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The Dark Side of Emotional Intelligence
Original Article Lying, Attacking others, Example
"Upset with a friend" - an example
Original Article on the Dark Side of EI
Most writers, researchers and consultants in the field of emotional intelligence (EI) typically promote only the "good" side of it. They say it makes people better students, better employees, better managers, better soldiers etc. Or they say it makes everyone more "successful". How they define "better" or "succesful" is an important question, but it is usually left unaddressed. Instead, it is assumed that we all know what such words mean. In other words, we are all expected to accept the common definitions of them without question. (See comment) But leaving aside the issue of what defines a "better" person, in this article I talk about what I call the dark side of EI.
Not satisfied with the common definition of EI, I have long suspected that a person's innate emotional intelligence could be warped by an abusive environment. In my experiences with teens, I am finding this to be exactly the case. The depressed, suicidal and self-harming teens I have worked with all come from emotionally abusive and neglectful families. Often there has been sexual abuse. Among these teens, I am finding that those I would consider to be the most emotionally intelligent are also fast learners and have good memory and recall. Sadly, because they are so emotionally hurt and starved, they are learning, remembering, developing and using unhealthy, destructive, hurtful or dangerous survival mechanisms.
Here is an initial list of what I have found from these emotionally intelligent, yet emotionally abused and neglected teens:
- They learn to manipulate. They need to manipulate because their needs were not met by simply asking or expressing their needs directly
- They learn to use their tone of voice, their words, their silence to manipulate
- They learn how to threaten you with what will hurt or frighten others the most
- They remember things they can use to hurt others with when they feel hurt
- They learn to use your own words against others
- They learn how to lie (See note on lying)
- They learn to tell you whatever you want to hear
- They get hurt easily because they have been hurt so many times. This hurt causes them pain and they become desperate to stop it. It is this desperation which leads them to lie, manipulate, threaten etc.
- They become nearly constantly defensive and therefore lose their childhood ability to empathize
- They may become bitter, cynical, sarcastic
- They learn how to verbally attack (See note on why we attack others)
- They learn hurtful phrases and quickly recall and apply them
- They can sense when someone is upset with them or is going to be, so if they are afraid of conflicts, as many are, they learn to do whatever it takes to avoid that person's disapproval or anger
- They learn responses to defend themselves
- They learn when to be evasive, for example, when to say "I don't know" and "I don't remember"
- They learn how to lay guilt trips
- They learn how to apologize when it serves them; how to beg for mercy and forgiveness
These are just some of the things I have noticed, I expect there are several more.
What is most sad to me is that all these teens I work with feel alone, unloved and unwanted. They are desperate to feel connected, cared about, understood, loved and wanted. They often hate themselves, so they look for love in relationships. But they don't have the necessary ingredients to make a relationship work. They don't have the needed self-love or even self-acceptance. They don't have the relationship skills or communication skills. These things are not taught in schools and all they see are dysfunctional models at home. These emotionally needy teens get into romantic relationships with other emotionally needy people. These relationships are unlikely to work, so they end up feeling more disillusioned, bitter, jaded and depressed.
It is a vicious cycle. Their high level of innate EI has given them an ability to both feel emotional pain and to hurt others emotionally. The survival instinct has programmed humans to attack what is hurting us and to defend ourselves from it. Because emotionally intelligent people are sensitive, they are easily hurt. They are also insecure from years of feeling disapproved of, disappointing, threatened, afraid, unworthy, inadequate, guilty, etc. Because of this insecurity, they take everything personally and are easily put on the defensive. Or they may go on the attack.
When the body is in attack mode, it doesn't feel its own pain. The energy is redirected. For some people, there may even be pleasure in hurting others. This brings to mind the lyrics in the song by Hall and Oates "it's so easy to hurt others when you can't feel pain." But these people did feel pain once. They felt it more intensely than their peers. They felt the pain of injustice and hypocrisy. They felt the pain of being invalidated and left alone or overcontrolled and unfree. They felt the pain of crying in their rooms with no one to comfort them. They felt the pain of being mocked and ridiculed by those around them from their parents to their teachers and peers. They felt the pain of having no one to talk to who wouldn't judge or lecture them.
Eventually, out of survival, they learned ways to numb their pain. This does not make them any less emotionally intelligent, though they might score lower on any of the current tests which are supposed to measure EI. It is also possible that they would still be able to get a high score, but it doesn't mean they are people you would want to have as friends or partners. This is something no EI researchers have addressed as yet, to my knowledge. I continue to urge the people who are seriously into EI research to consider the effects of emotional abuse and neglect on emotionally intelligent children and teens.
I believe that when emotionally intelligent teens develop the above-listed survival techniques while living at home, then apply these to relationships outside of the family, they eventually push away all the people they once wanted to be close to. I have done this myself in the past and I have had it done to me. They tend to enter into emotionally intense, codependent relationships. By codependent I mean each person's moods strongly affect the other's to the point it becomes unhealthy.
It is well known, in fact, that people from abusive homes take their survival mechanisms along with them as adults where these mechanisms no longer work. These mechanisms didn't work very well in their families, but they were better than nothing. People from emotionally abusive and neglectful homes did not learn any better ways of surviving, and if they tried to use better ways, they found those ways did not work with the people they were dependent upon for food, money, clothing, shelter and acceptance. For example, if they tried to simply state their feelings with feeling words, their feelings were invalidated. As adults though, where people choose friendships and relationships voluntarily, these mechanisms become self-destructive.
I believe emotionally intelligent people from emotionally abusive and neglectful homes can become some of the most hurtful, manipulative, greedy, controlling, arrogant people in society. Or they can become depressed and suicidal. Which direction they go depends on their personalities and life experiences. But chances are good that an emotionally intelligent teen from an emotionally dysfunctional family, or society, will develop some seriously unhealthy thoughts, feelings and behaviors as adults.
This is what I would call the dark side of emotional intelligence. It is something that could be prevented if parents, first, and teachers, second, were more emotionally competent. I make a distinction here between emotionally intelligent and emotionally competent. A parent does not have to be especially emotionally intelligent to stop invalidating their children and teens. A parent does not have to be an emotional genius to develop some basic listening skills. Some training in school or later on could provide a basic level of competency, just as most people have a basic competency in addition and subtraction without needing to be math geniuses.
The sooner we provide such training and education to all parents and prospective parents, the sooner we can begin to avoid the consequences of the dark side of EI.
S. Hein
June 28, 2003See notes on a more idealistic vision of emotionally healthy, emotionally intelligent teens
In my own experience I have had several teens lie to me and then admit it later. I have known them to lie to their parents and school counselors. They lie for several reasons. Often they lie to avoid punishment. They typically come from very punitive homes and go to schools where punishment and the threat of it is used as a primary basis of behavior control. (See related article on punishment in schools) They may also lie because they want and need something so desperately. They may lie to get someone's approval, attention, love, acceptance, etc. since these emotional needs were not provided at home. I suspect the more emotionally intelligent they were at birth, the better liars they are.
See also notes on lying from book by Gold and Eisen
I can think of two reasons we attack others. One is to try to control them by weakening them, making them feel guilty etc. The other is to push someone away who has hurt us so we can't be hurt again. Often, though, we push away the very people we need, so we end up feeling more alone. Or we may stay with the person in a mutually hurtful and resentment filled relationship. The more emotionally intelligent someone is, the better they are at hurting others emotionally if they come from emotionally abusive or neglectful homes. Parents who raise children in such environments are creating another generation of emotionally needy adults.
Generally, it seems those who are exploiting the term EI define "better" as whatever eventually leads to either making money or winning wars. Since the main promoter of EI was Daniel Goleman, an American, it can be expected the marketing of EI would reflect these two of the high priority American values. (Note that I myself was born in the USA, but have become disillusioned and have been traveling around the world since about 1997.)
Here is an example of how an emotionally intelligent person from an emotionally abusive home and emotionally toxic culture defends herself
In this part of our chat she is telling me a story about what happened between a friend and her. She wanted to show something to a friend and the friend turned and walked off. Then she started talking to the friend's boyfriend to see what was up. The reason I would say this is an example of the dark side of high EI is because Maria, 17, is obviously very sensitive. From her writing and my other conversations with her, I would say she is also intelligent. When she felt hurt by her friend, she "intelligently" used sarcasm and swearing to hurt the friend back. But the conflict troubled Maria so much that she could not sleep and was also motivated to contact me for help. So this tells me emotional problems are important to Maria. And relationships are important. Sadly, Maria has never been helped with managing her emotions and her emotional intelligence, and her emotional power we might say. So this is the kind of thing society ends up with through this lack of education:
maria says:
and so he tells me what's going on
maria says:
and she comes back and is all "sure just tell all your secrets to ana"
maria says:
here I understood that she's obiously was very insecure about something, but I was not willing to put up with her fit
maria says:
so I told her, well at least he's being a fucking friend by telling me what's going on
maria says:
I didn't get any sleep bawling about it all
steve says:
aw
steve says:
hug
maria says:
today I saw her in the hall and I walked off quickly
maria says:
but I was determined not to talk to her because I didn't want the wrong words to come out
maria says:
but she insisted
maria says:
i ran off and she chased me and yelling "I need to talk to you"
steve says:
ew
maria says:
yeah
maria says:
I didn't even bother going to newspaper (the class I have with her) I walked home
steve says:
yeah that sounds pretty upsetting
maria says:
hhhmmm.....
maria says:
I'm being overly dramatic
maria says:
but she really hurt me
steve says:
hug
maria says:
hug back
maria says:
i don't know I guess that's what's going on that's keeping me from being the usual perky maria
steve says:
i can understand that
maria says:
at the same time though, it's like well WTF??? she's the one losing a friend
maria says:
I can't have that in my surrounding if all I'm going to get is her shit
maria says:
you know?
maria says:
ok, enough about that