Patrick Kilcarr - Leading an Emotionally Intelligent Life: Expanding Your EI to Make Courageous Decisions and Transform Your Life

Patrick Kilcarr, PhD, has been the director of Georgetown Universitys Center for Personal Development since 1999. The Center offers direct clinical services, workshops, and trainings on a variety of topics related to enhancing mental health and personal well-being, especially related to emotional intelligence, leadership, and motivation. His research studies the intersection of risk-taking behavior and emotional intelligence in the college-age population. He is a master trainer in emotional intelligence, certifying professionals to use the EQ-i 2.0 (the most valid and reliable self-assessment of emotional intelligence) to assess and evaluate the social and emotional competencies of individuals in a variety of professional venues. He has acquired a number of certifications in the field of mental health, along with being an adjunct professor in the School of Health Science at Georgetown University, teaching interactive courses on personal development, sexual health, and emotional intelligence. He completed his PhD in human development, through the acclaimed Institute of Child Study at the University of Maryland College Park. All of his work is directed toward strengthening the individual with respect to their innate talents and abilities. He has written extensively on emotional intelligence, addiction, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and he has coauthored an award-winning book, Voices From Fatherhood: Fathers, Sons and ADHD. Dr. Kilcarr maintains a private practice in Washington, DC, where he offers individual, couples, group, and family therapy to local residents.

I am one of the countless invisible wounds walking around and participating in this campus, pretending to be a smart, whole human being.

Smart I am.

Whole I am not.

These profound words resulted from an emergency phone call. A faculty colleague who taught a large Intro to Philosophy class at our university had asked her students to write an essay about overcoming a difficult experience.

Now she was on the phone, and a bit frantic. No fewer than 50 of the 250 essays reported experiences of suffering, pain, and disillusionmentboth past and presentexceeding anything she had previously encountered in her many years in academia. Because she had mentioned that they could write about something that might not be known by anyone else, many used the essay to describe something they had rarelyor neverdiscussed before.

She asked me to speak to them and share my perspective on growth, pain, and healing, assuring them it was all confidential and that I didnt have their names. They agreed. Then, I addressed this gifted group of young students who had won admittance to an elite university:

You look at one another and draw various conclusions: Smart. Did a lot of extracurricular activities in high school. Probably top of their class. Pretty motivated. Achievement oriented.

What you dont see are the emotional mountains that many in this room had to summit to be here today. What you dont see are the struggles that many continue to battle because of situations over which they had no control. Yes, this is a room filled with people whose talent knows no limit. But what can, and often does, limit talent is unremitting pain and hidden suffering.

So, what can we do about what has happened to us? Carry the weight until we simply can go no further? Carry it until what is left in our wake are broken relationships, obsessions, addictions, and mere fragments of what was possibleall based on incomprehensible internal and external woundedness?

A window of opportunity has opened. Your professor created it by sharing your thoughts with me and inviting me to share mine with you. Our opportunity is to find a safe place to tell your story, own what is yours, and learn to discard what is not. It is a process for survivors, and each one of you in this room who has suffered and made it here is precisely that: a survivor. Imagine for a moment that you are no longer white-knuckling it in relationships, you are not relying on substances or something outside of you to ease the pain. Imagine you feel emotional balance, you feelyes, you feelin control of your life. You champion your life with all your varied talents and abilities. This is the process of transitioning from surviving to flourishing!

So how do we really begin to flourish? Sharing our stories is a start. However, learning to work with a trained therapist and understanding the fifteen coompetencies of the EQ-i 2.0 is an essential tool for flourishing to continue.