Is emotional intelligence innate or learned?

[Giraffes]

I was thinking about this today, as someone who really didn't have much emotional awareness/intelligence, but I've found that with effort, I can learn to discern my emotional responses fairly easily. I am a quick learner in general and surely that's part of it. Is it like that for everyone?

Is, for instance, alexithymia a condition of not being capable of discerning emotion, or never having learned how?

Can most people develop emotional intelligence with effort?

Thanks for the post it has created a opportunity for me to research a way to develop a understanding of how emotions affect me and others and hopefully lessen how i often feel overwhelmed by feelings and emotions with-out knowing what they are or how both myself and others experience them,which is currently;exhausted,often angry/frustrated and anxious.

 

[risootser]

Emotional intelligence is probably innate but also if potential exists then one can develop it.

There are people who are emotional but also have very poor control. In MBTI if someone is interested in it those are the ExTJ's who need IxFP's to provide them sympathetic support and calm their out of control emotions. Then there are emotionally exiting individuals (MBTI ExFJ) for the serious ones (IxTP), supportive uplifters and adjusters (IxFJ) for internally cycling individuals (ExTP), emotion protective and manipulative individuals (ExFP) to protect and bond (IxTJ).

 

[onlything]

I understand the first part, being introspective and non judgemental.
however, I don't get the link between meditation and emotional intelligence.

Well, meditation is always helpful and teaches you how to focus on the present and on that one thing only, as well as accept what is as it comes and goes.

However, what I meant is that parts of my method are based on basic mindfulness practices. For example, body scan is a technique where instead of focusing only on breathing, you proceed to gradually scan your whole body - essentially you check in with each part to look for any tension, cold, tiredness etc. I use a similar approach to analyse each part of myself, literal and metaphorical, in an effort to find possible traces of what could be caused by an emotion - and through analysis of these traces I am able to learn how each emotion feels without further physical analysis. It takes a lot of visualisation at times, too, as well as confusion and flailing around.

In short, I compare the observed differences with my default equilibrium - the neutral, almost blank, state I find myself to be most often in.

But then, I found that there are at least two different neutral states in me - one that arises as a numb answer to too much input (uncomfortable neutral) and one that arises as an answer to calm (comfortable or peaceful neutral). I call the former one numbness and it's the most prevalent in my depressive episodes. The latter I call being content. In general I base emotions around temperature, from warm, through neutral, to cold, kind of like a spectrum .

I'm sure that it'll be different for everyone since we're all completely different people.

I suppose it can be a bit difficult to get with words only, since for me it's highly based on feeling (kind of blindly) and visualisation. I would suggest trying things for yourself until you find what seems to work for you. Just don't get discouraged. It took me the better part of the last three years to even start on the road of discerning emotions and more subtle emotions still seem to elude me.

Still, there's progress!

 

[SimplyWandering]

I believe like many others that we are born with a certain amount of emotional intelligence, like a spectrum.

It is more of struggle for those lower on the Autism spectrum to improve their senses, however for others it is simply through neuroplasticity;
The ability of the brain to change continuously throughout an individual's life.

It just takes a lot of effort to change. For a group of people who don't care to change or where change is difficult the event is slower to occur or simply doesn't happen.

You as an individual choose whether you want to interact with others (in a group for ex) or build some type of emotional control... in my case i want to, but the anxiety is overwhelming.

 

[Ylva]

Neither. I'd say it's cultivated.

 

[Progster]

Babies are born with an inate ability to read and respond to certain universal face expressions such as a smile, but other forms of emotional intelligence are dependent on culture and that is picked up from our environment, social interactions and experience. The ability to read and understand others' emotions as well as our own emotions develops as our brain develops. So-called ferral children, who for one reason or another have grown up without contact with other human beings, lack this ability and are only able to partially develop it once past a certain age.

 

[hatfullofrain]

I don't think that lacking emotional intelligence and alexithymia are the same thing. Here's a good article about how a man experiences alexithymia
The only emotions I can feel are anger and fear
The person with alexithymia doesn't feel feelings. That's not the same as blundering socially.

NTs pick up on social cues better then we do, they learn them faster. Our brains work differently. Differnt parts of our brain fire up to certain stimulae. We are focussed on other things. How people present socially isn't that interesting or important to us.

I think it only becomes important once we realise that we are not in step with our peers and we accidentally get things wrong socially.

I learned social skills slowly. As a teenager I was very blunt and not so much bad at reading body language, but I didn't care to.

As I've got older I recognised that I wasn't getting good responses from other people and I've learned how to read them and what is appropriate to say and do. Maybe this is what they call "masking".

Often when I have something that I want to say I evaluate how i'm going to phrase it before I say it so that it doesn't come out the wrong way and cause offence. I've also learned which battles to pick. There's no point always being right about small things that don't really matter. I'd rather have peace.

 

[onlything]

I don't think that lacking emotional intelligence and alexithymia are the same thing. Here's a good article about how a man experiences alexithymia
The only emotions I can feel are anger and fear
The person with alexithymia doesn't feel feelings. That's not the same as blundering socially.

That's interesting. Possibly alexythymia, like autism, is a spectrum of its own? Just like different autistic people may have limits or even more difficulties in social contact or independent living, specific alexythymic people have different capabilities in the feeling and emotion recognition departments? A food for thought perhaps.

I still believe that active learning of emotional intelligence can help in any instance, however. Everyone has limits, that's true, but at least some degree of improvement is always possible and any kind of improvement is better than nothing.

The article you linked struck a chord with me, I have to say. I was never diagnosed with alexythymic, nor have I thought too much of it, but when I was younger, I felt in a very similar way to the gentleman from the article. As a teenager there was really only three things I felt that I couldn't even properly discern between at the time: fear, anger and what was possibly some degree of loneliness, and even these would be highly muted at times. I remember that the only words I had about these was hot for anger and cold or sharp for anything else. Fear and anger were the only motivations of mine at least until early adulthood and only major depression I encountered afterwards motivated me to try to even understand the 'rot in my brain' as I would call it.

I was able to improve and while everyone is different I'm going to stand by my belief that every person has at least some potential to get better in this direction if worked on for long enough. People have limits, yes, but you won't ever know what these limits truly are until you fully apply yourself.

 

[SDRSpark]

The article you linked struck a chord with me, I have to say. I was never diagnosed with alexythymic, nor have I thought too much of it, but when I was younger, I felt in a very similar way to the gentleman from the article. As a teenager there was really only three things I felt that I couldn't even properly discern between at the time: fear, anger and what was possibly some degree of loneliness, and even these would be highly muted at times. I remember that the only words I had about these was hot for anger and cold or sharp for anything else. Fear and anger were the only motivations of mine at least until early adulthood and only major depression I encountered afterwards motivated me to try to even understand the 'rot in my brain' as I would call it.

Same. I was only able to really discern anger, fear, and happiness. I mistook everything else for one of those three.

And yet...in what seems like a short period of time, with practice and effort, I am able to differentiate a lot more. Although to be honest, I'll say something like "I feel cognitive dissonance about this situation" and while I'm quite certain that's a valid feeling, I'm also pretty sure that "cognitive dissonance" doesn't count as an emotion. So maybe I'm still way off. But at least I'm able to communicate now.

 

[SDRSpark]

This is interesting (to me) - I feel unusually relaxed this morning (I am not usually so relaxed unless there is a lot of alcohol involved or something) - and I realized, for the first time, that there is actually a physical sensation of relaxation.

I know I felt it before, but I never paid attention to it. I always associated physical sensations with uncomfortable emotions (fear, anxiety, sadness) - it just never occurred to me that positive emotions have physical sensations as well.

 

[Au Naturel]

I don't believe you can "learn" something you're just not wired for. What you learn are coping mechanisms. You learn alternative routes to the destination, ways to mimic what you're missing. You can learn ways to avoid weaknesses and play to your strengths. You can build up areas where you are weak to a limited degree but it won't be the same as someone for whom it comes naturally.

Someone like me has to develop a warning system for when I'm going off the social rails since I often don't realize when it is happening. And there has to be a lot of acceptance that things just aren't going to work for me as they do for Mr. Popular. It is using rules and algorithms for what comes instinctively to most. With practice, those algorithms can be executed very quickly but it will never be instinctive.

OTOH, if I can step back and observe the field rather than diving right into the fray, (and I don't go into sensory overload) my algorithms and rules serve me very well. It is why I can write far better than I can converse. My rules may cause me to miss out on opportunities. They also keep me safe from exploitation.

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is not the same thing as empathy. Empathy is just feeling a sample of what another person is feeling. If you don't recognize what they are feeling you could be extremely empathic and it would do you no good. EQ runs a whole gamut of social skills, the who, what, where, why, when, and how of social interaction. It includes the use and detection of deception and misdirection. Empathy can be a part of that but doesn't have to be. Psychopaths of a predatory nature often have a very high EQ and are able to manipulate their targets with ease but feel nothing for them. They make good serial killers, swindlers, and robber barons.

 

[cnn]

Definitely a good discussion, Thank you for opening it up:
1- When I go through forum, I see spectrum of emotional expressions; Emptiness-Saddness-Anger-Happiness-Love. We do feel, We know its intensity/ quantity, but We need some practice to understand the quality.
2- We live in sustained Emodiversity, called Mood. Observing and communicating the mood is much easier than picking on particular emotions.
3- EQ has two dimensions; external/ others and internal/ self. Understanding your own emotional state is EQ too. Machiavellian/ Predator onesided EQ is a different story. Let's keep on inner EQ.
4- When I took the Mind in the Eyes test, I scored 95% ( average is 70% for NTs and below 50% for AS). You can read facial muscles, body signals like a book. However in real life, I still need extra energy for connecting these signals to the context or taking my time off to understand my own emotions.
5- We might have less capacity, but there are ways to balance it out, like blind people using other senses more efficiently. I try a holistic approach and start from understanding what makes me happy.

 

[Matthias]

I suffered from alexithymia and had very low emotional intelligence my entire life until I used CBT last year. After CBT, I took an emotional intelligence and my score was above average. I took the same test based on what I was like before using CBT and scored well below average. My EQ is high enough now that I'm able to help other people with their emotional problems.

I think what happened was I felt rejected when I was a baby which caused several intense emotions (sadness, frustration, anger, anxiety, and fear) that were overwhelming which made differentiating emotions later in life confusing. I ended up avoiding and suppressing my emotions to avoid the stress they caused.

I researched CBT and learned that our thoughts are what causes our emotions. The cognitive dysfunction I was born with and the stress I experienced caused me to form distorted beliefs about myself and others. Once I changed those beliefs, my emotional problems and the stress they caused went away allowing me to think clearly for the first time in my life.

Based on my experience and research I've read, I'd say stress caused by unresolved emotional issues is what causes low emotional intelligence and alexithymia in many autistic people. The good news is this problem can be overcome using CBT which can be done on your own without a therapist.

Here are videos that helped me -

I also recommend the book "feeling good" by Dr. Burns. It's focused on depression but also has a chapter on anger and the same techniques can be used for dealing with anxiety and other emotions.

 

[SDRSpark]

Definitely a good discussion, Thank you for opening it up:
1- When I go through forum, I see spectrum of emotional expressions; Emptiness-Saddness-Anger-Happiness-Love. We do feel, We know its intensity/ quantity, but We need some practice to understand the quality.
2- We live in sustained Emodiversity, called Mood. Observing and communicating the mood is much easier than picking on particular emotions.
3- EQ has two dimensions; external/ others and internal/ self. Understanding your own emotional state is EQ too. Machiavellian/ Predator onesided EQ is a different story. Let's keep on inner EQ.
4- When I took the Mind in the Eyes test, I scored 95% ( average is 70% for NTs and below 50% for AS). You can read facial muscles, body signals like a book. However in real life, I still need extra energy for connecting these signals to the context or taking my time off to understand my own emotions.
5- We might have less capacity, but there are ways to balance it out, like blind people using other senses more efficiently. I try a holistic approach and start from understanding what makes me happy.

You bring up a REALLY good point about being able to grasp the intensity of emotion/mood but having difficulty with the quality of emotion. For the longest time I could readily recognize three things: anger, anxiety, and happiness. Everything uncomfortable that wasn't clearly anger, I labeled as anxiety. And happiness was of course a catch all for everything comfortable/joyful.

It actually took effort to learn to differentiate different things. But that doesn't mean I felt them any less - in fact I seem to feel them more intensely than others.

On the "mind in the eyes" test - I could pass it, but only because it was multiple choice, I'm convinced. I just think it's a really poorly constructed test. Most of the time, I looked at the picture, thought they were expressing one thing... and than that thing wasn't one of the options. So then I picked the option that I thought could be right. I scored well on it. Remove the multiple choices and I would have bombed it horribly.

 

[Au Naturel]

I have always been very good at multiple-choice tests and not so hot at fill in the blank tests. Multiple chioce limits the possibilities and you can usually throw some options out immediately. OTOH there is no limit to the fill-in-the-blank test. To get the "correct" answer you have to be thinking the same thing as the test writer.

 

[Au Naturel]

I suffered from alexithymia and had very low emotional intelligence my entire life until I used CBT last year. After CBT, I took an emotional intelligence and my score was above average. I took the same test based on what I was like before using CBT and scored well below average. My EQ is high enough now that I'm able to help other people with their emotional problems.

It is entirely possible to learn methods to compensate for that which does not come naturally. They include algorithms, role-playing and even method acting. (Some very fine high functioning autistic actors out there!) These are very good things to do if your symptoms are not so severe as to preclude them. They are no more a "cure" for autism than an insulin pump is a "cure" for type I diabetes.

I think what happened was I felt rejected when I was a baby which caused several intense emotions (sadness, frustration, anger, anxiety, and fear) that were overwhelming which made differentiating emotions later in life confusing. I ended up avoiding and suppressing my emotions to avoid the stress they caused.

Hate to say this but you do not remember what happened to you as a baby. The signs of autism are even visible in pre-verbal children if you know what to look for.

In comparison to their typically developing peers, children with ASD exhibit deficits in the use of nonverbal communicative behaviors that comprise the majority of early intentional communication acts.

Predicting Intentional Communication in Preverbal Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

If someone suggested what might have happened, they could easily have created false memories. This is the same thing doctors have been saying for many decades, that autism is caused by frigid mothers. Too many good and loving mothers had their lives and self-respect destroyed by this bit of slander.

The evidence for a very large genetic component for autism is so overwhelming that denying it is like denying the change in the climate over the last 50 years or denying the value of vaccinations. If CBT fixed your issues, you didn't have autism.

Twin studies reported 60% concordance for classic autism in monozygotic (MZ) twins versus 0 in dizygotic (DZ) twins, the higher MZ concordance attesting to genetic inheritance as the predominant causative agent. Reevaluation for a broader autistic phenotype that included communication and social disorders increased concordance remarkably from 60% to 92% in MZ twins and from 0% to 10% in DZ pairs.

The genetics of autism. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[Matthias]

It is entirely possible to learn methods to compensate for that which does not come naturally. They include algorithms, role-playing and even method acting. (Some very fine high functioning autistic actors out there!) These are very good things to do if your symptoms are not so severe as to preclude them. They are no more a "cure" for autism than an insulin pump is a "cure" for type I diabetes.

I overcame life long anxiety, depression, and stress in one day after watching 1 hour of CBT videos and changing beliefs I've had as long as I can remember. I went from very low emotional intelligence and not understanding people very well to above average emotional intelligence and understanding people much better in just one day. There wasn't any compensating, pretending, or masking of anything.

Hate to say this but you do not remember what happened to you as a baby. The signs of autism are even visible in pre-verbal children if you know what to look for.

I remember what beliefs I've had since I was a young child. I also have parents who told me how I acted as a child. Behavior is caused by a person's beliefs. A recent study confirmed that toddlers can get depressed and that those who do have symptoms similar to autism. Although they lost interest in people, they were extremely sensitive to rejection suggesting that perceived rejection was the cause of their depression. There's evidence that babies can suffer from depression.

Changing my beliefs eliminated symptoms I've had since I was 1 or 2 years old which meant those beliefs are what caused the autism symptoms that went away after changing those beliefs.

Predicting Intentional Communication in Preverbal Preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

If someone suggested what might have happened, they could easily have created false memories. This is the same thing doctors have been saying for many decades, that autism is caused by frigid mothers. Too many good and loving mothers had their lives and self-respect destroyed by this bit of slander.

No one suggested anything.

It's an established fact that early childhood neglect causes many of the symptoms of autism. Bruno Bettelheim observed that all of the autistic children he evaluated closely had symptoms consistent with parental rejection. His observation that classic autism is the result of feeling rejected has never been disproven and is supported by science.

The Refrigerator Mother theory made popular by Bettelheim was that children rightly perceived their mother as cold and rejecting. I believe classic autism is often due to children wrongly perceiving their mother as cold and rejecting due to cognitive distortions that arose after being born with cognitive dysfunction (which I consider the genetic cause of autistic traits). That means there's a strong genetic predisposition to autism with the child's misunderstanding, not the mother, causing autism.

The evidence for a very large genetic component for autism is so overwhelming that denying it is like denying the change in the climate over the last 50 years or denying the value of vaccinations.

The evidence is that autistic traits have a large genetic component which can predispose a person to becoming autistic. I agree that autistic traits are genetic. The evidence that autism (meaning the additional symptoms above and beyond autistic traits) is psychological is overwhelming and CBT has been proven to cure the additional symptoms of autism beyond autistic traits.

If CBT fixed your issues, you didn't have autism.

Science says otherwise. Numerous studies have shown that people recover from autism. Claiming that everyone who recovered was never autistic is a logical fallacy known as circular reasoning.

 

[tree]

"Numerous studies have shown that people recover from autism."

Please cite five or more of them.

 

[hatfullofrain]

Actually therapy helped me. I had a good therapist who was able to articulate how emotions feel very well and she could pinpoint how I was feeling about things from what I said and what my body language revealed and was able to help me find words to describe how I feel.

A start to understanding how others might be feeling is to understand how you yourself feel.

 

[Kayla55]

What happens sometimes when for years we had a birthday but suddenly we realise what a party is and get happy?
Was it experience of unhappiness that brought realisation.
Is it when you too comfy you don't have space to grow.
Do sports we enjoy stimulate us?

Is it a type of natural occuring RMI therapy

I explained in this thread about being older before having kids and discovering this dignity and breaking away to celebrate life with shopping or a party...noticing after time of financial struggle that my leftie son had noticed it too. There was time he was so excited to go swimming that he was really insistent and ultra happy.


https://www.autismforums.com/threads/experiences-with-people-pleasing.43119/page-2#post-961676