6 – The Language of Relationships…

Developing Emotional Literacy allows one to create strong and lasting relationships. Most people deal with relationships through thinking and talking, we ad depth and meaning to that through adding our feelings and our empathy for the other persons feelings, it is through balancing our thinking, with our feeling that we muster a much stronger way to communicate, with far greater depth and intimacy, thus a more beautiful language is created. Relationships of any kind depend on understanding other people. It is not only important to be able to communicate how we are feeling, but equally important to have empathy, which is both about sharing the emotional state of others and understanding it in relation to oneself. It is all about communication, expressing oneself and understanding others.

When emotions are expressed positively we tend to feel safe, trusting and heard; when emotions are expressed negatively or not expressed at all, we tend to feel nervous, uneasy, and maybe even afraid. When we don’t know how to read our feelings we can end up feeling doubt or confusion. In a relationship, if we feel afraid we need to identify why, and then bring our understanding to the situation and take appropriate action based on the information our thoughts and feelings together have given us. If an emotion is real and expressed lovingly (even if painful) then our trust in each other and  the power of the relationship can grow, trusting the relationship to be able to “handle” whatever comes up. Put another way, a “positive emotion” is really an emotion that is appropriately expressed, as it is the expression that causes the release of energy and the movement in our reality- a “negative emotion” is an emotion that is held in, any unexpressed emotion can make us sick, or cause harm in our reality- love not expressed can cause heartache and depression, anger not expressed or dealt with can lead to violence and or substance abuse. When we are not  aware of our emotions, we react to them; when we are emotionally aware, we have the ability to respond. When we respond we are being “responsible.” When we are “responsible” then the power is squarely in our hands and we can no longer blame others or feel like victims; we are empowered to find a solution. When all parties in a relationship are coming from a place of responsibility the relationship has the opportunity to grow and flourish. An emotionally literate child is more able to easily differentiate between feelings of his/her own and the feelings that are someone else’s, or feelings that are activated by another person’s presence. As parents/teachers we can use these tools to help our children to identify how they feel about other people, and to take appropriate action in creating strong relationships.

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