How’s your emotional intelligence?

Here’s a question almost every therapist asks.

“How do you feel?”

There’s a reason we lead with it. Not because we’re stuck for something else to say, but because of this.

Most of us, myself included, did not grow up in families where emotions were acknowledged, never mind explored. And if we did show them, they got shut down, or treated as weak.

Take a client of mine. Let’s call him Jordan. He comes in to work on his failing marriage, broken family, and unhappy life. I ask him, “How do you feel about it?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

I wait.

“Bad, I guess.”

I hear this all the time. Good. Bad. I don’t know.

And here’s what most people never realize. Those aren’t feelings. They’re exits. The door we slip through so we don’t have to go any deeper.

It’s not our fault. We never learned the words. We weren’t asked. Feelings were something you swallowed, not something you shared. So we grew into adults who look completely functional and can’t reach our own emotions.

So why does this matter so much?

Because the moment you can name what you feel, something shifts. The storm gets smaller.

The feeling stops running the show. You hand it to the wise, thinking part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, the part that can slow down and make sense of things. You stay you.

But when you can’t name it, the alarm part of your brain, the amygdala, takes over. And it tends to default with three moves. Fight, flight, or freeze.

So you stop expressing your feelings and start acting them out. You yell. You get defensive. You shut down. You disappear.

And who takes the hit? Not strangers. But the people closest to you. The ones you love most. Your partner. Your kids. Your family.

Here’s the cruel twist. The ones who got hurt are usually the ones sitting in my office trying to heal, not the person who hurt them.

That person often thinks they’re fine, and everyone else is the problem. And so, without ever meaning to, we single-handedly wreck the best relationships of our lives.

So here’s my challenge to you.

If you recognize yourself here, the yelling, the withdrawing, the defensiveness, the avoiding, I’m talking to you. If you say you love someone and keep doing these things, that’s not love.

I’m not here to shame you. I’m here to give you a reality check. It was never your fault that no one taught you how to feel.

But it is your responsibility to heal it, and to stop handing your wounds to the people you love to carry. That’s not how we treat the ones we love.

And to the men reading this. For too long, boys were handed only two feelings they were allowed to have.

Sadness they had to hide. Or anger they could unleash. Everything else got locked away.

So boys who can’t name feelings become men who can’t name feelings.

And those men become partners and fathers who act out their feelings by raging, withdrawing, defending.

This gets passed down, quietly, generation after generation, until someone decides to stop it.

That someone can be you.

Naming your feelings was never about fancy words. It’s about finally understanding yourself, and turning the loud, messy thing inside into something you can share, in a way that pulls people closer instead of pushing them away.

Here’s where to start:

1. Grow your feeling words. Most people use about five. Keep a longer list on your phone or the fridge. You cannot share what you cannot name.

2. Name it to tame it. Before you react, quietly finish this sentence: “Right now I feel ___, because ___.” Just naming it cools the alarm and puts you back behind the wheel.

3. Trade “you” for “I.” Instead of “You always ignore me,” try “I feel lonely when the room goes quiet between us.” One blames. One invites.

4. Let your kids see you do it. The fastest way to raise an emotionally intelligent child is to be one out loud. “I felt frustrated, and here’s how I’m handling it.” That’s how the old legacy ends.

You’ve felt the silence grow across the table. You’ve watched a small thing harden into a wall. The answer was never to try harder. It’s to learn a new language together.

So here’s the real challenge. Stop asking the people you love to keep carrying what you were never taught to hold.

Learn to feel it, name it, and say it out loud. Become the partner, the parent, the person they’ve quietly been waiting for.