Understanding EQ

What is the difference between EQ and IQ? IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient. I is a simple calculation that is derived from a person's intellectual age divided by their actual age multiplied by 100. So, if a person is 18 and has an academic age of 18, their IQ is 100. IQ changes from day to day and has a number of factors that make the information from it more or less useful. EQ does not have an age component. We are not trying to arrive at a number, just a range of development. So when we say your EQ is high, it means you have developed a depth and breadth of skills that relate to a robust emotional potential.

Intelligence lives in your head. Intelligence is directly related to how your brain stores and processes information. It has to do with how much information you know and how well you process it.

Emotions live in your body. Emotions, on the other hand, live in your body. A good burst of anger is often first felt in your belly. Sadness is often felt in your heart. These bursts of emotion occur whether we want them to or not. We have said here that emotions are messages from your soul.

Your brain processes emotional information. Now, all the information relative to physical feelings gets passed through the central nervous system into the brain. So the brain doesn't actual feel the emotion, it simply recognizes and names it. This intersection point of feelings in the body and processing in the brain is where we begin to identify emotional intelligence. Most simply, it is how smart your head is about what is going on in your body.

This is where it gets interesting. Emotional information is part of the oldest nerve track in humans. This existed long before the frontal lobe developed and gave us what is referred to as "higher order processing". This information track comes through the spinal cord into the base of the brain into the hypothalamus. This is often referred to as the "reptilian brain" and this is where fight/flight responses are processed. Emotions go there first, and are then processed through the frontal lobe. So, that is why we say that the emotions are faster than we can name them and respond to them. By the time your brain names an emotion, your body has already responded to the feeling.

Your brain has habitual filters. We receive the information from an emotion, we name it, we decide whether it is good or bad, useful or destructive, desirable or undesirable, then plan our actions accordingly. We develop filters that screen emotion information, both in ourselves and in others, and tend to interpret emotions habitually. That is to say, we tend to identify and process anger in the same ways, sadness in the same ways, and so on.

A bit of information on the brain. Here's a diagram of the various parts of the brain.

Emotional Intelligence Institute of Santa Barbara
eq@myemotionaliq.com
1221 State St. #204Santa Barbara, CA 93101
(805) 277-4993