The Psychological Tool That Helps You Develop Robust Emotional Intelligence
Use Yale’s Mood Meter to increase your emotional self-awareness.
“Stop trying to manipulate me.”
I’ll never forget those words. Someone — let’s call him Bob — said them to me when I was barely a teenager. After a fight with my friends, I’d started crying, believing it to be the most natural thing in the world.
Bob disagreed.
With an annoyed expression, he asked me to stop. Apparently, he, a grown adult, thought I, a twelve-year-old girl, was trying to manipulate him by acting sad.
Though it sounds ridiculous, Bob’s words scarred me. Even now, almost two decades later, I find it hard to cry in front of someone else. I don’t want to come across as manipulative.
But this is wrong. It has alienated me from people. It has kept me in a self-made protective shell that has hurt me in the long term. After all, you can’t build intimate relationships if you’re afraid of showing your emotions.
Or worse, feeling them in the first place.
Everything changed when I enrolled in Yale’s course, Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress. Though aimed at teachers affected by the pandemic, this course is…
