When we talk about emotional learning, we often focus our attention on the specific benefits that come from successful cases, where it has been implemented across a number of areas of a child's life.  Emotional Learning has been shown to demonstrate profound benefits for children, including providing an advantage in self-control, leadership skills, decision-making, and overall confidence. Emotional Learning gives students the foundations for success later in life by preparing them for the many complexities of adulthood along with a resilience to life’s stresses.

At its core, Social Emotional Learning is about relationships and learning how to build connections with others. These skills give children even more unexpected foundations for success. One way is in the surprising relationship between connection and addiction.

Why does connection matter?

This quote from Russell Brand comes from an interview discussing his approach to the 12-step recovery programs. For Brand, the opposite of addiction is connection, as bringing people together removes the core of addictive behaviour: the alienation of trauma and emotional turmoil. More importantly, he draws the connection between how we relate to people and the drive behind addiction and dependence. 

Addiction goes far beyond chemical dependence. It’s deeply seated in the emotional and social aspects of a person’s life. Too often in today’s society, we find ourselves facing extreme isolation and alienation. We carry our weight without the prospect or ability to share it with others. Why? Because we do not feel as if we can, nor do we know how to. So many times, addiction is another way for people to fill a void or make up for their lack of connection to other human beings.

It isn’t necessarily a substance abuse issue or a moral failing that is in question. It is a social issue and something that many Social Emotional Learning advocates already know: human beings need social connections to thrive.

Addiction and Social-Emotional Learning

The root of Social Emotional Learning comes in teaching our children and all future generations how to connect to each other in healthy, meaningful ways. If we can teach children that feeling and understanding their emotions, even negative ones, are not wrong but all part of what it is to be human. The skill comes in being able to manage their emotions responsibly and positively so that they can interact with their peers, teachers and the world around them. Encouraging positive social behaviours and showing immediate benefits of these behaviours can minimise disruptive, antisocial tendencies from forming. Teaching children to understand, process, and adapt to negative emotions like loneliness, exclusion, and anger towards others helps them indefinitely. These skills directly contribute to building self-awareness, self-control, and high emotional intelligence. 

Research from the CDC has shown that SEL programs prevent substance abuse (and addictive behaviours) by promoting personal and social skills.  They are far less likely to seek out these behaviours or develop addictions of any kind, whether from substance abuse or risk-taking activities. It can also help children deal with the effects of addiction in the home or other environments they find themselves in frequently. By encouraging young children to invest time and energy in connecting with those around them,  from other children, teachers, caretakers, and others, they understand how to build those connections themselves throughout their lives.