Mastering Emotional Intelligence for Socially Awkward People
Humans are emotional beings by nature; it’s written into our DNA. From the time we are infants to when we are old and gray, we thrive on the relationships we have with others — all of which are built on the foundation of emotion.
When you don’t know how to exercise emotional intelligence in your relationships, you’ll end up frustrated wondering why you seem to fumble the most important relationships in your life.
Take it from me: I was diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) when I was a teenager. Consider ASD just another fancy way of saying I have a chronic case of innate social ineptness that made it hard to have healthy relationships with family members and non-family members because of my lack of emotional intelligence (EQ) and social skills.
My experience with overcoming my social and relational deficits prompted me to delve deeper into the impact that emotional intelligence has in our lives and relationships, so I hope this article will help you improve your EQ so that you can have the healthy relationships that every person needs and wants.
What is Emotional Intelligence (EQ)?
Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, is defined by Mental Health America as the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. However, EQ doesn’t stop at that definition; the renowned psychologist, lecturer, and science journalist Daniel Goleman explains his full definition of EQ with what he calls the 4 domains of emotional intelligence.
The 4 Domains of EQ:
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is knowing what we are feeling and why we’re feeling it, and also serves as our moral compass, which means it gives us some direction on how we should react to and behave in situations that require self-awareness of our emotions.
Not all socially awkward people struggle with self-awareness in terms of how they are feeling, but they can sometimes struggle with being self-aware about how our behavior is making other people feel.
Check out my blog post 5 Major Signs That You Are Socially Awkward (From a Former Awkward Person) if you need some help becoming self-aware about how your behavior and conversation may be off-putting.
Self-management
Self-management involves handling your distressing emotions in effective ways so that they don’t cripple you and they don’t get in the way of what you’re doing, and yet attuning to them when you need to so that you can learn from them.
Socially awkward people can sometimes struggle with recovering from the negative emotions that result from their socially awkward behavior. When awkward moments happen, they can get discouraged and stop trying to socialize altogether, or they try to ignore the tension that they caused which tends to worsen the situation.
Check out my free cheatsheet on recovering from socially awkward moments to learn how you can manage your behavior in moments when your socially awkward nature steals the show.
Empathy
Empathy involves knowing what someone else is feeling. This can be done by using social cues and considering the context of a situation.
Moderately socially awkward people can usually realize the error of their ways when they say or do something that makes someone feel uncomfortable and empathize with them, but more severely socially awkward people oftentimes lack the ability to empathize with how off-putting their behavior is.
If you think you may be oblivious to how your awkward behavior makes others feel, check out my article 19 Behaviors That Make You Seem Socially Awkward.
Skilled relationship (combining self-awareness, self-management, and empathy)
The ultimate goal of EQ is to combine self-awareness, self-management, and empathy in ways that lead you to have healthy relationships with your friends, family, colleagues, and others.
Socially awkward people can struggle to make and maintain relationships because they tend to struggle with the important components of having skilled relationships, including self-awareness, self-management, and empathy.
If that sounds like you, you might enjoy my free 6-step guide to making meaningful connections which gives you 6 straightforward steps to connect with just about anyone.
The Role of EQ in Relationships
Emotional intelligence plays a major role in most everyone’s lives, from relationships with family and friends to your workplace relationships, and even in daily interactions with the random people you meet everyday.
Socially awkward people’s lack of social skills is highly associated with a lack of emotional intelligence, and while we can’t definitively say whether the relationship is causal, I can say from my personal experience with being severely socially awkward that in many cases, the root of socially awkward behavior is a lack of emotional intelligence. (Whether this is a fact in your own life is up to you to decide).
You probably already knew this to be true if you’ve ever been in a romantic relationship where your feelings weren’t being considered or valued; or if you’ve had to work with an intelligent yet condescending coworker who doesn’t seem to care or realize how their communication style makes you and others feel; or if you’ve ever had your mood ruined by an exceptionally rude store clerk, bank teller, or front desk attendant.
Here are the findings of several reputable studies and surveys showing the role of EQ in different aspects of life:
A study done on 505 adolescents to measure the relationship between EQ and social anxiety showed a positive relationship between EQ and subjective well-being, and likewise showed a negative relationship between EQ, stress, and social anxiety.
In an in-depth analysis of 104 peer-reviewed articles about EQ, leadership, and teams, it was found that emotionally intelligent leaders improve both behaviors and business results and have a positive impact on work team performance and team members’ attitudes about work.
A meta-analysis of six studies involving a total of 603 participants found a significant correlation between emotional intelligence and satisfaction in romantic relationships.
According to Talent Smart EQ, people with high emotional intelligence make an average of $29,000 per year more than people with low emotional intelligence suggesting that being socially skilled and emotionally intelligent is correlated with higher wages.
These findings and more are the reasons you should prioritize learning to understand your own emotions and the emotions of those around you, so that you can form healthy relationships in every aspect of life.
3 Practical Steps to Improve EQ
1. Understand Your Own Emotions
Here are some ways you can work to understand your own emotions about your social awkwardness:
Practice self-reflection
When you’re in the midst of or in the aftermath of a situation in which you feel angry, disrespected, sad, or any other type of negative emotion, do some self-reflection the understand why you feel that way, if you should be feeling that way, and whether how you’re feeling is your fault or the other person’s fault.
Think before you speak/act
When you’re dealing with people, especially ones that you care deeply about, I’ve learned that it’s best to be quick to listen and slow to speak. So before you say or do something that you know will cause more emotional damage to a relationship, think about what response would give you the best results.
Know your strengths and weaknesses
It’s good to know your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies in terms of socializing so that you know how to conduct yourself in social situations.
For example, I know I have a tendency to take things very personally, particularly jokes, even if something said wasn’t directed towards me at all. Because of this, I know that when people say something that starts to make me feel self-conscious, I just tell myself that it’s not a big deal, and that the person probably didn’t mean any harm towards me (unless they did mean harm, which is a completely different story).
Learn from your past experiences
If a situation has happened in your past that ended poorly and you left it feeling unhappy at how you handled it, you don’t have to obsess about it, but you should take some time to learn what went wrong and how you would’ve preferred the situation to go.
For example, when I was in high school in the height of my social awkwardness, I was on my school’s JV tennis team. At a competition, I accidentally hit one of my opponents in the head with the tennis ball. I apologized, but because I lacked emotional intelligence at the time, my apology was very dry and monotone, so the girl didn’t think my apology was sincere (now that I think about it, she might have thought I was being intentionally snarky). So guess what she did? She hit me in the head in the next round, and responded with an equally as dry and sarcastic, “Oops, sorry.” That day, I learned that when you apologize for something serious, it’s important to sound and look sincere about it so that the other person doesn’t misinterpret it.
2. Understand Other People’s Emotions
Here are some ways you can work to understand your other people’s reactions to your social awkwardness:
Pay attention to how others behave around you
If you study how people tend to behave around you, you’ll begin to notice patterns that you can fix.
For example, say when you meet new people, you have a habit of not talking enough to the point that awkward silence become the norm for you, and you notice this often causes people to awkwardly walk away from you. You know that you might need help with your conversational skills.
Exercise empathy
When you notice that you made someone feel awkward or uncomfortable, try to put yourself in their shoes so you can understand how they may be feeling.
For instance, if you said a joke or just anything that obviously offended someone, take a moment to view the situation from the other person’s perspective and then apologize.
Respect the other person’s feelings
Mutual respect of people’s feelings is the backbone of any relationship, so have some respect for how people are feeling in response to something you may have unintentionally said or done.
Showing respect for someone can come in the form of many different ways. Some situations may require an apology, and others may require you to make the first move in an interaction if other’s are weary of talking to you because of your social awkwardness.
3. Turn Your Emotional Intelligence Into Action
Now that you know how to understand your own emotions as well as others, it’s time to take some action in improving your EQ and overcoming social awkwardness. To get you started, check out my article The Complete Guide to Social Aptitude for Awkward People where I provide my best conversational and behavioral tips for socially awkward people.
Are you struggling with emotional intelligence in your own life? Let me know; I love hearing stories from readers like you!
