There was a best-selling book in 1995 by Daniel Goleman called Emotional Intelligence. This book provided us with many examples of the effects that our emotions can have on our rational brain. The book begins with the story of Gary and Mary Jean Chauncey, who were in an Amtrak train that crashed into a river after a barge hit and weakened a railroad bridge in Louisiana. Gary and Mary Jean were trapped in their compartment as they tried desperately to save their eleven year-old wheelchair ridden daughter Andrea who had cerebral palsy. Finally they succeeded in pushing Andrea through a window to rescuers. They saved her life, but they did so at the cost of their own. (1)

It’s a heart-wrenching story, but anyone who is a parent can relate to it and testify that, under similar circumstances, …