Four Ways to Improve Your Emotion Communication

This online article “4 ways to improve your emotional communication” written by Susan Krauss Whitbourne (2014) in Psychology today, focuses on four skills:  perceiving, facilitating, understanding and managing emotions to improve one’s emotional communication.

Firstly, perceiving emotion is about being emotionally aware of oneself. When  one  is  able  to perceive  their  own  emotions,  they  will  be  more  resistant  to  the  bad  moods  and  be  able  to maintain their composure during bad situations.

Secondly, facilitating emotions is about evaluating different emotions in a situation and putting them together in a useful way. Identifying one’s emotion, figuring out where it’s  coming from, and  then  deciding  how  to  act  in  a  way  to  resolve  the  situation  is  likely  to  produce  the  best possible outcome. Generally, this strategy works the best.

Thirdly, understanding emotion is the ability to understand how one react to various situations. By doing so, they will be able to have a better prediction on how they will react to the similar situation in the future. Thus helping them in making better decisions.

Finally, managing emotions is the ability to keep one’s coolness while they are expressing strong emotions or when someone is in a stressful situation. Being able to do so will prevent them from impulsive behaviors and this will also manage their frustration in one’s personal life. As  whenever  one’s emotions  get  out  of  control,  the  less  likely  it  will  be  that  they  will  get  the outcome they desire.

These are the 4 skills to successful emotion communication.

Team Members: Angela, Lin Zaw & Kok Zheng