Theory of emotional relativity. Practical guide to the development of awareness and emotional intelligence

The development of emotional intelligence is gaining increasing importance (is becoming more popular nowadays). But what it means, no one fully understands. There are many definitions of this concept, the main one is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of the people around you. But is that enough? What does it mean to understand emotions?

To understand the emotion, first of all, you should know how to identify it, give it a name and change if necessary. The mechanism of the birth of emotions is not so simple, the emotion is not born in a random order, it connects with our innermost psychological processes in the structure of our personality. Emotions are not only a reaction to the real circumstances in our life, but a kind of connection with our ancestors, with the more global systems – family, dynasty and nation. We feel only 10% of emotions from the present moment, the rest 90% is emotions in the combination of systemic feelings connected with our deepest convictions which appeared far in the past, long before our birth, they are kept in our subconscious and manage our life.

But first things first.

To start, we are offering to open a test at the end of the book and define your subjective level of Emotional Intelligence to notice the changes that will happen with you while reading “Theory of Emotional Relativity”.

Gratitude

We’ve done it! Finally, the book took the very shape that is in front of you. I am happy and at the same time I don’t believe that we’ve managed to transfer the years of experience into an easy-to-read text. Perhaps, you notice, my dear readers, I always use the plural number? And this is not because of superiority complex but because of a lot of people devoted their energies to create this work. I begin with the first and the most important “heroes” of this book – our clients and those who had enough courage to dive into the ocean of unclear emotions, adapt and become a captain who manages his “Life” boat. Your endless trust, surprised and inspired eyes were that very light put us in the right way. Your sincere interest and readiness to study from the beginning unconscious flow and stabling blocks of emotional life sphere let us create and improve our models and algorithms. And your obvious transformations during our training programs and consultations gave us constant confirmations of effectiveness and usefulness of our work. Your gratitude as the main of senses (you know!), supported me and my team on the way to creation.

I’d also like to express gratitude to my parents who gave me birth and love and, as well as my countless teachers whom I don’t even dare to name so as not to miss someone. Your lectures, trainings, practical tasks, master-classes, webinars and books formed my life approach. Coaching, Enneagram, NLP, Family Constellation – mastered directions through your help. Each of these methods shed light on emotional life sides and all together acquired the necessary volume and consistency.

This book has never shaped without my “favorite osteopath”, attentive and interested listener, friend, opponent, coach, transcriber and text editor, Alena Rabkevich. A year left when you agreed to accept this challenge, and support, and help me to create this “Emotional Bestseller”, “The Book of Emotional Changes”, “The Book of Feelings” and “Practical Guide for the Development of Awareness and Emotional Intelligence”. Thank you so much for your attention, which you were listening to my emotional narratives with, asked me clarifying questions, made me look for and find simple and clear examples describing difficult things. The time together, spending on the book creation, glided effectively.

And the biggest thank to my husband, Evgeny, he is my personal trainer and coach, who was constantly urging me and terrorizing me to finish this book, that he even agreed to write these thanks to everyone involved instead of me. Here he is so cool and modest, and I love him very much, although he infuriates me regularly.

Having been born, the child automatically gets its place in the family system. Satisfying his needs is entire parents’ responsibility. The development level of the child’s personality depends on parental ability to cope with it. All three psychological needs are important. This means that it is important to take care of the child and help him to feel safe, at the same time to give him the opportunity to cope with problems on his own to feel respect for himself, look at him kindly, speak kind words, have tactile contact that the child feels love. On the basis of these attitudes, which determine the attitude towards oneself and the world, the entire emotional sphere of a growing-up child is formed, which comes to life.

Three main patterns:

1. The world is safe. I have all the resources to come over problems. In this case, the need for security will be satisfied by internal resources, a person trusts his feelings and thoughts, fearlessly makes his own decisions regarding his life. This attitude helps to feel calm, confident in a situation of uncertainty. Otherwise, there is a pattern “The world is unpredictable and full of dangers. I don’t have enough strength to cope with it”, it forces a person to seek security at the expense of external resources “If others support me and circumstances will help me, then I can get through them”, then all his decisions are determined by the situation, but he does not rely on his own feelings and thoughts, but on the opinion of significant people who still questioned.

Self-confidence (security)

2. I accept myself as I am. I am interesting and valuable for myself. This internal pattern is a characteristic of those people who love and value themselves, it allows them to be themselves in any situation, and don’t be dependable on the assessment of others, such people calmly remain alone with themselves, privacy for them is an opportunity to stay in company with an interesting person. Otherwise, there is a pattern: “I do not accept myself as I am. I am not interesting and not valuable for myself.” People usually treat themselves in this way and don’t even realize it, carefully hiding their weaknesses, prettifying themselves with external attributes, stories, reinforcing themselves, wanting attention and acceptance from others: “If I’m interesting and attractive to other people, I like myself.” Thus, receiving confirmation that he can be loved. Or “If others do not notice me, if they do not admire me, do not thank me, so I am not good enough for myself”. Such people are most afraid of loneliness, it is perceived as rejection, exclusion.

Self-love

3. I am, I am important, I am significant as an independent unit. This pattern allows a person to feel the strength in himself to influence his life, start significant projects with a challenge, move to his own desires, focus on himself, first of all, be responsible for his decisions and desires. With such a life position, a person decides what to do, but not to think about ideas which help him not to do anything. This is an adult position and adult freedom. The opposite self-perception is: “I don’t feel my own significance and importance, I can’t influence anything.” In this case, it is observed as an aggressive desire to make others respect himself: “If I don’t depend on anyone, people ask for my permission and opinions, listen to me, so I’m an important person”, or total sufferance when a person is absent in his own life and fully under the influence of loved ones: “Anything rather than conflicts”. Having a strong will to compensate the lack of respect for himself, a person seeks external confirmation. If he does not find it, he experiences extremely negative feelings: “If I am dependent on others, people neglect my opinion; my voice does not affect anything, which means I do not consider myself important.”

Self-respect

All three needs are important for each of us, but there are also individual characteristics – their degree of relevance is different. The need, which is of great relevance according to the structure of our personality, is the leading one. Unknowingly, most of our life time we spend on it, sacrificing others. For example, a person who has a leading need for love can be involved in deliberately unsafe situations after the person from whom he wants to receive it. A person with a leading need for respect, wants to feel his own worth and makes himself respect, can sacrifice acceptance, attention, destroying ties with loved ones.

It is the same situation with security. When a person follows this need, he does not make important decisions, as he doesn’t know what they may lead to, and eventually lose his self-esteem.

What is important to remember:

1. Safety, love, respect – basic psychological needs (survival conditions).

2. Prioritization of needs depends on self-perception.

3. The formation of self-perception of the child is the responsibility of the parent.

4. Satisfying the needs and development of a mature personality is the responsibility of its owner.

5. A low level of personality development – a stable negative attitude towards oneself. A high level of personality development is trust, love and self-respect.

All people have values and treasure them very much. But some things are valuable to one person and absolutely indifferent to the other. So why do we assign the value to some things and phenomena, but not to others? Value means importance, significance, benefit. On the one hand, it seems that value is a real characteristic of an object or phenomenon and significance and usefulness are not inherited from nature, but they are our subjective measures. We consider the value important and valuable only if it is involved in our life and we are truly interested in it, and therefore need.

All values can be divided into three groups. It is connected, as you may guess, with the existence of three psychological needs. One group of values satisfies security needs, receiving them, we feel calm and anxiety is releasing. Another list of values satisfies the need for love, receiving which we feel acceptance, we feel a deep connection with the object, we feel beautiful. And the third group of values – values that satisfy the need for respect, having received it, we feel strong, large, significant, cool.

It means that values serve our needs.

The existence of valuable, in our view, things and phenomena in our lives leads to satisfaction, and the absence, on the contrary, causes states of depression and dissatisfaction with life and ourselves. There are a lot of such values in our life; it is a whole system in which there is a hierarchy. We make all our decisions on the basis of this hierarchy of values from buying products in the store to choosing a partner for business or family life.

The hierarchy of values is a system of guidelines in all spheres of human life. Usually, if you ask a person what is important to him, you can hear the answer: family, children, work, travel, etc. These are all spheres of life, contexts in which we satisfy our needs for safety, love and respect.

There is also a hierarchy in the spheres of our life, someone devotes himself completely to work, and someone to the family. The truth is that the more spheres of life which we are realized in, the happier we are. Speaking of values, we, first of all, talk about the quality of life. To understand your values, you need to answer these questions:

What does this subjective value depend on? Why does one person, buying a chair, pay attention to its reliability and durability, another to beauty and elegance, and the third one to the price. Moreover, it’s important for someone to buy cheaper to save resources, and for someone more expensive to emphasize their capabilities and significance.

The individual internal hierarchy of psychological needs prioritizes values exactly.

Nominalization

You must have noticed that different people, speaking the same definitions, often mean the different experiences that lie behind them. For example, when you say “I will be soon”, what period of time do you mean? “Soon” – it is when? Is it 5—10 minutes, 1—1.5 hours, immediately? To feel what we are talking about, answer yourself this question, and then ask it to your relatives.

Nominalization means words that do not denote a specific object, their meaning is often subjective and can be interpreted in different ways. Examples: happiness, support, individuality, control – each of these concepts can be understood in different ways by different people.

To estimate your values, you need to be as sincere with yourself as possible, it is 100% individual work, you have to unveil on your own what experience and meaning are behind such words as “love”, “support”, “freedom”, “responsibility”, “respect”, “justice”, etc. Sometimes people say: “I need your support”, but actually they feel the lack of love, presence, the other person’s attention and call all these things “support”.

“Support” as a value which means the need for security, is not only the presence or approval of another person, support implies very often specific actions, assistance in some business, taking on some responsibility. In this case, support will have a broader meaning. Of course, there are situations when it’s enough to be near and just say: “Well done! Everything is Ok! Do as you do.” Such support helps to resolve internal doubts which sound something like this: “Am I on the right way? Am I looking in the right direction? Am I normal? Am I good?” In this case, approval really gives strength, because confirmation from a significant person weakens doubts and self-confidence increases.

“Attention” means the need for love, and when it comes to this, it is enough just the presence of another person nearby. A man can do nothing for you now, but if he looks at you with a keen look, catches your every word, at the very moment you feel loved, special, beautiful internally and externally. There is a message “you are what I need now”, it creates a very favorable state and satisfies the need for communication and acceptance.

In the same way we very often put different concepts into the word “freedom”. The value of “freedom” is more related to the need for respect. Freedom is to do what I want, I decide what I do, no one can limit me in making decisions, in actions, in movements. It is important to understand that such freedom cannot exist without responsibility. If I’m in charge, I make decisions, so I’m responsible for everything. Thus, the need for respect is satisfied and in this case:

However, there is another kind of freedom that satisfies the need for security. In this case, a person feels safe when he is free FROM expectations, FROM responsibility, FROM obligations. We also call such freedom “childish freedom”.

How do Values Form and Where do they Come from?

Why is one kind of values important and other kinds are not so significant? Why do different people have different values?

Someone, for example, is ready to shout aloud, give up relations, leave work, remain without means of living in order to prove justice. This behavior will indicate that for a person at the moment the most important is the need for respect.

Another person will remain silent in the same situation, tolerate the fact that nobody listens to his opinion, it will be more important for him that he knows where he will be tomorrow, what he will eat and that somebody will take care of him if such a need arises. This is about the need for security.

And the third case, when the need for love is leading: “My God, it doesn’t matter if I have any justice or work, I can give up it at any time, if my love requires me to go to the world’s end, the main thing is that we are together, together we can cope with anything.”

These examples are a bit exaggerated to demonstrate the difference in the attitude towards life according to the basic psychological needs.