Chapter 9: Social & Emotional Intelligence

We can think of social and emotional intelligence as learned skills that allow us to identify our own emotions as well as the emotions of others and correctly and effectively respond to them. 

Being emotionally intelligent, or self-aware, means that one can identify and name their own emotions, apply those feelings to thinking and problem solving, and manage emotions- meaning one can regulate their own feelings and respond appropriately to other people’s feelings. This means an emotionally self-aware person can critically think about why they are feeling frustrated, relieved, upset, or irritated in a given situation. They can then decide how they will react, make decisions, resolve the issue, or move on and are totally in control of their behavior. They also understand that although we cannot control another person’s emotions, there are often situations where we can listen to, comfort, cheer up, or share excitement with another person.

Social intelligence is also learned and developed over the course of our lives. This skill allows us to apply tact and common sense in our interactions with other people. Socially intelligent people know how to be good listeners, how to carry conversations with a wide variety of people, understand why other people may think the way they do, and are aware of how they present themselves to other people. You’ve likely already developed this skill without giving it much attention. A useful way to think about social intelligence is in terms of knowing the mood or tone of a situation and knowing how to adjust your own behavior to it. For instance, your demeanor during a job interview or conversation with your boss is likely formal and respectful whereas your demeanor during a conversation with your parents or older family members is likely also respectful, but in a different way, and likely not as formal. Understand the differences in these situations, and in the countless interactions we are a part of everyday, is a sign of social intelligence.

Knowing how to take care of your mental health when you’re in college is just as important as maintaining your physical health. In fact, there’s a strong link between the two: doctors are finding that positive mental health can actually improve your physical health. Mental health can be defined as “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.” Having good mental health doesn’t necessarily mean being happy or successful all the time. Most people feel depressed, lonely, or anxious now and then, but those with good mental health can take these feelings in stride and overcome them. When such feelings or moods persist and interfere with a person’s ability to function normally, though, it may be a sign of a more serious mental health problem and time to seek help.

The number of students in higher education who have emotional health problems is steadily increasing (Duenwald 2004). According to the American College Health Association (2008), 31 percent of college students report that they have felt so depressed that it was difficult to function. Almost half of students say that they’ve felt overwhelming anxiety, and 60 percent report that they’ve felt very lonely. 

Emotional health includes many factors. Your skill at managing stress and ability to build loving relationships are key. And so are your capacity to meet the demands of school and work and your beliefs about your ability to succeed. People with mental illness have thoughts, emotions, or behaviors that consistently interfere with these skills.

You can take simple and immediate steps to prevent emotional health problems—and cope with them if they do occur. Here are some other suggestions to promote your emotional health:

• Take care of your body. Your thoughts and emotions can get scrambled if you go too long feeling hungry or tired. Follow the suggestions in this lesson for eating, exercise, and sleep.
• Solve problems. Although you can’t fix a bad feeling in the same way that you can fix a machine, you can choose to change a situation associated with that feeling. There might be a problem that needs a solution. You can use feelings as your motivation to solve that problem. If you feel intense sadness, anger, or fear, think about whether it is related to a specific situation in your life. Describe the problem, then brainstorm solutions, choose one to implement, and describe the next action you’ll take. Reducing your course load, cutting back on hours at work, getting more financial aid, delegating a task, or taking some other concrete action might solve the problem—and help you feel better.
• Stay active. A related strategy is to do something—anything that’s constructive, even if it’s not a solution to a specific problem. For example, mop the kitchen floor. Clean out your dresser drawers. Iron your shirts. This sounds silly, but it works.

The basic principle is that you can separate emotions from actions. It is appropriate to feel miserable when you do. It’s normal to cry and express your feelings. It is also possible to go to class, study, work, eat, and feel miserable at the same time. Unless you have a diagnosable problem with anxiety or depression, you can continue your normal activities until the misery passes.

In the public health arena, more emphasis and resources have been devoted to screening, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness than mental health. Little has been done to protect the mental health of those who are free from mental illness. Here are some known indicators of mental health:

• Emotional well-being: life satisfaction, happiness, cheerfulness, peacefulness.
• Psychological well-being: self-acceptance, personal growth including openness to new experiences, optimism, hopefulness, purpose in life, control of one’s environment, spirituality, self-direction, and positive relationships.
• Social well-being: social acceptance, belief in the potential of people and society as a whole, personal self-worth and usefulness to society, and a sense of community.

The former surgeon general suggests that there are social determinants of mental health—just as there are social determinants of general health—that need to be in place to support mental health. These include adequate housing, safe neighborhoods, equitable jobs and wages, quality education, and equity in access to quality healthcare.

There are also some common-sense strategies that you can adopt to support and improve your emotional, psychological, and social health:

• Eat a balanced diet
• Get enough sleep
• Get regular physical activity
• Stay socially connected with friends and family
• Make smart choices about alcohol and drugs
• Get help if you are anxious or depressed

As a student, you’re probably plenty familiar with the experience of stress—a condition characterized by symptoms of physical or emotional tension. What you may not know is that it’s a natural response of the mind and body to a situation in which a person feels threatened or anxious. Stress can be positive (the anticipation of preparing for a wedding) or negative (dealing with a natural disaster). As a college student, it may feel like stress is a persistent fact of life. While everyone experiences stress at times, a prolonged bout of it can affect your health and ability to cope with life. That’s why social support and self-care are important. They can help you see your problems in perspective . . . and the stressful feelings ease up.

Sometimes stress can be good. For instance, it can help you develop the skills needed to manage potentially challenging or threatening situations in life. However, stress can be harmful when it is severe enough to make you feel overwhelmed and out of control. Strong emotions like fear, sadness, or other symptoms of depression are normal, as long as they are temporary and don’t interfere with daily activities. 

It’s easy to feel stressed if you dwell on how much you have to accomplish this year, this term, this month, or even this week. Focus on one task at a time. Remember that an effective plan for the day does two things. First, it clarifies what you’re choosing not to do today. (Tasks that you plan to do in the future are listed on your calendar or todo list.) Second, it reduces your day to a series of concrete tasks—such as making phone calls, going to classes, running errands, or reading chapters—that you can do one at a time. If you feel overwhelmed, just find the highest-priority task on your to-do list. Do it with total attention until it’s done. Then go back to your list for the next high-priority task. Do it with total attention. Savor the feeling of mastery and control that comes with crossing each task off your list.

Don’t believe everything you think. According to Albert Ellis and other cognitive psychologists, stress results not from events in our lives but from the way we think about those events. If we believe that people should always behave in exactly the way we expect them to, for instance, we set ourselves up for misery. The same happens if we believe that events should always turn out exactly as we want. There are two main ways to deal with such thoughts:

1. Don’t believe them. Dispute such thoughts and replace them with more realistic ones: I can control my own behavior but not the behavior of others, and some events are beyond my control. Changing our beliefs can reduce our stress significantly.
2. Release stress-producing thoughts without disputing them. Mindfulness meditation is a way to do this. While meditating, you simply notice your thoughts as they arise and pass. Instead of reacting to them, you observe them. Eventually, your stream of thinking slows down. You might enter a state of deep relaxation that also yields life-changing insights

Physical or emotional tension are often signs of stress. They can be reactions to a situation that causes you to feel threatened or anxious. The following are all common symptoms of stress:

• Disbelief and shock
• Tension and irritability
• Fear and anxiety about the future
• Difficulty making decisions
• Being numb to one’s feelings
• Loss of interest in normal activities
• Loss of appetite (or increased appetite)
• Nightmares and recurring thoughts about a particular event
• Anger
• Increased use of alcohol and drugs
• Sadness and other symptoms of depression
• Feeling powerless
• Crying
• Sleep problems
• Headaches, back pains, and stomach problems
• Trouble concentrating

It’s not only unpleasant to live with the tension and symptoms of ongoing stress; it’s actually harmful to your body, too. Chronic stress can impair your immune system and disrupt almost all of your body’s processes, leading to increased risk of numerous health problems, including anxiety, depression, digestive problems, heart disease, sleep problems, weight gain, and/or memory and concentration impairment.

That’s why it’s so important to learn healthy ways of coping with the stressors in your life.

The best strategy for managing stress is by taking care of yourself in the following ways:

• Avoid drugs and alcohol. They may seem to be a temporary fix to feel better, but in the long run, they can create more problems and add to your stress instead of taking it away.
• Manage your time. Work on prioritizing and scheduling your commitments. This will help you feel in better control of your life which, in turn, will mean less stress.
• Find support. Seek help from a friend, family member, partner, counselor, doctor, or clergy person. Having a sympathetic listening ear and talking about your problems and stress really can lighten the burden.
• Connect socially. When you feel stressed, it’s easy to isolate yourself. Try to resist this impulse and stay connected. Make time to enjoy being with classmates, friends, and family; try to schedule study breaks that you can take with other people.
• Slow down and cut out distractions for a while. Take a break from your phone, email, and social media.
• Take care of your health. Eat well, exercise regularly, get plenty of sleep, and maintain a normal, predictable routine.
  • Try meditating. Meditation allows your mind to slow down and focus on a single thing at a time. Practicing this skill trains your brain not to get overwhelmed when you do encounter a stressful situation. 
  • Many religious organizations offer meditation classes. You can also find meditation instruction through health maintenance organizations, YMCAs or YWCAs, and community education programs.
  • Online you can check out UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, they’ve put together several guided meditations:  www.uclahealth.org/marc/mindful-meditations. You can also try The Mindfulness Solution, they also provide free, easy to follow guided meditations: www.mindfulness-solution.com/

Not surprisingly, these techniques are similar to those recommended for supporting good mental health in general. If the self-care techniques listed above aren’t enough and stress is seriously interfering with your studies or life, don’t be afraid to get help. 

Japanese psychiatrist Morita Masatake, a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, based his whole approach to treatment on this insight: We can face our emotional pain directly and still take constructive action. 

It might not be pleasant to feel bad, but it can be good for you. Often, bad is an appropriate way to feel. When you leave a place you love, sadness is natural. When you lose a friend or significant other, misery might be in order. When someone treats you badly, it is probably appropriate to feel angry. When a loved one dies, it is necessary to grieve. The grief might appear in the form of depression, sadness, or anger. All of these are normal reactions. Remember to allow yourself some time and space to experience these emotions. They’re often an appropriate response to stressful or upsetting events.

There is nothing wrong with extreme emotional pain, but if depression, sadness, or anger persists for too long, or affects your physical health, relationships, or motivation, then it may be useful for you to seek help.  It’s helpful to turn to a trusted person or a mental health professional because they are able to see the situation more clearly and offer objective advice. 

There’s no way to predict how long emotional pain will last. Remember to not be hard on yourself. Re-frame your thoughts: if your friend was in your situation and came to you for guidance, how would you talk with them? Show yourself the same kindness and understanding you would show them. The main point is that it does not last forever. Although you can find abundant advice on the subject, just remember a simple and powerful idea: This too shall pass.

We have so many demands on our time—school, jobs, family, errands, not to mention finding some time to relax. To fit everything in, we often sacrifice sleep. But sleep affects both mental and physical health. Like exercise and a healthy diet, it’s vital to your well-being. Of course, sleep helps you feel rested each day. But while you’re sleeping, your brain and body don’t just shut down. Internal organs and processes are hard at work throughout the night. Sleep can help you “lock in” everything you’re studying and trying to remember.

“Sleep services all aspects of our body in one way or another: molecular, energy balance, as well as intellectual function, alertness, and mood,” says Dr. Merrill Mitler, a sleep expert and neuroscientist at NIH. When you’re tired, you can’t function at your best. Sleep helps you think more clearly, have quicker reflexes, and focus better. “The fact is, when we look at well-rested people, they’re operating at a different level than people trying to get by on one or two hours less nightly sleep,” says Mitler. Tired people tend to be less productive at work and school. They’re at a much higher risk for traffic accidents. Lack of sleep also influences your mood, which can affect how you interact with others. A sleep deficit over time can even put you at greater risk for developing depression.

But sleep isn’t just essential for the brain. “Sleep affects almost every tissue in our bodies,” says Dr. Michael Twery, a sleep expert at NIH. “It affects growth and stress hormones, our immune system, appetite, breathing, blood pressure, and cardiovascular health.” Research shows that lack of sleep increases the risk for obesity, heart disease, and infections. Throughout the night, your heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure rise and fall, a process that may be important for cardiovascular health. Your body releases hormones during sleep that help repair cells and control the body’s use of energy. These hormone changes can affect your body weight.

A good night’s sleep consists of four to five sleep cycles. Each cycle includes periods of deep sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when we dream. “As the night goes on, the portion of that cycle that is in REM sleep increases. It turns out that this pattern of cycling and progression is critical to the biology of sleep,” Twery says.

Sleep can be disrupted by many things. Stimulants such as caffeine or certain medications can keep you up. Distractions such as electronics—especially the light from TVs, cell phones, tablets, and e-readers—can prevent you from falling asleep.

If you have trouble falling asleep, experiment with the following suggestions:

• Exercise daily. For many people, regular exercise promotes sounder sleep. However, finish exercising several hours before you want to go to sleep.
• Avoid naps during the daytime.
• Monitor your caffeine intake, especially in the afternoon and evening.
• Avoid using alcohol to feel sleepy. Drinking alcohol late in the evening can disrupt your sleep during the night.
• Develop a sleep ritual—a regular sequence of calming activities that end your day. You might take a warm bath and do some light reading. Turn off the TV and computer at least 1 hour before you go to bed.
• Keep your sleeping room cool.
• Keep a regular schedule for going to sleep and waking up.
• Sleep in the same place each night. When you’re there, your body gets the message that it’s time to go to sleep. Only use this sleeping place (probably your bed) for sleeping, not for reading, watching TV, etc.
• Practice relaxation techniques while lying in bed. A simple one is to count your breaths and release distracting thoughts as they arise.
• Make tomorrow’s to-do list before you go to sleep so that you won’t lie awake worrying that tomorrow you’ll forget about something you need to do.
• If you’re not feeling tired, get up and do a light physical activity.
• If you struggle with sleeplessness for more than a few weeks, consider seeing a doctor or mental health professional.

Sometimes, other people—friends or family members, for example—have a hard time letting you feel bad. They might be worried that they did something wrong and want to make it better. They want you to quit feeling bad. Tell them you will—eventually. Assure them that you will feel good again, but that for right now you just want to feel bad. It’s OK to ask for some space to process your thoughts and feelings.

Share what you’re thinking and feeling. Revealing your inner world with a family member or friend is a powerful way to gain perspective. The simple act of talking through a problem can sometimes reveal a solution or give you a fresh perspective.

Get help. Remember a basic guideline about when to seek help: whenever problems with your thinking, moods, or behavior consistently interfere with your ability to sleep, eat, go to class, work, or create positive relationships.

Most colleges and universities will have a student health center or other offices that offer mental health resources. Your tuition helps to pay for these services. It’s smart to use them now.

You can find resources to promote emotional health even if your campus doesn’t offer counseling services. Start with a personal physician—one person who can coordinate all of your health care. (For suggestions, go to your school’s health center.) A personal physician can refer you to another health professional if it seems appropriate. These two suggestions can also work after you graduate. Promoting emotional health is a skill to use for the rest of your life.

Remember that suicide is no solution. While entering higher education, people typically go through major change. For some people, this involves depression and anxiety. Both are risk factors for suicide—the second leading cause of death on college campuses. Most often, suicide can be prevented. 

If you suspect that someone you know is considering suicide, do the following:

• Take it seriously. Taking suicidal comments seriously is especially important when you hear them from young adults.
• Listen fully. Encourage the person at risk to express thoughts and feelings appropriately. If he claims that he doesn’t want to talk, be inviting, be assertive, and be persistent. Be totally committed to listening.
• Speak powerfully. Let the person at risk know that you care. Trying to talk someone out of suicide or minimizing problems is generally useless. Acknowledge that problems are serious, but they can be solved. Point out that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.
• Get professional help. Suggest that the person see a mental health professional. If she resists help, offer to schedule the appointment for her and to take her to it.
• Remove access to firearms. Most suicides are attempted with guns. Get rid of any guns that might be around. Also remove all drugs and razors.
• Handle the event as an emergency. If a situation becomes a crisis, do not leave the person alone. Call a crisis hotline, 911, or a social service agency. If necessary, take the person to the nearest hospital emergency room, clinic, or police station.

If you ever begin to think about committing suicide, seek out someone you trust. Tell this person how you feel. If necessary, make an appointment to see a counselor, and ask someone to accompany you. When you’re at risk, you deserve the same compassion that you’d willingly extend to another person.

If you need help right away call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.

Some other excellent resources include:

• It Gets Better Project offers support for LGBTQ young people, itgetsbetter.org
• OK2TALK.org is a community for young adults struggling with mental health challenges
• The Crisis Text Line offers help from trained responders, text HOME to 741741 to be connected

SOURCES

• American College Health Association. “American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment II: Reference Group, Executive Summary Fall 2008.” www.achancha.org/docs/ACHA-NCHA_Reference_Group_ExecutiveSummary_Fall2008.pdf (accessed March 15, 2011).
• Duenwald, Mary. “The dorms may be great, but how’s the counseling?” New York Times, October 26, 2004. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/26/health/psychology/26cons.html (accessed November 8, 2012).
• Emotional Intelligence. (n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/emotional-intelligence
• "Mental Health Basics." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013. https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm (accessed April 22, 2016).  
• Reynolds, David. A Handbook for Constructive Living. New York: Morrow, 1995.
• Schaffer, M., E. L. Jeglic, and B. Stanley. “The relationship between suicidal behavior, ideation, and binge drinking among college students.” Archives of Suicide Research 12 (2008): 124–132.
• Social Intelligence. (n.d.). https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201407/what-is-social-intelligence-why-does-it-matter (accessed February 25, 2019)
• OpenNow College Success. Authored by Cengage Learning. Provided by: CEngage. Available at: https://oercommons.s3.amazonaws.com/media/editor/179572/CengageOpenNow_CollegeSuccessNarrative.pdf License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
• “Managing Your Mental and Physical Health” from Effective Learning Strategies at Austin Community College. Authored by Laura Lucas. Provided by: Austin Community College. Available at: https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/8434. License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/