Emotional intelligence: learning to listen to what you feel

María Cristina Forero Pérez, Registered psychologist no. 23181 · 6 November 2026 · 5 min read

For a long time, being "intelligent" was measured almost exclusively by IQ: reasoning, calculating, memorising. In the mid-1990s another idea began to gain ground: emotional intelligence, our ability to recognise what we feel, understand it and manage it, and also to understand other people's emotions.

Why it is so hard

It sounds simple: paying attention to what is going on inside us. But we live in a hurry, jumping from one task to another with our phone always at hand. There is little room left to stop and ask ourselves how we really are and what we need.

Keeping up that pace without breaks is exhausting. The emotions we do not listen to do not disappear: they tend to come back as irritability, tiredness or tension.

The four skills of emotional intelligence

1. Noticing. Recognising which emotion you feel at each moment and where you feel it in your body.
2. Naming it. Anger is not the same as frustration, nor is sadness the same as tiredness. Naming it helps you understand it.
3. Managing it. Choosing how to respond instead of reacting on autopilot.
4. Connecting with others. Understanding what the people around you feel and communicating better with them.

An exercise to get started

For one week, every time you feel bad, write down four things:

• When: day and time.
• The situation: where you are, who you are with and what is happening.
• Your body: what you notice physically (sweaty hands, pressure in your chest, wanting to cry…).
• Your thoughts: what you are telling yourself at that moment.

Then review those thoughts calmly. Do I have evidence that it is so? What would happen if it were? Does thinking this way help me? This exercise, described by psychologist María Jesús Álava Reyes in her book La inutilidad del sufrimiento, helps to separate what happens from what we tell ourselves about what happens.

When to ask for help

Emotional intelligence can be trained, and sometimes it is easier to do it with support. A space for psychological support gives you tools to get to know yourself better, identify your needs and relate differently to yourself and to others: your partner, your family, your friends or your work.

Educational content. It is not a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation and does not replace an assessment by a healthcare professional. If any symptom persists, please see your doctor.