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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Understand Feelings and Express Emotions

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
 "Happy World" by Basia P., 2011

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.
Vietnam, 2013
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.
Vietnam, 2013

Play Theater

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

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