Five Tips For Expressing Emotions

When you’re happy, it’s easy for you to smile and show others that you’re in a good mood. When you are serious, the interpretation made by others becomes much more subjective. Do others think you are tired, sad or upset? This is why it is so important for you to know the best way to express your feelings.

If you are able to verbalize your feelings, you can get empathy from others. Expressing your feelings will help others get to know you better. Expressing your feelings will help them know what they should do to help you. Expressing emotions also helps to avoid misunderstandings or anger. Expressing your feelings will help you face difficult situations and improve your own self-awareness. Here are five tips that can help you express your feelings.

How do you express your feelings? – Think about their reason

Expressing emotions in words is complicated. We are not always aware of what caused our evil minds. This is why we need to think first about what made our minds change so much. What made us feel the way we do?

Try to relax for a couple of minutes and clear your mind so you can clarify and individualize what caused your mood change. Think about what made you experience all those feelings. Close your eyes if you think it will help and reflect. What causes you a feeling of surprise, joy, aversion, contempt, or fear?

Learn to express your feelings verbally

Expressing an emotional state by simply saying “I feel bad” or “I feel good” is better than nothing, but it does little to help express emotions. Try to be more specific and refine the words you use to name the feelings you feel. The more concrete you are, the better you will understand what you feel.

Imagine, for example, that you are angry with your supervisor because he presented you in an unfavorable light in the eyes of your colleagues. When explaining to another person, you can use adjectives such as “embarrassed,” “ineffective,” “annoying,” “angry,” or “humiliated.” This will make it easier for the other person to understand you and come up with ways in which he or she can help you.

Use verbal forms of expression such as “notice,” “perceive,” or “feel,” instead of using verbs such as “think,” “think,” or “believe”. The latter do not refer to your inner state but express a cognitive process.

The “try not to think about it” method doesn’t work

Let’s imagine that your partner doesn’t like being touched by his or her hair. Every time you touch her hair, you get her in a bad mood. If he hasn’t told you about it, it would be normal for you to keep touching his hair as a show of affection, even if he finds it annoying. In the end, someday it would be the last straw for him, the one that would make him explode and you wouldn’t understand the reason for his resentment.

You think he is exaggerating and linking the cause of his annoyance to another situation. Thus, the consequences of this act are not as expected and his fears, anger or resentment will turn against you. Because of this situation, we find that answering in silence is not the best option. Trying not to think and avoid something only prolongs the difficulty, the restlessness of the people around us and can even cause conflicts.

Express feelings, not just thoughts

When we want to express emotions, we use the verb “I feel”. If we want to convey thoughts, we use the phrase “I feel that”. The difference between the two expressions is subtle and is related to the use of the word that. For example, if we say “I feel that,” then we are expressing an idea. When we say “I feel paralyzed by fear,” we are expressing a feeling.

In the first case, we make sense of the feeling or how we have reacted to a situation. It means that we have already cognitively addressed the event that caused our feelings. We no longer explain the effects of a situation on us, but we speculate about its possible consequences.

Practice taking responsibility on an emotional level

If you start explaining to another how he makes you feel, you are not only blaming the other, but you are also giving him power over your feelings. Responsibility for feelings is personal and cannot be transferred to others. Transferring responsibility to others is neither justified nor possible in practice. In addition, it can cause problems with the person around you.

Speak freely

How do you feel after saying something you’ve been thinking about for a long time? Don’t you feel like you’re free from something? Speaking is therapeutic and liberating. Several studies suggest that people who try to avoid talking and other communication about how they feel may have a higher risk of developing cancer (Chapman, Fiscella & Kawachi 2013).

We cannot help but feel emotions because we are human. The best way to respect ourselves is to learn to live with emotions. Accept them and try to understand them.

If you try to express your emotions once, the next time it becomes easier. Eventually, you will be able to make it a natural and daily habit. If you succeed well in this, you will have a great lead over other people.

Express your feelings in a healthy way

When we openly express what we feel, the intensity of the uncomfortable feeling is alleviated. This is because when we express our feelings in words, the activity of the almond nucleus decreases. This, in turn, has the consequence that the emotional reaction is alleviated. (Lieberman et al., 2007.)

In addition, the  ability to express  emotions increases psychological strength and the ability to face difficult moments and situations (Kross et al., 2009). It prepares you mentally to face strange situations and helps you know how to react to them.

Although this is easier said than done, using time to express emotions improves the quality of interpersonal relationships. It is an effort that requires constant introspection and full self-acceptance.