Emotional Intelligence In the Context Of A Medical Crisis

[This is the transcript of Session 6 at the Emotional Intelligence Online Summit 2022 with Shiri Ben Arzi.]  

Today we're going to talk about emotional intelligence in the context of a medical crisis. So, what does that mean? It talks about how we tap into that emotional intelligence during a health or medical crisis. The thing about a health or medical crisis is that they tend to be overwhelming. 

Let's talk a little bit about the characteristics of a medical or health crisis. I will define what they are and how they differ from one another. Then, we’ll go into some tools, skills, and tips you can use.  

First of all, how do we know if an event, that has something to do with our health or body that we are going through, is a medical or health crisis? 

Well, it all depends on your decision.  

You are the one to decide whether or not your health is a medical crisis.  

It’s your life.  

To guide you with that, you can ask yourself these questions: 

What does it feel like to you? 

Does it feel like a medical crisis or a health crisis? 

You get to name it because it is your life — your emotional intelligence. It’s your body. 

So, let’s talk about some of the characteristics of a health and medical crisis.  

A health and medical crisis had to do with something going significantly wrong with your health. And that means two things: 

1. There is a mega break of trust. 

Your body is that basic primal container that you learn to trust unconditionally. You need to trust your body. When you were still a baby, you needed to trust your body to turn from lying down on your back to lying down on your stomach, sit up, stand, and learn how to walk, skip, climb and run. 

You need that unconditional trust.  

So, when a medical or a health crisis comes into your life, they usually disrupt you. It almost feels like the ceiling has just fallen on your head without asking for our permission. So there's a break of trust, and you go: “I cannot trust this vessel — my body, which is a part of me. I have trusted this body unconditionally until now. What can I trust that body if I cannot trust that body anymore?”  

Do you see the ripple effect of that trust? And that's pretty profound.  

So that's one aspect.  

2. Survival mode.  

A medical or health crisis can be dangerous. You're fighting for your life (medically speaking). So, you need to go through a lot of procedures; some of them might be new, some of them are frightening, and some of them are painful. You need to have this medical practitioner and this team of medical professionals, and you don't know them.  

You trust their profession — they have all the credentials and are working in a hospital. However, they need to probe, touch and hurt you. Although you trust that they have the best intentions, you are returning to that trust issue.  

So, everything is overwhelming. 

You also might be dealing with some financial issues because you are not working anymore or you can’t work right now, and it’s going to take some time before you can get back to work.  

Then you also have thoughts bothering you, like: 

“What about my family?” 

“What about my spouse?” 

“What about my body image? How am I going to look like." 

“Who am I going to be?” 

“I have this story of who I am and what I can do; what’s going to happen after this? Who am I going to be then?”  

“What am I going to be able to do?”  

“Where will my place be at home and in society?"  

This kind of crisis tends to be a 360 crisis which means it touches EVERY area of our lives.  

This crisis will touch your self-esteem, your emotions, thinking strategies, values, relationships, and your environment. So, it touches everything.  

Therefore, you need to tap into your Emotional Intelligence to create those coping skills — those empowering perspectives that will give you the inner strength to work through this.  

Because sometimes, a crisis like this can be an acute crisis, where it has a short lifespan, a beginning, a middle, and an end. But sometimes, you might come across and deal with a chronic crisis. A chronic crisis has a beginning and a very long middle, and we don’t know when and if it will end and how it will look when it ends.  

What does that mean? And I'm talking about chronic illnesses.  

It means that there's a need to create a new normal. 

So, for you to create those coping skills and create that new normal, you need to tap into your emotional, mental and even spiritual resources or wherever/whatever those might be for you.  

Spirituality can be connected to religion, but it can also be connected to the human spirit.  

So, I want to share my slides with you because I want to give you some skills and tools to create that transition into a more resourceful state where you can tap into your emotional intelligence. [ Slides start at 6:36 of 33:12]  

Imagine you are in a state of crisis.  

This is a very dramatic crisis where you feel a lot of fear, a lot of stress and sometimes, a lack of hope. The crisis can have traumatic aspects to it, but in any case, it’s overwhelming. You want to reach that state where you can tap into your emotional intelligence so you can create these powerful, empowering, and sustainable coping strategies.  

How do you do that? If emotional intelligence has a lot to do with awareness, how do you get from your current state to a more resourceful one? 

Imagine a wide gap between your current state and a more resourceful state (the state where you want to go). To go from where you are to where you want to go, you need to have a bridge. 

And that bridge is called Emotional Agility.  

Emotional agility is the “doing" that helps us connect to that emotional intelligence. It's an aspect within this vast concept of emotional intelligence.  

Emotional agility has a lot of skills and tools. And like I said, it is a lot about doing. In this article, I am going to share with you how emotional agility can lead to a place of tapping into your emotional intelligence and creating those coping strategies that will work for you and support you in your journey.   

There's a foundation to this bridge. Let's talk about that foundation. 

The first thing that I want you to know is that all of us need to change how we look and talk about emotions. We tend to make a distinction between positive emotions and negative emotions. And we want to move away from those negative emotions and only embrace the positive ones. However, life doesn’t work that way. There are no negative or positive emotions. Some emotions do not feel good, and some are pretty nice to feel. However, they are all human emotions, and they have a context to them.  

So, the first “doing” of emotional agility is stepping away from that distinction. 

Stop judging your emotions. You deserve better than that.  

You have emotions. They're all part of the human experience, and they all have a context to them. 

Some emotions might feel nice; others might be difficult. Maybe there are some emotions that you don't like feeling (that’s a place for exploration), but let's step away from judgment. That is the first principle and the first tool that we use. 

The second thing is that instead of making that distinction between negative and positive (remember I invited you to step away from that), I want to invite you to look at it as balanced and imbalanced emotions.  

What does that mean?  

Well, let's take “anger" for example.  

Anger is not a feel-good emotion. We often judge it and say, “Oh, anger is a negative emotion.”  

However, anger is not negative; it's a human emotion. You can learn a lot of things from anger.  

Anger teaches you to set boundaries; to say no.  

Anger teaches you right from wrong anger.  

Anger is also an amazing motivator. If you look at history (and even at the lives of other people), think about how many people decided to stand up and change their just because they were angry — they had enough and were pissed off? 

Anger can be a motivator. It doesn't feel nice. It doesn't always feel nice physically (because there's an embodiment of anger). But when anger is balanced, you can ask yourself, “what am I learning from this?” 

So, it’s about stepping out from your anger and objectively looking at it and asking yourself:  

“What is the truth about this anger?” 

“What do I want to learn from this anger?” 

“How do I want to hold space for the anger?” 

So be with the anger and process it.  

Now that’s a balanced emotion.  

However, when anger becomes imbalanced, it becomes rage.  

Rage is like a forest fire; it consumes us. There is no learning in rage.  

When you become consumed by rage, you can’t differentiate yourself from your emotions— from your rage. You become your rage, and you just burn everything down.  

Let me give you a few additional examples: 

One of them is fear.  

So, fear is the balanced version while anxiety is going to be the imbalance version.  

Fear is not a negative emotion; it's just an emotion. You need to be afraid. If you’re not afraid of things that might put you in danger, you might not survive. So you need fear for your survival. Fear also teaches you things.  

Fear teaches you to survive and to be careful. It teaches you self-preservation and how to prioritise things. It teaches you to plan. 

So, fear is an amazing teacher. However, when fear becomes imbalanced, it becomes anxiety.  

Anxiety tends to surround you and will make you feel that there is no way out — that you’re doomed, and you're going to die (in some cases).  

Another example is happiness. 

Happiness is not a positive or negative emotion. It's just an emotion. It feels good.  

Does happiness have an imbalanced version?  

Yes, it does, and it’s called euphoria.  

The thing about euphoria is that it makes you disconnected from reality. When you are disconnected from reality, you don't see reality for what it is, which means you might be in danger, not knowing that you might put yourself in danger and endanger others.  

Euphoria often leads to reckless decisions. So, being in a euphoric state is actually pretty dangerous.  

So that's the second thing.  

So, now look at your emotions and ask yourself: “Is this a balanced or imbalanced emotion? How do I know?  

Can I step out of the situation, stand on that bridge, look at myself down there feeling that emotion, and then ask myself: What am I learning from this?

If I cannot do that, then I am in an imbalanced emotional state. And then the best thing I can do is use some grounding techniques. I'm gonna talk about that in a bit.  

The third part of the foundation is understanding that in the context of a crisis, emotions are a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. 

As I have said earlier: Every emotion has a context.  

Emotions do not exist outside our context.  

For example, I am having a medical coaching session with a 36-year-old man who was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer. And he is angry. So, his anger is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation because it’s normal to feel angry and sad when you have stage 4 brain cancer, so that is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.   

His anger is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation because it's normal to be angry and sad when diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  

And that’s one thing that I want you to carry with you: When you are going into that emotional reaction, look at the context. Because many times if you change or reframe the context, you will see a shift in the emotional state.  

So, in a context of a crisis, do not judge yourself for being upset, for being sad, crying, for being terrified, for being stressed, or for losing hope. This is a crisis. It has a completely different set of rules to it. It's a different game. In a crisis, all emotions are normal reactions to an abnormal situation. No judgments. No negative or positive. Just ask yourself, “Am I able to learn something from this emotion?” Because if not, then you are in an imbalanced state, and you need to ground yourself.  

Last but not least, and this is so important, is: (if there is one thing that I want to give you in this short talk, this is it) 

You are a human being. You have emotions — you are not your emotions.  

In that aspect, emotions are like internal behaviours — they can be changed. When you see yourself as a human being with emotions, you credit separation between yourself and your emotions.  

You are not your emotions. This means you can negotiate, process, change and work with your emotions. However, you are not to judge yourself according to your emotions. If you are feeling overwhelmed and angry and can’t seem to focus because you are profoundly sad, that does not mean you are weak. It also does not mean you are an angry, “bitchy", or depressed woman or whatever it is. In this context, what you are feeling in the moment just means that you are feeling an emotion — nothing more, nothing less.  

Let’s talk about the crisis that plays medical health crisis. 

What happens to us? 

Earlier, I mentioned a few of those characteristics. But now, let us take to the subject of human experience.  

Let us look at the acronym CRASH. We call this a CRASH state.  

Contraction 

Reaction 

Analysis Paralysis 

Separation 

Hurt and Hate 

Let’s start with Contraction. 

When you are in a state of crisis, you will feel physical contractions on many levels. You can feel that contraction in your muscles, which has something to do with high cortisol levels (the stress hormone in our system). You can also feel that contraction in your chest, resulting in shallow breathing.  

Aside from experiencing a physical contraction, a crisis can also lead you to a mental contraction which often alters your ability to assess situations. 

When you are in a relaxed state, you look at a situation from different angles and perspectives. However, when you are in a crisis, your peripheral vision contracts. Therefore, you tend to get into this tunnel vision which affects your ability to explore different perspectives and tap into different resources and situations (like situations in the past) which can help you get through your crisis. 

Reaction.  

Often, when we are faced with a crisis, we shift from a proactive state to a reactive state.  

A proactive state has to do with stepping out and initiating a response. When you are in a place of reaction, you are constantly reacting to things that are coming in to meet you — things that are invading your space, environment, human experience, and things that you did not ask for or did not ask for your permission. 

However, the irony is although we did not give them our permission, we find ourselves paying attention to them by constantly reacting when they come in. 

So, imagine being attacked from different angles and constantly reacting to these attacks by pushing them back. That's exhausting, right?  

Analysis Paralysis. 

Analysis paralysis means that your ability to analyse a situation is paralysed.  

So, what happens when we analyse a situation?  

We look at it from many angles.  

We explore different ways to solve it.  

We try to come up with the best reactions and strategies to deal with the situation.  

So, that is the ability to analyse a situation. We do that all the time.  

However, when you are in a state of crisis — in a crash state — your ability to ability to analyse what happened and what is happening, your ability to look into the internal and external resources, is paralysed. This means that you cannot access any of them.  

Separation.   

The experience of separation is the experience of isolation. In a state of crisis, even though you might be in a room filled with people, your subjective experience is that you are absolutely separated and isolated.  

You are all alone.  

You may also come to a point where you feel that nobody’s seeing how desperate you are right and that you are facing a crisis. You feel that nobody’s seeing how terrified you are, and nobody feels that you feel like you’re in a “survival mode” state.  

Then you may spiral into thinking that if nobody sees you, then nobody can help you, and if nobody can help you, then nobody loves you and cares for you. 

And that’s separation. 

You feel alone. You feel separated. You feel like you are no longer part of the group or the community. 

So, feeling and experiencing separation is a frightening and stressful experience.  

Hurt and Hate.  

When you are in a state of crisis, you feel hurt many times.  

First of all, there's a betrayal of the body. And that's hurtful because any experience of betrayal hurts us emotionally.  

Then we have that emotional hurt.  

Other people might hurt you.  

You might be disappointed, which might be connected to that separation experience.  

You might be asking them these questions: 

“How come you're not seeing me?”  

“How come you are not there for me?”  

And sometimes that will also shift into an experience of hate.   

“I hate other people.”  

“I hate the world.”  

“I hate what's happening to me.”  

“I hate myself.”  

So those responses make up a CRASH state. And CRASH state is a classic response to a health or medical crisis. 

What we want to do is shift it to a COACH state which stands for: 

Centred 

Open 

Awareness 

Connected 

Holding  

Other than the fact that COACH is also an acronym, being in a COACH state means that you are in a state where you can tap into your resources, values, strategies and into what works for you.  

As we talk about that shift, I will also be giving you a number of tools and tips. 

 Centred 

Being centred means you are going back to the centre of who you are — what you know to be absolutely true about your life, who you are and your abilities, and the world.  

To centre yourself in a CRASH state or a state of crisis, you don’t go to your mind, but you go immediately to the body instead.  

So,this is how you centre yourself: 

First, you need to take your shoes off so you can feel the floor. Remember that you need to use your senses. Now, you’re going to tap into the intelligence of the body because the body holds a lot of intelligence (by the way, that is connected to emotional intelligence as well).  

After taking off your shoes, feel the floor.  

You want to start breathing, and you want to send that breath down to your abdomen.   

Imagine you have a balloon in your lower abdomen (a little bit below your belly button or your navel). As you are inhaling, you are sending the air into the balloon. You will see that as you breathe that way, your lower abdomen will stop moving (you can also put your hand there to feel it). 

So just practice that.  

What you are doing there is that instead of expanding the upper part of your chest, you are expanding your lower abdomen.  

Physiologically, that means that you are inhaling more air into your lungs. Because in a state of a crisis, our breathing usually becomes very shallow therefore using about one-third of our lung capacity. So, when you’re breathing using this abdomen type of breathing, you’re using our entire lunch capacity, which means two things:  

1. You have more oxygen in your blood, which can improve your neurological function significantly because more oxygen goes into your brain.  

2. When you use the entire capacity of your lungs, your diaphragm starts moving. The diaphragm is the muscle that separates the lung and all our internal abdominal organs. That muscle is crucial, and it needs to stay flexible and strong. As you’re breathing like that, you are moving the diaphragm, which in turn gives a massage to all your internal organs, which helps them function.  

Therefore, you need that strong diaphragm to massage your intestines, so they work better.  

After placing your bare feet on the floor, rub your hands to create that nerve stimulation. Then, start looking around you. So, you are going to use your senses to bring your attention to the here and the now because one of the characteristics of an imbalanced emotional state is that our attention gets out to this unknown thing in the future. So, you want to bring attention back to the body, and the way to do it is through your senses. So, look around you and find something to count. You can count the pictures on the wall, look out the window, count the people that go by, the trees, etc.  

It does not matter what you count. But you want your counting, your breathing, your neurology back to the here and now.  

So, you want to listen to voices.  

Right now, if you are watching the video, you might be hearing my voice;  

Do I have a specific accent? 

Does my voice sound nice? 

Am I too loud? Or is the volume of my voice too low? 

You can also listen to other voices.  

You can try to notice the humming of the air conditioner.  

Notice that.  

Then you want to take your attention to the body.  

Is this something that feels uncomfortable? 

Take your attention to the feet. How does the floor feel like? What’s the temperature? Are you feeling a carpet? Or are you feeling another kind of texture? 

By doing this, you are using your body to get centred.  

There is a lot of free content on centering techniques online. I recommend that you just Google it and enjoy them.  

Open 

Being open means becoming open to what else is around you, who else is around you, and who can help you. So, you want to use your eyes and start looking around, but you can also start expanding your awareness by asking yourself: What else am I noticing? Who else is here? What else is possible? 

When you do that, you start expanding your awareness.  

As you expand your external awareness (your awareness of everything outside of you), your awareness will increase to everything inside you. Your inner resources, values, beliefs and experiences. 

Connected  

What am I connected to? Who do I want to connect to or connect with?  

So, you can connect to your values, you can connect to a really pleasant memory where you felt loved, seen, empowered and strong. However, you can also connect to someone else that sees you. So “connected” is consciously looking for something to connect to or connect with.  

Holding the space. 

Imagine that you're cradling.  

I want you to bring your hands to you and make a cradling motion. And the thing that you're going be cradling is you. 

So, you're just going to hold the space for yourself as you are imperfect, wonderful, and amazing as you are right now.  

As you are cradling yourself, you’re going to bring a lot of compassion because you are just perfect as you are right now.  

Remember, you have emotions; you are not your emotions.  

You're having a crisis.  

You're going through a crisis.  

You are not your crisis.  

You have an illness.  

You are not your illness, and you are not your symptoms, you're not your pain, you're not everything that happened to you. You're a beautiful human being; right now, you’re going through something, and you must be held with compassion. You need to be seen, and you need to be acknowledged. And the first thing that you're going to do is you're going to give that to yourself by holding a safe and compassionate space for yourself.  

I hope all of these tools helped.  

There are several resources available for emotional agility that can help you connect to that emotional intelligence.  

Remember, this is a skill.  

You are born with the ability to tap into your emotional intelligence. You are born with the ability to do emotional agility. So, it's a skill and an ability. The more you use the emotional agility tools, the more you connect to your emotional intelligence. The more you use it, the more it becomes second nature.   

Then, when you find yourself in a situation where you might be going through any crisis (health, medical and others), you can immediately tap into your emotional intelligence. You can use those emotional agility tools and skills and create a shift. So, start creating that shift in no time, and that's what I wish for you.  

So, thank you very much, and be well.

Shiri Ben Arzi | Medical Coach and founder of MCI (Medical Coaching Institute)

Shiri is a coach, supervisor, workshop facilitator, and international lecturer.

She holds certifications in Medical and Health Coaching, Co-active Coaching, Embodiment Coaching, ADHD Coaching, Caregiver Coaching, NLP, Greif Education, Advanced Clearing Energetics (ACE), and Timeline Therapy.

She is a co-leader of the ICF Health and Wellness Community of Practice co-leader.

Over the past 15 years, Shiri has worked with international leading pharmaceutical companies, medical organizations, patient associations, and hospitals.

Her vision is to promote empowerment and a patient-centered medicine practice within medical systems through a coaching approach.