Emotional Self

There is a lot of chatter around the areas of emotional intelligence these days. I had to look up what the components of emotional intelligence were for something else and it got me thinking. The five components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. In a way, I wish I had read a little bit more about this a while ago. Part of me knows, however, that I would not have been in a place to see what I am seeing now. While I certainly had empathy (to a fault) to offer and generally decent socials skills, I was (and probably still am) lacking in the area of self- awareness and self-regulation. Motivation is one that is slowly returning and I think I have the career shift to thank for that. Let's break this down.

EMPATHY: The ability to be understand other people's emotions. Yup. I can do that. I think in the past 5 years I found out the level of empathy I have. While it is a source of strength, it was likely my biggest downfall in attempting to be a counselor in the field. The emotions I experienced in my own addiction and subsequent recovery were intense. No other way to say it than that: Intense. Intense enough to attempt to take my own life to make it all stop. Intense enough to drink a liter of alcohol a day, every day, non-stop for almost 10 years. My despair was so intense at the end of my active use that I had lost hope. Hope is a funny thing to me. I say it all the time. I hope people are well and had a great day. I hope that I can be a decent human being. I hope you are enjoying my blog. What does that mean? For me, it means "future" and "desire". When I lost hope that I could not possibly live outside of my addiction, my world almost ended. There was no sunshine. I didn't care if you had a good day. I didn't care about anything other than finding a way out. Hope is powerful. Hope is the foundation of tomorrow. When dealing with active addiction in other people's lives, what I grabbed onto most was their sense of hope. I don't want people to ever feel what it is like to live without a sense of hope or promise of a new day. I would sense on a scale of 1-100 where a person was in their hope for change or for themselves. If they were in the 10-20s , I would struggle to find a way for them not to feel that way. If there were at 100, I had a good day too. That's the struggle in working directly with people. We need to have some empathy, sympathy even. The whole counseling thing just really showed me something about my ability to empathize with people. I can do it, but I have to be careful too. I haven't figured out how to keep free of taking on the problems as my own. Deep down, I just don't want you to ever feel the way that I felt all those years ago. I was scared, ready to leave the earth and void of anything that matter. I would give my heart for another person not to experience this. Because of this, I needed to return to nursing (more on that in a bit).

MOTIVATION: To be willing to make the effort to remain well informed and work for continuous improvement. Everything I mentioned in the previous section zapped all of this out of my life. I was no longer interested in getting better at anything. I was struggling to just stay afloat. What I didn't like about myself in the past year or so was going back into seclusion. I broke plans with others. I crawled into bed every night the minute I got home. I was late for work. I was unmotivated to do anything on weekends. I wish I had known that I was not going to be able to moderate my empathy back when I started this journey into counseling. My motivation can wax and wane on its own without a lot of intervention. One day I am slug, the next day, my house has never been cleaner. One day I am ready to write a book, the next thing I know, I hadn't written a blog entry in over 4 months. Under prolonged stress, my motivation is the first causality. Toward the end of my time in counseling, I was just struggling to find the motivation to get out of bed. I've been there before. I am not interested in being back there. I have too much good in my life to watch it pass by from the confines of my bed.

SELF-AWARENESS: Hmmmm....I would say that I am a solid half and half on this one. I can read a room. I can sense how others are processing information. I know that I can be loud and crass. I know that I will avoid like the plague if something is making me uncomfortable. So, a good portion of the time, I think I have reasonable self awareness. The kicker, though, is that I am also incredibly impulsive. Despite having some self awareness, I just push right through that "now is a good time to hold your tongue" thing and state my opinion. Part of my motivation for certain action is based in my emotional responses to the situation. In most situations, I will just engage and be aware of how I am holding myself and what my physical responses are. It's not nice to yawn in someone's face, for instance, even if the topic is of little interest. It is obviously a source of passion for this person and I want s/he to have the space to talk about it. On the flip side of that, hit me with certain topics and I am suddenly a tornado of dynamite coming your way. I have been known to be explosive at times, aggressive, passive aggressive (an upper mid-western trait amplified by 100) and, at times, kinda stupid. The struggle for me is that I am not quite sure what those triggers are all of the time. I know a few hot button topics for myself. Other times, I am just as surprised as you are that I am losing my mind about something. In conclusion, I am self-aware enough to know that I am not self-aware enough to keep in all together. I have to imagine I am in some sort of normal category here.

SELF-REGULATION: Ummm....can we skip this one? Ugh. Self-regulation is difficult for me. It has been a struggle in sobriety for sure. The first year of my recovery, I was angry. I was mad. I was annoyed. This whole "live sober" stuff was bullshit in my eyes. "If I am going to feel this way, I should just drink." It was around 6 month marker of sobriety that I started DBT. You know what makes an angry person even more irritable? To be told that they lack the ability to self-regulate and are defensive/angry. I remember when my therapist then and my current therapist told me that I was defensive and argumentative. "I AM NOT! HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT? [Insert random insult here]" Oh, wait. I suppose that is what you are talking about huh? My current therapist was shocked when I stood up and walked out when he said that about a year ago. "I wasn't sure you were coming back. I was right though." Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was right. My reaction, though, is that emotional regulation piece that has been so challenging for the past couple of years. When I lack the motivation to get out of bed, what strength do I have to regulate my emotional state? I had little to give. I pulled together what I could to be regulated in front of my clients. At any other given moment, my emotional state was going to be right on my sleeve, in the raw, unpleasant form that will be evident as soon as I open my mouth. Even when I told myself, "no getting into this or that, be kind and gracious today," it rarely happened. I think I will always lack in this area. DBT help me come a long way in terms of calming down for a second or two before I react to something. Under prolonged stress and an ill-fitted work environment, I am rendered incapable, on any level, of regulating my emotional state. I feel like I am crawling back to a more normal state, though, with keeping my emotions in check now.

SOCIAL SKILLS: I tell people often that I can play both sides of the fence and can be quite charming. In the career world, I have used this to my advantage frequently. I have quickly been identified for promotions and positions because of it. What I have talked about in previous blog entries, though, is that playing both sides of the fence starts a process of me losing myself in playing the game and forgetting I had an opinion to begin with. I don't feel this happens as strongly now as it used to. I am a good person to take to any social event. I can strike up conversations with just about anyone. I am not shy. I can make conversation about many different things. I try to use my powers for good and not evil. I can handle most personalities. I may be screaming inside "SHUT UP" but will continue to converse and remain social and engaged. The benefit of having social flexibility is that I meet all sorts of people in all sorts of different ways. I am genuinely interested other people's experiences. I think people, in general, are really interesting. I have always love multicultural classes and discussions. I like to see different viewpoints and experiences. I want to know why people think the way that they do. So, social skills, I am set here. Yeah me. Go team.

With all of this said, January has been quite the roller coaster. My therapist warned me that my initial excitement about making a transition will fade at some point and some more hostile emotions may start to surface about my experiences over the past 5 years. My response was, can these hostile emotions be any worse than what I was already experiences while I was there? He responded, "resentments". Well, thank goodness I have a whole entire 12 step program to deal with those. I won't be able to see him as often as I was for the past year so, I will be engaging in more community based supports. The timing is good for that. Anyway, he is right, I am started to feel some of my resentments surfacing. 

I am content with my new job. I have been well received. I have used most of my emotional intelligence as defined here to seamlessly engage in a nursing department. Here are a few things I have noticed since returning to nursing in behavioral health field. 1. I can take feedback. I am in training right now and I am not doing everything perfectly. Yet, I get the feedback, say "great, will do" and move on. I was so defensive and angry before, I wasn't sure if I could take feedback (good or poor) anymore. I fear rejection more than anything. My mind will tell me that "feedback = rejection" so I bob and weave to avoid it if I can. It's a fear that has legitimately held me back from my full potential. I am working on it though. Now, fortunately, I am having the experiences in which I can take constructive feedback, use it and move on. Whew. This is relieving for me. 2. I have a defined role with perimeters that are more clearly focused. This is a really fancy way of saying "I leave my job there." I have a series of tasks to complete. I have the skills to address issues outside of those tasks. At 10:30pm, I hand the keys to the next shift and call it good. I am not on for 4 days now and I am not going to be thinking about work. Finally. 3. My nursing side is a bit more cold and clinical and I like it this way. It is not that I don't engage with people warmly. It's not that I don't care. In any given moment, I am there to assess and determine an intervention to address the situation. The patient is sitting in front of me because they need or want something. They may not get what they want, however, they were given the explanation for the response and I am done. I have firm boundaries. I care but only to a certain point. I took more abusive behaviors from my counseling patients than I ever have from my nursing patients. I think because I was so emotionally fragile towards the end of my time in counseling, I just straight up believed that I deserved the disrespect I was getting. The confidence I have in nursing allows me to understand and enforce my limits. I never felt like I could do that in counseling without being accused of not being person centered, compassionate or "cold". 

My number one resentment is this at the moment: I haven't been in direct nursing since 2009. I stepped into my current position with a 10 year lapse in doing what I am doing today. I have trained for 6 shifts and they are ready to release me on my own. I feel comfortable with that too. I felt like I had a natural affinity for counseling. I thought I was pretty good at it. Yet, here I am, in a totally different capacity, thriving and feeling good about where things are at in less than 2 weeks. Why could I not find this confidence and comfort in something I actually pretty decent at? Why did I feel so broken for so long? Did I let my job/management get the best of me? I was repeatedly told by my superiors that there was something wrong with me because I clearly couldn't deal with the stress of my job. Was it really me? Did I fail? Am I really too empathetic? Am I really that emotionally dis-regulated? As I am writing this, I feel like a 5 year old kid on the playground seeking acceptance from my peers while secretly hoping they say what I thinking. "No, you are fine! It wasn't you, it was "[insert any excuse here]". 

In the world of 12 steps and dealing with resentments, I have to be clear about what my resentment is. I have to define the role of the other person AND my role in it. My defensive, angry side does not appreciate this part of the assignment at all. You should have watched me go through this when talking about my divorce! Wow....you mean there ARE two sides and I played a role too? Never. I was perfect. Anyway, I have also have to decide if I am willing to resolve this resentment. The answer is a clear "no" for me right now. I am not willing, yet, to do the work around it. I need some time to sit with my changes for a bit longer. I need to get a bit more distance between myself and what happened over the past couple of years. I plan to talk at my next session about secondary trauma and how this plays out in a person's life. I believe that I absorbed a lot of trauma from my experience in counseling. What I felt like I took home night after night was trauma. My boss told me at one point that the way I presented cases in staffing was traumatizing staff and re-traumatizing myself. In reality, I was just talking about what happened. Sadly, I was also seeking support that this was a typical response from my management there. "You have issues with their experiences. If you can't deal with it, something is wrong with your self-care/you." So, this resentment is pretty strong right now. However, with time and space, I will work through it. 

Wow, this has become a long entry. If you are still reading, thank you.
​Julie