Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to understand and regulate your own emotions, as well as identify and influence the emotions of others’. The term was first coined in 1990 by researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey and was later popularised by psychologist Daniel Goleman.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability perceive, control, and evaluate your emotions. Some people can do this with ease while others require practice in this area. This ability is necessary for anyone who wants to function effectively in a society – it pertains directly to our ability to interact well with others and respond effectively when situations are outside our control.

EI is best described as a way of thinking that enables people to perceive their own emotions, understand the emotional states of others, and behave appropriately in response (Cherry, 2022). People with high EI can feel empathy for others, determine their own emotional responses (including the process of suppressing an emotion as a defence mechanism), and think through situations before responding emotionally. Emotional intelligence is strongly linked to many positive outcomes. Those with high EI are likely to become financially stable, have meaningful and healthy relationships, respond effectively to stress, and maintain desirable physical and mental health (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). They are also likely to avoid dangerous situations (such as driving under the influence), interrupt negative thinking patterns, and use healthy coping skills rather than self-destructive or maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Here are some key features of a person with high emotional intelligence (Drigas & Papoutsi 2018):
– An ability to identify how they are feeling (i.e., the can name what they’re feeling)
– An ability to identify how others are feeling
– An awareness of strengths and weaknesses
– The ability to let go of mistakes and forgive others
– The ability to accept change
– Curiosity about oneself and others
– The capacity for empathy and compassion
– The ability to regulate emotions in the moment

The ability to regulate emotions is a skill that anybody can learn with practice.

How to develop emotional intelligence

The following tips may be helpful if you’re interested in developing or improving your emotional intelligence. Pioneers in the field Salovey and Mayer (1990) have identified four levels of emotional intelligence that are person should aim to move through in order – these are:

1. Perceiving emotions: The first step is to be able to acknowledge that emotions are occurring in the first place. This might involve understanding nonverbal signals from other people or associating internal bodily states with certain emotions. Some clients, especially those who have suffered from trauma, may have a sense of detachment from their bodies, making it difficult to discern emotional states. As such, this lack of internal data will make it harder to recognize emotional states in others. Practicing mindfulness and other self-awareness exercises can help clients to perceive their emotions more effectively.

2. Reasoning with emotions: Once an emotion has been identified, the second step is to learn how to think about emotions appropriately. Many people will shut down in the presence of strong emotions, but emotions can be used to promote thinking and cognitive activity. Developing a sense of curiosity and openness toward emotions can help to facilitate this process, and result in less aversion towards certain experiences.

3. Understanding emotions: The third step is understanding the meaning of emotions in more detail and recognising complex relationships between different emotions. Once emotions are perceived and reasoned with, a person can evaluate them and find the underlying causes of them. This is where emotional intelligence really starts to develop, as it fosters the ability to become less reactive to emotional content and learn to listen deeply to emotions and discern their origins.

4. Managing emotions: Finally, in the fourth step we learn to regulate emotions effectively. This involves a person developing their ability to problem-solve and identify healthy coping strategies for dealing with an emotion. It also involves being able to use the skills learnt in previous steps – perceiving, reasoning, and understanding – to resolve emotional conflicts peacefully. This is the highest level of emotional intelligence.

Generally, building emotional awareness through mindfulness helps to propagate EI within oneself, and learning to perceive nonverbal cues helps to attend to others; outlines of these two angles are as follows:

Building Emotional Awareness

Perceiving emotions is the foundational skill of emotional intelligence, and mindfulness has been identified by research as being one of the most efficacious ways of developing this capacity. Mindfulness involves paying attention to the present moment without judgement or interference. Mindfulness is correlated with greater clarity of feelings and thoughts, and less reactivity and distraction, making it the perfect catalyst for emotional intelligence (Feldman et al., 2007).

Mindfulness generally involves meditative exercises; you sit or lay down, and use the breath and other sensations (i.e., the feeling of feet on the floor, or sounds in the room) to anchor into the experience. As you enter an observational state, encourage yourself to simply notice how your experiences arise, change, and pass away. When using mindfulness to develop emotional awareness, specifically connect to your emotional state. The key focus here is not necessarily on the breath or on acceptance, as per common mindfulness strategies; rather, simply become familiar with the process of having and noticing feelings. If you have difficulty identifying your emotions, try to explore the characteristics of your emotions such as where it is located in the body, how it feels (e.g., warm, cold), how big or small it feels, or perhaps what colour they associate with it.

Regularly performing this exercise will habituate the brain to approach emotions with curiosity rather than avoiding or repressing them. As such, the processes of emotional functioning will become more familiar, resulting in greater emotional intelligence.

Decoding Emotions by Analysing Speech, Body, and Face

Created by Hugo Alberts, this exercise helps people to accurately identify and understand the emotions of other people through ‘reading’ their body language and other nonverbal cues. This is a very valuable skill, as research has shown that cultures all around the world express emotions through similar facial expressions (Friesen, 1972). Similarly, it has been found that deciphering body language can accurately provide insight into emotional states such as anger, fear, pride, joy, and more (Gelder & van der Stock, 2011). Speech patterns are a more nuanced area than body language and facial expressions, but valuable nonetheless; people use thousands of micro semantic terms to express their emotions beyond the words themselves (Sabini & Silver, 2005). By learning to attune to these three aspects of communication (i.e., face, body, speech), a person will be able to exercise enhanced emotional intelligence with the people in their life.

One activity to develop this skill is to use videos that you are familiar with (e.g., films or tv shows) and to spend time evaluating how the actors use speech, body, and face to communicate their emotions. Depending on your current level of EI, you might be able to identify the emotions being expressed but not understand the role of nonverbal cues to communicate this. Another strategy would be to become more self-aware of your own nonverbal conduct during different emotional experiences. Notice your posture, get a sense of your facial expression, notice your stance, hands, chest etc. You could keep a journal of what your speech, face, and body language is like during various experiences throughout the day. Over time, you will come to understand how to decipher these elements and associate them with emotional states. Please be patient with yourself. It is challenging to mindfully pause and think about your nonverbal language when you’re caught in an emotional experience. You may like to ask others whom you trust to give you feedback.

Additional skills

Having covered the internal (emotional awareness through mindfulness) and the external (nonverbal cues), you can then use these new understandings to develop further practical skills. A person can embody emotional intelligence by practicing empathy, active listening, and assertiveness.

Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s experience through their frame of reference (Cuff et al., 2014). Whilst an aspect of empathy is being able to relate other people’s experiences to your own, it is further positioning yourself within the other person’s perspective and relating to them from that place. This is what is meant by “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.” Empathy is a useful skill to practice because it both requires and fosters emotional intelligence; EI is required to relate fully to another person and is developed further through this process. It is recommended to cultivate compassion for others when developing empathy. It can be an uncomfortable experience, one which people may resist or tense up against.

Active listening

Activate listening can help conversational partners interact in more meaningful ways. It offers people space to explore their feelings, disclose important information, and feel like they are heard, validated, and cared for. Joseph Topornycky has identified some fundamental attributes of active listening (2016). These include:

• Being non-judgmental: Reserving judgment allows speakers to exercise freedom in exploring and expressing their ideas and feelings.
• Patience: Being patient when somebody is speaking, and not rushing them or interrupting them, is crucial for them to feel heard and understood.
• Minimal encouragers: These are small indications of engagement, such as nods and smiles, as well as words like yep, mm-hmm, uh-huh, and more.
• Questions: Asking the person questions will show that you are interested in what has been said and are engaged enough to want to know more.
• Summaries: It can be a useful bonding behaviour to repeat what the person has just said back to them, but in different words.

Assertiveness

Assertiveness is often be perceived as rudeness, however, if the person communicating in an assertive way maintains a compassionate undertone, it is very effective for improving EI and self-esteem. Many people lack EI because they were never taught or encouraged to explore their emotions and express their feelings. By learning to express ourselves truthfully and appropriately, a person can validate themselves, protect themselves and set boundaries with others (Makino, 2010).

One way to practice this is through role playing with a counsellor or someone you trust. You can also practice by yourself, playing the role of both parties in an interaction. Practice expressing what is most important for you in a conversation and express the emotion e.g., “I feel worthless, like nobody cares about my opinion” and then offer yourself assurance as if you are the other person e.g., “I really value your opinion, and I am interested in hearing it.”).

If you’re someone who hasn’t been able to assert your needs, wants or feelings in the past, you may feel rude initially. Like I always tell my clients,

1. self-awareness is always the first step so you may need to spend time meditating, educating yourself, or reflecting on what it is you’re feeling, what you want or need. The second step is to:
2. identify what you think or feel you need to do
3. allow that to be there (try not to resist your reality – what we resist persists)
4. make an intention to ask for your needs or wants – or express your emotions with language
5. act on your intention

References

Cherry, K. (2022, August 3). How emotionally intelligent are you? Verywell Mind. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-emotional-intelligence-2795423#citation-5

Cuff, B. M. P., Brown, S. J., Taylor, L., & Howat, D. J. (2014). Empathy: A review of the concept. Emotion Review, 8(2), 144–153. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073914558466

De Gelder, B., van den Stock, J., Meeren, H. K. M., Sinke, C. B. A., Kret, M. E., & Tamietto, M. (2010). Standing up for the body: Recent progress in uncovering the networks involved in the perception of bodies and bodily expressions. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 34, 513–527.

Drigas AS, Papoutsi C. A new layered model on emotional intelligence. Behav Sci (Basel). 2018;8(5):45. doi:10.3390/bs8050045

Feldman, G., Hayes, A., Kumar, S., Greeson, J., & Laurenceau, J.-P. (2007). Mindfulness and emotion regulation: The development and initial validation of the Cognitive and Affective Mindfulness Scale-Revised (CAMSR). Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 29, 177–190.

Friesen, W. V. (1972). Cultural differences in facial expression in a social situation: An experimental test of the concept of display rules. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California San Francisco

Gosling, M. (n.d.). MSCEIT 1 Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence. Retrieved from https://www.mikegosling.com/pdf/MSCEITDescription.pdf

Makino, H. (2010). Humility-empathy-assertiveness-respect test. PsycTESTS Dataset. https://doi.org/10.1037/t06420-000

Mayer, J. D., Salovey, P., & Caruso, D. R. (2012). Mayer-Salovey-Caruso emotional intelligence test. PsycTESTS Dataset. https://doi.org/10.1037/t05047-000

Sabini, J., & Silver, M. (2005). Why emotion names and experiences don’t neatly pair. Psychological Inquiry, 16, 1-10.

Salovey P, Mayer J. Emotional Intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality. 1990;9(3):185-211.

Topornycky, J. (2016, June). Balancing openness and interpretation in active listening – researchgate. Retrieved October 23, 2022, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315974687_Balancing_Openness_and_Interpretation_in_Active_Listening

Addiction fundamentally alters the brain’s reward and decision-making systems through well-documented neurobiological mechanisms. When substances like drugs (including alcohol and nicotine) are consumed, they trigger massive releases of dopamine in the brain’s reward circuit, particularly in areas like the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area. With repeated exposure, the brain adapts by reducing natural dopamine production and decreasing the number of dopamine receptors, creating tolerance and requiring increasingly larger amounts of the substance to achieve the same effect. This neuroadaptation hijacks the brain’s natural reward system, making everyday activities less rewarding while the addictive substance becomes disproportionately important.

Over time, addiction also impairs the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for executive functions like decision-making, impulse control, and weighing long-term consequences. This creates a neurological double-bind: the midbrain structures driving craving and drug-seeking behaviour become hyperactive, while the prefrontal systems that would normally regulate these impulses become weakened. Chronic substance use also disrupts stress response systems, making individuals more vulnerable to relapse during difficult periods. These changes help explain why addiction is recognised as a chronic brain disease rather than simply a matter of willpower – the neuroplastic changes can persist long after substance use stops, though the brain does have remarkable capacity for recovery with sustained abstinence and appropriate treatment.

The Challenge of Stopping

The challenge of stopping stems from the profound neurobiological changes addiction creates in the brain’s fundamental survival systems. The brain essentially learns to treat the addictive substance as necessary for survival, similar to food or water. When someone tries to quit, they face intense physical withdrawal symptoms as their neurochemistry struggles to return to homeostasis, combined with psychological cravings that can persist for months or years. The damaged prefrontal cortex makes it extremely difficult to override these powerful urges with rational decision-making, while stress, environmental cues, and emotional states can trigger automatic drug-seeking responses that feel almost involuntary. This creates a cycle where attempts to quit often lead to temporary success followed by relapse, which many interpret as personal failure rather than recognising it as part of the neurological reality of the condition.

Addiction appears progressive because tolerance drives escalating use over time, while the brain’s reward system becomes increasingly dysregulated. What begins as recreational use gradually shifts to compulsive use as natural dopamine production diminishes and neural pathways become more deeply entrenched. The condition typically follows a predictable pattern: initial experimentation leads to regular use, then to use despite negative consequences, and finally to compulsive use where the person continues despite severe impairment in major life areas. Additionally, chronic substance use often damages the brain regions responsible for insight and self-awareness, making it harder for individuals to recognise the severity of their condition. The progressive nature is also influenced by external factors – as addiction advances, people often lose social supports, employment, and housing, creating additional stressors that fuel continued use and make recovery more challenging.

Understanding addiction when you’re not “addicted” to alcohol or other drugs

The difficulty in understanding addiction, even among people with their own compulsive behaviors, stems from several key differences in how these conditions manifest and are perceived. While behaviors like sugar consumption, social media use, or shopping can indeed activate similar dopamine pathways, they typically don’t create the same level of neurobiological hijacking that occurs with substances like alcohol, opioids, or stimulants. Addictive drugs often produce dopamine surges 2-10 times greater than natural rewards, creating more profound and lasting changes to brain structure and function. Additionally, many behavioral compulsions allow people to maintain relatively normal functioning in major life areas, whereas substance addiction typically leads to progressive deterioration across multiple domains – relationships, work, health, and legal standing.

The social and cognitive factors also create barriers to understanding. Most people can relate to losing control occasionally – eating too much dessert or spending too much time scrolling their phone – but these experiences usually involve temporary lapses that can be corrected relatively easily through willpower or environmental changes. This creates a false sense of equivalency where people think “I can stop eating cookies when I want to, so why can’t they just stop drinking?” They don’t grasp that addiction involves a qualitatively different level of brain change where the substance has become neurobiologically essential, not just psychologically preferred. There’s also often a moral lens applied to addiction that doesn’t exist for other compulsive behaviours – society tends to view overconsumption of legal, socially acceptable things as personal quirks or minor character flaws, while addiction to illegal substances or excessive alcohol use carries heavy stigma and assumptions about moral failing, making it harder to see as a medical condition requiring treatment rather than simply better self-control.

A Word On Nicotine (Tobacco Products)

Yes, nicotine absolutely does release large amounts of dopamine, making it highly addictive despite being legal and socially accepted in many contexts. Nicotine causes an increase in dopamine levels in the brain’s reward pathways, creating feelings of satisfaction and pleasure.Research shows that nicotine, like opioids and cocaine, can cause dopamine to flood the reward pathway up to 10 times more than natural rewards.

This helps explain why nicotine addiction can be so powerful and difficult to overcome, even though people often view smoking or vaping as less serious than other forms of substance addiction. Repeated activation of dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area by nicotine leads not only to reinforcement but also to craving and lack of self-control over intake. The addiction develops through the same basic mechanisms as other substances – as people continue to smoke, the number of nicotine receptors in the brain increases, requiring more of the substance to achieve the same dopamine response.

What makes nicotine particularly insidious is its legal status and social acceptance, which can make people underestimate its addictive potential. The rapid delivery of nicotine to the brain (within 10-20 seconds when smoked) creates an almost immediate reward that strongly reinforces the behaviour. This is why many people who successfully quit other substances still struggle with nicotine, and why nicotine addiction often serves as a gateway that primes the brain’s reward system for addiction to other substances.

People living with obsessive-compulsive disorder are encouraged to follow three general tips for effective self-management. They are: challenge the obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours (this includes use of distraction skills, and resisting the compulsion), maintain high self-care (you may need to put your needs first a lot – this is NOT selfishness or self-centredness), and reaching out for support. I want to clarify that I am not trained or qualified in OCD treatment – this is an extract from an article posted on the Australian Institute of Professional Counselling website.

The following information has been retrieved from AIPC Article Library | Self-help Strategies for OCD and OCPD. I think it’s also important to reinforce that if you have been living with OCD for years, you’re probably the expert on what is already most effective for you, and some of the following suggestions may make you roll your eyes. It can be very helpful/useful to talk to other people who live with OCD. They may understand your experience better than health workers, and this can be comforting, validating and healing.

Challenge the obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours. In addition to refocusing, the OCD client can learn to recognise and reduce stress. Some of the strategies here are counter-intuitive. You can urge clients to “go with the flow” by writing down obsessive thoughts, anticipating OCD urges, and creating “legitimate” worry periods. Tell them to:

Write down your obsessive thoughts or worries. Keep a pen and pad, laptop, tablet, or smartphone nearby. When the obsessive thoughts come, simply write them down. Keep writing as the urges continue, even if all you are doing is repeating the same phrases over and over. Writing helps you see how repetitive the obsessions are and also causes them to lose their power. As writing is harder than thinking, the obsessive thoughts will disappear sooner.

Anticipate OCD urges. You can help ease compulsive urges before they arise by anticipating them. For example, if you are a “checker” subtype, you can pay extra attention the first time you lock the window or turn off the jug, combining the action with creating a solid mental picture of yourself doing the action, and simultaneously telling yourself, “I can see that the window is now locked.” Later urges to check can then be more easily re-labelled as “just an obsessive thought”.

Create an OCD worry period. Rather than suppressing obsessions or compulsions, reschedule them. Give yourself one or two 10-minute “worry periods” each day, times you are allowed to freely devote to obsessing. During the periods, you are to focus only on negative thoughts or urges, without correcting them. At the end of the period, let the obsessive thoughts go and return to normal activities. The rest of the day is to be free of obsessions and compulsions. When the urges come during non-worry periods, write them down and agree to postpone dealing with them until the worry period. During the worry time, read the list and assess whether you still want to obsess on the items in it or not.

Create a tape of your OCD obsessions. Choose a specific worry or obsession and record it into a voice recorder, laptop or smartphone, recounting it exactly as it comes into your mind. Play the recording back to yourself over and over for a 45-minute period each day, until listening to it no longer causes you to feel highly distressed. This continuous confrontation of the obsession helps you to gradually become less anxious. When the anxiety of one worry has decreased significantly, you can repeat the exercise for a different obsession (Robinson et al, 2013).

Maintain good self-care. A healthy, balanced lifestyle plays an important role in managing OCD and the attendant anxiety (generally present with OCD, even though the disorder is no longer classified as an “anxiety disorder” per se), so the helpfulness of the following practices – truly not rocket science – cannot be underscored. Encourage OCD clients to:

• Practice relaxation techniques, for at least 30 minutes a day, to avoid triggering symptoms.
• Adopt healthy eating habits, beginning with a good breakfast followed by frequent small meals – with much whole grain, fruit and vegetable – throughout the day to avoid blood sugar lows and to boost serotonin.
• Exercise regularly; it’s a natural anti-anxiety treatment. Get 30 minutes plus of aerobic activity most days.
• Avoid alcohol and nicotine, as these increase anxiety after the initial effects wear off.
• Get enough sleep; a lack of it exacerbates anxious thoughts and feelings (Robinson et al, 2013).

Reach out for support. Staying connected to family and friends is the best defense an OCD client can muster against intrusive obsessions and compulsive urges, because social isolation exacerbates symptoms. Talking about worries and urges makes them seem less threatening. Also, involving others in one’s treatment can help maintain motivation and guard against setbacks. To help remind the client that s/he is not alone in the struggle with OCD, ask him or her to consider joining a support group, where personal experiences are shared and attendees also learn from others facing similar problems.

OCPD: Self-help strategies for survival

For both the person diagnosed with OCPD and also for his family and friends, dealing with this disorder requires patience, compassion, and fortitude. To start with, the ego-syntonic nature of OCPD means that the person does not necessarily agree that he has anything wrong at all. For those who staunchly continue to insist that their relational problems arise because of others’ faults, treatment is complicated. Given the OCPD’s general world view of “I am correct; you are wrong”, the prognosis for change is often poor. Transformation is likely to occur only when the OCPD’s relational skills and outlook are shifted. This is not a job for medication (at least not for long and not alone), and yet psychotherapy is not always available. When it is, the OCPD is not always willing to avail himself of it.

Regardless of this less-than-ideal context for managing OCPD, there are some things that the client himself and also friends and family can do to alleviate some of the tension and conflict that goes with living with the disorder. As a therapist, you can encourage the client and those around him to utilise some of these strategies.

Bibliotherapy. It’s a good idea to read up on OCPD, not only in order to know what to expect, but also for tips in dealing with it. Your client may also come upon writings that link some behaviours and lifestyle choices to the disorder in ways not understood before. When comprehension deepens, so, too, does the prospect of compassion.

Gentle confrontation (agreed beforehand). While we agree that OCPD clients have a mammoth need to be right, those clients who truly seek to feel better may be willing to make agreements with family and friends in which OCPD behaviours, when noticed, are gently challenged; the operative word here is gently.

Self-insight through journalling or tape-recording. We noted above that many OCPD clients are intelligent, sensitive people. Thus, keeping a diary or making voice recordings to note anything upsetting, anxiety-provoking, overwhelming, or depressing is a step toward the self-insight that will eventually help to manage the disorder. Too, family and friends may agree to note their observations and share them in a constructive, non-confrontational manner.

Good self-care. OCPD is a disorder about exaggerated need for control, so keeping on an emotional even keel can help reduce the unconscious need to micro-manage all of life. Strategies to achieve this are listed above under Tip 2 for maintaining self-care with OCD. They revolve around the basic life efforts of practicing relaxation techniques, adopting healthy eating and exercise regimens, getting decent sleep, and avoiding excessive alcohol/drug consumption (the last is not hard for the OCPD).

Reaching out for help. OCPD individuals tend to be loners, and relationships are hard for them to build and maintain. Nevertheless, it is helpful to the ultimate reduction of OCPD-engendered tension to go for support. This can be in the form of self-help groups, informal support from partner, family, and friends, or even from joining online communities of people dealing with the disorder. Whatever the form of the support, it may be helpful for OCPD clients to own their places of dysfunction when they see others owning their imperfect humanness – and surviving (Robinson et al, 2013)!

References

• Long, P. (2011). Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder. Internet mental health. Retrieved on 18 April, 2013, from: hyperlink.
• Robinson, L., Smith, M., & Segal, J. (2013). Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Symptoms and treatment of compulsive behaviour and obsessive thoughts. Helpguide.org. Retrieved on 24 April, 2013, from: hyperlink.