Another very interesting talk about emotional intelligence. I feel that self awareness is key to emotional intelligence, and emotional intelligence is crucial to adaptive coping skills. Since most decisions are made at an emotional level, this set of skills in many ways will allow one to have a greater effect on the quality of one’s own life than many other sets of skills, both in terms of how we deal with ourselves and what effect we have on others.

Since we know that eighty seven percent of those suffering from personality disorders have had a history of trauma, particularly in childhood. If we take into account what Dr van der Kolk has found about trauma, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to come to the conclusion that greater emotional intelligence in parenting would better equip those people to deal with those traumatic experiences outside of the home. Sadly, greater emotional intelligence in parenting would reduce the amount of trauma which children experience in their own homes, unwittingly or otherwise.

While this may seem somewhat obvious, it is also true that, where statistics are available, between ten and twenty five percent of people suffer from disorders of some description, I suspect possibly a larger number than that if one takes into account those places where statistics are not available. To me, this alludes to emotional intelligence skills not being prolific enough.