Four Ways to Improve Your Emotional Communication (Hyirah, Angela, Zheng, Lin)

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 reacts to various situations. By doing so, a person 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 expressing strong emotions or when one is in a stressful situation. Being able to do so will prevent a person 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.

Edited 03/03/2016

Evaluating Verbal and Nonverbal Behavior

Communication comprise of verbal communication and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication mean the exchange of information between two or more person through speaking. Non-Verbal communication mean the exchange of information between two or more person through body postures,facial expressions or body gestures.

My grandmother is 80 years old and having difficulties in walking. Both of my parents are working and they do not have the time to look after my grandmother. Thus, my family employed a foreign domestic helper to take care of my grandmother, cook for her and take care of her daily needs. My grandmother is poorly educated and illiterate. Thus, she cannot speak any language other than her own hakka dialect. My family's foreign domestic worker only know how to communicate in Indonesian and basic English as she originated from Indonesia. Thus, there is this language barrier between my grandmother and her.

There was this incident in the morning where both of them had problems communicating with each other. My grandmother wanted to eat sliced cucumber fried with egg for lunch but she did not how to communicate with my family's foreign domestic helper. My grandmother pointed to the fridge while she sat on the sofa and instructed my family's domestic helper with dialect to open the fridge and take out the cucumber. However, she does not understand but only making guesses on what my grandmother want. My grandmother raised her voice louder and louder each time as she got more and more frustrated until I decided to intervene. I told my family's domestic helper to open the fridge and take out the cucumber. After my family's domestic helper took out the cucumber and show it to my grandmother, my grandmother took the cucumber and demonstrated how to cut the cucumber according to the shape she want and to fry it with egg. After my family's domestic helper seen my grandmother's hand gestures, she understood that my grandmother want the cucumber to be sliced and fried with egg.

From this incident, I understood that even when two or more person came from different culture or age and there is no common language between them, there is still a communication method that works which is non-verbal communication. I am glad that we learn verbal and non-verbal communication in class as I am a person who is insensitive and not observant. I tend to hurt peoples' feelings unintentionally when speaking. After going through these communication classes, i hope that I will be able to overcome this weakness of mine.

Commented blog
Zong Hong -> 7 Cs of Communication
Syai
Mei Ying

Edited on 19/02/2016