Psychotherapy is gradually becoming a familiar part of modern life. But there are still many questions about the mechanisms of how psychotherapy works.
The very first thing that comes to mind is anxiety disorder. Therapy is able to reduce it, and in some cases – and remove it altogether. The person begins to live a peaceful life, panic attacks stop happening to him. Therapy also helps to cope with traumas that form negative patterns of behavior, when a person often gets into acute states and does not understand why. In therapy, the client gets to the root cause of the trauma. And so he learns if not to eliminate the trauma completely, then at least to get along with it, to control it in his life.
For example, attachment trauma. For example, the mother was inconstant or the child was often and for a long time taken to the grandmother. In such cases, the child develops an anxious attachment. In adulthood, this person, when creating any relationship, cannot understand why he or she is unable to create intimacy, to get a natural, healthy attachment. In therapy, we find a reason for this. It’s like being sent to grandma’s house for a long time or being sent to an elite full-time school. And then, it turns out, it negatively affects the future, forms a trauma. Then the work of the therapist is to make the person understand this trauma and learn, based on all the consequences, gradually build healthy relationships with others.
Does therapy have any effect on emotional intelligence or is it innate and cannot be “fixed”?
Therapy increases both emotional and social intelligence. When a person becomes more inwardly oriented, he or she is much more effective in communicating with the environment. If we do not notice our aggression, skin inflammations can appear in this place, for example. But if we realize our anger, discontent, know how to protect ourselves from toxic people, then, of course, the quality of our life becomes higher.
How does emotional intelligence differ from social intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is when a person has a good understanding of their emotional life. Not just an understanding of feelings, but the ability to live them.
Social intelligence is the ability to trace interrelationships between people, patterns in actions. In women, it is a little better developed, because they are still in childhood playing, for example, in dolls, and thus learn the first social connections. Boys are a little different. They later learn to recognize the interrelationships between people, groups of people.
