Lecture #18:
Social Emotional Skills [1]
by Darcy A. Santor | June 2022
In the first of a two-part lecture, you will learn about social-emotional skills, starting with one of the first and most important skills saying how you feel. It sounds easy, just say how you feel. But you know it is not that straightforward. In order to say what you feel, you need to know exactly what it is you are feeling, then you need to put those feelings in words – good words – and then tell another person what it is you have been feeling.
Frankly, nothing could be harder.
What makes this even more difficult is, according to research, that children already start to learn, by the age of two, to hide their feelings. Many of us go on to become experts at not saying what we feel, either because we have grown up being told not to say what we feel or have become convinced that saying you are sad, upset or afraid is a sign of weakness.
In this lecture, you will start learning about social and emotional skills, as well as about the important function that emotions serve in every aspect of your life. You will also learn about the extraordinary research of James Pennebaker, who demonstrated the concrete benefits to health and mental health simply by writing down what you feel, as well as the theoretical work of Jaak Panksepp, whose views emotions as
That’s just one of the very important social-emotional skills that you will learn about in addition to a variety of relationship and decision-making skills in the next lecture.
Resources: Please download the worksheet before the seminar and complete the surveys after the seminar.
