In the February Monday Meeting we looked at our emotional development and how important it is to be able to understand and read our own emotions. We specifically looked at events in our childhood that roused strong emotions, these feelings have often not been dealt with and so in similar situations in our adult lives we revert back to the intense childhood emotions. For instance at the age of 5 our parents fought and it was scary for us, so we withdrew and hid. Now we find ourselves at 55 having the same response, if we observe people in conflict or enter into conflict ourselves, we feel terrified, like our world is about to fall apart and we do anything to avoid it. Our emotional response is disproportionate to the situation we face. To help each of us access the reality of this in our lives, we each looked at the first childhood memory we could remember and what emotions it had evoked. We then thought about how that has translated into our adult life and how we could practically face these fears and emotions in the week ahead.