Emotional Intelligence – The Edge That Activates True Power
- Brainz Magazine
- 5 hours ago
- 12 min read
Written by Kate Alderman, Somatic Sexologist
Kate Alderman is a Somatic Sexologist, Intimacy & Relationships Coach, Psychedelic Integration Coach, and the founder of You’re A Strong Woman Foundation - Domestic Violence Prevention and Recovery. With a decade of experience in plant medicines and extensive expertise in sexual empowerment, trauma-informed healing, and somatic coaching, Kate empowers individuals and couples to reclaim their power and thrive through embodied practices and transformative coaching.
Emotional intelligence is the missing ingredient, the edge that transforms self-control into true, integrated power. Most of us have been taught that power comes from discipline, willpower, or holding ourselves together. But without the ability to feel, understand, and respond to our emotions, both our own and those of others, that power is incomplete. It becomes rigid, limited, and blind to the world around. Stoicism cancels empathy and teaches us to suppress feelings rather than engage with them. This disconnects the power from both ourselves and others. In effect, stoicism becomes armour, blocking emotional literacy and maturity.
True power goes beyond control, dominance, or force. It’s about presence, clarity, courage, the capacity to feel and respond empathetically, and the ability to lead from awareness rather than reaction. Being powerful does not require sitting at the top of a hierarchy. It comes from integrating all of who you are.
Emotional intelligence sharpens our presence. It gives us the ability to navigate challenges with composure, connect deeply with others, and lead in ways that inspire trust, loyalty, and resilience. This edge is what separates self-mastery from authentic integrated power.
One of mankind’s greatest blessings is empathy, the ability to feel and respond to the inner world of others. Yet today, empathy is often taken for granted, undervalued, or dismissed. Empathy gives us access to clarity, boundaries, self-protection, and discernment. These are the pillars of safety. Cultivating emotional intelligence restores its power, making empathy a living, respected force in our relationships and leadership.
For anyone seeking to live fully, whether in relationships, leadership, or personal growth, developing this edge isn’t optional. It’s essential. Vulnerability, transparency, honesty, and self-awareness are not weaknesses. They are the tools that allow power to be relatable, flexible, resilient, and fully alive. The more we cultivate emotional intelligence, the more we discover that true power feels effortless because it’s aligned with our most authentic selves. It takes much more effort to wear a mask and act out a stoic facade.
Training for emotional mastery
In martial arts, we train with an opponent, not to destroy them but to develop ourselves. Every moment becomes a mirror. We cultivate awareness, attunement, intuition, instinct, and composure. We sense subtle shifts in energy, anticipate what’s coming, adjust and repeat, refining our response with precision. This inner refinement is the foundation of emotional mastery, the ability to stay present with ourselves under pressure without collapsing into fear or escalating into force.
Relationships are no different. The other person is not our opponent. They are our intimate partner, teammate, friend, family member, or colleague, someone whose emotions we can empathically attune to and engage with. The same skills apply, only now the goal is not to block or counter but to connect with empathy, collaborate, and co-create. We expand from defence into relational intelligence. Awareness becomes empathy, attunement becomes understanding, intuition becomes trust, instinct becomes care, and composure becomes compassion. This shift requires vulnerability, not as a weakness but as the grounded openness that allows truth-telling, repair, and deeper connection. Without vulnerability, emotional intelligence remains cognitive. With vulnerability, it becomes embodied.
Just as training with an opponent sharpens our instincts and hones our skill, relating with another person refines our emotional awareness and deepens our capacity for connection. The other person becomes a training partner, a mirror, a guide, and a catalyst for growth and for mastering the full spectrum of relational intelligence, depth, and integrity.
For example, instead of snapping in frustration at a loved one or colleague, we notice the tightness in our body, breathe into it, take space if needed, move the emotion, and then choose a response from grounded awareness and our values. The shift is subtle but profound. Communication becomes collaborative, conflicts become opportunities for deeper understanding and growth, and our relationships deepen in emotional safety and integrity. Creating safe relational contexts where emotions are met with respect rather than judgment allows the nervous system to soften and open the way for true connection.
When both people align and collaborate with curiosity instead of control, and presence instead of fear, harmony becomes possible. Conflict becomes a teacher, not a threat. Emotional intelligence enables us to move in rhythm and harmony with one another. It also allows us to recognise how power dynamics, cultural conditioning, trauma histories, and communication styles shape our interactions. Emotional mastery isn’t about ignoring or bypassing these influences. It’s about meeting what rises in the body with honesty. We don’t need to analyse old patterns to transform them. We simply need to recognise when something isn’t working and try a new, more aligned response. In choosing differently, the old pathways reveal themselves and reorganise, allowing us to respond from integrity rather than reactivity.
Emotional intelligence doesn’t just improve communication. It transforms intimacy. Many clients come to me seeking more or better quality sexual connection, and the missing ingredient is almost always emotional safety. When bodies feel safe, they naturally open on a cellular level. This isn’t just psychological. It’s physiological. Emotional intelligence cultivates safety by regulating the nervous system, deepening attunement, and allowing trust to thrive. The more we practise presence, vulnerability, authenticity, and grounded awareness, the more we create the conditions for intimacy that is deeply connected, meaningful, satisfying, and recharging.
At the heart of this emotional intelligence training is the Emotional Reset, a simple but profound somatic practice. Before reacting, we pause, breathe, and feel the body’s cues. This moment of presence interrupts old patterns and creates space for clarity, empathy, and choice. Over time, the Emotional Reset builds our nervous system so that it can hold intensity without us shutting down or lashing out. The Emotional Reset helps transform emotional reactivity into emotional leadership. This brief introduction hints at the transformation the Emotional Reset can bring. Later in this article, we will explore the full practice and learn how to embody emotional leadership in daily life.
Why we learned to avoid emotion
For most of us, emotional expression and our capacity to hold others in their emotional expression weren’t developed early in life. As children, we were often punished or shamed for expressing emotions. We were told to stop crying, to toughen up, to get over it, or to be good. We learned very early that emotions were inconvenient, overwhelming, or unsafe burdens that made others uncomfortable. No shame. It’s generational, cross-cultural, and a reflection of the emotional conditioning we all inherited.
So we did what we had to do. We buried emotions. We became hard, stoic, avoidant, and independent. We wore masks of competence, control, perfection, humour, or having ourselves together. People of all genders wear masks to hide their insecurities. The alpha mask is not limited to men.
We learned to survive by numbing and masking what made us human. But what we suppress or hide doesn’t disappear. It lives in our bodies, governs our health, shapes our reactions, and limits our capacity for real connection. Authenticity, honesty, vulnerability, and transparency are what make us relatable, what make us human. When we give ourselves permission to be fully human, life flows more freely than any mask ever could.
Our emotional patterns weren’t flaws. They were adaptations that kept us safe. We must realise that emotional avoidance and dismissiveness are not powerful. They create separation, disconnection, and distance from our own truth.
Choosing differently means modelling the state of nervous system you want to experience from others, without ever tolerating disrespect or abuse. Emotional intelligence is not self-sacrifice. It is self-leadership. True power arises from a regulated nervous system and integrated emotions.
The power of vulnerability
Most of us grew up believing vulnerability was weak, dangerous, or a doorway to shame, rejection, or loss of control. Many people, especially men, were taught to hide anything that looked like fear, sadness, disappointment, or uncertainty. As adults, this conditioning becomes the armour we carry into relationships, leadership, and conflict.
Vulnerability is not exposure without protection. It’s not emotional dumping, helplessness, or oversharing. Vulnerability is the willingness to be honest and transparent about our internal experience, with ourselves first and then with others in ways that are grounded in empathy and respect. A peaceful warrior has the kind of strength that includes awareness, heart, and relational depth, the ability to express emotions transparently while maintaining self-control.
It takes strength to say, I don’t know, I need support or I’m feeling something I don’t fully understand yet. These moments aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signs of self-awareness and emotional maturity. They show others that you are real, present, and courageous enough to be seen.
When expressed with clarity and self-responsibility, vulnerability creates trust. It signals safety. It invites collaboration instead of power struggles. It builds the kind of emotional integrity that strengthens relationships rather than destabilising them.
True power arises from integration, not hierarchy, the union of presence, emotion, and wisdom. It grows from self-leadership, resilience, and relational depth. By embracing vulnerability, we access authentic power. Vulnerability is the doorway into emotional intelligence and the foundation for every skill that follows.
Learning to feel again
Emotional intelligence begins with awareness and the freedom to express. Not to fix, analyse or suppress, but to notice, value, trust and communicate what arises inside us. Most of us grew up with an emotional vocabulary limited to mad, sad, or glad, but the human emotional landscape is far more expansive. Expanding our emotional vocabulary widens our capacity to feel, understand, and resonate with others, because we can only recognise in someone else what we’re willing to acknowledge within ourselves. Relationship health improves when both people commit to authenticity, emotional self-care, and integrating unprocessed emotions.
One of the most practical ways to develop this is through the somatic practice, the Emotional Reset. This practice helps us meet emotions safely in the body, integrate sensation, and respond from clarity rather than old patterns. Emotional intelligence isn’t built through thinking about our feelings. It’s built through experiencing them.
When we allow ourselves to feel our emotions without judgment, something powerful happens. The nervous system recalibrates, tension dissolves, the mind quiets, and the body unfreezes. We return to an inner state that’s responsive instead of reactive, and open instead of armoured.
Emotional resilience is built in our ability to stay present with what we feel long enough for it to transform.
The emotional reset practice
1. Name it
“I’m feeling anxious.” “I’m feeling angry.” “I’m feeling sad.” “I’m feeling disappointed.” Naming the emotion brings it to the surface and helps the body relax. “I’m feeling.” opens the body like a doorway, letting sensation move in and out as it needs.
“I am.” welds that doorway shut, and what was meant to be expressed becomes part of the identity instead, heavier, tighter, and harder to free.
2. Validate it
“Of course, I’m feeling anxious, a lot is happening right now.” Validation replaces shame with understanding and reassurance. It reminds your nervous system that emotion is safe to feel. There is nothing wrong with you. You are deeply human.
3. Feel it
Where do you notice the sensation in your body? Tight chest? Knot in your stomach? Tension in your throat, neck, or shoulders? This is emotion expressing itself physically, sensation wanting to move.
4. Get curious
Does the sensation have a texture, shape, temperature, or colour? If the sensation could speak, what would it say?
If the sensation could make a sound, what would that be? If you send your breath to the sensation, what do you notice?
5. Move it
How does the sensation want to move, shaking, sighing, tapping, or stomping? When you give the sensation permission to move, you will feel something shift.
When we create space for integration rather than avoidance and suppression, emotion transforms into clarity, insight, and liberation.
6. Redirect
The final step is to choose a response aligned with your values, not trauma patterning. Feel your body, notice your impulses, and consciously move in a way that reflects your true self rather than old survival patterns.
A simple daily micro-challenge to anchor this:
Today, notice one emotion as it arises. Pause, name it, feel it in your body, move it in whatever way feels natural, then watch what changes when you respond from awareness rather than reaction. Small shifts like this create seismic changes over time.
This is how we cultivate emotional intelligence. Just as we strengthen our body through training, we strengthen our heart and nervous system through presence, patience, and self-compassion. Emotional safety creates openness on a cellular level. When the body feels safe, the parasympathetic nervous system activates, allowing us to think clearly, respond with flexibility, and engage fully, physically, mentally, and emotionally. The Emotional Reset is a gateway to cultivating this state intentionally, helping us transform reactivity into emotional leadership.
When our nervous system feels safe and regulated, we access the parts of ourselves that are creative, wise, discerning, and relationally attuned. The more we feel ourselves, the more we can feel others without collapsing or losing our centre. This is where relational intelligence becomes transformative. We can hold space for another person while also holding ourselves.
Holding space: The ripple effect of emotional integration
After we learn to name, feel, and integrate our own emotions, developing the capacity to empathise with and hold space for others’ emotions starts to feel more familiar. This is a core component of emotional intelligence and one of the clearest markers of emotional maturity.
Holding space begins with patience, allowing yourself a moment before responding. It continues with curiosity, seeking to understand what someone is experiencing rather than assuming or defending. These two skills form the foundation of non-reactivity. From here, something important becomes possible, we stop taking things personally.
When you understand your own emotional landscape, you can recognise that other people’s reactions come from their inner world, their history, their stress, and their triggers, not from your worth or intention. This doesn’t mean you tolerate harmful or abusive behaviour. It simply means you can stay grounded and discerning rather than internalising every emotional signal as an attack.
This is the ripple effect of self-mastery. When you can be present with your own emotions, you naturally become more capable of being present with someone else’s. This strengthens relationships, deepens trust, and allows conflict to become collaborative rather than combative.
When someone feels truly seen, held, safe, and supported, their nervous system relaxes, the body softens, and life-force can flow freely. Bodies that feel emotionally safe and regulated become receptive to connection, intimacy, pleasure, and joy. There is a crucial link between safety and the capacity to experience life’s pleasures fully. Emotional intelligence and the ability to hold space create fertile ground for vitality, trust, and deep human connection.
A healthy partnership is not about choosing someone who is only strong or protective, but someone willing to grow. We need partners who can lead and protect, yes, but also listen, nurture, and evolve. Relationship stability increases when both people are committed to emotional growth and to co-creating a relational environment that supports expansion, not stagnation.
If you choose a partner who has no desire to grow, your own growth will always be constrained. Joy, pleasure, needs, and desires can only exist in relationships where both people are willing to evolve. Stuckness is a dense, heavy state to live in. It drains vitality.
Relationship health dramatically improves when both people choose authenticity over performance, emotional self-care over self-abandonment, and the integration of unprocessed emotions over defensiveness. Suppressed emotion doesn’t just affect the individual, it shapes the entire relational field.
Leaning into vulnerability asks for rest, gentleness, and patience with yourself. Regulation requires pacing, not pushing. Move at your own pace, and if you feel overwhelmed, reach out for support. You don’t have to do this alone.
The new definition of power
To feel deeply and remain grounded, that is real power. Being powerful does not require sitting at the top of a hierarchy. It requires integrating all of who you are. It’s not about being unaffected by life, it’s about being fully engaged with it while staying steady inside yourself.
When we develop emotional intelligence, we become more effective in every area of our lives. In our relationships, we connect with authenticity and depth, and we also respond with patience instead of reaction. In our work and personal lives, we lead with empathy, grounded insight, and wisdom.
This edge doesn’t just improve relationships, it amplifies effectiveness in every area of our lives. Leaders, parents, creatives, and teammates, anyone who wants influence or impact can develop the emotional intelligence that shapes resilient, inspiring, and generative environments.
Those who dominate, coerce, and control may appear powerful, but their power is taken from others. True power rises from within. It is wisdom earned through courage and resilience. It isn’t stoicism, force, or control. True power uses strength, clarity, and even assertive action, but is always guided by awareness, ethical alignment, and emotional intelligence. It is authenticity in motion, strength anchored in attunement, action guided by wisdom, and protection balanced with receptivity. True power flows from a grounded body, an open heart, a clear mind, and a calm, unstoppable centre.
Closing reflection
We are not robots. We are human beings, created to feel, connect, and evolve. Our emotions are not burdens or problems to be solved. They are signals guiding us toward wholeness. When we cultivate emotional intelligence in our daily lives, in our relationships, in our leadership, and in our love, we stop fighting life and start collaborating with it.
Emotional intelligence is the edge that activates true power, power that comes from awareness and is grounded in empathy, safety, accountability, protection, and uplifting others. Power that transforms every emotion, every encounter, and every challenge into an opportunity for growth, connection, and freedom.
It only takes one. When one person develops emotional intelligence, the entire environment shifts. Families shift, teams shift, communities shift, and the world becomes less reactive and a lot more humane.
None of us has mastered this. Most of us are quietly trying not to manage other people’s discomfort, take responsibility for emotions that were never ours to hold, or remain in roles we outgrew years ago simply because the dynamic feels familiar. But when we meet our emotions with maturity, humour, and heart, we not only elevate ourselves, we uplift the collective.
Emotional intelligence doesn’t make us perfect. It makes us human. And that is where true power lives.
Kate Alderman, Somatic Sexologist
Kate Alderman is a Somatic Sexologist, Intimacy & Relationships Coach, Psychedelic Integration Coach, EFT Practitioner, and the founder of: You’re A Strong Woman Foundation – Domestic Violence Prevention and Recovery. With over a decade of experience in plant medicine and extensive expertise in sexual empowerment, Kate supports individuals and couples in reclaiming their power, healing, and thriving through embodied practices and transformative coaching. She offers a safe, judgment-free, compassionate space for deep healing and integration, using somatic therapy, EFT, and a trauma-informed, body-based approach. As a survivor of intimate partner violence, Kate is committed to supporting others on their recovery journey and raising awareness about domestic violence. She excels at bridging the gap between science and spirituality, delivering her wisdom in a practical context that inspires, motivates, and offers new perspectives.
