Making Sense of Emotion

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.

“Making Sense of Emotions provides a unique, humanistic approach to emotional intelligence and psychiatric care. Based on decades of his interactions with patients, Dr. Ninivaggi's approach to emotional intelligence is truly focused on patient care and patient health, complete with practical guidance for readers. Readers will likely find his "biomental" perspective to be a refreshing take on the power of emotions as influencers of one's mind and body, and his recommendations for using emotional literacy in the therapeutic process stand to be incredibly useful for both patients and practitioners.”

Emotions are complex states that involve consciousness, our bodies, our brains, our social and physical surroundings, our cultures, and much more. The complexity of emotions, and the abundance of approaches and theories regarding them, has led several brain scientists and other experts in emotions research to propose comprehensive and universal frameworks to explain them. Consider, for example, Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience (2004) and, more recently, Elizabeth Johnson and Leah Olson’s The Feeling Brain (CH, Dec'15, 53-1773). Ninivaggi, who also wrote Envy Theory (CH, May'11, 48-5388) and Biomental Child Development (2013), has a clinical background and takes a wide-ranging approach. Specifically, he integrates definitions of emotion as particular brain states and feeling states with concepts derived from emotional intelligence and emotional literacy—translating emotions into insights on solvable life problems and skills that can be mastered. He thus promotes emotional well-being under the old rubric of “emotional hygiene.” His focus is developmental, with an emphasis on “innovating” emotions in children and adults through “emotion performance utilization.” Fascinating.... Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. CHOICE
Making Sense of Emotion provides a unique, humanistic approach to emotional intelligence and psychiatric care. Based on decades of his interactions with patients, Dr. Ninivaggi’s approach to emotional intelligence is truly focused on patient care and patient health, complete with practical guidance for readers. Readers will likely find his “biomental” perspective to be a refreshing take on the power of emotions as influencers of one’s mind and body, and his recommendations for using emotional literacy in the therapeutic process stand to be incredibly useful for both patients and practitioners. -- Dana L. Joseph, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Management, University of Central Florida
Exalted by his clarity of understanding human emotions, Dr. Ninivaggi's Making Sense of Emotion: Innovating Emotional Intelligence succeeds in presenting a supremely well-crafted model of emotion, neuroscience, and clinical perspectives. -- Simone G. Shamay-Tsoory, PhD, University of Haifa
Dr. Ninivaggi has put together a scholarly, well-integrated and beautifully well-written overview of emotional intelligence and how it develops. This engaging contribution brings the uniquely compelling perspective of a child psychiatrist to the understanding of emotional intelligence and its practical implications for all of us as parents or merely developing humans. In my roles as inpatient child psychiatry medical director, parental brain researcher, and father of two young children, this fascinating book illuminates in its detail the natural and facilitated development of emotional intelligence. Making Sense of Emotion: Innovating Emotional Intelligence presents extraordinarily complex perspectives on the development of emotional intelligence in clearly understandable and thoughtful ways. Practical implications for the general reader as well as anyone with interests in emotions are explained in language accessible to everyday real-life experience and usefulness. -- James E. Swain, MD, PhD, FRCPC, Medical Director of Inpatient Child Psychiatry, Stony Brook University Medical Center
This book contributes an innovative approach toward understanding emotional intelligence. Advancing current theory, the author proposes some novel statements on the emergence and evolution of complex emotional processing. One impressive hypothesis is that envy is the foundation of cognition and feeling states. This book furnishes an interesting perspective for the public to understand emotion. Dr. Ninivaggi’s framework of emotional intelligence has practical relevance for cultivating social-emotional competencies. -- Lei Mo, PhD, Center for Study of Applied Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510631, China
Dr. Ninivaggi’s aim is to elevate emotional literacy and make human performance a high-reliability accomplishment. His skill-based approach wisely guides the reader through the hidden roles that emotions can play in basic processes like thinking, experiencing self, relating, learning, and communicating. His elegant weaving of academic theories with how real-life people experience their feelings helps the reader connect both the head and heart of emotional intelligence. Dr. Ninivaggi’s intelligent and engaging exploration is an essential read for clinicians, coaches or any fellow traveler on the emotional – human – journey to a more productive life. -- Matt Townsend, PhD, Relationship Coach, Radio Show Host and Author of STARVED Stuff: Feeding the Seven Basic Needs of Healthy Relationships
Dr. Ninivaggi’s penchant for evocative verbal expressions captures his integrative concepts. His enthusiasm and optimism are both infectious and inspiring. These insights base themselves soundly on a wealth of personal and clinical experience. His clinical approach is practical and supported by not only his experience but also by other evidence-based practices.Making Sense of Emotion: Innovating Emotional Intelligence is informative and accessible to a broad audience ranging from educated persons seeking greater self-awareness to patients in therapy. Clinicians and researchers in the neuroscience of emotion can benefit from his practical clinical experience. -- C. Robert Cloninger, MD, PhD, Wallace Renard Professor of Psychiatry; Professor of Genetics and Psychology; Director, Sansone Family Center for Well-being, Washington University in St. Louis
In my day to day work, I meet many people who are struggling with emotion. Holding, supporting, allowing, and understanding emotion is at the core of what I do, and it seems to me our society has a pretty big problem with emotions. Here is a book seeking to correct this emotional illiteracy by offering an alternative to the common view of ourselves as a mind separated from the body. Dr. Ninivaggi’s “biomental” self is one where biology is inseparable from mind. A place where emotion takes centre stage holding the whole show together. Dr. Ninivaggi takes Emotional Intelligence, adds some welcome new twists, and offers up a framework for how we might exploit his insights. This is a book to take time digesting because it is much more than just a description of an emotional “theory." Also on “offer” is a guided tour of the traps posed by the “Rat Race” and the more enigmatic “Horse Race” phenomenon. The culmination is a detailed presentation of practical ways to achieve “emotion performance utilization” —living a fuller, more emotionally prosperous life. -- Mark Redwood, BA, BACP, MBACP, Southhampton, England; Humanistic Counsellor
Making Sense of Emotion is a well written book for clinicians as well as general public. Frank Ninivaggi has used his vast clinical experience to present an easy to understand concept of emotional intelligence and its role in elicitation of psychiatric and somatic symptoms. The book describes ways of achieving emotional self-discovery and explains how it could enhance our creative potentials. It can be used as a text book and also as a resource that can help enhance creative abilities of people in industries and corporations. -- Rajendra Badgaiyan, MD, professor of Psychiatry; Director, Laboratory of Advanced Radiochemistry; Director, Laboratory of Molecular and Functional Imaging; Neuromodulation Scholar, University of Minnesota

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.).

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.

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