The Intelligence of heart (1997)

social intelligence by Isabelle Filliozat (Psychologist)

The intelligence of social relations: to animate a meeting, to speak in public, to overcome shyness, to respond to aggression, to assert oneself, to give his opinion, to listen, to cry, to motivate a team and to motivate yourself, to cope with adversity and change, resolve conflicts, …

Would it not be so useful to receive some notions on self-awareness and the decoding of emotions, as to know the kings of France and 1515?

1 out of 10 French people is depressed. It is urgent to learn to face our emotions!

90% of our daily life is ignored at school. Is not the intelligence of social relations on the same level as other forms of intelligence?

Multiple Intelligences (1983 Howard Gardner): To the verbal and logico-mathematical intelligences (QI), you can add the intelligences for space (3D), for music, for kinesthetic (body: dancers, athlete, surgeons), and finally for the 2 last but not the least, interpersonal (understand and working with others) and intrapersonal (faculty of forming self representation and using it) intelligences, brought together in emotional intelligence by D Goleman – EQ.

EQ:

• Ability to motivate and persevere despite adversity and frustration
• Control of impulses and ability to postpone satisfaction
• Ability to regulate moods and prevent distress from impairing reasoning skills
• Empathy & Hope

In the West, traditions burst, the individual is honored, but he does not always know what to do with this freedom. (note: The Terror period of 1789 in France).

Temperament, innate or acquired?

Neurons that transmit sensory and motor information would be genetically programmed. While the networks of connections between the neurons, the areas of association, are built as and when lived. So 50/50!

We own 10 power 12 neurons. See the complexity … and the range of possibilities!

The more you get angry, the more you promote this reaction among other possible, and therefore more easily and quickly will get angry in the future. Your habits, through the play of neuronal facilitations, form your character and draw your temperament (tendencies to anger, submission, courage, reflection or fear).

Emotions reorganize the memory!

Emotion informs us about the world around us faster than hypothetico-deductive thinking. Our emotions give us our sense of existence to the world (meaning). They individualize us by giving us the consciousness of our own person.

The role of emotions is to signal the events that are significant for the individual and to motivate the behaviors to manage them. Emotions are biological, drive. Feelings (sentiments) are so-called secondary elaborations because they are mentalized.

The denial:

Fred and Sandrine have a car accident. The car is crumbling. They are safe and sound. The danger is now spread. Sandrine starts shaking and screaming. Fred tries to calm her without success. What’s the interest of screaming? Sandrine finally calm down. Fred stayed marble. Without being recognized and expressed, the tension was crystalized in him. He’s going to have nightmares for months, reliving the accident. He refuses to become aware of the emotional impact of the event, his unconscious will represent him night after night … until he finally agrees to recognize his fear and cry.

Silence

Silence is more traumatic than shared pain. Emotions that can not be said dig a gap between people who love each other. “I do not have a problem” can also be an equivalent of “I do not want to ask myself questions”. Existential anxieties can be silenced for a time, but they will catch you one day. They crystallize into the body, or hug your offspring.

Perhaps you are one of those who share their lives with a cold, frustrating person on a daily basis because he doen’t speak, doesn’t express hisr feelings, doesn’t react. His defenses are like a skin protecting his fragilities. To open up again, he needs to feel completely safe with you.

The untimely activity of a prefrontal lobe conceals the perceptions of the other. In fact, feelings with a pleasant and unpleasant affective tone are each managed by a lobe of the brain. The left prefrontal takes care of the joy, the hope, the gratitude. The right prefrontal treats unpleasant emotions like anger or sadness.

The origin of armor

we can be beaten physically but also psychically. The lack of respect for the experience (of the child), the lack of listening to needs, the denigration of emotional outbursts, indifference and unspoken (parents) are at the origin of armor of emotional denial.

John was never beaten, but he lost his father very young. His mother was desperate, she was waiting for her 7 year old boy to replace the missing father. He assumed the role of “the man”, he became the confidant of his mother, he reassured her, he was filling administration papers, he could not afford to cry. He must be strong.

Coldness

Coldness is not genetic, but it is passed from generation to generation.

Peter works a lot. He leaves early in the morning, comes back late at night. He works the WE. When his wife complains of being alone at home, he retorts that it is necessary to earn his “crust”. He prefers to forget that she also has a paid job. In reality, Peter flees his emotions. Fatigue is a strategy for not feeling. He is not at home because he does not want to face his affects. His children are small. They require a lot of attention. Peter does not want to give it to them, he does not have the courage. Working outdoors is much easier and much less tiring than staying at home. … The intimacy, especially with a small child, was painful for him …

Because of their avoidance strategy, “they” inflict the same lack on the next generation.

Power:

The need for power over others is all the more important because inner impotence is great. When we don’t feel up to an expectation level, we can not admit our weaknesses. We terrorize to be less afraid ourselves.

Many people having concreted their impulses go in the natural environments precisely to find there what they killed in them.

Judgment:

Brain functions:

The human brain integrates the previous findings and adds its personal touch, conferring on us these fabulous advantages that are the possibilities to make assumptions and deductions, in short to access the abstraction, to direct our behaviors according to our objectives as well as to take self-awareness (animal principle in front of a mirror), and to awareness of others and of our place in the world.

We owe to Mc Lean, classification of the brain in 3 parts: the archeocortex, the paleocortex and the neocortex (Attention: these subdivisions are mental constructs, like the map versus the reality of the country crossed).

The reflex Brain or reptilian:

In fact the brain of a reptil has no access to memory functions  and to anticipation

The Emotional Brain:

To free itself from automatisms, it was necessary to develop in the brain a structure allowing the choice of its behaviors. To choose, it is necessary to have preferences, to define the best and the least things. Developed by mammals, the emotional brain is particularly important in dolphins and humans. A set of cores allow the memorization, the recognition of situations already lived and the attribution of their affective meaning.

Among the glands, let us note the hippocampus, which memorizes the raw facts, and the amygdala, small gland of the temporal lobe which attributes to them preferences. The amygdala receives information from the 5 senses that make exteroception (perception of the outside) and proprioception. It informs the upper areas and listens to their message. It reacts to the thoughts, images, fantasies produced by the neocortex. It is finally linked to all the vegetative functions (breathing, heart, sexual, …), nervous and humoral (Immunity) that participate in the balance of the body.

The reptilian brain allows only a weak alternation: to flee, to remain immobile or to attack (palatability or aversion) in the moment PRESENT. Through the emotional brain, behavioral nuances appear. A personality is sketching.

Thanks to the emotional brain, the memory of our experiences (PAST) draws our particular profile of responses to the environment, our character.

The brain of thought:

or the brain of emotions … of others (empathy)

The dimension of the FUTURE is accessible only with the neocortex, the famous gray matter. The evolutionary leap lies mainly in the appearance of associative areas (note: do you remember? … that we make and break throughout our life). We can associate the information with each other, compare them, prioritize them, weight them … in short analyze, infer, deduce, reflect …

It gives us the ultimate freedom in relation to the environment, that of the conscious choice of our attitude (note: invent two different words for consciousness: consciousness of the animal?).

Human life feeds on meaning as much as bread.

The supremacy of the neocortex has disadvantages. In fact it can be duped by illusions and forced the lower layers of the brain to comply with abusive requirements.

It also opens us to the awareness of the emotions of others. It is the organ of altruism and compassion.

Moreover it seems that the left lobe (“rational”) has the function of tempering its right-hand neighbor, so as to regulate these negative emotions. So we can not talk about location of emotions in a particular lobe.

Each lobe has its own ability to learn, remember, feel, and behave.

Filters, memories and beliefs:

The emotional reaction focuses attention on the stimulus trigger, allowing mental analysis. This evaluation will modify (or not) in return the initial raw emotion. We see first what can feed the emotional state, the rest is set aside.

The more an event has strong emotional color, the more it will be memorized and recalled. A reaction disproportionate today, sign the reminder of an event buried in a corner of the brain. Only we are not always aware of it. Because the left brain rationalizes and creates theories to give our attitudes appearances of logic and adequacy.

This is how the irrational beliefs sprinkle our daily life.

Hyperemotivity:

Sometimes we experience affects without knowing how to identify their origin. Decoding the meaning of our untimely “exits” can prevent us from messing up our close relationships.

The only way to not pass on our frustrations, rages, terrors or despair to others is to SHARE them. (note: evolution of man has been the sharing of work and food – the origins of man)

Elastics: when an emotion is disproportionate to the context, whether excessive or insufficient, it is likely that it does not concern the present, but rather responds to an old unresolved situation. Transactional analysis names this dynamic: elastic. (note: notion of oscillation between two opposites, notion of choice, notion of paradox)

The concept of QE invites us to take more into account our emotional life. Test.

The Fear (front of risks):

The stage fright is blocking when, interpreted negatively, we try to control it, to hide it.

Patients showing fear before the operation (under certain limits) recover better and faster. Those who “trust” remain passive, they expect all caregivers … and are disappointed if the pain reminds them that their body belongs to them. Anticipating allows you to prepare.

Accompany the fear of the other: respect his excitement. Never ridicule fear. Listen without finding a solution. Do not try to reason with him or give him advice. Do not try to reassure him, to remove his fear, let him first live it. His first need is to feel accepted with his emotion.

Shyness and social fears: shame implies the idea of a defect in being, the awareness that something is wrong in itself. In guilt, something is wrong with my behavior.

phobias, shocks and traumas (fear of death, separation, the unknown, suffering, dependence, judgment, fear, life, …).

Violence and power:

violence and the temptation of power over others come from impotence.

Reminder of the Milgram experience:

Following a rigged draw, the subject finds himself “monitor”. He is instructed to inflict ever more severe electric shock on every mistake made to the student strapped on a seat with a wrist-mounted electrode. The student is a comedian who does not receive of course any shock. Thirty joysticks are arranged in ascending order. No participant refuses to disobey before 300 V, shock already painful. Between 65% and 85% of subjects were obedient to the end.

By a very large majority, people do what they are told to do without taking into account the nature of the prescribed act, and without being restrained by their conscience when the order seems to them to emanate from a legitimate authority .

Anger

Anger … healthy: to assert one’s identity and defend one’s integrity. we often confuse conflict and quarrel. The first is a confrontation of two universes, the second is an attempt to seize power.

There is bound to be friction in a relationship if the two protagonists want to register as a complete being. It is from the beginning of a relationship that it is important to clarify its limits. The “unsaid” soon make them precipices. Do not tell stories, do not try to protect others, do not be afraid to get bored with your questions. If they bore, it is that there is an “eel under the rock” (something is wrong).

If it is your behavior that is the object of the other’s anger, do not justify yourself. Begin by accepting the emotion of the other. It may not concern you, so it’s useless to lose yourself in fruitless discussions.

If you are really involved, the situation is different. You made a mistake ? (note: Do not justify yourself) Acknowledge it. The person felt hurt? Sympathize. Recognize the importance of his injury. Excuse yourself. Offer repair.

Love:

Long-lasting love is the difficult story between security and freedom, between belonging and personalization, between fusion and separation, between bond and autonomy. (Note: oscillation)

Is love a feeling (sentiment) or an emotion? The same word covers both dimensions. The emotion of love is intense, violent. The feeling of love is built day after day, it feeds on the emotion of love but is not reduced to it. The emotion of love is very present at the beginning of a relationship, in the discovery of the universe of the other and the fire of passion. It arises again in reunion after a separation but also on the occasion of a bouquet of flowers, tender attention, and every time we pronounce these words delicious “I love you”.

To love is to pay attention to the way we treat each other. The ability to listen to each other, to learn from each other, to resolve conflicts makes the quality of the report. When we express things, we can always find common ground. Only the unsaid digs impassable précipices.

Conflicts do not disrupt the bond, they feed it, as do the bamboo knots that slow down its growth but give it more strength. 

Any unexpressed emotion is likely to interfere with the free flow of love.

Take the time to be available. Remember that the only real emergencies are emotional. An emotion must take precedence over the rest.

By not allowing the other to penetrate your Heart, you are moving away from Him.