Greatly Improve The Quality & Success of
Your Relationships with These Strategies for
Managing
Feelings
I
n relationships that
work well, the participants use strategies for
managing
feelings.
These
subjective emotions well-managed contribute to
relationships that seem like they were made in
heaven; poorly managed or not managed at all, they
can result in relationships that seem like they were
made in - well, you know, that other
place that's
really hot!
The game
plan for managing emotions in each relationship will
necessarily have some aspects that are unique to that
relationship. After all, we are individuals, we
are all different ages and stages, our backgrounds
are unique, our goals and plans are our own, our
roles with each other vary etc. So a way of
proceeding with a long-term, trusted friend will be -
and needs to be - very different from the plan of
action with a stranger. Indeed, taking into
account that this person is your boss/ your best
friend/ your intimate partner/ your casual
acquaintance/ your child/ your parent is central to
having the game plan work
well.
That
said, there are some commonalities to keep in mind,
and they are quite basic. In fact, you knew
them when you were an infant, even though the chances
are you've forgotten some or even all of them.
So it's worth revisiting them, the better to be sure
to include them in creating successful emotional
management strategies in each of your many
relationships.
Why revisit
what you knew as an infant about managing emotions? Because
as an infant, your life depend ed on creating successful
relationships Think about it - without a successful
relationship you simply would not have
survived!
Also, as an
infant, you couldn't distract yourself from feeling states
like you can as an adult. Like it or not, your life
revolved around feelings. In fact, that's one way to
describe your life as an infant -moving from one feeling
state to another - hungry, tired, satisfied, uncomfortable,
needy, mad, happy, scared, content. In short, you had only
the communication of your emotional state with which to
build the relationships on which your life
depended.
Which is why
it's worth reviewing what your infant self knew about the
role of your emotional states in building successful
relationships.
Here are some
primary points you knew then. Keep them in mind as
you go about developing effective game plans for managing
emotional states in your relationships now:
1. Feeling is central to
being alive. Everybody you have a relationship with is
alive and therefore has feelings, even though they have
different styles of dealing with them. Emotional states are
as fundamental as breathing.
2. Communicating feelings is
as natural and basic as breathing. As an infant, you just
flat-out expressed your emotional experience without
apology. You included these states as the central part of
your relationships. What this means is that conveying and
receiving messages about these states was normal then and
is still both natural and normal.
3. Having feeling states
accurately received and accepted - by ourselves - and by
another - is massively
comforting.
As an infant,
you communicated feelings non stop... until.... yes,
UNTIL you experienced you'd been accurately received
by another person. Then you felt sooooo much
better.
That doesn't
change just because you're an adult. You still want
your emotional state to be accurately received and
interpreted, both by yourself, and by
others.
What this
means is that a successful emotional management strategy in
each relationship still includes receiving and
accurately interpreting feelings - both your own, and those
of others. The goal as an adult is to learn to do it
well, and in ways that are appropriate to the various
situations and relationships you have
now.
A good place
to start is with yourself. Simply identifyand
acknowledge your own feeling state.
For example:
-
"I'm so mad right now, on a scale of one to ten I'm
an eleven."
-
"That scared me so much I'm
shaking."
-
"I know I'm anxious, I just don't know what I'm
anxious about... yet."
A next step is
practicing this skill with another, so that you learn to
accurately identify and acknowledging their feeling
state:
-
"Wow, you're really mad about this,
huh!"
-
"That sounds terrifying, were you (are you
)scared?
A
third step is to check for accuracy. If you're not sure
whether you correctly identified the feeling state of
another person, you might consider gently asking for
clarification if it is appropriate in that relationship and
if the situation is conducive to
it: "Are you
sad? (Mad? Glad? Scared?) about this? "Are you saying
you're hurt that...."
Fourth, stop immediately if you notice
any tendency to:
-
Compete. Some people operate
under the hidden rule that only one person can feel,
and they will fight to the death to be that
person. Don't be one of them. And if you find
they insist on playing that game, well, you might want
to reconsider your
involvement.
-
Escalate
above the other person's feeling state. Feelings
are not cudgels with which to bludgeon another
person. Put your weapons down and communicate
instead. There are no losers when people share feelings
honestly - only
winners.
-
Overpower, interrupt or in any way
block or obliterate. Having feelings- even strong
ones- is not an invitation to a contest.
Everybody feels and everybody deserves to be
heard.
Fifth, people grow and change
and situations change too, which means that the game plan
you made at the outset of the relationship will need
updating. That's why it's better to think of
feeling-management-strategies as an ongoing processes
rather than something that's established and then set in
stone.
Last, there will be relationships in
which it is simply not safe or appropriate to either
communicate your own feelings or to even acknowledge those
of others. This is a sad but simple fact of
life. Learn to differentiate the times, places and
relationships where it's safe and appropriate - and
be sure you have plenty of relationships in your life where
exchanges about the feeling states of the parties involved
are both safe and welcome.
Developing effective
feeling-management strategies, you will dramatically
improve the quality of your relationships. You will
also almost magically transform them into more supportive
relationships. You will increase emotional intimacy,
increase your sense of satisfaction, reduce relationship
difficulties, diminish relationship stress. And, you will
significantly lessen the chances that unexpressed feelings
might sabotage those
relationships.
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