Special Presentation with Dr Louise Porter
Emotional Intelligence
Our emotions guide us to face challenges and tasks that are too important to leave to the intellect alone. Emotional intelligence, then, is the ability to integrate thinking and emotions to produce effective behaviours.
To do this, we need to understand our emotions. However, we can become muddled if we mistake thoughts for feelings. When we allow our feelings to dictate how we live our life, we are like a puppet on a string, being jerked around by our emotions.
Therefore, it is important that, just as we call a spade a spade, we call a thought a thought, and an emotion an emotion. To that end, this session will describe three ‘fake’ feelings. These are merely thoughts that we have chosen to invite in and entertain – but when we give them the status of emotions, we believe that we are justified to act on them and to make other people suffer for ‘causing’ them. Once we understand that they are mere thoughts (or stories in our heads), we will be less distressed and therefore more able to process information clearly, and less likely to blame others and expect them to ‘fix’ what we are feeling. We will be emotionally literate.
Dr Louise Porter is a child psychologist with over 35 years’ experience in private practice consulting with parents and practitioners about children’s developmental and social or emotional challenges. Alongside this private work, she was also employed for 10 years in disability and mainstream settings and lectured at Flinders University in Adelaide for 13 years in topics relating to early childhood, special and gifted education, and behaviour management. She has a particular interest in how adults can guide children’s behaviour, which was the subject of her doctorate. She has published widely, with her books on children’s behaviour being: Parental guidance recommended, Young children’s behaviour, A comprehensive guide to classroom management; plus a DVD Guiding children’s behaviour. (See www.louiseporter.com.au)
One World for Children Acknowledgement of Country: Here is the land; Here is the sky; Here are my people and here am I. We give thanks to future, present and past; Ancestors and elders and the connection that lasts. We acknowledge the Wathaurong people on whose land we learn and play; We promise to look after it every day. ©
