Using emotional intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic

GLOBALLY, countries are responding differently to the second wave of COVID-19 variant, with some having introduced more intense measures such as strict lockdowns. These have focused much on the physical wellbeing with minimum attention to the mental wellbeing which is so vital. An adjustment to new ways of learning and working from home has brought fear, anxiety, stress and depression.

The COVID-19 has brought challenges on mental health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are dealing with intense emotions and high levels of anxiety. Emotions that people experience are not bad as they work to serve people to know how best to handle them. If people let them get out of control, they can paralyse or send them into a downward spiral.

We have reached a level where we need to intertwine mental health and behaviour for a positive environment. This can only be possible when we recognise how our emotions influence our thoughts. In the field of psychology, emotional intelligence is one of the key areas that constitute behaviour and how we relate with others.

Therefore, we need to focus on emotional intelligence to improve our mental health wellbeing with mental health issues becoming a staple in such human life-threatening pandemics and also in the morden medical aspect.

Emotional intelligence refers to one’s capacity to perceive, process and regulate emotional information accurately and effectively, both within oneself and in others and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.

Therefore, treating COVID-19 with medication alone helps the physical aspect, yet destroying the psychological which becomes crippled and a no-look twice aspect in one’s mental health.

Therefore, we need to make use of emotional intelligence especially in this pandemic. Our emotions communicate, they give a message.

They help us understand situations and also how to react to different situations. All emotions are either positive or negative and it is up to you to choose which communication channel to focus on, that is the positive or the negative.

With the lessening up of the lockdown restrictions, every individual needs to be emotionally vibrant since the unending pandemic has brought a different eye in the future flooding uncertainty and skepticism among other things.

Emotional intelligence is not about focusing on emotions and trying to wipe them off in our day-to-day life but rather it’s about understanding and managing those emotions.

This helps us to balance our thoughts and emotions, thus thinking rationally and making decisions which are not emotionally driven so not to later regret our actions. Thus, making emotions work for you, instead of against you.

In this era, some of our family members, friends, workmates who were known before in navigating change easily and coping with others may find it difficult to do so. Failing to manage your emotions after a long period of time under lockdown is part of human nature and a psychological normalcy.

All the different emotions that we experience day to day, give us information of how and what we are experiencing together with possible reactions. These emotions come and go. They are no bad or good emotions but we have bad and good ways of expressing and reacting to the emotions. Know how you react towards your emotions. Don’t let your emotions negatively affect a step ahead because each emotion passes and makes room for another experience. Therefore, we need to apply emotional intelligence to cope up with the uncertainty and the different worries we do have.

Emotional intelligence operates in four different ways which are perceiving emotions, using emotions to facilitate thought, understating emotions and also managing emotions. These four will help us in understanding emotional intelligence. Firstly, one needs to perceive emotions. Perceiving emotions relates to being aware of your own and recognising other people’s state. It also includes identification of other people’s feelings and emotions accurately and appropriately.

As we perceive emotions, we need to ask ourselves questions like, how do I feel? How do others feel? After perceiving emotions, one needs to use emotions to facilitate thoughts.

This is led by questions like: is the mood helpful? Does it focus my attention? Does it motivate me? Does it blind me?

These questions will facilitate better judgments, capitalising on mood changes so one can appreciate multiple points of view and differentiate between positive and negative sentiments. Using emotions to facilitate thoughts will help one to direct thoughts to the most important information which will help you to think more creative.

How we attend to and appraise our lives has an effect on how we feel. For example, a person afraid of dogs sees one in the streets as threatening which then leads to emotional distress and a person who sees dogs as friendly will have a different emotional response to the same situation.

We also need to have empathy, that is by understanding our own and others emotions.

This brings in questions like; why do I feel this way? Why does the other person feel this way? How will we feel?