This chapter engages with the misconception that one must control or master emotional experience. Emotions cannot be controlled or contained, and by doing so the individual creates inner disturbance and havoc. The author discusses the processes of channeling emotions in growth-promoting practices. Meditation, mindfulness, and creative expression are discussed to provide readers with a multicultural perspective on emotional management. This chapter also discusses the differences and consequences of adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation habits.

This chapter explores the foundations of emotions from empirical research in neuroscience, biology, psychology, multiculturalism, and primatology. The phenomenon of emotional experience is depthless and ever complex. The reader learns to appreciate how social and emotional intelligences are necessary if one is to learn the nature of emotions. Cultural meanings, languages, and world paradigms may seek to define emotions. However, this chapter argues that by developing a multicultural humanistic psychology approach to understanding emotions, readers can appreciate their flowing nature that is not known by definition, but through relationship.

This chapter discusses multicultural humanistic psychology, which is a theoretical foundation that seeks to engage the culturally relative self-actualization processes of the individual and community through the diverse spectrum of multicultural facets, so that wellbeing and social and emotional intelligences flourish. This paradigm synthesizes the strengths of both humanistic psychology and multicultural paradigms to support clinicians and educators in engaging with phenomena in the rapidly changing world. Multicultural humanistic psychology is not about validating Western cultural paradigms so that a new theory can be prepackaged and distributed globally. Rather, it is a way to awaken the potential of consilience, to recognize and transcend limitations, and acknowledge that together the fields are more relevant to global challenges. This paradigm guides the further discussions on social and emotional intelligences.

This chapter utilizes an existential perspective to educate readers on the importance of responsible decision-making and creating meaning in life. The author explores how social and emotional intelligences help foster wellbeing and create meaning in life. However, decisions can be affected by negative emotions and desire for risk-taking. This chapter discusses the negative psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it caused existential crisis for many around the world, influencing emotional responses and thus decision-making habits. Recovery and wellbeing can be found again in the ability to create meaning from the years of death and psychological destruction.

Essentials of Social and Emotional Intelligences explored the phenomena of the social and emotional intelligences (SEI). Through a multicultural humanistic psychological perspective, readers discovered that SEI are shared by more life forms than previously believed, and that the meanings of the human experience provide unique insight into these phenomena. This exploration was necessary because the current focus of study and instruction on social and emotional learning rests on superficial concepts of social and emotional phenomena. By exploring emotions beyond isolated, static concepts and reductionist definitions, new understanding emerge within diverse contexts – this supports one to transcend the dull confines of erudition and enter into the flowing, living moment of the here and now. Although SEI may have been explored in separate chapters in this book, that does not indicate they are isolated phenomena; rather, they are interrelated, interdependent, and blend like colors in a flowing watercolor painting.

This chapter is a unique contribution to the social and emotional intelligences discourse. Culturally relative self-actualization is defined as the transcendence of basic physiological, psychological, and self or group-fulfillment needs that are meaningful and defined by a person’s cultural paradigm. Within a cultural paradigm, the person’s specific living contexts must be taken into account, as many do not have the privilege or ease of satisfying needs as readily as others. This chapter demonstrates how social and emotional intelligences support culturally relative self-actualization.

Although an ancient capacity, empathy is a relatively new concept in the field of psychology. Generally defined, empathy is the ability to imagine what the meanings of emotional experiences are for other beings. This chapter explores empathy as a spectrum of abilities, some responsive and others intentional through emotional and cognitive channels. Readers learn about affective and cognitive empathy and why they are critical for social and emotional intelligences. The author also explores a new concept called empathic humility, to designate a motivation to develop abilities for a lifelong critical self-assessment of cultural meanings and values, reflecting on the privileges of the self, and to explore the worlds of meaning for others in a delicate and sensitive manner.

Loneliness can be found in many life experiences, such as loss, rejection, illness, failure, as well as in success, creativity, or meditation. This chapter is unique because it includes loneliness as part of the social and emotional intelligences. The author helps readers shift their perception of loneliness from something to be avoided or defended against to a necessary exploration of their solitude in the universe. Solitude is argued as a necessary experience for developing social and emotional intelligences. This chapter explores the benefits of solitude for wellbeing and growth across the lifespan.

The nature of all existence is relationships. This chapter discusses how spirituality is a being’s relationships with all forms of existence and phenomena. For human beings, spirituality means accessing cognitive and physical capacities in order to find and establish connections with the universe. Human spirituality is a secular form of practice and belief that focuses on the autonomy of the person. There is an encouragement to explore personal freedom and to develop relationships with the natural world. This chapter focuses on why connections with others, animals, nature, weather, and natural environments is a critical aspect of the social and emotional intelligences.

This chapter introduces readers to the history and concept of social and emotional intelligences. Readers explore the spectrum of social and emotional intelligences that are associated with holistic processes within the organism to understand emotional states, develop social awareness, regulate emotional states, develop empathy, make growth-promoting decisions, and form diverse relationships. The author situates this discussion within a multicultural framework by expanding definitions to be inclusive of diverse cultural perspectives.

Self-awareness brings the person to deeper levels and within new realms of understanding social and emotional intelligences because the perception is focused on the contexts and meanings in which feelings or emotions arise. This chapter offers readers a multicultural perspective on what awareness means and how it can help to explore the social and emotional phenomena of a person’s world. Taoist and Buddhist perspectives open up the perspective on what awareness entails. This chapter explores how self-awareness is more than a cognitive endeavor, and is a phenomenal feature of the social and emotional intelligences.

This chapter serves as a guide for heuristic inquiry into the social and emotional intelligences. The intent is for readers to come to know their relationships and emotions in ways that appreciate them as phenomena, where there is always something to be discovered. Heuristic inquiry offers a discovery process for application to a concerning or meaningful issue or challenge, which are associated with emotional experience. This allows readers to develop their own social and emotional intelligences to increase the quality of their lives and the effectiveness of their personal and professional endeavors.

The endless depth, emptiness, and darkness of existence are just as powerful as the fulfillment and light that come, ceaselessly, in the tides of an ocean of emotions. Each wave is familiar but entirely new, always with something to discover just beyond. They are as much me as I am it. Emotions are a unique way of knowing or experiencing the phenomenon of existence, which is based in relationships with the universe.

Emotions cannot exist in isolation, and therefore the quality and depth of relationships one has with the world are integral to social and emotional intelligences. The growth-promoting relationship is a unique connection between two beings, where there is an intention from one or both beings to realize a deeper value for, greater expression of, and purposeful use of inner resources, directions, and meanings. The intent seeks to promote growth of the relationship and/or the other being, which can only be done through the unique and special relationship that blossoms from an encounter. This chapter focuses on building culturally diverse relationships through cultural humility and empathy.