Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

Daniel Goleman
Paper 3 of the Training to become a Certified Contextual Coach with Dr. P. Warschawski
Joshua Gonsher
September 28, 2014; Rewritten and resubmitted July 3, 2015

According to Goleman, the emotional brain is as involved in reasoning as is the

thinking brain. Consider an individual trapped in the throes of anger. It is nearly impossible
to ask him to think logically. It seems every other week Hollywood showcases this archetype
in a wife who catches her husband in the midst of an affair and, despite his begging and
rationalizing with her, shoots him and the other woman. The wife then collapses to the floor,
realizing what she has done, and sobs hysterically, taking in the gravity of her actions. She
is the victim of an emotional hijacking. Consider, further, the child who, upon just having
been handed a lollipop, accidentally drops it into the mud below. No amount of sensible
argument will stop his tears; he needs, instead, to mourn his loss before progressing.
Consider, finally, the woman whose luggage has been left at her origin by the airline.
Though she knows full well the next flight from their to her present destination is not until
tomorrow morning, she continues to yell at and blame the customer service representative
at the airport. Her shrieks and screams cannot be silenced or even quieted even though she
knows she cannot physically receive her bags until the next day.
This overriding of one's sense of logic by one's emotional brain is an important
concept to keep at the back of my mind in my preparation to become, and in the future
practice as, a psychologist and contextual coach. It will be important to realize that clients
and patients come into my office with preconceived notions and assumptions about what
therapy entails. Until I can be selective and decide whom I will see, I will most certainly
need to treat betrayed, sad, and angry clients, many who are yet in the pangs of an
emotional attack. The untrained, uninitiated, and unaware may attempt to calm down those
suffering, often with attempts to distract them ("You're okay; don't worry about it."), with
spiritual reasons why the events happened ("God decreed you should lose your son."), or
even with blatant attacks on the way they are facing these scenarios ("Don't be such a
baby."); the empathic therapist will be present throughout these episodes, helping clients to
experience their emotions fully by attending to them as they occur. Finally, the contextual
therapist will have clients intensify their emotions to be intense and profound as quickly as
possible, which prevents their ruminating over them and relieves them of the suffering they
cause. Goleman says that we cannot determine when and with what emotion we react to
stress or trauma or even neutral news, but we can be in control of how long and intense
these outbreaks are. Though this decreasing of duration and power is the responsibility of
the clients, the good therapist knows how and when to push them to reach this level.
The first discovery I made while reading the book was in the "Know Thyself" section.
This is where the author brought up the concept of individuals and their levels of attending
to and dealing with emotions. Some people are self-aware and recognize their emotions as

they occur; others are engulfed and feel overwhelmed by them, often believing they have
no control over their emotional lives; still others are accepting, clear about their feelings but
not willing to escape the distressing ones or even change. As a clinician, I will be working
with the gamut of emotions: depressed, anxious, angry, and a replacement or mask for
them all: substance-addiction. Contextual therapy understands these states as resulting
from a loss and does not pathologize the individual like other theoretical orientations might.
Since symptoms are solutions, contextual therapists help patients become aware of the
actual or potential loss, help them take responsibility for the sadness therein by mourning it
sufficiently, and then ask coaching questions to identify and achieve their desired goals. If I
try to treat patients who do not realize, have never been aware of, or feel helpless to
change what feelings they are enduring, at the outset it seems daunting to think of how I
could get them to lament their losses. I may have to change my techniques from what has
helped previous clients mourn before. I will undergo the continuous experiment to
determine which psychoeducational interventions bring the client from an engulfed or
accepting style to one in which he is aware and in control. As Goleman says (p. 54), "the
key to sounder personal decision-making in short: being attuned to our feelings."
Contextual coaching and therapy will only be successful if the individual is able to make
decisions and articulate his goals clearly. Having no wish to change one's current situation is
not a problem, but there is no reason for him to seek therapy or coaching help. However,
those who do not realize their present lot in life can be altered are prime candidates.
Similar to those who are overwhelmed by or unaware or merely accepting of feelings
are those who lack the discipline to lower the intensity and length of their emotional
reactions. Whether this lack of control came about by parents teaching their children to
ignore their emotions or by their own labeling them incorrectly is not the concern. What is
important is their desire to be the victim no longer. Taking responsibility for their actions will
ensure partial success, but part of the therapist's job is changing their perspectives, as
providing them a new way to view their predicament will help them out of it. Goleman says
that continuing to worry about what is causing a depressed mood determines how long it
will last, and contextual coaches rattle their clients' assumptions and abruptly interrupt this
cyclical, spiraling thought process. This is an instance when therapists help patients evaluate
the validity of these thoughts and help them create more positive alternatives.
Another aspect of this book that will be important in my future endeavors as a
therapist is the concept of hope. Chances are good that I will need to treat some patients
who are facing existential crises. Perhaps they are going through chemotherapy for
particularly bad cancer. Maybe they have a sick child. An older parent of theirs might be

terminally ill. They may have lost a job they had had for a long time. Their marriage may be
headed for disaster. Regardless of the situation, the pain they are suffering, though not
technically physical, is distressing and potentially hazardous. In keeping with the EQ theme,
if these patients do not understand what they are feeling and how they should be dealing
with it, they may believe that there is no real way out and that ending it all is the only
solution. Even if my clients do not risk existential "danger," they may not know how to be
successful in lifeschool, job, family, etc. Hope is a good predictor of success. Those people
with hope know how to set high goals and work hard to attain them. One of the
assumptions of Shawnian therapy is that each client has the necessary resources to achieve
his goals. Goleman quotes Snyder and defines hope as "believing you have both the will and
the way to accomplish your goals, whatever they may be." Their having hope is the same as
my assuming they are able, which makes these individuals wonderful candidates for therapy
or coaching. Upon failure, they tell themselves they are using a wrong approach or see
something in the situation and not in themselves as the reason for the fiasco. These people
do not breed despair, and individuals who view the world through rose-colored glasses are
not nave; they are happier, better adjusted, and generally more successful than their
pessimistic (yet often more IQ intelligent) counterparts. These people are also in good
moods, which, according to Goleman, enhance the ability to think flexibly and with more
complexity. Someone in a good mood can find a solution to a problem more easily, whether
it is intellectual or interpersonal.
This is a reason I am shaping up to be a good therapist and coach. I am funny and
happy and in a good mood. This means that I am better suited than my patients at figuring
out their complex issues and problems. This also means that since my mood is infectious,
the clients will get into a better mood and therefore then be able to solve heretoforeunsolvable problems. No longer does the therapist need to mirror the depressed affect or
sad mood of the client with perceived insurmountable obstacles, as psychoanalysis or other
theories posit; Goleman's research suggests that laughter is, indeed, the best medicine.
Good moods, no matter how brief, help the anxious patients succeed despite their anxiety,
the depressed patients to escape their depression, or even provide a glimpseperhaps
fleetingas to what life would be like without the suffering that brought them in to my
office.
The final discovery I made that has helped me in my social, religious, and
professional life is being conscious that temperament is not destiny, something I
remembered while reading the book when it was further elaborated by Goleman.
Understanding that my biology and genetics do not determine my future has been incredibly

empowering. When interacting with friends, family, or employees (disgruntled or satisfied),

for example, no matter when in the conversation, if I see it turning towards somewhere I do
not wish to tread, knowing that the past does not dictate the future, I can veer it back to
where I wanted it to go originally or to a new destination, one I would feel more comfortable
pursuing. Knowing that past sins do not necessarily preclude someone's entering paradise
since God accepts individuals where they are at the present moment helps in my spiritual
pursuits; one can acquire the World to Come in a moment. And accepting the concept that
individuals can change in a split second helps inform my practice as a therapist and coach.
If I did not have this belief, I could not engender it in others and would not produce such
short-term results as can be found with contextual therapy and coaching.
EQ is teachable. I can arm my patients with the skills they need to be successful in
the real world. While IQ is usually unwavering and does not change over the course of one's
lifetime, EQ can be learned, improved, and increased. So when my patients come in with
issues in living, I know that I can get them to a better place. The main way to get results is
to employ discipline. Maintaining calm in the face of adversity, being able to give up fighting,
and being willing not to make the other person wrong all take discipline, and those with high
EQ exude it. I may have clients high in IQ who wish to be more successful in all walks of
life. These individuals will be relatively easy to treat since their intellect provides insight into
what is asked of them, and they will appreciate the cognitive, happy manner I employ. They
will wish to complete the tasks necessary to reach an adaptive level of EQ and will therefore
improve their hope, their optimism, and the functioning of their emotional brains. They will
appreciate the discipline I utilize to help them change though the future may appear bleak.
And it is with this newly realized and remembered discipline I choose to end my
paper, as further discourse runs the risk of going contrary to the utilitarian responsibility
inherent in contextual therapy.