How do you express yourself when you experience strong or negative emotion? Do you find that people are drawn to you, making you feel more connected? Or does it seem to have the opposite effect of pushing people away. . . avoiding you whenever you are experiencing strong or negative emotion?
What if I told you the way you show up when you are in strong emotion is one of the biggest lost opportunities for deeper intimacy? Understanding your own emotions and how to invite others into understanding your emotions is a learned behavior. Unfortunately, many of us were not taught this skill, and so, rely on our instinct and impulses, harming our relationships.
Over the next few posts, we're going discuss three very simple steps to effectively express your emotions. With practice in patience, applying these principles to your life will help you feel more connected and engaged with others—even when expressing negative emotions. This practice will cause you to no longer put people off or cause people to avoid you.
The very first step is that you convert your own feelings into words. It is very common for a person to experience strong emotion and be asked, “how are you feeling?” Yet too many people lack the words to accurately express the emotion. Rather, the default expression is:
I’m angry...
I feel bad.. .
I’m not happy…
But the more you take the time to check in with yourself, the better you develop an accurate description of what you're experiencing. Are you feeling disappointed? Are you feeling betrayed? Are you feeling confused, frustrated, or resentful? Are you enraged? These words, communicate the degree of pain or discomfort you are in. Taking time with yourself is the very first important thing to do.
What was modeled for many of us is that when you feel a negative emotion, you blow up and you vomit on other people in the moment. But what does that accomplish? How do you feel when someone just—all of a sudden—vomits on you? Even when you caused it, even when you made a mistake? Is it fun when someone pukes their negative emotion on you? Yet somehow, we were taught this this method of expressing negative emotion. On the opposite extreme, what was modeled is total shutdown, withdrawal or avoidance. On either extreme, we gain the exact opposite of what we really want. What we really want is to be understood. What we really want is to be connected with. But instead of seizing our connection opportunity, we vomit on people or totally withdraw.
When people get vomited on, or when they are unsure about your withdrawal, they're going to find ways to avoid you more and more and more. Or in other instances, when they notice the little pressure buildup happening, they find convenient, exit doors to get away from you.
So what do you want to do? You actually want to take a “time out.” You want time out, you want to have a conversation with yourself. This is your soul's way of telling you need to pay closer attention to yourself right now.
It’s time to attend to what you are experiencing in the emotional realm.
What is it that I'm feeling? How can I express this in words and how can I take care of myself in this moment? How do I puzzle this out in words before I attempt to communicate it to another human being? Fifty percent of our interpersonal conflict can come to closure so much more quickly when we practice this very, very important step.
Take care of yourself and communicate with yourself in words. What are you actually feeling?
Be blessed and encouraged,
Judge Char
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