Anyone can become angry – That is easy.
But to be angry with the right person,
To the right degree,
At the right time,
For the right purpose,
And the right way –
This is not easy.
Aristotle, The
Nicomachean Ethic
"Emotions" by Basia P., 2012
Be happy for this moment.
This moment is your life.
Omar Khayyam
"Emotions" by Basia P., 2012
You will never be happy
If you continue to search for what happiness consists of.
You will never live
If you are looking for the meaning of life.
Albert Camus
Feelings are an important part of
our life. In order to live fully and effectively, we need many sources of
information (e.g., our senses, thoughts, and perceptions) to guide us,
motivate, and help to make sense of things we do and see. Often, there is a
strong relationship between the events in our life and our feelings, for
example, we feel sad in response to loss, or we feel happy in response to winning
a tournament. The feelings are related to our interpretations of events more
than to the events themselves. While it is natural to think that we respond
only to the events of our life, in fact we make interpretations or judgments of
these events, and these interpretations play a key role in our emotional
responses. When we stop to think about it, each event could defer a variety of
emotional responses. Our interpretation of the event helps link a particular
emotional response to that event.
When we feel something we can ask
ourselves some questions:
- What is this feeling?
- What is this feeling telling me about this situation?
- Why has this feeling come up right now?
Next comes labeling.
To learn appropriate vocabularies
go to http://www.sba.pdx.edu/faculty/mblake/448/FeelingsList.pdf
Or to http://karlamclaren.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Emotional-Vocabulary.pdf
from “The Language of Emotions” by Karla McLaren
Experiencing and expressing
emotions are integral parts of our everyday life. We learn to incorporate
emotions into our life by observing our surrounding and participating in
different situations. Yet, for many people, emotions remain mysterious,
confusing, and difficult to express constructively. Just imagine, if it is hard
for a grown up how difficult it must be for a child. Just as we have choices
about how to interpret an event, we also have options about how to express
those feelings we experience. Often we limit the range of our expressive
options by believing that there are only two options: either directly
expressing them to someone else (e.g., in a personal confrontation), or keeping
them to ourselves. In reality, there are many ways to respond to our feelings
and express them. To some extent, we express a feeling any time our behavior is
influenced by that feeling, but the way we express that feeling, and the
intensity of that expression can vary widely. This is where decision - making
comes in. First, we consider what our options are, for example, if a close
friend is moving away, we may feel very sad about that. We have many options, for
example, we can tell our friend how much we will miss him/her and make a
special effort to spend more time with him/her. These options may be painful at
the time, but they give us the opportunity to express our feelings to our
friend. On the other hand, we can avoid the friend until he/she leaves town, so
we won’t have to say good-bye, or we can stay busy making other friends, so we
won’t miss this particular friend as much after he/she leaves. These choices
may allow us to postpone or avoid painful feelings at the time, but they do not
provide the opportunity for closure with our friend. The point is that we have
options, and it’s our decision.
Here are some questions to think
about when deciding how to respond to your feelings:
- Does the intensity of my feelings match the situation?
- Do I have several feelings that I need to pay attention to?
- What interpretations or judgments am I making about this event?
- What are my options for expressing my feelings?
- What are the consequences of each option for me?
- What are the consequences of each option for others?
- What result am I hoping for?
- What do I want to do?
- What if I do nothing?
Our families helped shape our
attitudes about emotions, abilities to identify emotions, ways of interpreting
events, and ways of expressing emotions. If we are having difficulties in any
of these processes and are trying to change them, we may find it helpful to
consider what we learned about them from our family. Many people do not recall
being taught “family rules” concerning emotions, but such teachings occurred,
whether directly or indirectly. A subtle example might be when a parent left
the room whenever we got angry, thus indicating that expressions of anger were
unacceptable. In other families a parent may yell, “Don’t raise your voice at
me,” suggesting a rule against the child’s expressing anger, but subtly
conveying the rule that expressions of parental anger are permissible.
Identifying our family’s rules can help us change the ways we experience and
express our emotions.
En examples of my family rules:
- Never ignore your feelings, but trust them.
- Treat other people’s feelings as your own.
- Don’t use anger to get attention.
- Express your anger with words in civilized manner.
- Trust others with your feelings and don’t keep them just to yourself.
- Be happy when it is time for happiness. Mourn when it is time for mourning.
As the parents we must help our children to
learn, understand and express their feelings and emotions. If our child says
that he or she is worried or scared, you shouldn’t say "No you're not!" or
"You're fine." That doesn't help our child. Instead, it is likely
to make our child believe that we do not listen or do not understand him/her.
Instead, we should validate our child's experience by saying things like "Yes, you seem scared. What are you
worried about?" Then have a discussion about our child's emotions and
fears. Once we have validated our child's emotions and demonstrated that we
understand his, her experience and listened to what our child had to say, we
should help our child to solve a problem. It doesn’t mean we should solve the
problem for our child, but it means we help our child to identify possible
solutions. If our child can generate solutions, that is great, if not, generate
some potential solutions for our child and ask our child to pick the solution
that he or she thinks would work best.
Techniques of Active Listening
adapted from The Inner Resilience Program
Paraphrasing - Repeat what was
said
Encouraging - Tell me more… Anything else?
Clarifying - Where, why how
questions, e.g. When did this happen?
Reflecting - State the feelings. You seem upset, angry, etc.
Validating - Express appreciation
for sharing, e.g. I’m glad you came to
me.
Summarizing – Restate major ideas
and feelings expressed, e.g. These seem
to be the key ideas.
Teach your child to express his/her anxiety.
"Angry Girl" by Basia P., 2012
Listen carefully to your child and answer the questions.
Talking, Cambodia 2013
Try to find the best solution.
Use an interactive book “How Do I Feel?” by Greenhouse Publications
http://www.greenhousepub.com/howdoifeel.html
Make emotion prints and masks.
Practice opened questions associate to social situations.
Play Theater
“Mood game” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16XRMxGjp_k
“Freeze game” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCw9vTLaOK8
Concluding: Learning to
experience our feelings fully and expressing them in ways that are adaptive and
healthy is not a simple process, but there are some key components that can
help. In general, it is important to become a good observer of our feelings, to
accept and value them, and to attend to what they signal to us. We should pay
attention to how our interpretations and thoughts affect how we feel and also
how the lessons learned in our family about emotional expression continue to
influence our behavior. When deciding how to express how we feel, give some
thought to all of our options. And most importantly, we should be patient and
don’t become discouraged when we find ourselves struggling with this process.
Learning to experience and express our emotions is a life-long process.
References and Resources:
Burns, David (1980 ), Feeling
Good. New York : Avon
Books
Ellis, Albert (1962), Reason and
Emotion in Psychotherapy. New York :
Lyle Stuart
Jeffers, Susan (1987), Feel the
Fear and Do it Anyway. San Diego :
Harcourt Brace
Lerner, Harriet (1985 ), The
Dance of Anger. New York :
Harper & Row
Potter-Efron, Ronald &
Potter-Efron, Patricia (1989, 1995), Letting Go of Shame. New York : Harpercollins Publishers
Rubins, Isaac (1969, 1997), The
Angry Book. New York :
Simon & Schuster
Check also http://www.wikihow.com/Express-Your-Feelings
