting highs and lows with our kids. And it's funny, we have no problem coming up with highs. You know what I mean? And Brooks still doesn't understand highs and lows. So sometimes he'll say like, my high is that daddy went to work and my low is that he came home. I'm like, oh, what? I don't think that's what you mean. Or maybe it is. And that's sad. But one of the things that I've seen is with Brady, specifically our six year old, sometimes he doesn't have a low and I'll press him on that. I'm like, no, really, let's talk about this for a second. What was your least favorite part of the day? Doesn't mean it has to be this awful part, but like trying to create that space where we're not gonna ignore negative experiences or the emotions that came from those experiences. And I just, I feel like that has been a really practical, easy way. We're not spending 45 minutes. It's literally, if we go around the table, the four of us, it takes six minutes max, you know, and so it's something though, that that continual opening. It's funny, the last episode we recorded with Rodney and Tracy, it's that consistency, the reinforcing, that this is a safe place to feel all the emotions that you have. And so I feel like for us, that's been a really easy and almost silly thing that we've Done. That has created a lot of really cool opportunities. But that's just maybe something people could start doing right now with their kids.

And I think that part of this process is just being able to recognize that there are going to be times when we feel something and we don't know what that is. And I had this happen within the last couple months that I came home from an event, and I walk in the door and I'm crying, and Michael's looking at me like, what's wrong? And I'm like, I don't even know. But for some reason, it's coming out as crying right now. And so I just need to figure out what this is, you know, because I was having a physiological response to something that. And my brain hadn't gone through the process of interpreting what I was feeling that was creating that, you know, and so it's just being able to, again, give yourself time and space to sit in it and to be able to put words to it so that it makes sense.

As you shared that, I was thinking how interesting it is with our kids, we will often use that phrase, Use your words. Not your fists or your kicking or you're yelling or whatever. Use your words, tell me what's going on. And I think sometimes as adults, we maybe need that invitation of, can you use your words? Can you describe what you're feeling, what's going on? And. And that can lead to just good results. Let me try to put into words. And that's the whole corpus callosum thing in the brain, right? Like, feelings are on one side and logic and reason on the other. And sometimes it's connecting what I'm experiencing into words. And if we can, maybe in the moment, we can't. But at some point, that's the goal here. I'm trying to put into words what's going on inside or in my body.

Absolutely.

Now, this has been a super good conversation. I think all of us would acknowledge we have room to grow in emotional intelligence. It feels like one of those areas that the more you know, the less you feel like you know, and the more you need to grow. I know. I definitely feel that way. So what are some final thoughts today or encouragement that we would want to give to people who are looking to grow in their emotional intelligence?

I would say probably the best thing that somebody can do is to just start practicing just on your own. You don't even need to tell anybody else that you're doing that, doing this. But just to be more.

Think about that emotional. I'm angry.

I Know, well, just to be more aware, you know, of just like, when I start to feel this way, what is the feeling? Where is it coming from? Why am I feeling this right now? And again, it's gonna depend on where you're at in life, where you are in recovery, where you are in your healing journey, and just being sensitive and gracious with yourself to give yourself time with that and whether it's with. I'm gonna write down this word because it's the one that keeps coming to mind, even though I don't like that I'm feeling that. So I'm an expert at that. When I'll sit and say, oh, okay, I'm feeling this way. And then in the next second I'm like, I'm not feeling that. I try and talk myself out of it instead of. Because I don't want to do the work of digging into it. But sometimes it's just like writing down the feeling word and then going away from it and then coming to look at it and then going away. And then after a few times, being able to sit down and write out everything that's connected to that feeling word. Sometimes that can be really helpful because there's a part of our emotional intelligence that comes from empathy and being connected to other people and doing life with other people. There is a really powerful thing that happens when you just engage in relationship in a really, just simple, easy. I'm going to sit and I'm going to listen, and we're going to just share experience with this person. And I think that all of those kind of things all fall under that. Practicing that. I'm going to practice being empathetic. I'm going to practice using words to describe how I'm feeling. I'm going to practice understanding how my thoughts are connected to my feelings. All of those kind of things I think can be really helpful for people to grow in emotional intelligence.

The word integration came to mind for me. In order to be healthy and to be fully integrated, we have to. And I like what you said. The way I wrote it down was acknowledge our emotions, accept our emotions, and then process them. And that's a lot of work, especially if you're not good at it. But the idea really that I have is just to not run away from our emotions because God created us to feel them. Even Jesus felt emotions, you know, the perfect one. And so I think that's one thing I've had to almost give myself permission to feel them because growing up, and even in my adult years, I don't feel Like, I was given. It doesn't matter what word I use there. But, like, I did not get that message from people. And so I think don't run away from your emotions. Like, be willing to acknowledge them, accept them for what they are, and then process them.

The final thing I would say in this area, like, we could say in a lot of areas, but I think particularly this one, is do something. Pick one thing that you feel would help you grow your emotional intelligence and do it. Because this is an area that's really easy to intend to do. Something like, oh, I should work on that, or that's a good idea. Someday I'm going to take time to be more emotionally intelligent. Like, there's never a perfect season where you're just going to nail this. It's a growth path. It's something I think we're all working on for the rest of our life. So what could you do? What could you start today? This week? Is it. I'm going to finally start meeting with a counselor or a therapist because I don't know how to process my emotions? Or is there a trusted friend and family member that you have just to say, I'm going to meet them for coffee and try to start figuring out what it is I'm feeling? Is it using the faster scale again? Is it inviting conversations with your spouse or your kids about. About highs and lows? Is it journaling consolation, desolation from your day, that prayer of examine? There are so many things that we've talked about today, and I would just encourage you as you're wrapping up and whether you're getting off the treadmill when you've been listening to this or finishing your walk or you've pulled into your driveway and it's okay, the episode's over, what could you do? Pick that one thing. And if it seems like a small step, great. Do that. Because I think sometimes we have these grandiose ideas, like, what's gotta be this super big journey? I go on? Like, well, maybe someday, but maybe today. What? What's one thing that you could do? And that one thing becomes a building block for another and another. And over time, we'll realize we're in a healthier place with our emotional intelligence than we were before.

This is a great conversation. And I'm appreciative for you guys both being willing to share part of your story too, because I think that. Or your process and journey in this, because I think it's easy to just teach about this stuff, but it really does make sense. It practical when we can share how we've experienced this stuff. So I appreciate that a lot from you guys. And Heav, thanks for coming in and recording with us.

Yeah, this was a great conversation.

And wherever you're at on your journey, Pure Desire is here to help you take back your life from unwanted sexual behavior and betrayal trauma. If you or someone you know needs recovery and healing, go to PureDesire.org and begin the journey today. If you like this episode or a fan of the podcast, please share it with others and make sure to check out this full episode up on YouTube as well. And lastly, never stop being helpful.

It.