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hey there everybody and welcome to this video on how secure attachment develops emotionalintelligence i'm your host dr donnelly snipes let's start out by reviewing what emotional
intelligence is emotional intelligence is your ability to identify your own emotions
to be able to feel something and put a label on it accurately and say i'm scared i'm angry i'm
depressed i'm happy i'm curious i'm motivated there are a lot of different feelings there
it's also your ability to identify your triggers and vulnerabilities for those emotions
what things trigger what things cause you to feel happy angry scared depressed curious
the list and what are your vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities really apply more
to distressful emotions what situations like being hungry or sleep deprived or in pain
make you more vulnerable more likely to have a overly strong reaction
to something that happens and normally you would react with a three but because you were already
vulnerable because you were already under distress you reacted to this situation with a seven and
then you regret it so people who are emotionally intelligent are aware of their vulnerabilities
and they are mindful of them and note them and are able to take steps in order to prevent the
possible distress so for example and i um if you wake up in the morning and you've got a migraine
and you obviously you don't feel well and you've got to go to work you know probably that you're
going to have a little bit more difficulty being patient you may be a little bit more
irritable therefore what steps can you take to prevent yourself from biting somebody's head
off at the office what steps can you take to make yours help yourself feel more productive and less
hopeless and helpless and angry and anxious the next component of emotional intelligence is your
ability to regulate your emotions and maintain motivation regulating emotions is not just about
tamping down or avoiding or managing distressful emotions it's also about increasing positive
emotions how do you increase your motivation your excitement your happiness your curiosity
those are all things we want to increase and how do you tolerate distress when it comes your way
and then deal with emotions like anger and depression and sadness and grief
people with high emotional intelligence no strategies have strategies to be able to do that
they are able to sort of alter the temperature of the bath water if you want to think about it that
way they are able to turn up the cold and turn down the hot if you think of cold as being the
happy and hot as being the painful i don't know um but that is something they're able to do and the
third component we're really going to talk about for emotional intelligence is people's ability
to identify and respond appropriately to other people's emotions you're able to see somebody
and get an idea of oh they're probably angry it looks like they're sad it looks like they're happy
pretty um standard emotions you know we don't have to get super down in the weeds with
getting incremental and emotions and then ability to respond appropriately if somebody is displaying
sadness being able to empathize how do you respond to somebody who's sad
one of the steps that a lot of caregivers use is to say well how would you want somebody to
respond to you when you're sad how would you want somebody to respond to you when you're in pain
it doesn't mean that everybody's going to want you to respond that way but it gives
you a starting point you can empathize you can ask what is it that i can do to help you feel better
so how is all that created from secure attachment what you remember
by mnemonic for secure attachment is consistency responsiveness attention validation encouragement
and safety so how does consistency really help the person develop emotional intelligence
when a caregiver is consistent with noticing how their child is feeling what their child
is expressing then the child is consistently getting feedback when i start feeling this way
my caregiver says that i'm anxious or my caregiver uses this word and that helps children start
developing that emotional vocabulary and that mindful awareness of the early warning signs
of anger anxiety depression happiness excitement those can be very very helpful as we grow as
adults it's also important for us to be mindfully self-aware and securely attached to our self in
order to pay attention to you know what are those feelings noticing those feelings early now in our
childhood secure attachment hopefully we learned emotional vocabulary of emotional vocabulary
to assign to those feelings and hopefully our caregiver helped us develop tools to deal with
it but right now we're just on consistency and that's being consistently self-aware and mindful
of our emotions of our motivations of our triggers and vulnerabilities that sounds familiar of our
strengths and weaknesses and our impact on others people who are emotionally intelligent recognize
how they impact other people they recognize when i walk into the room this person kind of
shies away or this person gets really excited they recognize their impact on other people
when children are growing up they start learning these things because their caregiver responds
their caregiver says oh it seems like you're feeling anxious it seems like you're feeling
disorganized right now whatever word the caregiver uses and communicates with the child that i'm
noticing how you're feeling that can really help people develop a sense of self-awareness
responsiveness is the next concept insecure attachment that caregiver doesn't just notice and
go wow it seems like you're feeling really anxious good luck to you the caregiver hopefully is able
to say wow it seems like you're feeling really anxious would you like to go on a walk would you
like a hug let's practice chewing gum and blowing bubbles something that can help the child get
into their wise mind that can help them tolerate that distress we're not trying to make it go away
we're just helping them move around until they can let that adrenaline bleed off a little bit
and get into their wise mind so distress tolerance they learn then impulse control and delay
delay of gratification is another thing they learn once the caregiver has said all right you
have we went on a walk you seem to be a little bit calmer now or you seem to
be in your thinking mind that makes a lot more sense to kids let's talk about what's going on
by virtue of interrupting the process when they the child starts to get anxious or angry
the caregiver steps in identifies the emotion or helps the child identify the emotion
helps the child implement distress tolerance skills the child is learning impulse control
they're not able to yell to scream to hit to bite whatever response that child might normally use
which can be really helpful and then the caregiver helps them identify coping skills the caregiver
is going to respond to the child and say all right you seem really angry what do you think
is the best step in this situation what do you think could happen they may try to help
the child take the other person's perspective how would you feel if sammy did that to you
helping the child process this and then figure out how do i cope with this situation
what can i do what is the best response option in this situation
and motivational skills also kind of come under responsiveness it comes under a couple places
but responsiveness helps people feel capable when they recognize they can feel something they can
think something and then they can figure out what to do it helps them feel empowered it helps them
feel safer which helps with motivation it also helps them recognize and be responsive hey i'm
not real motivated to do my math homework what is the best coping skill what is the best response
option for that validation is another component of secure attachment empathy and awareness of
others emotions and needs while maintaining personal boundaries is again crucial and both
empathy and awareness of others emotions and needs are part of emotional intelligence
a lot of people have difficulty setting boundaries they have difficulty validating
other people's emotions if they don't share them and validation can be very helpful when
caregivers are working with children the child may feel very very angry or overwhelmed or
terrified about something and the caregiver is looking at it going uh i don't get it however
it's important to validate that that child feels the way they feel right then now then you can move
on to responding to it what can we do in order to improve the next moment but for children because
they've had so many fewer experiences than we have what is really not an iss a non-issue for an adult
may be a huge issue for a child because they don't have as many things to compare it against and it's
important that we don't invalidate them it's important that we help help them feel supported
and recognize yeah this hurts a lot right now and i will help you work through it and encouragement
this is people's ability to respond appropriately a in a secure attachment the caregiver
has helped the child identify caregiver notices is mindful of early warning signs or early signs of a
particular feeling the caregiver helps the child get into their wise mind if necessary tolerate
distress if necessary and then understand you know what caused me to feel this way and what are some
possible things that i can do to address it and then encouragement comes in the form of saying all
right now you know what you can do let's go do it you got this i have faith in you and that is also
part of responding appropriately not doing it for somebody not telling them that they're wrong or
invalidating them but communicating assertively with them that you recognize how they feel and
that you believe they have the ability to take the next step which can help with motivation as well
same thing as adults when we encourage ourselves we're increasing motivation we're saying
i can do this or i really don't want to do this however i know how to modulate my emotions i know
how to increase my emotions to get it done and how awesome will that be when it's finally finished
emotional intelligence is essential for secure attachments and secure attachments
help people develop emotional intelligence emotional intelligence is developed with self
and other interaction when the caregiver provides consistency the caregiver is consistently aware
of their own thoughts wants needs feelings and can communicate that they say i'm feeling tired
i'm feeling frustrated i'm feeling however you don't have to feel that way but they're able
to acknowledge it for the child modeling that awareness modeling that mindfulness and they're
able to help children start identifying early warning signs or early signs of emotions label
them and then understand their triggers their vulnerabilities and possible coping responses
responsiveness is when the caregiver can either model if they're experiencing distress
or help the child figure out okay how do i get into my my wise mind how do
i de-escalate so i can think clearly and what are my options here validation
helps people develop emotional awareness and the awareness that they can have
different reactions different feelings to things than other people do and that's okay
and encouragement helps them develop assertiveness and motivation and learn how to
talk to themselves nicely assertively as well as motivate themselves in the future