Why Emotional Intelligence Changes Everything – Interview with Elena Hernandez-Cordova

Elena Hernandez-Cordova, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, behavioral health leader, educator, writer, and founder of Embrace Psychotherapy & Education, an integrative group psychotherapy and teaching practice. A Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York and New Jersey, she brings more than 20 years of experience across clinical practice, behavioral health leadership, substance use and recovery, program development, supervision, advocacy, and community-based social work.

Elaine Hernandez-Cordova, Founder of Embrace Psychotherapy and Health Leader

What led you to create Embrace Psychotherapy & Education, and what did you want the practice to do differently?

Embrace really began before it was Embrace.

I have spent more than 20 years in social work and behavioral health, and my career has moved between micro and macro practice, psychotherapy, substance use and recovery services, work with adolescents and families, crisis intervention, program development, clinical supervision, community education, advocacy, and behavioral health leadership.

That range of experiences taught me something very early: you cannot fully understand a person without understanding the world around them.

When I moved to Rockland County, I fell in love with the community. It was beautiful, diverse, and eclectic, but professionally, I also noticed a gap. There were limited opportunities and resources for people who needed treatment that addressed both mental health and substance use disorders. I had spent much of my career working at that intersection, and I began thinking about what I could create to help fill that need.

During COVID, that idea became Rockland County Counseling Services. It was an extraordinary time to start something. We were living through collective uncertainty, isolation, fear, grief, and change, and people needed connection.

My partner at the time, Brian, grew up in Rockland County and understood the community deeply. He became part of the vision for the practice. When Brian died by suicide in October 2023, my life changed profoundly. I made a commitment to continue what we had started and to keep building a place where people could feel seen, heard, respected, and connected.

Eventually, I realized the practice needed to evolve, too. Rockland County Counseling Services became Embrace Psychotherapy & Education.

Today, I see Embrace as much more than a place where people come when something is wrong. I don't want mental health to be understood only through illness, crisis, or healing. Emotional development is part of being human.

Psychotherapy is one avenue for developing emotional intelligence, but so are relationships, education, movement, mindfulness, yoga, meditation, community, and simply becoming more curious about ourselves. That is where Embrace is going.

We're building a community centered around emotional intelligence, helping people understand themselves, navigate emotions, communicate more effectively, strengthen relationships, and become more intentional about how they live.

Emotional intelligence is intelligence.

How do you decide which therapeutic approach fits a client when your work spans CBT, DBT, mindfulness, relational work, EMDR, and other integrative methods?

I don't start with the modality. I start with the person.

My approach has always been biopsychosocial and spiritual. I want to understand the whole person, not just a diagnosis or presenting problem.

Who are you? What happened to you? What relationships shaped you? What are your strengths? What does your culture mean to you? What does your body do when you feel threatened? What gives your life meaning? What are you trying to change, and what might you need to accept?

I've trained and worked in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), motivational interviewing, trauma-focused approaches, mindfulness, family systems, relational therapies, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and other integrative approaches. They are all valuable tools. But people don't walk into my office saying, “Hello, I'm a DBT problem.”

Sometimes clinicians become so attached to a modality that we try to make the client fit the model. I think the model needs to serve the person.

One person may need concrete skills to manage distress before they're ready to explore trauma. Another may understand everything intellectually but continue repeating the same relational patterns. Someone else may need less talking and more attention to what is happening in their body.

Sometimes what a person needs most is a relationship in which they feel safe enough to tell the truth.

Integrative therapy doesn't mean throwing techniques at people. It means being intentional, flexible, and responsive.

I bring clinical knowledge into the room, but the client brings something I can never have: expertise in being themselves.

Good therapy respects both.

What have you learned about the ways occupational trauma shows up differently in first responders, veterans, and military families?

One of the most important things I've learned is that occupational trauma doesn't necessarily stay at work. It can walk through the front door with you.

First responders and veterans may repeatedly experience things most of us will never see. Their minds and bodies learn to function in environments where vigilance, emotional control, rapid decision-making, and compartmentalization aren't necessarily problems; they may be survival skills.

The challenge is that a response that serves you extremely well professionally may create distance personally.

Hypervigilance can keep you alive at work and make it difficult to relax at home. Compartmentalization can allow someone to respond to a horrific scene and later make emotional vulnerability with a partner incredibly difficult.

The family lives with that experience, too.

That's part of why I co-developed Mind on the Frontline and Love on the Frontline. Mind on the Frontline addresses post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), occupational stress, trauma exposure, mental health, and resilience. Love on the Frontline looks at how occupational stress can enter intimate relationships, communication, sexuality, parenting, and family life. My work has included bringing these conversations directly to law enforcement and fire service audiences.

We can't only ask, “How do we reduce this person's symptoms?” We also need to ask, “What has happened to connection?”

I also believe therapists working with these populations need to understand occupational culture. Culture isn't limited to race, ethnicity, or religion. Law enforcement, the military, fire services, and other first responder professions develop their own languages, values, expectations, strengths, rituals, and attitudes about vulnerability.

If we don't understand the culture, we may misunderstand the person.

Where does psychotherapy fall short when a client's distress is treated only as an individual problem rather than a relational or systemic one?

This is where being a social worker shapes everything I do.

Social work taught me to think about the person in their environment. I've spent my career moving between micro and macro work, and one continually informs the other.

Sitting with individuals teaches you where systems are failing. Working within systems teaches you how profoundly those systems enter the therapy room.

Earlier in my career, I worked extensively in substance use and recovery services. I supervised 26 recovery specialists, Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors (CADCs), and Master of Social Work (MSW) interns, and I created and implemented the Bergen County Opioid Overdose Recovery Program, which engaged people following an overdose reversal and worked to connect them to treatment and recovery resources.

That experience taught me that telling someone to “get help” and making help accessible are two very different things.

I've worked across behavioral health, addiction treatment, hospitals, schools, juvenile justice, community organizations, law enforcement, and family systems. I've watched people described as noncompliant when transportation was the barrier, resistant when fear was the barrier, or unmotivated when the system had given them very few realistic choices.

We must remain curious about context.

If someone is anxious because they can't afford housing, therapy cannot make housing affordable. If someone is experiencing discrimination, I don't want to teach them breathing exercises in a way that implies their reaction is the problem. If a parent cannot access appropriate services for their child, we need to examine the system as well as the family.

Psychotherapy is powerful, but it should never become a way of teaching people to tolerate conditions that are harming them.

Sometimes change is internal. Sometimes it means setting a boundary, changing a relationship, accessing resources, finding community, advocating for yourself, or challenging a system.

Usually, it's a combination. We must be careful not to pathologize human responses to unhealthy environments.

What does culturally responsive care require from therapists beyond simply being aware of a client's identity or background?

For me, it starts with humility and curiosity.

Knowing someone's race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, culture, family structure, or background doesn't mean I automatically understand what any of those things mean to that individual.

Two people can share an identity and experience that identity completely differently.

Culturally responsive care requires us as therapists to continually examine our assumptions, biases, power, privilege, and blind spots. It also means becoming comfortable enough with what we don't know to say, “I don't know. Help me understand what this means for you.”

My current doctoral studies in integrative social work have deepened my interest in identity, advocacy, cultural humility, decolonizing approaches to social work, ethics, and the relationship between individual experiences and larger systems.

I sometimes struggle with the word competence when we talk about culture because it can sound as though, eventually, we graduate and become competent in somebody else's lived experience.

I don't think we ever get to stop learning. One of the ideas I keep returning to in my work and my doctoral studies is very simple: Ask questions. Listen to learn. Learn to listen.

As clinicians, we have expertise. But the client is the expert on their lived experience. Our job isn't to replace their knowledge with ours. It's to bring the two into conversation.

What are the clearest signs that someone is emotionally overwhelmed rather than simply struggling to communicate?

Sometimes what looks like poor communication is a nervous system saying, “I can't do this right now.”

When people become emotionally overwhelmed, their ability to communicate changes. One person may become reactive, defensive, or angry. Another may shut down, go blank, withdraw, repeat themselves, or suddenly lose access to language.

We can easily interpret those behaviors as signs that someone is being difficult, uncaring, irrational, or unwilling to communicate. But sometimes what we are seeing is emotional flooding.

I talk about this frequently with couples. Once your nervous system perceives a threat, you're no longer having exactly the same conversation. You're trying to communicate while part of your body is preparing to protect you. That is why slowing down matters.

Sometimes the most emotionally intelligent thing a person can say is, “I want to continue this conversation, but I can't do it well right now. I need some time, and I will come back.” The last part matters.

Come back. Taking a pause can be regulation. Disappearing indefinitely can become avoidance.

Emotional intelligence means learning to recognize what is happening inside ourselves early enough that we have choices about what we do next.

What can couples do to move from trying to fix each other toward feeling genuinely seen and understood?

Become curious instead of corrective.

I see couples get trapped in this all the time. One person is talking, but the other isn't really listening to understand. They're listening for what's inaccurate, unfair, exaggerated, or wrong. They're preparing their defense.

Pretty soon, the relationship becomes a courtroom. Everyone presents evidence, and nobody feels understood. One of the most important things I tell couples is that understanding does not require agreement.

You can say, “That's not how I experienced it, but I can understand why it hurt you.” You haven't surrendered your reality. You've simply made room for another person.

I also encourage couples to become curious about what is happening underneath the conflict.

What looks like anger may be hurt. Criticism may be covering fear. Withdrawal may be protecting someone from rejection.

The argument about the dishes probably isn't just about dishes. Money isn't always just about money. Sex isn't always just about sex. A text message may become a fight about trust, security, importance, rejection, or whether someone feels chosen. That's where emotional intelligence becomes relational intelligence.

Instead of asking, “How do I prove my point?” we begin asking, “Can I understand what is happening for the person I love?”

Your partner isn't a problem you're supposed to solve. The goal is to learn how to turn toward one another.

When you say “emotional intelligence is intelligence,” what do you wish people understood about that idea?

This has really become the heart of Embrace for me.

We've traditionally defined intelligence largely through cognition: what you know, how quickly you solve problems, your education, your career, and your accomplishments. Those things matter, but I think our definition of intelligence has been far too narrow.

Can you recognize what you're feeling before the feeling controls your behavior? Can you tolerate discomfort? Can you hear another person's perspective without abandoning your own? Can you recognize when your past influences your present?

Can you communicate a need without attacking someone? Can you establish a boundary without losing compassion? Can you recognize when you've hurt someone? Can you apologize? Can you repair? Can you sit with uncertainty without immediately needing to control it?

Those are sophisticated forms of intelligence.

That's why our philosophy at Embrace is, “Emotional intelligence is intelligence. We believe how you understand yourself, connect with others, and navigate emotion matters every bit as much as what you know.”

I don't want emotional intelligence to become another standard people use to judge themselves.

We're human. We're going to get dysregulated. We're going to misunderstand people. We're going to say the wrong thing. We're going to have reactions we aren't proud of.

Emotional intelligence isn't emotional perfection. It's awareness, flexibility, accountability, curiosity, and the capacity for repair. It influences how we love, lead, parent, work, communicate, make decisions, handle conflict, and move through change.

That's the larger vision I have for Embrace. Therapy is part of it, but emotional intelligence belongs everywhere.

What is one shift in how we relate to ourselves or others that can create meaningful change?

Move from judgment to curiosity. Instead of immediately asking, “What's wrong with me?” try asking, “What's happening for me?”

What am I feeling? Where did I learn this response? What is this reaction trying to protect? Is it still serving me? We can extend the same curiosity to other people.

Instead of immediately asking, “Why are they acting like this?” we can wonder, “What might be happening underneath this?”

Curiosity doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior. It doesn't mean abandoning boundaries or accountability.

I think curiosity can make accountability more possible. When we understand ourselves better, we have more choices about what we do with what we feel.

That is an important distinction for me because I don't want Embrace to communicate that human beings are perpetually damaged and need to spend their lives healing.

We are allowed to be well. We are allowed to be stable. We are allowed to enjoy our lives. Growth doesn't require something to be wrong with us.

Sometimes therapy is about trauma and recovery. Sometimes it's about getting through a crisis. But sometimes it's about understanding ourselves more deeply, strengthening a relationship, becoming a better leader, navigating a transition, communicating differently, or simply becoming more intentional about the life we're already living.

My own career has taken me through direct psychotherapy, addiction and overdose response, adolescent and family work, community programming, clinical supervision, organizational leadership, professional education, advocacy, and now doctoral study. The settings have changed, but the question underneath my work has remained remarkably consistent:

How do we understand ourselves well enough to connect more meaningfully, with ourselves, with one another, and with the communities around us?

That's what I want Embrace to represent. Not a lifetime spent trying to fix ourselves. A lifetime in which we continue learning about ourselves. Emotional intelligence is intelligence.

Visit my website for more info!

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