Emotional intelligence, emotional quotient and EQ – we’ve all heard these terms, which describe the ability to manage and accept responsibility for our own emotions. And, we’ve heard that it’s one of the most valuable skills a person can learn.

But how do we learn it?

Understanding and managing our own emotions is essential to developing emotional intelligence. The better we can do this ourselves, the better equipped we will be to help others manage, navigate, process and take ownership of their emotions.

According to Joshua Routt, LCSW, mobile assessor for Methodist Family Health, words are important. How we say things reflects what we believe. “What I’m going to suggest may sound really simple,” says Routt, “but it’s incredibly difficult. It starts by eliminating one phrase and replacing it with another: Eliminate ‘makes me’ statements and replace them with ‘I feel’ statements.”

A person or situation cannot make us anything unless we allow it to, explains Routt. He gives the following example:

Scenario 1: I wake up in the morning groggy and grumpy. I did not sleep well, I spilled cereal on my pants, my kids were less than pleasant. As I’m driving to work, somebody cuts me off. I flip them off and yell at them because it made me mad.

Scenario 2: I wake up after a great night’s sleep, my wife made breakfast for me and my kids were helpful and courteous. As I’m driving to work, somebody cuts me off. I slam on my brakes and immediately think, “Wow, they must be in a hurry.”

“In those two scenarios, the event, getting cut off, is the same,” explains Routt, “but how I responded was different. So why is it that these identical events can elicit two different emotional responses? Because it has nothing to do with the person or situation, and everything to do with me and my emotional state at the time of the event.”

So, how does this example tie in to managing our emotions? By responding using “I feel” statements, instead of “makes me” statements. “I don’t ever want anyone to deny an emotion or deny how they feel,” says Routt. “What I’m suggesting is that instead of saying ‘you make me mad’ you say ‘I feel mad when you …’”

As we learn to understand and manage emotions, Routt has identified three key effects of using “I feel” statements:

1. Creating ownership.
2. Identifying the true emotion.
3. Limiting responsibility to our own emotions.

Creating Ownership

Before we can process, manage or change an emotion, we must own it. Routt clarifies it this way: “If I am renting an apartment, I cannot just start knocking down walls or changing the paint color, because I do not own it. The same is true with an emotion. Before I can change, manage, or understand an emotion, I have to own it.”

In our statements about our feelings, “I” denotes ownership.  “When saying ‘I feel angry’ I’m saying that the anger is mine,” says Routt. “I can express it, I can hold onto it, I can do whatever I want with it, because it’s mine.”

Identifying the True Emotion

Often, when we say we feel angry, it’s not really anger we feel. We may actually feel scared, embarrassed, unimportant, humiliated, rejected or another emotion. Routt tells us that sometimes, anger is an easier emotion to deal with because it is one that we tend to blame on other people or situations, and because it is easier to face than fear or sadness. “If done correctly,” says Routt, “the ‘I feel’ statements force you to identify the true emotion, so you can take ownership of that true emotion.”

He gives this example from his own life: “When having a discussion with my wife, I don’t want to discuss how I felt angry with her when what I really felt was unimportant or not valued. Rather than immediately identifying my emotion in a given situation, I now often ask her to give me a minute to think. I tell her that ‘I feel emotionally charged’ or simply, ‘I feel charged,’ and that I need a minute to figure out why. As it turns out, most of the time the reason has nothing to do with anything she has done but is the result of a bad day at work, or something like that.”

Limiting Responsibility to Our Own Emotions

Good news: We don’t have to own other people’s emotions! “Something I do that makes it easier for me NOT to own others’ emotions is to always assume,” says Routt. “Usually the advice we’ve heard is that you should never assume, but I want you to always assume – assume that the responses and behaviors of others all come from a good place.”

This is especially helpful in relationships, advises Routt: “I want my wife to always assume that I would never intentionally hurt her or want her to feel unimportant, and vice versa.  Even if you know the person’s behavior might have been intentionally rude or hurtful, it doesn’t matter. By assuming it comes from a good place, your response is different. You cannot take responsibility for another person’s intent or behaviors. You can only accept responsibility for yours.”

To explain, Routt shares another example from his life: “One evening I came home from work and, as I have done every evening for 15 years, I took my bag off my shoulder and threw it on the floor.  My wife happened to be cleaning the living room and when she saw me throw my bag down, she said, ‘You make me so mad! You just come in and throw your stuff down.’

“I could’ve easily owned her emotions and in anger replied, ‘Why are you yelling at me? I just walked in the door and I’ve always put my bag there.’ However, working from the assumption that my wife knows that I love her and would never intentionally hurt her, I reinterpreted what she said as, ‘She feels mad that I put my bag down in a place where I’ve been putting it for the last 15 years.’ I realized, anger did not make sense – she obviously felt charged about something.

“What I said to her was, ‘Honey, I hope you know I would never intentionally do something to upset you, but I can tell you’re really charged. What’s going on?’ She tearfully explained how stressed she was because of all her obligations with her new job. She wasn’t angry at me for putting my bag down. She was feeling overwhelmed and was extremely charged.

“While I couldn’t own her feeling of being overwhelmed, I could help alleviate some of her stressors at home. I told her that I would finish cleaning the living room, that I would get dinner ready for the kids and that she could go in the back and do everything she needed to do.”

Pulling It All Together

Understanding, managing and taking responsibility for our own emotions helps us deal with other people’s emotions. When someone says that we made them mad or we made them sad, we know that’s not true. “That is not to say that your actions may not have been unkind or could be interpreted as unkind,” cautions Routt. “It just means that when accepting responsibility for your behaviors, you do not have to accept responsibility for others’ emotional response to your behaviors.”

Routt has presented these concepts to groups of mental health professionals, parents and couples. “The best way to teach our children and others to accept responsibility for their emotions is by accepting responsibility for our own,” he says. “We do this best by being a good example. Children usually learn better by watching what we do than by hearing what we say.”

Of course, sometimes feelings seem beyond our control and no matter how we phrase it, no matter how much we own it, we can’t change it. “This is why it’s so important to seek help as needed,” says Routt. “Therapy, medication management, or a combination of the two can greatly improve your mental health and make it possible to feel happy and fulfilled.”

More Information:

Methodist Counseling Clinics