Addiction Recovery – Emotional Intelligence

Addiction recovery – emotional intelligence. They go together. Emotional intelligence can be described as the ability to assess, deal with and learn from emotions. Emotional intelligence can be enhanced and it’s related not solely to addiction recovery, of course — everyone can benefit from learning more about their emotions. Emotional immaturity and emotional instability are common problems. For the recovering addict, this lack of emotional intelligence can lead a person to relapse, so it’s critical that those in recovery from addiction develop both a better understanding of emotions and the skills necessary to deal effectively with primary emotions.

The basic primary emotions are anger, sadness, fear and joy. Some writers on the subject include other emotions as primary, but these four are basic. If a person doesn’t accept and deal with these primary emotions effectively, secondary emotions become a problem, and, for the person in addiction recovery, these secondary emotions can drive a person back to taking that first drink or drug to relieve the emotional turmoil. For instance, if a person doesn’t deal effectively with anger, the anger can turn to hatred, rage or passive-aggressive behavior. If sadness is not accepted and dealt with, it can become depression or the feeling of victimization. These secondary emotions can create ongoing emotional pain that eventually overwhelms a person.

Our basic emotions are trying to tell us something important — it’s like we’re telling ourselves to slow down and pay attention to the emotions so that we can learn and grow and deal with whatever’s causing the primary emotion. Too often, we ignore or suppress unpleasant emotions, and this is where things can go wrong. This is from Psychology Today:

What Is Emotional Intelligence?