What Makes Me Tick?
Personality, Emotions, and Social/Emotional Intelligence
My Personality
I feel I can attribute these changes to my nurture, how I was raised. When I was young, it was just my parents and me. I was an only child up until the age of six. The reason I was so shy when I was young is because I wasn't used to being around other people my age. However, my parents got divorced, and I got a half-sister from my mother, and then my mom left me with my dad and didn't come back. This brought about the beginnings of a change in my personality, but it took me some time. I was living with my dad in a subdivision with tons of kids always outside playing together and I started watching them out of my window wishing I could go out and play with them, but my shyness was deterring me. Eventually, my dad coached me to just suck it up and introduce myself and that's exactly what I did, which helped me to become more outgoing. A few years later, my dad got in an accident and passed away, leaving me alone. When I was 10, I moved in with my aunt and uncle, and my two cousins, Haley and Hunter, who were both my age. Being thrown into a family of four (now five) forced me to be more extroverted as time went on. Also, because of my experiences, I have learned to be very compassionate and sympathetic towards others. I have learned to also be open minded and always try to look at things from others' perspectives.
My Emotions
I realize this is an unhealthy approach to managing my emotions because eventually, I just "explode" and it seems like all the unpleasant emotions rush out of me. Whenever this happens, I like to be alone and will withdraw from people and stay in my room until I cool down. When thinking of how I got to be this way in dealing with my emotions, I believe it is a result of my nature. I believe my nature is linked to this because I can remember at a very young age, my mother would have these emotional breakdowns every once in a while. I know this contributes because while I'm not as extreme as my mother was, I still inherited this sort of breakdown from her. I remember her being fine for a while and then all of a sudden, she would just explode with all the emotions that she kept bottled up. I'm similar to this, just not as extreme. It has to be my nature because I don't know my mom anymore and I haven't seen her in almost 10 years. The family that I live with is pretty healthy in managing their emotions and whenever they're experiencing emotions that are unpleasant, they typically talk it out with one another.
My Social/ Emotional Intelligence
I believe I am more socially intelligent than I am emotionally. I'm a pretty perceptive person, so I am good at reading people and recognizing what they're feeling so that I can think of a way to accommodate them. This plays with my future story because I want to be a doctor, so I will need to be good at interacting people and judging how to best help them. I can't let my own emotions get in the way of that.
I believe that my present social and emotional intelligence is a result of my nurture. I'm a waitress so my job is interacting with people. Over time, I have learned how to read people from their facial expressions and body language in order to see how I can best help them. Regardless, I will continue to work on and improve my social and emotional intelligence.
The Importance of Understanding Myself, My Emotions, and My Social/ Emotional Intelligence
I will continue to work on managing my own emotions, dealing with others', and being the best me that I can be. Learning these things will ultimately help me in the long run, and I can keep these things in mind when I am in job interviews or simply just interacting with people everyday. Understanding others will help me to be seen as more compassionate and caring. Because I now know how it is that I can manage my own emotions, I will no longer feel like I'm drowning in my emotions after I've bottled them up for so long. I will now be able to understand why I'm experiencing the emotions that I am and manage them accordingly.