We prepare ourselves on how to treat our physical injuries. We take first aid for serious injuries and teach our children on where are the bandages for their scrapes and cuts. However, we fail to prepare ourselves for loneliness, rejection, and depression. We fail at creating tools in our lives that would help us during these challenging times. It has become a such apparent issue in our society that it has become a topic for research for Guy Winch. He addresses his research during his local TED Talk called Why we all need to practice emotional first aid.

He shares his life story of his immigration to America and the emotional struggles he underwent while being separated from his family. So he wanted to explore how the emotional struggles we face affect how we live our lives. Did you know that depression and loneliness can shorten your life span? Anxiety can raise your heart rate. Rejection can feel physically painful. It was shocking to see how the emotional pain we feel created a strong physical response. We need to understand how we heal from emotional trauma that we experience in life. We need to create tools within ourselves and our children of tomorrow to treat ourselves in a crisis. We need to create first aide for our emotions. We need a plan for how to heal and recover. We need to identify when we need to apply the first aid in our lives and the actions involved in the application of that plan.