Understanding Emotional Intelligence, Ep 128, Audio

Hi guys. We're getting ready to start the radio show. Again, we're getting ready to start the radio show. And it's going to be very interesting because it deals with emotions.

Something we all have. Are we emotionally intelligent? It's a good thing.

I think I'm not. It's a very good intelligence. And actually, emotions are healthy. And they can mean that we're more resilient.

So it's a good thing if we learn how to manage them. Guys, I know we can. I believe in us. We can do this. And Bobby wants to say hello on a beautiful sunny day in Miami. Yes, Bobby says hello.

Thank you guys for joining us. If you wait a couple of minutes. Actually, how much? Probably a couple of seconds. Anytime now. Anytime now. We're going to start the show. And hopefully we'll get the guests on video. As soon as she does an update. Yep.

Yeah. The Cure with Amy Cabo. Life can bring many difficult situations.

Domestic violence, addictions, poverty, and even sexual abuse by your loved ones. Welcome, Amy Cabo and The Cure. Good afternoon and welcome to The Cure radio show. I'm your host, Amy Cabo, with my amazing partner, Boris. Wow, I'm amazing. Today you are also. Thank you. Our show is available live on your radio. Also live through our app, The Cure, on any smartphone and our website, goddessthecure.com.

Because he is. We are broadcasting live from Miami through satellite. Available on 35 radios in 11 states. And on series XM channel 131. Also on social media and soon after the show, any podcast player. I wanted to thank our social media followers, especially since we've been reaching an average of one million people every month since 2021.

Thank you and thank God. This show deals with suffering and the tenacity of the human spirit, the will to survive and the courage to keep moving forward. Despite any obstacle with the help of God who enables us to help each other. We provide testimonials to let people know that we're not alone. And in this show, the testimony started with me having been a survivor from child abuse well into young adulthood. We also have experts in several fields and inspirational speakers that are willing to help us with valuable information.

Knowing that education is necessary. Awareness is crucial and comfort is very much needed. I do believe we all suffer or have suffered from something and we hope to be a source of healing for each other. Just to let you guys know, I tried everything and God was my only care. But other forms of cure are presented as well to service everyone. Life will always be challenging, but always know there's always someone who cares if no one at all.

At least God does. The song we played earlier was No Tears Left to Cry by Ariana Grande. And here's my take. We are all in this trial of life, equally loved, carefully knit together, piecing it all as we go and giving it our best while trying to beat the weather. It can seem cold at times, harsh and full of rain.

And if we don't adjust and buckle up, it can drive anyone insane. Surviving no matter what and staying strong is the key by praying all the time until it's something better that we see. Stick to God who knows us best and wipes away our tears, who kept his promises and gave us words full of hope to put away our fears.

Crying and emotions are OK. A tender heart is always good. Balance it with faith and logic and God will take us where we should. Today, we will talk about emotional intelligence and vulnerability with our special guest, Dr. Ilona Jarabek. Ilona Jarabek serves as the president and scientific director of PsychTests AIM. PsychTests offers both individual and corporations the opportunity to evaluate aptitudes, attitudes and personality traits in an interactive way. Dr. Jarabek has written or collaborated on the development of more than 200 scientifically validated psychological assessments and several matching applications. Ilona, welcome to the Cure.

So good to have you. Thank you so much, Amy. Ilona, can you describe for our listeners what it means for people to be emotionally vulnerable? Well, what it means for people is essentially sharing their feelings, sharing their mistakes, admitting mistakes, not being defensive, opening up to others about what is going on in their heart and in their mind. It means not being on guard all the time, essentially showing up our true self to ourselves and to others. It also means the ability to apologize properly, not only just saying, I'm sorry, but actually revealing how you understand what mistakes you made, why you feel regret about what you have done and offering true apologies and offering also a way to make up for what you have done. It is about admitting shortcomings, admitting flaws. It is also about dropping the defensiveness and being able to just wear your heart on your sleeve. Sometimes it also means being able to laugh at yourself.

I love what I'm hearing. It sounds very unifying. It's kind of, you know, the kind of things that Jesus taught us.

And, you know, it has a lot to do with accountability and ownership, which are very great qualities that it's important to have. It's how we grow. It's how we get to understand one another. Why do people find this type of vulnerability so off-putting? Why would someone want to avoid it? Well, because if you allow yourself to be vulnerable, of course you are opening yourself up to potential mockery, right? Like people can put you down. People can laugh at you.

It can feel embarrassing. So we are kind of, especially men, are wired to avoid that kind of situation because they want to be seen as strong, as the protectors, as the breadwinners. I mean, that's how they had been socialized for generations and generations.

And even though that pattern is changing these days, it is still very much ingrained in our DNA. So do you suppose we're confusing kindness with weakness? Kindness with weakness. I think we are confusing, we are confusing admitting weakness with actual weakness. Because our studies show that men and women who are, or in general, people in general, when they are able to admit weakness, they actually benefit on many different levels. And it takes a strong person to admit a weakness.

So it's a little bit of oxymoron, if you will. But definitely in terms of admitting weaknesses, it actually makes us mentally tougher. It makes us degrade, continue to overcome obstacles. And it fights stress in general.

Okay? So it makes us more resilient as well. Interestingly enough, you did reveal in the study that being honest about feelings and mistakes, even though there's a risk of rejection, actually make people happier, even though it may seem counterintuitive.

Exactly. So people who are willing to admit mistakes and to show their vulnerability actually experience higher life satisfaction. They tend to be more positive. They even have higher self-esteem than people who are trying to hide their weaknesses. They are much more able to motivate themselves.

So the benefits are really numerous. And yes, it may seem counterintuitive because you are showing a flaw, right? But actually it takes a strong person to be able to do that. And it helps us to be closer to one another. I've learned that most relationships are symbiotic, meaning we help each other. And when somebody does show their vulnerability and they're willing to admit their faults and their feelings, the person that they're interacting with is happier about that. And therefore they can also, and it makes the relationship, whatever relationship that may be healthier and hence making them happier people. Otherwise you have fights and you're pretty miserable. Exactly. Because it allows for closeness, right? And when you open up to someone else, you essentially give them permission to open up as well.

And it actually promotes wellbeing in terms of your emotions and even physical health. Well, this is something that we all need to hear and it's a great topic and I love what I'm hearing. We will continue talking about this, guys, when we return after the short break. We will be right back with Amy Cabo and The Cure.

I love you and I thank God for you. Somebody would have told me. It's only these would be the good old days.

No, these. You're going to change. I didn't think I had the answers. I didn't drink all of that glass first. I made it to homecoming.

God had the courage to ask. And now we will continue with Amy Cabo and The Cure. Welcome back and thanks for tuning in to The Cure with Amy Cabo.

That's her. And also remember that you can listen to the radio show Life through our app The Cure with Amy Cabo or as a podcast. Just look for God Is The Cure on any podcast platform.

Song that just played was Good Old Days by Macklemore. And this is what I get from it with the help of the Holy Spirit. Of course, prayer should be constant. There's no telling how we can grow. There's just learning from mistakes. God shows us God shows us what we need to know. Staying close to God, living for real and doing it right is what life has taught us to do by creating a path that sheds a light. Keep in mind, if we are careless, unbelieving and hit heed to sin so easily we can get lost, vulnerable to evil and misery sets in. We were meant for so much more because of Christ, our life can change. Our perception turns a great new level, becoming better as our past seems strange. The good old days with God are endless, still growing up.

Now they're new. No longer what seemed fun before, but peace and happiness. That's true. We are talking about emotional intelligence with special guest, Dr. Ilona Jerabek. Ilona, so tell us, what is emotional intelligence? Emotional intelligence is a relatively new concept. It actually started in the late 80s, but it was not until 1995 when Daniel Goldman's Emotional Intelligence book came out. There's been a lot of research and a lot of advancement in research since then.

My company is one of the research groups that works on it quite a bit. Emotional intelligence is something that, of course, works hand in hand with regular intelligence, like the classic intelligence. But the interesting thing is that other things being equal, meaning regular IT being equal, people with high emotional intelligence are at a major advantage in terms of life satisfaction, in terms of performance at work, at any level actually. You might think that it's really important for people who are in sales or in management or HR, but actually it makes a difference regardless of the rank in the company. So people with emotional intelligence tend to have more success in life.

Again, other things being equal. So EQ is first of all about recognizing emotions in yourself as well as in others. It's about regulating our emotions, being able to console ourselves, not to have angry outbursts, that kind of thing. But it is also about kind of having our emotions work together with our rational mind. So we call that emotional facilitation of rational thinking. And essentially what that means is that you consult your emotions, you retrieve the information, you milk it for information, and then you use that information in rational processing.

So that makes it really, really powerful. So people who suppress their emotions and who are not willing to even look at them, thinking that emotions have no place in the workplace, for example, they are putting themselves at a disadvantage because they are leaving quite a bit of information on the table that is available to them. So basically consult your emotions before you act and determine what's appropriate. Be slow to anger.

Oh, I guess I have a very low value on that one. Maybe I should take a test. Maybe you should. Yeah, because if you imagine an iceberg, our rational mind has access only to the information that is available at the tip of the iceberg, right? Like recent memories, recent experiences.

But emotions have access to the bottom of the iceberg. So in a sense, if you retrieve those emotions that are not available to your rational mind, you have much more info to work with. Because everything that we ever experience is actually encoded in our body, even if we already forgot the event itself, but it still forms these neural pathways that have actually a direct link to the brain. And these neural pathways that are based on things that we have learned in the past but forgotten our experiences with people and with situations. So all these experiences that we have acquired throughout our lives helped us to form certain neural pathways.

And these neural pathways get activated when we encounter a similar situation or a person who resembles someone in our past. So it actually influences our perception of what is really going on in our reality. And what we need to keep in mind is that our perception of reality does not equal the reality itself, right? So even if you look at just the facts and you pride yourself to be a logical, rational person, still these past experiences taint how you assess the situation, how you judge the situation. So it's like basically having tinted glasses that paint a very different picture from someone else who might be in the same situation, but may perceive it quite differently, actually. This is how I feel we can get the wrong idea.

And I learned this just recently. You know, there's such a thing as evil, you know, and they can give you the wrong idea. That's the temptation. You have to think beyond that. They can even give you the wrong feeling. You don't have to act upon it. And, you know, it goes a long way just putting a little bit more thought into it and just not falling for it because it seems like that's our environment.

Everybody just seems so easy to have a short fuse and just lose control and just let emotions take over when we are so much better than that. Oh, yeah, I got it. The more holy we are close to God, the more emotionally intelligent we are. The more we're tried, but that doesn't mean that you can think beyond that. You know, we could use our intellect.

It's there. OK. Is that including in your tests, doctor? How about religion? Is that kind of influencing? Well, it's helped me. You know, I like to blame the bad guy, not me. Who wants to be the bad guy? But anyway, when we are back, we will continue talking about emotional vulnerability and intelligence. We would love to hear from you. Tell us your story. Call us. Tell us your truth or ask a question.

We will be right back with Amy Cabo and The Cure. The wrong place at the wrong time, chasing all the wrong things, most of my life and every kind of loss that you can't find. But I got one thing right. Been the kind of guy girls, mamas don't lie. Running with the wrong crowd on the wrong nights. I've been wrong about a million times, but I got one thing right. You got one thing right. Saw it through my pain, kept us patient while I changed.

Never even crossed your mind to walk away. The Cure with Amy Cabo. Life can bring many difficult situations, domestic violence, addictions, poverty, and even sexual abuse by your loved ones. Welcome, Amy Cabo and The Cure. Welcome back, guys, and thanks for listening to The Cure with Amy Cabo. We're live every Saturday at 1 p.m. Eastern on your radio, on our app, The Cure, and our website, GodIsTheCure.com. And of course, all shows are available as a video podcast as well.

Just look for God Is The Cure with Amy Cabo or type GodIsTheCure and the podcast will show up. That song was One Thing Right by Marshmello and Kane Brown. And here's my take. Is any marshmallows? I don't know.

No, that's the food. Sorry. We've had our ups and downs and made mistakes.

All kinds of bad. Grace allowed it to take place. Lessons lead to peace.

No longer sad. Regrets helped us grow. So much we can do wrong.

Learning what we shouldn't do. And fighting made us strong. God was always on our side. Through the chaos turned to pride. If one thing we did do right is turn to God whose word we must abide. He saw it in us. Knows our purpose. God knew we had it all along. Kind enough to give us choice.

Most of us return where we belong. We are discussing emotional intelligence with special guest Dr. Ilona Jarabic. And I was mentioning a little bit about God before we went into break because I do believe God can change a negative perception into a positive one.

Negativity never helped anyone. So Ilona, what advice would you give to someone who's not used to being open about his or her feelings? How can they start opening up if it's not something they're accustomed to? It is not easy for people like that because they have been conditioned throughout their childhood and their adult development to hide their feelings. So it is not easy.

But it is totally doable. So there are two aspects of vulnerability. It is admitting vulnerability towards yourself and then admitting it towards others. So we all have our baggage, right?

And we've got our own blocks. But in general, if we want to generalize, men tend to block on both of these fronts. So the first step I would say is start with yourself, okay? You don't have to disclose that to others if that makes you really uncomfortable. The first step to essentially stepping out of your comfort zone is to start looking inside. Be vulnerable with yourself.

Stop putting on a facade even in front of yourself, okay? So there might be some inner work that needs to be done before you are able to go and open yourself up to others. So you can start with yourself just even if it's like looking at an event or an argument that you might have had with your co-workers or with your spouse. And looking back with hindsight and trying to figure out how your past experiences, how your perception of that reality influence your reaction.

Emotional thinking patterns as well as behavior. And start identifying triggers for you. And start identifying the stories that you tell yourself in your mind that influence your reaction to specific situations.

Gradually you will be able to catch yourself earlier and earlier. So before you start stepping on the slippery slope, you will actually be able to catch yourself and understand, okay, hold on. I am reacting strongly to what my wife said, for example.

And why is that? Look inside. What is it about that situation that triggered such a strong response? And then when you are able to catch yourself, you actually have the power to modify your own response. So you start responding rather than just simply reacting emotionally without any filters. So that would be the first step. And then you can start opening up with people with whom you feel safe, who allow you for that safe space, who you will know that they will not walk you.

They will not reject you if you show vulnerability. And gradually you get more and more out of your comfort zone. And you start also reaping the benefits of this ability to show yourself, to show the true self, okay, without that facade, without that persona that you are trying to portray. And once you see that, that is of course encouraging you to do that more often with more and more people. Of course you need to filter, right?

It needs to be context dependent. So it may not be appropriate to show vulnerability in certain situations. But start with those where you feel safe.

I'd like to think what would be a humble response and most pleasing to God. That's what helps me. How about kids? What can parents do when kids don't feel comfortable with their emotions, i.e. teenagers? Well, teenagers, sure, but also you can start much sooner than that.

That is actually the optimal situation. So you can of course start at an age, even if you're in your 80s, 90s, you can still do the inner work and start modifying your perception. But it is ideal to start with small kids because they are more natural in their responses, right? And the differences between the socialization of girls and boys are not that apparent. That starts to become more and more apparent as kids age, of course. And people saying things like boys don't cry or toughen up, that kind of thing definitely puts up that block that I was talking about.

So try to stay away from the tough talk like this. That may be changing. I mean, these days, men wear buns, get their hair done, have spa days, they cook.

I don't have spa days. They're stay at home dads. I mean, we're doing away a little bit with the gender type, stereotypes, don't you? But it's still there. It's still there, right?

It's still there. So what you need to do is, first of all, create a safe space for them to express themselves. Like a closet. Unless you're claustrophobic.

Okay, okay. Yeah, exactly. So a safe space in the sense that they don't fear the rejection if they open up. Don't get too overprotective, okay? Because kids need to experience life up and down. Like the helicopter parenting and overprotective parents actually are not doing their kids any favors because they don't equip them. It comes from the heart, right?

Like they want to protect their kids from harm's way. But what they are essentially doing is that they are preventing them from experiences that shape their character, that actually develop their resilience. So is it good for men to cry? How does it benefit crying?

How does it benefit people? Well, crying is the ultimate expression of vulnerability relief, right? It creates catharsis. So it allows you to release the tension, to release the pain, to kind of get it out of your system. And as you have most likely experienced after you have a good cry, you actually feel better, right? And it's the hormones like oxytocin and endorphins that get released during cry spells. And if you cry too much, can you feel depressed?

Yeah. Is there a delicate balance? There might, to a certain degree. But the thing is that if you don't allow yourself to express emotion, it's like... Wow, I know some of us that tend to cry a lot and it gets kind of tough.

But I'm sure there's good in everything. We'll continue talking about this when we return, guys. We'd love to hear from you. 86634 Truth. Give us your thoughts. About emotions and how we handle it.

86634 Truth. We'll be right back with Amy Cabell and the Cure. Romans 8 verse 26 says, We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Listen to me. Have you ever had a burden so great you didn't even know where to begin in prayer? When we don't know what to say, the Spirit does. When we don't know what to ask for, the Spirit does. When we don't know how to express the depths of our feelings, the Spirit does. He is praying for you now.

This is Anne Graham Lotz. I've been trying to do it right. I've been living a lonely life. I've been sleeping here instead. I've been sleeping in my bed. Sleeping in my bed. So show me family all the blood that I will bleed. I don't know where I belong.

I don't know where I went wrong. I can write a song. I belong with you. You belong with me in my sweet home. I belong with you.

You belong with me in my sweet home. And now we will continue with Amy Cabo and The Cure. Hi again and thanks for tuning in. We are live every Saturday at 1 p.m. Eastern on your radio and our app The Cure and on social media just for a look for God Is The Cure, which He is. And also the show will be available as a podcast and also just search for The Cure with Amy Cabo. Now Amy is spelled with an I and a double E or type in God Is The Cure and the podcast, which is The Cure with Amy Cabo. Show up.

The song that just played was Hey Ho by the Lumineers. Great song. And guys, this is what I get from it. Until we find a different way, loneliness can overtake. The lessons taught by God separates what's real from what's fake. God is our true family, our comfort and guiding light. With Him there's always hope, leads our way and gives us sight. Hard times will continue. Eventually we learn to navigate.

Such rough waters can be a climb. It's for the best and for our sake. Everyone soon will understand we truly are sweet God's creation. Given more than we deserve.

He is our rock, our refuge and salvation. We are continuing our conversation with our special guest, Dr. Ilona Jerabek, discussing vulnerability and emotional intelligence. Funny things should be, not too long ago I saw in LinkedIn, was it? That emotional intelligence is the greatest intelligence to have. Ilona, with these partial lockdowns in many places, how is that affecting us emotionally or compromising our emotional intelligence?

Well, that's a loaded question. Emotions are flying high in situations like this. Hard times like the pandemic tend to accentuate our natural responses to stress. In some people it brings out the best and in others it brings out the worst. It might be within the same person.

Some situations might do one or the other. So emotional intelligence definitely helps us to cope with the situation. It gives us the coping skills. It gives us the ability to console ourselves, to express what we are feeling about the situation and be honest with ourselves and with others. So the way I see it, it's also an opportunity for the society at large to increase the awareness of the importance of emotion. And in a way it can, that's what I see as the silver lining in the situation, is that it can bring us closer.

It gives us an opportunity to look back at our lives, to reconsider what is really important for us. So in that sense, that brings some positive aspects to the situation. Now, people who are high in emotional intelligence do have an easier time coping with what is going on, because they are able to recognize what's happening in their hearts and they are able to manage their emotions. Because if you don't have the self-awareness, you don't really know what is going on. So you might be reacting to the situation. You might be actually compensating in unhealthy ways. So prayer, for instance, is one of the good, or spiritual practice in general, is one of the good coping mechanisms, because it helps us to get in touch with ourselves, but also with the universe at large.

So that is definitely great, but it also gives us the opportunity to explore ourselves, and to turn inside and outwards as well, to open up. Well, here's what's beautiful about self-control. If we choose not to impossibly react on what we immediately feel, and we handle the situation better, we do feel better about ourselves. It's difficult to do a lot of times, but I heard that you can ask your guardian angel to help you with your anger. Absolutely.

I'm going to ask him. But you can also seek help from others, right? You can share your feelings with your spouse, with your family. You can develop your empathic skills so that you better understand what others might be feeling, and that makes you a better helper. So all these things help us cope with the situation. And it also gives us an opportunity to feel gratitude for what we already have. And that is one of the things that is so important and one of the best coping mechanisms, to develop a gratitude journal or to develop a routine to show gratitude. And that is actually one of the ways that we can help our kids to develop emotional intelligence and that emotional grit is to share at the dinner table, for example. What are we grateful for or just before bed?

It can be part of the prayer. So in general, this pandemic is, of course, difficult and destructive in many ways. But at the same time, hardships like this help us grow, and they provide us with lessons that we need to learn. And that's how we should look at it. And so how do we know that we're being emotionally intelligent?

What is it that we need to show in order to be a good example to others? Well, you can for sure you can take a test, right? But you can also look on the inside and just say, am I admitting to myself? What am I feeling? Am I able to label my emotions? And can I go a little deeper to identify what is really bothering me? So one of the classic examples would be the husband leaving dirty socks on the floor and the wife getting upset. I don't.

Good. But the point is, if the wife just simply gets upset and starts yelling, she is reacting to the situation emotionally, and she does not really know what is truly bothering her about the situation. But if she looks beyond just the upset, if she understands that what is really bothering her is that she perceives a lack of respect from her husband, she feels like she is being taken for granted, and she is being viewed or she feels like a servant, well, then she can communicate that to her husband. And if he is open to receive that information, he can change his behavior and he can assure her about these things. So that's the power of emotion, because they show you what is really at the bottom of the issue, not just on the surface. And if you can't get him to listen, try to get him to pray.

It works. And any take home message, we have one minute left. Well, take home message would be use this opportunity to look on the inside, understand yourself better, because your self-awareness is a very powerful tool. Self-awareness gives you the glasses through which you see the world. And if you understand what kinds of messages you tell yourself, what kind of stories your past trauma, past experiences have developed, then you can start changing things up.

Or what behaviors are more productive and more likely to make you feel better and set yourself up for happiness instead. So, Doctor, thank you very much. We've ended the show. It's been wonderful, and thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you very much for having me.

More information on Dr. Ilona Jarabek and the tests they do can be found on her website, queendom.com. So let's finish with a prayer, guys. Heavenly Father, in Jesus' name, please help me to dwell in the secret place today. Help me to remain stable and fixed under your shadow. Keep my emotions on an even keel today. Help me to just focus on you so that you can make me perfectly stable in every way. Thank you, Father, in Jesus' name.

Amen. God has clearly laid out His healing prescription for anxiety in the Bible. Philippians 4, 6-7. It tells us, Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Heavenly Father, I've been carrying all these worries around, and I can't do it anymore.

I can't handle it, and I know you never meant for me to carry this stuff anyway. So Father, in Jesus' name, please help me to be anxious for nothing, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, and with plenty of thanksgiving. Please help me to make my requests known to you. And Father, let your peace, which suppresses all understanding, guide my heart and mind in Christ Jesus. Thank you, Father. Thank you. I give you all my burdens right now, and I receive your rest. In Jesus' name, Amen. Father Pio says, No more tears, just be grateful. Thank you to the Truth Network and the wonderful people that work with us for having us on the air, and all other radios that carry our program, including Sirius XM Channel 131. Special shout-out to Robin Webster. This is Amy Cabo. You have been listening to The Cure. So until next Saturday, be safe, peace, be kind to yourself and others, and keep your faith.