Emotional Intelligence and Empathy Reflection

What (if anything) have you learnt?

• I learnt the difference between empathy and sympathy and realised that I do begin giving advice or helping a friend’s problems with ‘at least’ and reducing their emotions often. I learnt that this is an important distinction to make when being empathetic.
• I learnt that embracing vulnerability is important to be emotionally intelligent and I realised that I often listen to others sharing their information but I try to stay reserved or not open up too much which is something I can start trying to do now.
• Looking at the types of active and passive communication made me realise the impression I may be giving by being passive/ distracted in conversation and how good a proper active conversation feels like.

How can this benefit you?

• • Over the past week, whenever I have caught myself being ignorant in a conversation/starting to ridicule someones problems I have tried to correct my behaviour and I feel this can improve my friendship and relations by being aware of this.

How can you be more emotionally intelligent in your own life?

A summary of the skills I mentioned in the responses above – I can try to communicate in a more active constructive way to make people feel like they are having an enriching conversation, be a better empathiser and help people feel understood and allow myself to be equally reciprocative and open with people. These skills may help me have better and more stable relationships with people and make the small differences that go a long way to do this.