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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Beautiful beans and welcome to the podcast episode of today. This is another neuroscience episode. Actually, a couple of weeks ago, we did a little bit of a poll on one of the neuroscience episodes, because as we all know, we're getting back into more kind of science in neuroscience vibes, more old school, do you fucking mind circa 2021, 22.
And we did a little poll where like, do you want the neuroscience of this one, emotional intelligence, and then the other one was whatever we did two weeks ago, which I can't even remember what that one was. Anyway, so we had slightly, I thought that the one, what was it, Shania? It was the neuroscience of making and breaking a habit. Yes.
So that one, I was like, oh, that's going to be above and beyond. We're going to get way more of that one. But no, it was very, very close. It was kind of like 51, 49. So I was like, well, we're definitely doing the emotional intelligence episode for sure. And here we are now. Before I get into the podcast topic of today, I am going to poll you guys on a question. So I'm doing a bit of a rejig.
I'm really starting to, you know, obviously I'm in my postpartum phase and I have been working kind of from like two and a half months after having the babies. But now I'm feeling like I'm really getting back into postpartum.
the podcast do you fucking mind the whole thing and I'm probably getting more passionate about it as ever I'm like back to the early days passion and don't get me wrong I've always loved the podcast but there's always shit coming up in my life and now I'm getting back into it so I thought I'll poll you guys because I'm kind of re-jigging a little bit on how I'm doing things if you listen to this podcast on Spotify you can vote in a little poll um
And if you don't listen to this on Spotify, please follow me on socials, at least the podcast page, which is just Do You Fucking Mind on Instagram. And we will be polling you guys today as well, the day that you're listening to this episode. But we're basically going to be looking at how can we be structuring the podcast moving forward.
Now, nothing's going to change, quote unquote, as far as like the bones of the podcast. But remember back in the day, if you're an OJ listener, I used to have my podcasts be... Intro, life intro, sometimes yes or no. Then I would do a brain fact, science fact.
Then I would have the body of the podcast, whether it be a neuroscience one or whether it be more psychology based one, like detecting a narcissist, fucking heartbreak hacks, the neuroscience of saunas, whatever. And then at the end, I would answer one listener question. Okay. So that was the original structure.
Then about two slash three years ago, we changed it up and we were kind of breaking it apart, trialing this, trialing that. Long story short, I'm craving returning back to more old style content. I recently dropped the Wednesday head noise and people were actually quite happy with that, even though they love my head noise. they were like, we don't want it to be more head noise than it is Monday.
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Chapter 2: What is emotional intelligence and why is it important?
Okay. And it is the limbic system. The center of emotions, this is also when it comes to self-control, when it comes to discipline, when it comes to habits. So you've heard me talk about it in the last neuroscience episodes, and I'm going to talk about it again. The amygdala, the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, this is the feeling centers. It's your social emotional side as well, okay?
So this is what recognizes emotions. It's what... feels the emotion. It's what reacts to emotions.
Chapter 3: What are the characteristics of someone lacking emotional intelligence?
It's very emotional and very important. Okay. Then of course, we've got the prefrontal cortex, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, different regions of this prefrontal cortex, which is, you know, your ability to respond appropriately, hold off on impulses, manage reactions, regulate how you feel in the moment and It's able to manage, regulate, respond. Okay.
You want to look at the, when you talk about emotional intelligence, the emotional part of emotional intelligence is the amygdala and the intelligence part of emotional intelligence is the prefrontal cortex. And we need both of those things working together. There is no emotional intelligence. without the prefrontal cortex being involved. Impossible, actually impossible, okay?
And I will give you a prime example as to why that is. So we're looking at these different brain regions, right? So we've got the feelings that are coming from the emotional center. We've got the intelligence that's coming from the prefrontal cortex.
And then we're seeing that people with really evolved emotional intelligence have much higher activity in the prefrontal cortex versus those that have low emotional intelligence. We also see that people with ADHD have a dysregulated activity within the prefrontal cortex. So it might be higher activity and then lower activity. And then when you'd see quote unquote normal activity, you
In the normal population, you're going to see different kinds of activity in the prefrontal cortex with people with ADHD and then neurotypical people in general, different kinds of neurotypical, whether it's autism or other things as well, you may see a difference there. depending on what we're talking about, obviously. I'm not even going to start naming it because I could go on forever.
In addition, there's also if you have trauma to the prefrontal cortex. So if anyone's done psychology at uni, if anyone's done neuroscience at uni, even high school, I don't know.
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Chapter 4: How do brain regions relate to emotional intelligence?
Psych 101, the first lecture you're ever going to go to in psychology or neuroscience, you're probably going to hear about a dude called Phineas Gage back in the fucking early 1900s. And this guy was working on the train tracks and And he was like packing dynamite or whatever into this thing that he needed to like into a rock. And basically he was, he was packing it with like a rod, a metal rod.
And he, A spark lit, long story short, this metal rod went up through kind of the inside of his cheekbone and then blew out from like the top of his skull. Amazingly, like the rest of his head was incredibly intact, but he had the rod right through his head. Okay. So he had the surgery, got the rod removed. All was good. He made what seemed to be a miraculous recovery.
But then what happened was that he... experienced this severe reduction in emotional intelligence. He was not able to regulate his emotions. He was unable to read social cues. He was volatile. He would gamble everything away. He wouldn't be able to kind of manage and predict the consequences of his own behaviours. He couldn't anticipate that kind of stuff. His intellect and his memory stayed.
So he was just as quote-unquote intelligent as before and his memory was fine. But that social intelligence side of him completely went away. He was more volatile, more angry, more reactive, all of that, okay? So that inhibition went down. So he had less inhibition. He couldn't inhibit things. reactions, responses. It was all just like, and then he lost his job.
Chapter 5: What strategies can improve your emotional intelligence?
Like a lot of things went wrong for this poor guy. Okay. So there we're seeing where there's actual trauma in a part of the brain and how it actually directly impacts your emotional intelligence. Okay. So we're looking at these networks in the brain. It's also known as there's also something known as the social brain network.
And it's the particular networks within these regions of the brain that make for a really socially healthy brain as far as emotional intelligence versus one that doesn't. The more active these networks are and the better they are at communicating with each other, the more likely you are at having better emotional intelligence and self-control and
And, you know, being able to, you know, I've done episodes where we talk about regulating anger and anxiety and things like that. And again, it talks about these two brain regions communicating with each other because it's the logical part of the brain that's able to regulate. There is no regulate if we don't have the prefrontal cortex interacting.
And the way we interact properly is with more connectivity, a healthy back and forth, open communication, like a stream of information between the two regions. That's where you're going to see a much more well-rounded person as far as emotional regulation is concerned. Now let's talk about how we can improve our emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is not about how deeply you feel.
Chapter 6: How can self-awareness enhance emotional intelligence?
It's not about how much you cry, how emotional you are. How, you know, if you're the most empathetic person in the world, it doesn't necessarily make you like if someone's like, I'm an empath, I'm an empath, I feel that you might be emotionally intelligent. You also might not be. Okay.
It's a mix of things because if you're just empathetic and if you're just constantly feeling other people's pain, but there's none of the prefrontal cortex coming into it, then that's not going to solve any of your emotional intelligence problems, is it? So it's a fine balance. right? So it is not about being more sensitive. It's about thinking about what you are feeling, right?
It's also not about avoiding your feelings. So we have to have the two. We have to feel the feeling. We can't avoid it. We can't brush it under the rug. We can't have this like fake therapy talk when in reality, you're just absolutely avoiding what you're feeling. Those people that are angry, but they never look at the underlying issue of what is causing the anger, that kind of thing.
So we have to feel the emotion. But then after we've felt it, we need to know what to do with that emotion. If you just stay at the feeling the emotion, that's not emotional intelligence. That's just emotional, okay? So now we've got to, number one, feel the feeling. We have to be able to feel it. We have to be able to recognize it, name it, tame it, all the above.
then we've got to be able to know what we are doing about that, okay? Like I said, really sensitive people are not necessarily the most emotionally intelligent. Some really emotionally reserved people can actually be really good at feeling their emotions quite well and do a really good job of it. It's just not that public with their emotions.
So if someone is reserved, it doesn't mean they're emotionally intelligent. like they're lacking in emotional intelligence either. It just depends how they manage their emotions because you can be very in tune with your emotions but not be overly externally expressive with your emotions.
So you can't judge a book by its cover when someone who doesn't outwardly show these big emotions, they might still be very good at managing their emotions. They might still be very good at feeling and knowing their emotions. They might not just do it so visibly. in front of other people. So in a nutshell, emotions without regulation is not emotional intelligence.
So one thing we're going to do is cognitive reappraisal. So that is reframing your thoughts about a situation, right? So this is where we have to take a situation that's gone down. Let's say it's my friends didn't invite me to something or I blew up about that thing or I reacted really badly or I took that rejection as whatever or I took my boss's feedback. And we're going to reappraise this.
We're going to crack it open and look at what is the truth and what isn't the truth. What could be changed? What could be done differently? And the reason why this is so important is because you are getting your prefrontal cortex active. You are involving your prefrontal cortex in something that is normally just an emotional reaction to something. Even if it was terrible.
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Chapter 7: What is the difference between empathy and sympathy?
But the moment they get heated, it's like all reasoning goes out the window and you just like, why bother? That kind of thing. When there's too much emotion. You shut off your emotional intelligence. You literally shut off the ability for the prefrontal cortex to intercept because it's just overactive now. That part of the brain is overactive. So you just need to like just call it a day, right?
Just cut your losses. So we want to think about the perfect balance. Real, you know, emotional intelligence is a mix between emotional and prefrontal cortex, emotional and reasoning. And, you know, your cognitive interference technically with these emotions and how you then process. And that comes down to connectivity between the brain regions.
And then all of that is improved by doing all these things that I just spoke about. And really, if you listen to a lot of my episodes, you probably see it coming being like, yeah, no, I need to be fucking meditating. I need to be fucking... working on my sleep. I need to be having the tactical cry. I need to be doing all these things. And that will improve your emotional intelligence. Okay.
So the more you practice these things, the better the connectivity and the better your responses will be to all this stimulus around you in the world with other people, with, you know, behaving accordingly in a social situation and also responding accordingly to your own emotions as well. Anyone can get better at it. It just depends, you know, everyone starts at a different level.
It's not saying that it's easy for everyone. For some people, it will be harder than others. Other people have a more difficult starting position than others, especially if you do have ADHD and things like that. But people with ADHD specifically benefit from a lot of these things massively because there are at that deficit and there's many things that they can do to improve it.
So no matter where you are or who you are, these things can be put into practice to at the very least improve your situation. It's not saying, oh, it's all going to get cured and be better overnight, whatever. But these can make a difference. And that's kind of what we're working towards.
We're always working towards making some sort of a difference and becoming the best version that we can be of ourselves to other people and to ourselves. Cool. Cool. That is the episode of today on emotional intelligence. Guys, love you so much. Thank you for tuning in and listening to the podcast episode of today. Please go and answer that poll.
I don't know how I've worded the question because I haven't written it yet, but it will be hopefully more cohesive when you read the question. And if you don't already follow Do Your Fucking Mind on Instagram, go follow because you can vote on that poll as well. But we're just trying to make this podcast the best possible podcast it can be.
So I'm trying to figure out the ultimate format for you guys. because I kind of do miss the old school Monday episode format. But we'll see if you guys also miss it. And if you are an OG listener, then you'll know what I'm fucking talking about. And if you're not, go listen to any episode before episode 200. Anyway, I've got to go. I actually have a meeting. So I love you guys so much.
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