Emotional Intelligence

For as far back as I can remember emotions have controlled me. As a child and even as a late teenager I was prone to angry outbursts, punching walls and doors. I was out of control at times, because my emotions were controlling me.

I feel like it was a lot worse when I was younger, 14 to maybe 20 years old. There were posters and pictures all over my bedroom walls and each was covering up a hole I punched. I had a large NBA banner I hung on my bedroom door because I had punched it and kicked it so many times you could walk right through it.

Clearly this is not normal or healthy behavior but I don’t remember ever thinking there was something wrong with it (except when I got in trouble), it was just how I processed things. I was an adolescent trying to learn how to grow up in my body and mind but I had a hidden, insidious force working against me; trauma.

A hidden reason for my instability

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the pain and trauma I was suffering at the hands of my priest was the reason I was acting out. When my still developing brain felt overwhelmed about what I was holding in and what was being done to me, it needed a release. That manifested in violence, transferred pain and an unhealthy base I was building from for my future.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel like I was a relatively happy young man. I had passions that I was drawn to, mostly sports. I was very into my teams; Giants and 49ers. My emotions ran deep watching my teams play. When they won I was beyond overjoyed, but when they lost I reverted to my learned energy release of violence as a way of dealing with disappointment or failure. It was the infancy of a major problem in my life that would take over 30 years to address and be able to find the peace it took to change the behavior.

I still marvel that after what I went through in my youth, the trauma I suffered and the way it manifested itself in my daily life, that I became a police officer in my early 20’s. The anger issues were still there. My inability to process emotions properly as an adult were still a problem for me. I passed several police hiring processes with this silent beast living inside me including multiple lie detector tests and psychological tests and evaluations. Nothing uncovered my darkness. Was I that good at hiding it so as to appear as a normally functioning member of society or was/is the hiring process including mental and emotional health evaluations that flawed? That is a topic for another post on another blog.

Alcohol made it all worse

For the most part I kept my outbursts relatively private. They happened in my bedroom, the bathroom or maybe my car. When I drank too much the ugliness would creep to the front of my personality. There were too many days I woke up not remembering fully what happened the night before and worried about what I would be told I did. Usually what I didn’t remember was an angry outburst or that I was scaring people with the way I was acting, I was very volatile.

In recent years, while exploring my challenges, I spent a lot of time trying to understand why I never made meaningful change to my behavior. I was repeatedly facing the fact that the behavior was unacceptable yet the cycle constantly repeated. One insidious, unforeseen obstacle I faced and one that probably was more daunting than I still give it credit for today was that I was being gaslit. My closest friend was one of the people who made sure to always talk to me about my behavior. He would always make it into a huge issue that needed to be dealt with especially the fact that alcohol always made it worse.

Fighting an unexpected battle

He was a very influential person in my life at the time and so I would listen. I would look deep inside me and try to understand how to take positive steps to at least avoid the alcohol. There were so many struggles in my life at the time that I was confused, I wanted to change but had no idea how to. I wanted so badly to be better that I would set myself on a course to be better. Better for myself and my health but also better so that I wouldn’t let him down after one of his talks about my behavior. Within days he would hand me bottles of my favorite whiskeys or rums while laughing and saying what an enabler he was. Being controlled, manipulated and confused that way, I really wasn’t able to make any progress on getting better.

Once I recognized the toxicity that had been in my life I felt a lot of anger. Anger because another person kept me under control for years due to his own deep mental problems, years that I will never get back and could have spent getting better. Mostly now I feel relief and joy because once I realized where the trauma was working from and didn’t have a saboteur in my life I was able to dive deep into my damaged ability to control my emotions and make real changes in my life that I am benefitting from now.

Tools for emotional growth

Learning how to control my emotions has not been easy as you can imagine. It has taken hours of therapy, developing tools and then putting them in to practice. In order to have control of my emotions when I have never had any control over them I had to first learn how to not react. I learned through conversation and behavior analysis that situations quickly overwhelm me and I lose the ability to control myself within the situation. It was important that I learn how to foresee a problem so I could prepare my response to it.

I was very skeptical of this at first. In theory it felt unrealistic and stressful. I felt like I would have to be on guard constantly for a situation that might trigger me or for the welling up of feelings inside me. Initially it was not easy. I found that the majority of the work I was going to have to do would be internal, learning what it feels like when my emotions are being awakened. This allowed me to mentally prepare for what was coming from within and gave me that moment of pause so I could remember the most important part of gaining emotional intelligence, feeling it.

Going for a ride

I always felt like my emotions ran me over. I liken this new process to slowing down the car and hoping in, going along for the ride instead of getting run over by it. The most important thing for me to learn has been to sit in the emotions and feel them. Let them come at me from every angle and try to understand where the hurt, sadness, elation or any other feeling is coming from. That pause also gives me the time I need to realize that the feeling I am experiencing is not as intense as it initially felt.

I now understand that I can handle it, that I am mentally strong enough to overcome myself and create a life for myself that is built from a strong base of emotional intelligence.

Constant improvement

It will always be a work in progress. I’m not going to be able to see every problem coming and prepare for it. The more I address my own emotions as they come at me, the easier it becomes to reel them in when they do get outside of my control. This knowledge has changed my life. I know that I can handle whatever is thrown at me. I also know that when it gets to be too much, I have the tools I need to re-center myself and move forward in strength and I know that it’s ok to falter.

Emotional intelligence is not something that was taught in school. It wasn’t even something that any therapist talked about with me during the first terrifying years when I was trying to adapt to the new life I had thrust upon me. Trying to still be the person that my family and friends expected me to be, the person they knew, while I was losing my internal identity more every day, was disorienting and very scary. I’m not upset that it wasn’t discussed, at that point I was living in survival mode so focusing my therapy down to one aspect of recovery at that time would have been pointless.

It has taken many years and many failures and successes for me to be able to write this next sentence. I feel extremely in touch with my emotions today and I am confident that while I may not always react the perfect way, I will always use my emotions to my advantage in a respectful way while making sure my emotions and their manifestations are healthy for me and those close to me.

As a kid I had no idea why I was acting out the way I was. I had no understanding of why I was so angry and reacted the way that I did. My healing process has taught me why and also how my history of pain and abuse as a child created a place of such resentment and anger inside me that whenever I became overwhelmed by life I would angrily and at times violently lash out. The peace that healing has brought me, especially in regards to my emotional intelligence, gives me a foundation of love and caring to respond from when I feel my emotions and that has made all the difference in the world for me.

Behind the astrological eight ball

As an attempting to be functioning adult my new understanding of my own emotional intelligence should make a big difference in who I surround myself with and who I bring into my life. I am a Pisces and I wear that like a badge especially when it comes to feeling emotions, I am a true empath. While I absolutely love this about myself, it posed a significant challenge for me in gaining control of my emotions.

I first had to learn how to not feel the emotions of strangers. If I were to encounter someone who was clearly upset on a ferry ride or at the store, I would take on their outward emotions myself empathizing with the person. Sadness, anger, joy, happiness whatever the emotion, I would feel it. That was too much, exhausting. I learned to save my deep energetic feelings for myself and those who I love. At times even that is overwhelming.

I’ve learned to control the empath in me and how my heart reacts to other’s emotions. I say control because it is an important part of who I am and not something I would ever change completely. Taking control of this key part of me will be important for all of my relationships that I build or rebuild from now on.

Emotional peace

My emotional intelligence grows stronger all the time because I actively work on it every day. It becomes a part of a daily routine and in time creates a very healthy emotional foundation to deal with the ups and downs of life from. Find little ways to work on yours, it will lead to bigger ways. You won’t regret it!

Thank you for reading. Any questions, stories or other comments are always encouraged. Writing is healing. One Love.