Permission to Feel: How Emotional Intelligence Supports Healing and Mental Health
Counsellor / Parenting Coach / Career Coach
Permission to Feel: How Emotional Intelligence Supports Healing and Mental Health
Many people come to counselling not because something dramatic has happened, but because life feels quietly overwhelming. Stress lingers, emotions feel hard to manage, and it becomes difficult to name what’s really going on inside. Emotional intelligence offers a way to understand and work with these inner experiences — and can be a powerful missing piece in healing. Counsellor, Paula Brunning, explores how emotional intelligence can support healing and lasting change.
If you’re seeking counselling support, chances are life feels a bit… much. Too many demands. Too little time. A constant low-level hum of stress, frustration, or exhaustion that never quite switches off. You’re not imagining it.
In Dr. Marc Brackett’s book Dealing with Feeling: Use Your Emotions To Create The Life You Want, he cites that most adults today spend upwards of 80% of their waking day in emotionally charged states—stress, anxiety, frustration, overwhelm, or flat-out fatigue - which means outside the emotionally calm and responsive states. Knowing how to recognize, manage and support our emotional health is essential to dealing with these charged states effectively. And yet, many of us were never taught how emotions actually work, let alone how to express or regulate them in a healthy way.
That’s where emotional intelligence (EI) comes in—and why it has become central to modern counselling work as well as leadership models and coaching.
Emotions Aren’t the Problem — Our Relationship With Them Is
This is what research into Emotional Intelligence tell us: emotions are not weaknesses, distractions, or inconvenient side-effects of being human. They are data. They are information. (Learn more at https://www.6seconds.org/)
Emotions shape how we view and interact with the world, including influencing:
what we pay attention to
how we remember
the decisions we make
the quality of our relationships
our physical and mental health
our performance at work and at home
When emotions are ignored, suppressed, or judged, they don’t disappear. They leak—into our bodies, our behaviour, our sleep, our tempers, and our relationships. Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, calls this the problem of not having “permission to feel.” Many of us grew up learning rules, routines, and expectations—but not how to understand or work with our inner world.
In large US studies cited by Brackett, only 35% of adults recall having a “feelings mentor” growing up—someone, often a parent, who helped them understand emotions with curiosity rather than judgement. The rest were largely left to figure it out on their own.
And it shows if most adults are in emotionally charged states and not familiar or comfortable with navigating this emotional experience.
How Are You Really Feeling?
When people begin counselling, they’re often asked a deceptively simple question:
How do you feel?
The answers tend to cluster:
stressed
anxious
overwhelmed
frustrated
exhausted
lonely
But when given the space and vocabulary, something emerges from exploring our inner world:
calm
appreciated
fulfilled
satisfied
joyful
Here’s the tension many people live with: how we feel and how we want to feel are out of balance.
Counselling isn’t about eliminating “negative” emotions and chasing permanent happiness.
It’s about developing the skills to move through emotions with awareness, choice, and self-respect.
From Emotion Judge to Emotion Scientist: A Healthier Way to Relate to Feelings
One of the most powerful shifts in emotional intelligence work is moving from what Dr. Brackett calls being an ‘Emotion Judge’ to an ‘Emotion Scientist’.
An Emotion Judge:
labels emotions as good or bad
ignores or criticises feelings
rushes to conclusions
believes emotions should be controlled or avoided
An Emotion Scientist:
is curious and reflective
treats all emotions as information
asks “What’s going on here?”
seeks nuance and understanding
believes emotional skills can grow
Counselling works best when clients begin to adopt this emotion scientist mindset. Instead of “I shouldn’t feel like this,” the question becomes, “What is this emotion trying to tell me?” That single shift can be life-changing as new insights grow into opportunities to respond in different ways.
The RULER Skills: A Practical Framework for Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence isn’t a personality trait. It’s a set of learnable skills. The widely researched framework developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence is RULER:
R – Recognising emotions
Learning to notice emotions in yourself and others—through thoughts, body signals, tone of voice, facial expressions, and behaviour.
U – Understanding emotions
Exploring what caused the emotion, what’s sustaining it, and how it’s influencing your thinking and actions.
L – Labelling emotions (This may sound familiar if you’ve heard the saying: Name it to tame it.)
Developing a nuanced emotional vocabulary. Not just “fine” or “stressed,” but worried, resentful, discouraged, hopeful, relieved.
E – Expressing emotions
Knowing how and when to share emotions appropriately—taking into account context, relationships, culture, power, and boundaries.
R – Regulating emotions
Using strategies to reduce, maintain, or increase emotions in ways that support wellbeing, relationships, and goals.
This is where counselling becomes especially powerful: it offers a safe space to practise these skills in real time, with support.
Regulation Is Not Suppression
One of the biggest misconceptions clients bring into counselling or therapy is that emotion regulation means “calming down” or “getting rid of feelings.” It doesn’t.
Healthy regulation includes:
allowing emotions to exist
understanding their message
choosing how to respond rather than react
Helpful evidence-based regulation strategies include:
emotional self-awareness (recognising patterns)
managing the body’s budget (sleep, nutrition, movement—unsexy but vital)
quieting the noise (breathing, grounding, mindfulness)
shifting thoughts (reframing, self-talk, perspective-taking)
social support (co-regulation, not emotional dumping)
spending time wisely (boundaries, routines, meaning, rest)
Counselling helps tailor these strategies to you, rather than offering one-size-fits-all advice.
Why This Matters for Mental Health—and Life
Research consistently shows that adults who develop emotional intelligence skills experience:
better mental and physical health
higher life and job satisfaction
stronger relationships
greater sense of purpose
improved resilience under stress
This isn’t about becoming endlessly calm or positive. It’s about becoming emotionally agile—able to meet life as it actually is, not as we wish it were.
Counselling as a Training Ground for Emotional Intelligence
Think of counselling not as “fixing what’s broken,” but as learning a language you were never taught.
A good therapeutic relationship offers:
permission to feel without judgement
support in becoming an emotion scientist
structure for understanding patterns
practice in expressing emotions safely
tools for regulation that actually stick
It’s never too early—or too late—to build these skills. And the ripple effects extend far beyond the therapy room.
The bottom line is that emotions matter. You are allowed to feel—all of it. And with the right skills and support, emotions can become guides rather than obstacles.
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Emotional intelligence in counselling refers to developing skills that help you recognise, understand, express, and regulate emotions in ways that support wellbeing and relationships.
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Yes. Emotional intelligence is not a fixed trait. Research shows it can be developed at any age with practice and support.
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No. Emotional intelligence involves awareness and choice, not suppressing or eliminating emotions.
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Counselling provides a safe space to explore emotional patterns, practise regulation strategies, and build skills that transfer into daily life.
Counselling doesn’t take emotions away. It gives you a framework, a vocabulary, and a sense of agency. Reach out if you’re curious about developing your emotional intelligence to support change in your life. If you’re a parent, watch for my next blog post that shares how you can mentor your children to develop skills throughout childhood and adolescence by being a safe space for emotional expression.