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