Emotional Intelligence II – Sagar Satyal

The second meeting in the Emotional Intelligence series was based on the information received in the introduction of the first week and was more experiential and narrative course on the topic, as a follow-up to the initial meeting that students received. The session was planned to be the one in which we went beyond definitions and concepts and involved participants with the real life situations, reflective narratives, and stimulus activities. This turned out to create an interactive room that not only taught the students about emotions, but in some manner or another the students related to these emotions, probed into them, and experimented with the idea of making sense of them. The session commenced by a brief summary of the main concepts that were discussed during the previous sessions that included the emotional impact on decision making, how awareness determines behavior, and why emotional intelligence is a vital life skill at a personal and professional level. This provided a seamless transition to the main focus of the day, which was the comprehension of emotions based on the stories and stimuli. The facilitator emphasized that although theories offer order, stories offer nudging power since they help us see what is behind the scenes of our inner world, what wakes us up, and what habits we are inclined to do.

Story based learning was one of the key elements of the session. The thought provoking stories to the students were presented with scenarios which reflected common real world problems of misunderstanding with others, an academic pressure, a time of self-doubt and a time when emotion rather than rational thinking should override all else. These were not simply stories to discuss but to make students extract emotional cues, be able to trace cause and effect patterns and apply them to their own experiences. By facilitating the process of reflection, the participants were prompted to understand what feelings would have come up in the personalities and why, how these feelings impacted their decision, what alternate actions could have resulted in a better solution, and whether they could observe the same behavior in their own responses. According to the lots of students, listening to relatable stories made them feel that their own responses were observed in a different light. The stories gave them a psychological distance through which they could objectively analyze the feelings and then apply the understanding to their lives without fearing to do the same.

The second significant part of the session was dedicated to stimulus based exercises. Emotional responses were evoked with the help of various visual, verbal and situational cues, evoking discussion and refining the ability of students to observe themselves better. Whether it was a response to an image, interpretation of one of the complex messages or response to some imagined situation, it was aimed to make students realize how their immediate emotional perceptions are being formed and what influences them. The assumptions as brought to the fore by these exercises were that various people perceive the same stimulus in different ways. Students were given the opportunity to experience the way a single situation can motivate confidence in a few students and discomfort in others and start discussing empathy and perspective-taking and the necessity of not believing that everyone shares our attitudes.

The other thing that was observed was that emotional triggers do not always dig superficially. The situation when students explained their reasons why some stimuli influenced them helped to understand that all the experiences, values, fears and expectations contribute to the development of emotional responses. This made them realize that the emotions are not incidental since they have some meaning, stories and history. Emphasis was also put on the fact that emotional intelligence does not involve suppressing emotions but only noticing them in time so that healthier responses can be chosen. Using structured stimuli, the students learned to slow down, review their response and envision more positive responses to stimuli, by recognizing the trigger. The students were engaged in small group activities in order to support the learning process; they were asked to share their knowledge, make comparisons, and solve brief emotional problems during the practices. These activities enhanced group learning and made students understand the universality of emotional experiences. We all struggle, respond, and learn and in order to have improved emotional intelligence we need to practice.

Most of the students observed that when people spoke in front of others, it gave them a sense of closeness and credibility in the room. It also assisted in normalizing feelings of frustration, anxiety or confusion which are mostly mistaken or concealed. The students finished the session understanding more about why stories can be used to decode emotional pattern in clients, types of stimuli that lead to emotional reaction, the significance of self-awareness in client identification of trigger, significance of pausing reactions before reaction and importance of empathy through the identification of various points of view. In general, the second Emotional Intelligence session was effective in establishing a dynamic, thought-provoking, and interesting setting. Stories and interactive activities helped students gain the possibility to associate theory with any real life emotional experience, thus emotional intelligence was not only a concept taught to students but a skill that they started to train without being entirely conscious of doing it.