Enhancing emotional intelligence through self-monitoring

What is self-monitoring?

Self-monitoring means actively self-assessing the elements making up your present-moment experience (7 of these elements are listed below). To self assess, start by asking yourself a series of questions about the nature of each element as it’s occurring in the present; next, integrate the information you discover—in other words, connect the dots.

Here are 7 different elements that COULD make up your present-moment experience (not all may be significant at once):

1. Emotional state 

   • How am I feeling? What’s the emotion I’m currently experiencing?

2. The internal state of your body

   • What are the signals from inside my body that I’m able to sense?

3. Cognition

   • What have I been thinking about during these last few moments?

4. Five senses

   • Is there a specific sense that is particularly noticeable right now?

5. The positioning of your body in space 

   • What is there to notice about the position my body is currently in?

6. Your environment

   • What is going on around me? What is salient about where I currently am or what I’m currently doing?

7. Relationship to others 

   • How am I being influenced by the presence of another individual?

Here’s an example of an integrated self-assessment:

I feel anxious and I notice a hollow feeling in my chest that’s making it hard to breathe fully. I’m in my bedroom, sitting at my desk, slouched forward, trying to motivate myself to complete an assignment. I’m staring at this blank white page in front of me and no matter what idea I have on how to start this paper, it isn’t good enough. I’m stuck.

Now what?

Practice. Practice. Practice. Rinse and Repeat.

To increase emotional intelligence, you must build a consistent self-monitoring practice. Remember: this is a skill that will take time to develop. During that time, you may encounter many roadblocks along the way; 2 of the most common roadblocks include: not coming away with a new insight and practicing to feel better but nothing happens.

As you get started, practice just to practice. That’s it. Once self-monitoring becomes easier, you’ll be that much closer to discovering those insights you’re looking for or feeling better about the experience you’re working with.

Working with Dr. Arbo

Starting this practice alone is not easy. Working with me in therapy presents you the opportunity to master this practice and cultivate a new, health-promoting habit. Although I specialize in anxiety treatment, teen counseling, and couples therapy, I have experience working with a variety of other problems.

I invite you to contact me to see whether we may be an appropriate fit.

For a downloadable version, click the link below:

Self-Monitoring PDF