How To Heal From Childhood Trauma & Build Emotional Intelligence | Dr. Marc Brackett

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12going through the sexual abuse that you experienced for many years as a kid how do you feel like that shaped your nervous system as an adult and when did you feel like you were able to start processing the shame or guilt or fear or insecurity around that to feel like you had a healthier nervous system and a better relationship with all the parts of you yeah well it was tough because i was a precocious kid and when at 11 when i disclosed it um like any parents my mother you know had a breakdown she could not believe that her friend was doing this to me and my father got a bat and went to kill the man oh my gosh and luckily he didn't do that oh um uh he was arrested um and it was a long case unfortunately it was back you know in the 1980s and um unfortunately we found that he had abused cousins yeah but um and then stupidly uh my parents had a friend who was a psychiatrist and he was writing a book on pedophilia and i went on television with him which was the worst decision anybody could have made because i became you know the pariah you know of uh of people meaning that my school found out about it and the teachers found out about it and stuff parents would say things don't play with mark you know he's kind of like damaged goods oh man and so more bullying happened it was bad um but uncle marvin who is the man who was my hero in life who happened to be a teacher in the catskill mountains of new york state and a trumpet player by night and a curriculum writer kind of in other hours he was writing a curriculum to teach kids about emotions wow and he stayed with us one summer and he was the first person who asked me questions like hey mark you know how are you feeling and then he he practiced his his lessons with me with these feeling words and he'd say you know tell me a time when you felt elated and i'd be like i can't think of any of those how about when you felt alienated i'm like i could talk about that all day long.

2:19And we started having all these rich conversations just about emotions. What was the cause of that feeling? Was that really the right word? And how did you deal with that emotion? Well, let's think together about the strategies. So I tell you that because I went to college, life got better for me. And then I'm in college, I'm graduating, I'm still like, what am I gonna do with my life? I'm in therapy. And all of a sudden, it's 1995. And this book comes out called Emotional Intelligence. And I see it on the cover of Time Magazine. And I'm like, emotional intelligence? I don't know what that is, but that's my uncle and me.

2:56That's everything I learned when I was a kid. And so I read the book. And I call my uncle. And I'm like, he's retired now in Florida. And I'm like, Uncle Marvin, I think this is stuff that you were doing 20 years before this book came out. Let's work together and write a curriculum. And so I pulled my uncle out of retirement. We sat in Dunkin' Donuts in Fort Lauderdale, drinking our decaf and muffins and starting to think about how could I translate what he was working on in his classroom into a real curriculum, which then led me to get a PhD in psychology. Because in that book, that book was originally written by a journalist, not the scientists.

3:34And so I found the two scientists who were the real authors and theorists, and I called them both. They both agreed to meet with me. One was at Yale. one at the University of New Hampshire joke about that one is I got rejected from Yale where I'm now a professor and I went to the University of New Hampshire to study with the other professor and I share that kind of story because that really was my healing journey it started with my uncle and then I started studying it and really understanding it and then obviously other things like my martial arts training, having a 5th degree black belt in Hapkido which is a Korean martial art just the principles and the mindsets in the martial arts i studied zen meditation yeah so between psychology and the martial arts and uncle marvin it was really my healing journey and i you know it's funny i just gave a speech last night and you know there's a lot of people and people give you an applause at the end you know somebody came up to me and said you know gosh mark you know with all your story look at you you're like you're the one on stage presenting and I always say thank you for that and then I go back and I say but remember I had Uncle Marvin remember I have a PhD in psychology remember I got a 50 degree black belt on the martial arts I spent 30 years of my life researching studying teaching writing books I have a lot of time and effort put into my own emotional health and well-being and so while I appreciate that you know my big question is is how many kids are going to have of that journey.

5:09How many kids in our country are getting the emotion education they need to achieve their dreams in life? Yeah. And far too few. Well, I think a lot of people struggle accomplishing their dream dreams because they, they deal with a lot of inner suffering. Yeah. And I was the ultimate accomplisher for many years, high school, college, you know, my twenties was like goal setting accomplishing. But again, I could accomplish my goals and dreams, but I still didn't feel enough. And if you go make a lot of money and accomplish your dreams and you still feel less than, I don't think that's success. I think it's like suffering.

5:46You're just suffering because you haven't learned how to appreciate life and be at ease with who you are at this season of life.

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