Individuation and the realities of Emotional Intelligence
‘I am no bird, and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.’
Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre Chapter 23)
I hate socks.
One of my earliest memories was from when I was around two or three years of age. My mother had gone out, and my father, who used to abuse me emotionally and physically when I was a child, made me sit on a chair facing the corner of the living room. I would be sat there for ages, maybe hours, just staring at that wall. And whilst I sat there the one thing which used to irritate me was the socks I was wearing (the itchiness of the stitching etc). Yet, I would not move. I was too afraid to. I had learnt that were I to do that my father would come across the room and continue beating me, before putting me back in that corner, sitting there waiting until my mother came home.
I learnt from an early age to read the energies in a room, in a space. For example, when my father was due home, I learnt that I could feel the change in the air, the subtle but powerful shift in feelings when I knew my father was close. And when that shift occurred, I realised this was the time to stop playing and to start behaving. The shift meant that I was to remember my place in the order of things at home; that I had to be quiet whilst my father watched the news and ate his dinner in peace, to remember that he hated me and that I was less than.
The interesting thing about these early emotional adaptations though is that they never really worked. I could be doing my best to be likeable, to be performative, and my father (often from out of nowhere) would appear and belittle me, berate me, or beat me, and then go on his way, leaving me distraught, destroyed or dissembled.
What he did in the nineteen years until I left home was, he played his part in making sure that I was emotionally attuned to him. To his wants and needs. To his behaviours and his moods. My emotional behaviours were honed to meet him.
‘The human species has a remarkable capacity to adapt to any condition, but this adaptation is not a healthy reality, it can often involve numbing the soul.’
Gabor Mate
We are all emotionally adapted.
The importance of this Mate quote, together with my personal narrative is that it allows me to say that we are all adapted beings, and for the purpose of this blog, emotionally adapted ones especially. What I mean here, and why my own story should also be seen as a metaphor, is from an early age we have been taught which emotions are reasonable, and which are not. Taking this a stage further, we have internalised within us a way of being formed by culture, formed by family, formed by religion, and formed by trauma and abuse. We then behave in accordance with these scripts as we behave emotionally the same as everyone else around us. Yet, this leads to a split within us which is then hard to manage (and as the curse of being a psychotherapist, is something I often pick up from my clients – and from others I interact with – as I try to understand the world around me). In these moments, my experiences of those closest to me, or of those I am working with, involves understanding the emotional adapted part of them, together with the more emotionally intelligent, emotionally silenced part which often lays underneath.
For example, the women who are angry but have been taught within a patriarchal system that to do so is wrong, is unwomanly, so they instead cry, this is an example of emotional adaptability. From the angry man of a minority culture who instead of lashing out at the person who was racist towards them, they then take it out on their family, their kids, this is emotional adaptability. And in both instances when I am around them, I can feel the anger, I can feel the pain, of their emotional unconscious.
Emotionally adaptability is an incredibly powerful force which means that we are all more often than not, nowhere near the emotionally mature beings we so think that we are. Be us male, female, or non-binary, because of the socially constructed world which we live within with its unconsciously internalised rules, we are all at best emotionally adapted as a means of survival. We may do therapy. We may go for long walks or do exercise. We may do many things to cope. Yet, underneath so much of this there is a messaging which tells us if we do not comply, we will be punished.
This is where shame comes in. Shame plays a major role in binding us all to the systems which oppress us. Our fear of shame makes us conform to ways of being we would not really choose, to people we really would not date, to take on jobs we really would not wish to be a part of, because to not do so risks us being shame by our peers, our partners, by our culture. In these instances, emotional adaptability is more present than emotional intelligence, because we are not listening to that part of ourself which speaks loudest. We have drowned that part out because we want to comply, we want to fit in, we want to be a part of something.
Very much like the treatment my father left me with, where he regularly used shame to make me more compliant, shame is used by the systems of the patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism to make us all more malleable to its wants, excesses, and abuses. Even though our gut may tell us that said partner is not the right one for us, the system says who we should marry based around white supremacy, patriarchal ideals and capitalism, for example. So, we do as we are told. We form our families, we live the ‘good’ life, we do not rock the boat. And maybe, for some of us, this is the reason why when midlife comes round we rebel (van Deurzen, 2022). We have a break down to break through, we become more ourselves as we stride out and work out just what we want emotionally, how we want to express ourselves emotionally, what it means to be emotionally free.
‘Men (humans) must learn to feel and express a full range of emotions to heal themselves from patriarchal trauma.’
Bell Hooks
A confession: I absolutely hate the term Emotional Intelligence.
From its overuse on dating sites, to its overuse in popular parlance, the idea that there is a level of emotionality which people need to ascribe to in order for another to feel safe and met, is one of the problems why so many of us struggle to connect at all. Yet, and I will contradict myself slightly here, do I believe there is a route towards such a thing.
Well, this is where individuation comes into play. Individuation, in this emotional instance, works hard to challenge the experiences, systemic and personal of how they moulded us into compliance and being. Individuation also, if we are brave enough to wade through its choppy waters, divest systemic shame of its power to define us, to control us, and to keep us from our own inner emotional knowing. As we do this difficult work though, and as we sit with the shame of being seen as unacceptable to those peers who we project so much power on to (but who in reality are as clueless as ourselves) then what we end up doing is we repower our own emotional centres. We recognise that some of the decisions that we might make now, be they around relationships, work, or other core aspects to our lives, whilst they may not seem ‘normal’ to those around us, they resonate as good enough for us. They mean we are speaking from our hearts.
When we finally engage with these aspects, then we are doing so much more than living in fear, as per the Kakar (2012) statement below. We have realised that this fear is manufactured in order to control us. We have realised that in order to be really emotionally intelligent we have to recognise that fear can be worked with, pushed through, moved beyond, and then we can step out and follow our own disparate path through life.
So, yes, emotional intelligence does exist. But it is not the socially constructed stick used to beat those who see themselves as more emotionally aware than others (and who are therefore more egotistical boastful about it). When I see someone walking their path, and not talking about, or encounter someone on my travels who just feels different, and who embodies their words, then I know I am around someone different, someone emotionally aware, someone emotionally intelligent.
‘We do not just live in a culture, the culture lives in us, shaping our deepest desires and fears.’
Sudhir Kakar
References
Kakar, S. (2012). The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (4th Editio). OUP Indi.
van Deurzen, E. (2022). Yes, you are alone, but you dont have to be lonely. Emmy’s Existential Zone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE3flBPL6wU