Hi Hailey!

Lovely to hear from you again! I’m enjoying communicating with you. I love your self-motivated drive to learn about these topics. You

It is a shame that your parents didn’t compliment you more during childhood. Every child deserves to be complimented and praised regularly.

I can understand feeling pressure to praise people because they were proud of something even though you disagreed. Sometimes the best thing to say when you disagree with something is nothing at all. It is perfectly acceptable to do so. Non-committal responses can be more polite though to show that you are listening. Ahh and okay. That type of thing.

I’m sure with more practice you will get the hang of complimenting people in a way that you are comfortable with.

I wonder, do you have any strategies to lower anxiety at work? Is that where you have the most anxiety communicating? What situations make you most anxious?

I find that the more anxious I am, the more mistakes I make while communicating. Figuring out ways to lower the anxiety has been really important.

I tend to write scripts for myself to read from if I’m feeling anxious about communicating. Then I practice and memorise them at home and refer to my notes as needed.

It’s good to hear that you are practicing gratitude and meditation. In addition to that, I have found yoga extremely helpful. By learning to relax my muscles, I learned how to relax my mind and emotions. I’m also fond of practising diaphragm breathing and progressive muscle relaxation at the moment.

Various conditions such as autism, dyspraxia and mental health issues can cause difficulties with emotional intelligence. It is entirely possible to have no disorders and experience difficulties with emotional intelligence though.