Life or Death? An EQ Approach

​Soon after and without warning, events challenging my newly learned EQ knowledge effectively began. Please brace yourself and hold tight on your magic carpet for this one. Pardon the longer entry here... I promise it is worth it.

This is a sensitive entry as it involves a dear friend who has plenty of talents and an endearing personality. This friend is also driven by drama and dysfunctional patterns at times; it is truly frustrating to see someone with so much potential sail through life with destructive thoughts and behavioral patterns. Usually, due to my big heart, I always felt could change the world and help everyone, especially those dearest to my heart.

Oftentimes I have asked myself, how much am I qualified to do? Clearly I was no psychologist or mental health professional!
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How would you feel if on one night on the phone with a dear friend, he tells you “I am going to slit my wrist because I can’t bear the thought of losing her”? This followed with a WhatApp image of him putting a knife to his wrist. Yes, Awkward and terrifying! 

​That was the position I was in. I thought to myself, 'Wait. He wanted to slit his wrist because his girlfriend wanted to leave him?!' Did I hear correctly?!! I was flabbergasted! Stop. Was I ready for this? I wanted to go back to Dubai and study EQ some more. I wasn't ready for this, was my initial thought.

A flood of feelings rushed through me, feelings of fear, anxiety, guilt, hopelessness, sadness, frustration and panic were all about to take a hold of me. I felt my blood run cold and my ears ring. I could barely breathe. Here I was in a critical position, in the awkward and nerve-wrecking position of feeling responsible for life or death depending on what I say or do next. I knew I had to think fast.
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Since I did not have the luxury to hold time and travel through a time-space continuum, unbeknownst to me and perhaps because of my recent training, I instead managed to take a 6 Second pause, closed my eyes, breathed and checked into my own emotions as I heard his words echo inside my mind “I want to slit my wrist”.

A myriad of thoughts entered my mind. If he is saying he is going to do it, does this mean he wants to do it or that he is crying for help to hear why he shouldn’t?

If I neglected to take it seriously, would he go through with it? What made him reach this point? And what have I brought on to attract this situation into my life? I managed to stop my monkey mind from taking over and shift to Consequential Thinking as to what course of action I should take take that would be the best in this situation. 
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When emotions are improperly guided, darkness would seem to be the guide rather than the light...

​I thought, if I could show compassion to align myself with his emotions, and then manage to shift or help him navigate these emotions to appease the threatening feeling he was feeling with one of self-compassion, would that work? Would I manage to enable him to take a 6 second pause in order to appeal to the cognitive part of his brain "the neocortex" and activate his critical thinking?

After Navigating my Emotions, breathing deeply, I thought calmly to myself, it can be solved, and I reminded myself that it is not personal, I needed to be still and in the moment. Terrified that my efforts might not work, I acknowledged my emotions, battled my urges by channeling them, focused and proceeded following the EQ method and process... I figured, since he shared that with me, it was a cry for help and I could still do "something".

Forgive me if I am unable to state the details of what has happened for confidentiality reasons and in order to make this entry shorter, yet what I can mention is that I started off by connecting with my friend by showing him compassion, by acknowledging his feelings, shifting from the emotional state to the cognitive state using EQ based questions to help him think of alternatives.

​I've also shown that this is temporary, that we can still find a way to feel through the emotions and then let them go in order to create a better situation. I asked him if he was ready to do an experiment in order to help him feel empowered. And proceeded from there (in a nutshell). Should you wish to ask any more questions, please do so separately, I will manage to answer the best I can.

The most important thing to remember when connecting and aligning emotions, is not to get dragged into his reality and that is the skill of empathy.