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healing ways
Well-Being in Eight Seconds Hone Your Emotional Intelligence by Paige Dest
S
itting in my doctors’ office, I had no idea both of us were about to have a most pivotal moment. She put my face in her hands and said, “You just look so pathetic.” I had lost so much weight that I was practically a walking bone. It was so very frustrating that no matter how much I ate, I couldn’t seem to gain weight. What brought me to this point was stress—from work and from life. I had made it through two separate biopsies for breast cancer (both of which, thankfully, had come back negative), graduated with honors from a Master’s level program at the University of Pennsylvania and excelled professionally, only to be left with so much stress that it was beginning to take a toll on me physically. And though I knew my body well enough to know that the weight loss was due to stress, I was beginning to get nervous because no matter how much I ate, I wouldn’t gain. After much testing, it was determined that I was, to quote my doctor, “healthy as a horse.” She told me to eat cupcakes for breakfast, pies for lunch and cake for dinner—whatever it took to gain weight. I reminded her I thought my weight loss was
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New Haven/Middlesex
due to stress. I also told her all I knew about a set of skills known as “emotional intelligence” (EI), and that I really believed this would make a difference in my overall wellbeing—physically, mentally and spiritually. Three months later, I sat—at a healthy weight range—waiting for her to enter the examination room. “Wow,” she exclaimed, “I thought we were going to lose you three months ago, and now, you’re a healthy and balanced woman. You’ve opened me up to the difference emotional intelligence can make for someone.” I had been convinced by my personal growth through EI coaching and by seeing the amazing positive results in my total well-being; and she had been convinced, too. Emotions affect every element of our being. So it stands to reason that learning skills that help us use emotions as information, guiding our thoughts and behavior, can truly impact each of those elements and change our lives. Most of us have heard of EI (sometimes called “emotional quotient” or EQ), and many of us may have a deep understanding of it, but practicing EI skills is a daily
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commitment. It’s a process of accepting your emotions for what they truly are— chemicals in the brain and body that create synapses moving through the instinctual brain into the limbic system, enticing the amygdala and ultimately influencing our thoughts and behaviors. In the simplest sense, they are information. In fact, these chemicals only last about four to seven seconds. But the emotion affects your physiology and thoughts and vice versa, creating a feedback loop leading to “emotional hijack”, which can last a lot longer than that! You know the feeling—when you can’t seem to get past a particular emotion, driving thoughts and behaviors you may regret later. Within that small window of time, less than eight seconds, you can stop the potential for hijack and choose better thoughts and actions. The first step is breathing deeply and slowly a few times, through your nose. This will slow down your body’s reaction to the emotion, slowing your heart rate, increasing your blood flow and allowing more blood to the cognitive part of your brain, permitting it work more efficiently. The next step is to name your emotion and
