About EQI.org

EQI was started by Steve Hein, and is a website mainly about Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Abuse. Since Steve passed away in September 2019, EQI is now managed by a small group of volunteers.

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence is the innate potential to feel, use, communicate, recognize, remember, describe, identify, learn from, manage, understand and explain emotions. - Steve Hein (more here)

What is Emotional Abuse?

Abuse is any behavior that is designed to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation, intimidation, guilt, coercion, manipulation etc. Emotional abuse is any kind of abuse that is emotional rather than physical in nature. It can include anything from verbal abuse and constant criticism to more subtle tactics, such as repeated disapproval or even the refusal to ever be pleased. (more here)

About Steve Hein

I was born in the USA. Lived there till I was in my 40's. Since then I have been travelling around the world. I have been to about 60 countries now. I've actually lived in about 10 or so, in other words I have stayed more than a month or two.

I studied business in school, got an MBA. Graduated near the top of my class, according to their standards, but probably near the bottom in terms of relationship skills or emotional health or emotional skills.

I am frightened by what I see happening in the USA. I feel a responsibility to tell people who have not had the chance to travel as much as I what my own experiences have been and what I have learned while traveling.

My website started out mainly about emotional intelligence, but has evolved over the years.

Thanks for reading. Please do your part to make the world a better place.

More about Steve here.

Notes from the volunteers

Radovan:

Hey, this is Radovan.

I first learned about Steve's work when I was about 15.

Thanks to him, I've learned to recognize emotional abuse, understand how I feel and felt understood and cared about probably for the first time in my life.

EQI.org has been one of the most helpful sources of information for me (if not the best one).

I wish everyone would read his materials and have the capacity to understand and apply the principles within them.

This can also be a place for like-minded people to connect.

I didn't meet Steve in person, but I have been in contact with him for several years.
I've also met one of his close friends - this has been one of the most positively impactful experiences in my life so far.

He helped me and a lot of other people personally or by his writings.

He made me feel good about myself, respected, valuable, worthy of attention and time.

He took his time to help emotionally abused teenagers and give them his emotional support, care and guidance.

I honestly wish for more people like him, he has been a great role model for me in various aspects of life.

If you're reading this, thank you for doing so and for improving your emotional intelligence and caring about yourself and others too.

And I would like to encourage you in being a sensitive, caring and loving person.
I believe we need more sensitive people in the world for a positive change.

Radovan

SoulRiser:

Steve helped me to realize that I have a lot more feelings than I thought I did. Every time we talked, he'd always go "Hi, how are you feeling?"... I found that to be a really difficult and often frustrating question to try to answer, because I didn't know how I felt. I thought I just felt neutral, or nothing.

As time went on, I eventually realized that the reason I thought I felt nothing is because I had learned during childhood to hide my feelings from the adults around me (parents, school teachers, etc), either because it wasn't safe to be honest with them (I'd get yelled at or invalidated), or because they simply didn't have the capacity to care how I felt (they were not emotionally intelligent).

If I had even just one emotionally intelligent person I could feel completely safe to talk to as a child or teen, I probably would have learned to experience and process my emotions in a more healthy way at a much earlier age.

I'm very grateful to Steve for making this site, and for everything he's done to help me and many other people in the world.

The world needs more emotionally intelligent people like Steve.

-SoulRiser