> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://fessup.mymidnight.blog/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Can You Lose Your Shit and Still Have Emotional Intelligence? - URL: https://fessup.mymidnight.blog/can-you-lose-your-shit-and-still-have-emotional-intelligence/ - Published: 2026-05-15T23:38:14.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-07T16:11:13.000Z - Description: Yes. And why understanding your chaos is better than trying to be flawless. - Author: Jerry Fess - Tags: chaos, influencers, empathy, performative empathy, flawless, trauma, emotional intelligence, depression, internet, high functioning depression, creators, buddha, eq, zen, therapy, IQ, triggers, mental illness, time magazine, equation, Newsletter, #Migrated-1791389245739, #Import 2026-10-07 11:10 My therapist was talking about the emotional intelligence of someone I know and I had to stop the conversation for a second. Not because I disagreed. But because I realized I don’t even fully know what people mean anymore when they say “emotional intelligence.” The phrase gets thrown around so casually now that it almost feels self-explanatory. Like we all silently agreed on the definition years ago. And maybe in a way we did. Back in MY day I remember when *TIME* magazine put emotional intelligence on the cover in 1995, treating it like NASA discovering a habitable new planet. Suddenly there was IQ… and now EQ. An entirely new framework for understanding human behavior, exploding right before the internet became king. Back then, it felt revolutionary. The idea that human beings had another kind of intelligence besides logic, memory, and raw intellectual ability. Emotional awareness. Empathy. Communication. Self-regulation. And honestly, it WAS a useful idea. Not just: “Are you smart?” But: “Can you communicate? Can you regulate yourself? Can you read a room? Can you have feelings without detonating your entire life?” Fair enough. But somewhere along the way, emotional intelligence stopped being descriptive and started becoming moral. “Emotionally intelligent” became shorthand for evolved, safe, mature, healed, and *better*. And I think we all absorbed some of that. ![man sitting on mountain cliff facing white clouds rising one hand at golden hour](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1519834785169-98be25ec3f84?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwzfHxzdXBlciUyMHBvd2VyfGVufDB8fHx8MTc3ODg4Nzc5MHww&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080) Photo by [Ian Stauffer](https://unsplash.com/@ianstauffer?ref=fessup.mymidnight.blog) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?ref=fessup.mymidnight.blog) [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) We started treating emotional intelligence like a superpower. The myth became that once you achieve it, you stop spiraling. You stop overreacting. You stop getting hurt. You stop losing your shit. Like emotionally intelligent people just glide through conflict calmly while maintaining perfect eye contact and using flawless “I statements.” But that’s far from the truth, because human beings are messier than that. I don’t care who you are—having EQ doesn’t mean you move through life like some Zen Buddhist monk floating six inches above the ground. People with emotional intelligence still lose their shit. They panic, get jealous, get defensive, and shut down. They say the wrong thing, spiral, avoid difficult conversations, and cry in parking lots. I read somewhere that sometimes EQ is just understanding your own chaos in real time. That emotionally intelligent people don’t magically transcend being human; sometimes they just understand their dysfunction in higher resolution. And honestly, that definition makes more sense than the polished social media version of emotional intelligence ever did. Because awareness is not the same thing as perfection. Knowing why you’re spiraling doesn’t always stop the spiral. Knowing your triggers doesn’t mean you’ll never get triggered again. Sometimes growth is just recognizing the pattern a little sooner than you used to. Sometimes it’s apologizing faster. Sometimes it’s staying in the uncomfortable conversation instead of running from it. And sometimes it’s simply admitting: “I know exactly what I’m doing right now and it still feels impossible to stop.” The internet completely changed the way emotional intelligence gets displayed. It shifted it from quiet self-awareness into public identity performance. ![](https://cdn.mymidnight.blog/faafda66202d234463057972460c04f5/2026/10/6d970e39-e15b-4150-9c14-59656b4a65ae_1376x768-jpeg.jpg) [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) Now, everyone is publicly self-aware. Everyone knows therapy language. Everyone can identify attachment styles, boundaries, triggers, narcissism, trauma responses, gaslighting, and emotional labor. Which is good in a lot of ways. Seriously. A lot of this language has helped people finally describe experiences they never had words for before. But sometimes it feels less like emotional growth and more like people learning the *vocabulary* of emotional growth. And those are not always the same thing. Because online, emotional intelligence can start to feel performative. Less *“I’m trying to understand myself honestly,”*and more *“Look how emotionally evolved I am.”* EQ gets presented almost like personal branding now. A curated identity. Proof that someone is self-aware, healed, safe, enlightened, and mature. But some people can explain emotions beautifully while still hurting everyone around them. Some people can identify every trauma response they have while still expecting everyone else to absorb the impact of it. Some people can speak fluent therapy and still have no idea how to sit in discomfort, apologize sincerely, or tolerate being misunderstood for five minutes. We’ve added emotional intelligence to the growing résumé of labels, diagnoses, and self-definitions we use to explain ourselves—as if diagnosing yourself out loud somehow exempts you from having to do the actual work. But I don’t think emotional intelligence is something you permanently achieve and then graduate from. It’s not a credential. It’s just something you keep practicing while continuing to be a flawed human being. Maybe emotional intelligence isn’t becoming emotionally flawless. Maybe it’s becoming more honest about the fact that none of us are. --- [Leave a comment](#ghost-comments-root) [Subscribe](#/portal/signup)