Assisting someone through an emotional experience requires a clinical practitioner to challenge themselves in deepening their own emotional awareness through experiential and cognitive processing. One’s willingness to deepen their emotional intelligence is crucial in therapeutically leading others down their own awareness path, one must learn how to process before they can guide someone else in processing. Based on your readings of emotional intelligence and the results of the EQ questionnaire (questionnaire found here), students will consider the questions below and provide a reflective discussion board post based on what they gleaned about themselves.
Are there emotions that you tend to avoid? Are there emotions you are flooded by? What emotions are you open to and what is it about these emotions you are more open to? How was expressing emotions modeled for you? What values do you hold regarding expression of emotions? What would be a barrier to remaining present and engaged if one of your clients expressed an emotion with intensity that you personally try to avoid? What would be a barrier to remaining engaged if your client expressed a topic such as sex, sexual orientation, gender orientation, masturbation, suicidal thoughts, or self injurious behaviors? Could your discomfort with an emotion result in your leading a client away from processing the emotion unintentionally or intentionally, and if so, how can enhancing your emotional EQ deter this?
Adopted from Cook-Cottone, C. P., Anderson, L., & Kane, L. (2014)