Children not shown tools to develop emotional intelligence fail emotionally and socially. Basic empathy skills are absent. In adult life, employment and occupational advancement are less likely. Making Sense of Emotion grasps the Yale integrative emotional intelligence ability model. Adding key missing elements, this book unlocks its potential to trigger "emotion performance utilization" in real life and real-time. The epidemic of overusing medications, substance use disorders, addiction, drug overdoses, even global "doping" in sports reflects emotional malaise. Emotional illiteracy is one underlying cause and demands innovative emotional intelligence. Written by a psychiatrist, this volume supplies literacy tools---a vivid action language showing how emotions unfold as personal dramas. Emotions are our first language---the mother tongue infants and children are "lived by." Emotional awareness is refined emotional intelligence. This book clearly defines emotions, feelings, affects, moods, and the social-emotional competencies needed to understand and build emotional awareness. Skills take shape resulting in unfolding self-attunement. In real-time, emotional intelligence is effective emotional performance. The missing link between the two is the application of emotion regulation in real life---knowledge in the head displayed in skilled everyday behavior. Innovative ideas in this book explain how to apply this emotional hygiene fitness program to benefit children and adults.
About the Author: Frank John Ninivaggi, MD, is an Associate Attending Physician at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, Yale Child Study Center. He is Director of Psychiatric Services at the Devereux Glenholme School in Washington, Connecticut. He is Board certified in Psychiatry and Neurology, and in 2004 was certified as a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He received training at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He also trained at the Radcliffe Infirmary Hospital of Oxford University, Oxford, England. He currently holds both university and hospital appointments at the Yale Child Study Center, Yale University School of Medicine where he earlier received Fellowship specialty training in child and adolescent psychiatry. He is in private practice in New Haven, Connecticut. Dr. Ninivaggi's publications include the textbooks: Ayurveda: A Comprehensive Guide to Traditional Indian Medicine for the West (2008); Envy Theory: Perspectives on the Psychology of Envy (2010), Biomental Child Development: Perspectives on Psychology and Parenting (2013), and a chapter, "The Psychology of Aging," in Yue et al. (Eds.), The Comprehensive Treatment of the Aging Spine: Minimally Invasive and Advanced Techniques (2011). He has contributed sections on "Borderline Intellectual Functioning and Academic Problems," and "Malingering" to Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 8th, 9th, and 10th (2017) eds., in Sadock et al. (Eds.).