Emotional competence

Emotional competence refers to one's ability to express or release one's inner feelings (emotions). It implies an ease around others and determines one's ability to effectively and successfully lead and express. It is described as the essential social skills to recognize, interpret, and respond constructively to emotions in yourself and others.

The concept of emotional competence is rooted in understanding emotions as normal, useful aspects of being human. Anger is a reaction to aggression and gives a person the strength to repel the aggression. Though anger is usually seen in a negative light, sometimes it can also serve the purpose of protection. Grief is a reaction to abandonment or feeling unloved and it has the effect of eliciting sympathetic responses from others. Fear is a response to danger and has a clear physiological effect of heightening our senses and speeding up our reactions.

From this it can be seen that the suppression of emotion can be useful to avoid injury, embarrassment and arrest, but teaching people to suppress their inappropriate emotions is part of normal society. Suppressing other people's emotions to avoid conflict or discomfort in oneself can lead to controlling them, which may be unhealthy for all concerned. Emotionally competent people do express emotions appropriate to the situation, to their needs and to others, and they attempt not to suppress appropriate emotions, reactions and communications of feelings by others.

Some psychologists believe that if appropriate emotions are not expressed on a regular basis, a misplaced or unresolved memory of them becomes stored. Alternatively, this may also lead to an inability to process emotional clues in others, or have emotionally appropriate behaviors in oneself. Events in the future may trigger old emotions resulting in inappropriate emotional responses, or may trigger nothing, leaving one with a lack of emotional competence. This often applies to emotions that children may be experiencing, or are prevented from expressing, when an adult simply wishes to avoid dealing with feelings that may be very real to the child, who has yet to learn that feelings and facts are not mutually exclusive, or that emotionalism can be misunderstood or misused. Releasing childhood emotions, or pent up adult emotions can be a useful tool in co-counselling.

Emotional competence can lead to improved health through avoiding stress that would otherwise result from suppressing emotions. It can also lead to improved relationships since inappropriate emotions are less likely to be expressed and appropriate behaviour is not avoided through fear of triggering some emotion. It can be seen in an economics of human resource as a real capital.

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Wikipedia