Life’s challenges may offer hidden opportunities

Some people experience inordinate tragedy. Even those living the best of lives can’t protect themselves from occasional heartbreak, loss, trauma or overwhelming experiences that can create anxiety and depression. Those who possess the personal and interpersonal resources to overcome challenges not only survive, but can grow stronger in the process.        

Painful and difficult life experiences can strengthen as well as weaken us.

Challenges that don’t produce overwhelming stress may stimulate new brain cell growth. Stem cells, those capable of regenerating new cells, are found in the amygdala, the brain’s repository for emotional impressions and memories. This suggests a relationship between emotional challenges and new cell development throughout life. Since overwhelming emotional stress inhibits brain cell growth, this regenerative potential may be linked to resiliency, the ability to overcome challenges and resolve conflicts.

Noted researcher Allen N. Schore, in his groundbreaking, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, cites studies that show increased brain development in young children during periods when struggle ends in resolution. The interface between challenging experience, resolution, and brain cell growth may be a catalyst for ongoing human development.

Life’s challenges can be met with the resources provided by EQ

The resiliency that enables people to face and overcome life’s most difficult challenges springs from the ability to:

• quickly and dependable bring your stress levels into balance
• remain emotionally aware and able to harness your emotions
• effectively send and receive nonverbal cues
• engage in joyous playful activity with others
• resolve conflict in ways that build trust

These emotional intelligence resources can be acquired by mastering the five tools from this site’s video training program. They include: 

1.The Elastic helps you reduce stress and avoid

emotional overload

Out of control stress triggers knee-jerk fight or flight responses that make us feel like running or fighting and limit our capacity to behave emotionally intelligently. When this happens, and it commonly does, our emotions and those of others can seem threatening and overwhelming. The first step in raising your emotional intelligence is learning to rapidly and dependably calm and energize yourself.

2. The Glue helps you stay emotionally connected to

yourself and others

Emotionally intelligent communication is fundamentally nonverbal, emotionally-driven communication. Emotion points us towards what we really need, and is our primary source of motivation. Remove the emotional parts of the brain, and people lose their desire to do much of anything.

3. The Pulley helps you attract and hold the attention of others

Nonverbal communication is the lifelong pulley that consciously or unconsciously sends positive and negative signals to others. Nothing is more revealing or attracting than wordless communication.

4. The Ladder helps you rise above life’s difficulties

All emotional exchange strengthens relationships, but sharing humor and delight through interactive play adds a unique restorative healing element. Mutual playfulness reduces stress, defuses anger, mends fences, and lifts spirits.

5. The Velvet Hammer helps you resolve conflict

Painful upset is an unavoidable part of life. But conflict resolved is a velvet hammer that can be a cornerstone for trust. When conflict isn’t perceived as threatening or punishing, it fosters freedom, creativity, trust and safety in relationships.

In challenging situations, the tools work interactively, but each has a specific function. The first and second tools, The Elastic and The Glue always play major roles. Challenge threatens the status quo, requiring us to stay calm and engage our emotional and intellectual resources. Emotion stimulates us to act, collect nonverbal information, ease difficult situations with playfulness, and handle conflict in ways that support survival. All five tools aid in surmounting tragedy and misfortune.

Using the tools of EQ to overcome life’s challenges

Some people naturally meet adversity with resiliency, but for others the survival instinct prompts them to acquire better resources to face and surmount challenges. Here are three true stories of people who developed emotionally intelligent resources and applied them at times of great need.

Mitchell: who took control of his life at a time and place he least expected

Mitchell, a young man of thirty–four, with a lovely wife named Joan, had been living with leukemia for over four years. During this time, Mitchell gave little thought to the seriousness of his disease, delegating all responsibility for healing to his doctors. It wasn’t until Mitchell developed life-threatening anemia that required hospital isolation that he began to consider his role.  

With Joan's help, Mitchell's cold, drab hospital room became attractive and comforting. Beautiful posters of craggy mountains and crystal lakes adorned the walls, and a colorful patchwork quilt and pillows brightened the hospital bed. Though Mitchell’s risk of infection prevented Joan from being in his room, they could see and signal to one another through a large glass window.

On the surface, Mitchell looked and felt fine, but the tests revealed that destructive forces were ravaging his body. With time on his hands and little else to do, Mitchell began paying attention to thoughts and feelings he ordinarily ignored, ultimately acknowledging his fear, anger, and sadness.

When he shared his troubled feelings with Joan, he was surprised by her positive response. She confided that for years she had wanted to share her own fear and anger, but had been afraid to do so. After more soul searching and several good cries, both felt as if a huge weight had been lifted. Mitchell acknowledged that he had spent years avoiding the subject of death and had consequently failed to mobilize himself in the battle against his disease. As he spoke of both sadness and frustration, he felt more relaxed and clear-minded than he ever remembered being.

This emotional outpouring freed a long-absent spirit of playfulness and fun. Mitchell initiated romantic wine and candlelight dinners. Separated by thick glass, he and Joan sat across from one another and playfully communicated without using words.  

In a little over two months, Mitchell's body finally began responding to the medication. As optimism prevailed,  the thing they most feared happened--Mitchell developed a staph infection. Mitchell asked to say goodbye to those on a list he and Joan had prepared for this eventuality. After these meaningful visits, the hospital staff gave Mitchell and Joan privacy for the rest of the night.

The next day, Mitchell went into a very deep coma and by 5:00 that afternoon, died very peacefully. One might have expected Mitchell, whose young heart and other vital organs were strong, to linger for agonizing weeks or months, but he did not.  Mitchell may not have lived the majority of his life emotionally connected to himself and others, but he definitely died in touch and in charge.

Celia: who used her senses to overcome her fears  

Celia was fifty but, she looked and felt more like seventy. Her many problems included childhood neglect that had left her fearful and anxious. Without an adequate education or good health, she was trapped in an unfulfilling marriage. Except to walk for weekly mental health appointments, panic attacks kept Celia from leaving her apartment.

With little hope, Celia was resigned to her life. One day, while climbing the stairs to her counseling session, she noticed a sign that read Volunteer Bureau. The office door was ajar and she peeked in cautiously.  A man at a desk in the file-lined room smiled invitingly, asking what kind of volunteer work interested Celia. Surprised,  Celia stammered, “I don’t think I can.” “Its easy.” he replied. You tell me the kind of  work you want and I will give you three contacts. If you don’t like any of them, I’ll give you three more. We have thousands of requests. What do you enjoy doing?”

The question intrigued Celia. She couldn’t remember ever being asked what she wanted to do. “Well children interest me and I am a good seamstress,” she said, surprised by the sound of her own voice. The man’s eyes lit up.” Have I got just the job for you –if you’ll take it. It’s at a school for unwed teenagers who desperately need to make baby and maternity clothing. “

Boarding a bus and traveling across town terrified Celia, but the idea of helping pregnant teenagers touched a deep cord. In spite of her fear, she devised a strategy for getting herself on the bus and to the school.

The one place in the world where Celia felt safe was her tiny patio garden. Sipping coffee by the potted tomato plants, lattices strung with green beans and fragrant sweet pea flowers was the best part of her day.  Just thinking about it calmed Celia, and sparked her novel idea. If she could visualize her garden, maybe she could leave her house and get on the bus. Celia picked a nosegay of sweet smelling flowers for her lapel and packed some hard coffee candies in her purse. Popping a candy into her mouth, and breathing in the sent of the flowers, Celia headed determinedly for the bus stop. With the tastes and smells of her garden close at hand, the bus trip was bearable.

The teenage girls -some as young as fourteen- were every bit as vulnerable and in need as Celia had imagined, and she immediately set to work. Many students were as lonely as Celia, and appreciated both her company and sewing help. This gratitude encouraged Celia to venture into second hand stores and garage sales for sewing machine parts, buttons and inexpensive fabric.

As her relationships with the girls grew closer, they became Celia's first real family, and she added a second day to her volunteer schedule. When she added a third day, she told the agency her life was full and she no longer had time to see them.

Kay and Marty: How traumatizing transgressions of trust can be survived

 The couple seated in the counseling office appeared calm and affectionate. They had walked in holding hands, sat closely, and listened attentively to one other. Why did these people need marriage counseling?

The question grew as each described their marriage as loving and filled with shared interests and values. “What brings you here?” the counselor finally asked. After a period of extended silence,  Kay spoke with great difficulty. Two weeks before, she made a discovery that turned her world upside down. As she routinely emptied her husband’s jacket pockets, Kay found an intimate note from another woman. When confronted, Marty confirmed he had been unfaithful – with a prostitute! – and confessed to paying for sex periodically throughout their 25-year marriage.

Kay was shaken to her core. Never had Marty given her reason to suspect or distrust him. Although Marty dearly loved Kay and found her attractive, he revealed he could only feel sexually aroused with someone anonymous, almost faceless, someone for whom he had absolutely no feelings. For that reason, he rarely saw the same prostitute twice. He admitted he was disgusted at his own behavior but felt powerless to change.

Kay was a caring and compassionate person, an elementary teacher who had “never met a bad kid” and looked for the best in others. Though emotionally shattered by her husband’s betrayal, she contained her hurt and anger, focusing instead on trying to save a relationship that had been good for over 25 years– that is, IF Marty could change.

Marty’s actions were clearly speaking louder than his words when somehow, after 25 years of infidelity, he “accidentally” left a note in his pocket where his wife would probably find it. Perhaps he knew it was time to confront this issue, but did not know how. What Marty did know about himself was that he avoided his emotions - anger in particular.

Marty accepted and practiced an exercise to develop emotional awareness and comfort. As he practiced, he trembled. After learning his reaction was normal, and seeing that the exercise left him calmer, mentally focused and more energized than when he started, he was encouraged to continue.

Something even more unexpected than the trembling occurred: Childhood memories of abuse surfaced—the first and only childhood memories he had ever recalled. Kay listened quietly, using encouraging sounds, nods, facial expressions, body language and eye contact to communicate the depth of her engagement. Kay was a compassionate listener who didn’t interrupt and she remained focused on Marty’s experience. There was no hurrying past any emotion, and all emotions, from sadness to grief to anger to fear, were met without censorship, and with occasional humor or reassurance. Through Kay’s compassionate listening, Marty felt deeply known and understood.

Marty’s demeanor also changed. He became more self-assured, focused and playful. Marty’s sense of humor bubbled up and he became more creative, prompting  his supervisor at work to comment on the new lightness and spontaneity in his interactions. Marty and Kay’s intimacy increased in frequency, intensity and mutual satisfaction. Over the years the couple’s intimate relationship remained joyful and mutually fulfilling. Marty did not return to a prostitute and his added self-respect increased his popularity at work and productivity in every aspect of his life.

EQ empowers us with the resources we need to overcome suffering and loss 

Mitchell and Joan, Celia and Marty and Kay faced challenges of loss, trauma, anxiety and depression, but by using the resources of emotional intelligence, overcame these obstacles. Their stories prove that repairing the deepest of wounds is as much a social process as an individual process. These true stories demonstrate the mutable power of the brain to make positive changes at precisely the times we experience the greatest challenges.

EQ in Action

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