What is Emotional Intelligence and Why Does It Matter?
If you’re someone who constantly pushes yourself to perform at a high level—always striving for excellence, meeting expectations, and juggling a million responsibilities—you’re probably a high-achiever. Even though your life looks pretty good on paper, you sometimes feel like something's missing. Beneath the productivity there’s a quiet, underlying stress or unease that you can’t quite shake off. Does that sound about right? If so, you’re not alone.
The truth is, high achievers, perfectionists, and people-pleasers often overlook one crucial component of success: emotional intelligence. It’s easy to get caught up in metrics like how many goals you’ve hit, how many projects you've completed, and how many people are happy with you. But what about your emotional well-being? Your needs? Your feelings? Those probably aren’t getting taken care of the same way you take care of others. That’s where Emotional Intelligence comes in.
Emotional intelligence isn’t just about managing your feelings; it’s a skill that helps you navigate life’s challenges in a way that doesn't leave you burned out, anxious, or emotionally drained.Emotional intelligence (EI) is a powerful tool that impacts how you handle stress, connect with others, and how you lead in both your personal and professional life. But it’s not something you can just push through with willpower or perfectionistic standards. Emotional intelligence is a skill that requires awareness, practice, and most importantly, a willingness to feel, not suppress or ignore emotions. Let’s explore what emotional intelligence really means, why it matters and how you can start harnessing it to create more balance, healthier relationships, and long-lasting success.
What is Emotional Intelligence (EI)?
At its core, emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, manage, and influence your own emotions and have healthy responses to the emotions of others. It’s the capacity to be aware of what you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it, and how to appropriately respond instead of just react, based on that awareness.
Emotional intelligence is often broken down into five key components:
Self-awareness - learning to recognize your own emotions and their impact on your thoughts and behavior.
Self-regulation - this means managing your emotions in healthy ways, particularly in stressful or difficult situations.
Motivation - basically the ability to harness emotions to pursue goals with energy and persistence.
Empathy - understanding and being sensitive to the emotions of others.
Social skills - managing relationships and navigating social complexities effectively.
Emotional intelligence is crucial because it impacts how you handle stress, relate to others, make decisions, and even how you communicate in professional settings.
Myths and Facts About Emotional Intelligence
Myth 1: Emotional Intelligence is Just About Being Nice.
Fact: Emotional intelligence is not about being “nice” or “likable.” It’s about understanding emotions, both yours and others, and using that understanding to guide your behavior and decisions. Emotional intelligence allows you to be authentic and assertive while also being compassionate and strategic. It’s not about people-pleasing; it’s about managing emotions so you can navigate the complexities of relationships without sacrificing your own needs.
Myth 2: You’re Either Born With Emotional Intelligence or You’re Not.
Fact: While some people may have a natural affinity for emotional intelligence, it is absolutely a skill you can develop over time. Just like any other form of intelligence, it’s shaped by your experiences, upbringing, and practice. Emotional intelligence is not static. It’s actually something you can continuously grow, especially with the right tools and support.
Myth 3: High Achievers and High Performers Don’t Need Emotional Intelligence.
Fact: High achievers often rely on logic, discipline, and productivity to succeed, but emotional intelligence is what actually makes that success sustainable. Without emotional intelligence, you’ll find it harder to handle stress, avoid burnout, build meaningful relationships, or even recognize when you’re emotionally drained. Emotional intelligence is what keeps you from burning out or rage quitting your job. Emotional intelligence is what keeps you from hitting the wall and sliding down it.
Myth 4: Emotional Intelligence Means Never Feeling Negative Emotions.
Fact: Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean suppressing or ignoring negative emotions - it’s actually the complete opposite. It’s about acknowledging the full range of your emotions—anger, sadness, frustration—and learning how to process them in healthy ways. Emotional intelligence is the ability to sit with discomfort without allowing it to control your behavior or decision-making. It’s the ability to sit with others’ hard feelings without getting uncomfortable or just jumping in to “fix it”.
How Emotional Intelligence Improves Parenting, Relationships, and Leadership
Parenting: Emotional intelligence is a game-changer for parenting because it helps you navigate your child's emotional needs with awareness, empathy, and patience. As a parent, when you're emotionally intelligent, you're able to model healthy emotional regulation and communication for your children. You’re more attuned to their emotional states and can better help them process and express their feelings in constructive ways. For example, let’s say your child comes home from school upset because of a disagreement with a friend. If you are emotionally intelligent, you can: recognize that your own feelings (perhaps frustration or impatience) might be triggered by their distress. You can calmly listen to your child and acknowledge their feelings, instead of rushing to fix the problem or dismiss their emotions (i.e. tell them to ‘get over it’ or saying ‘he/she is just jealous and immature’ etc). Finally, you can teach them how to name their emotions and use strategies like deep breathing, self-reflection and talking about their feelings to process their emotions in a healthy way. By responding to your child with emotional intelligence, you teach them that it’s okay to feel their emotions and that they have the power to manage those feelings in healthy ways, which helps them to grow into emotionally intelligent adults themselves.
Relationships: Emotional intelligence is vital for creating trust, empathy, and effective communication. People who are emotionally intelligent tend to be better at understanding and expressing their feelings, which leads to healthier and more fulfilling relationships. Emotional intelligence also helps us recognize and understand others’ feelings, which improves communication and can improve connection and trust. For example, when an argument arises with a partner, an emotionally intelligent individual might recognize their own emotions and take a step back to prevent a knee-jerk reaction. They communicate their feelings honestly and calmly, without blame or shame, and listen empathetically to their partner’s perspective and find a middle ground, rather than seeking to “win” the argument.
Leadership/Work Settings: Emotional intelligence is just as important in the workplace as it is in personal relationships. Employees who have emotional intelligence can communicate needs and set boundaries in clear and effective ways, instead of letting resentment and frustration build and cause them to rage quit their jobs. Emotional intelligence also helps employees leave jobs well, in ways that feel empowering and not reactive. Leaders who possess emotional intelligence are better equipped to inspire and motivate their teams, manage conflict, and foster a healthy work environment. They are aware of their own emotions and understand how those emotions can affect their behavior and the behavior of others. For example, a leader with high EI might recognize when a team member is feeling overwhelmed and provide support or adjust expectations. They may use empathy to understand how others are feeling, which helps in making decisions that take everyone’s needs into account. Lastly, they model emotional regulation by staying calm under pressure, even in high-stress situations. Leaders who cultivate emotional intelligence create more cohesive, productive, and supportive teams. Their ability to navigate the emotional landscape of their work environment can increase employee satisfaction, retention, and overall success.
The Impact of Growing Up with Emotionally Immature Parents
Emotional intelligence is often shaped by the environment you grew up in. If you were raised by emotionally immature parents, the impact on your emotional development could be significant, especially if they didn't teach you how to process or manage your emotions effectively.
What Does Emotionally Immature Parenting Look Like? Emotionally immature parents typically:
Avoid emotional responsibility: They might shut down or deflect in response to emotions, attempt to fix problems instead of listening to or validating your feelings. An example of this could be if a child says, “I’m really sad because my friend didn’t want to play with me today” and the fine parent’s response is “Well, that’s life. You’ll be fine, go play with someone else”. In this scenario the parent skipped over the child’s feelings entirely, sending the message that the child’s feelings are not important.
Dismiss or belittle emotions: When you express distress, an emotionally immature parent might say things like, "You're being dramatic," or "Stop being so sensitive," or “stop complaining, it could be worse” - teaching you to suppress your emotions rather than process them. It also lays the groundwork for denying your own feelings, and denying and dismissing the feelings of others.
Use guilt, shame, or manipulation: Some emotionally immature parents use guilt or shame to control behavior, making you feel responsible for their emotions and well-being, which can create an unhealthy dependency or people-pleasing tendencies. This could sound like a parent saying “Be on your best behavior, your father had a hard day at work”, which puts responsibility on the child to not express any excitement or other emotion, when in reality it is the parent’s responsibility to manage their emotions and not require the family to walk on egg shells to avoid upsetting them.
Because of this, children of emotionally immature parents often grow up without an emotional vocabulary and have few coping strategies for navigating their own emotional lives. They might have learned to hide or deny emotions to avoid conflict or to gain approval. They might fear vulnerability, because if their emotions were not validated, they are afraid to show their “true self” or express emotions that seem "weak." Finally, they usually have trouble setting boundaries. If you were never taught to say "no" or stand up for yourself, it can feel impossible to set healthy boundaries as an adult. These experiences affect your emotional intelligence because they shape how you perceive and manage emotions, both yours and others'. Because of this it can be hard to tolerate anxiety, sadness, or frustration which often leads to emotional overwhelm, people-pleasing behaviors, and burnout. But the good news is that it doesn’t have to stay this way.
How To Develop Emotional Intelligence
Fortunately, emotional intelligence can be developed and strengthened over time. Here are some ways you can work on improving your emotional intelligence and start healing the impact of emotionally immature parenting:
Acknowledge your emotions. Start by paying attention to what you're feeling and where those feelings come from. Approach your feelings with curiosity, not judgement.
Learn emotional regulation skills. Practice managing your emotions rather than avoiding them letting them control you. For example, if you feel frustrated or overwhelmed, take a pause and use deep breathing, mindfulness, or self-talk to calm yourself down before reacting. Remember, it isn’t about denying your feelings - it’s about understanding them so you don’t just follow them blindly.
Validate your feelings. If your emotional needs were neglected as a child, it’s important to learn how to validate your own feelings. If this is hard to do (and it is for most of us when we begin working on emotional intelligence), working with a therapist can help you learn how to validate your emotional experiences.
Work on building healthy relationships. Practice empathy in your interactions with others. Try to listen with the intent to understand, not to respond or fix. Healthy relationships are built on emotional understanding and mutual respect.
Develop Boundaries: Emotional intelligence allows you to recognize when others are crossing your boundaries. Learning how to say no or assert your needs is vital to maintaining emotional health and protecting yourself from burnout.
Want to Learn More?
If you're tired of feeling overwhelmed by your emotions, stuck in people-pleasing patterns, or disconnected from your true self, it's time to take action. Developing emotional intelligence can help you break free from the patterns that keep you stuck and move towards a more balanced, authentic life. I specialize in helping high achievers, perfectionists, and people-pleasers build emotional intelligence, emotional resilience, and healthier relationships. If you're ready to improve your emotional intelligence and create lasting change and you’re located in Colorado, click here to book a phone consult with me today.
If you’d like to learn more, here are some books that can help you get started:
Permission to Feel by Dr. Marc Brackett
Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson
Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
