If I ask you the following question: “ How do you feel? " Surely you will tell me that you feel good. This is what most of us usually answer when asked, simply because we know what to say.
This way of acting as if nothing is happening usually makes it difficult for us to connect with other people effectively because behind each message we transmit there is a gesture, tone or look that contradicts what we say with words. If this happens to you frequently, read on and you will learn how to improve your way of communicating.
Every day more or less important events happen to us that make the answer "I feel good" too subjective. I mean that we argue with our partner, we have work problems, we worry about our children or we are sick. But if they ask us, we say that we are fine…
The importance of knowing how you feel
When part of a group, the normal thing is that in order that all the members feel good, we try to pretend that we have everything under control, that we are always happy and that there is no problem.
However, this is not always the case and we know it. We do not express it, we do not work on our emotions and then, yes we are surprised that our partner, our children and our coworkers do not understand us. But…; How are they going to understand us if even we don't know what happens to us?
We must learn to communicate
We usually relate to each other from intense and little conscious emotional states that make it difficult for us to communicate affectively in a balanced way.
Most of the problems that occur in families, work teams and groups of friends are the product of a sum of misunderstandings and prejudices that each member has towards the others. These types of situations can be avoided if we learn to manage our emotions in a positive way.
Learning to communicate our emotions
We call emotions the reflection of an internal state that we communicate to others externally.
The problem is that when expressing our emotions we do not usually take into account that others also have emotions. But I assure you: everyone experiences many emotions at all times (whether conscious or not).
When it comes to educating as a family, parents often have many problems in managing emotions because they find it difficult to reconcile their personal life as adults with the dynamics of the couple or the family as a whole. That is why it is essential that they know effective ways to communicate affectively.
The keys to family communication
To make family communication (or in any group) a success, you just have to follow these simple steps:
1. Observe our emotional states and those of our partner and children.
2. Think about how we can transmit the messages so that they understand us.
3. Act in a coherent way with what we have observed and planned.
4. Constantly evaluate our communication interventions.
Less information = better communication
Although controlling all the parameters to communicate effectively may seem very complex, in reality it is not. Note that many times we carry out a similar analysis in situations that we consider "more controlled", such as a business meeting with a client. This occurs because:
- We do not usually have much information about the client, and therefore, we will not have many stereotypes that contaminate our perception and confuse our way of expressing ourselves.
- We are very clear that our personal problems must be left out of the meeting room if we want them to be successful.
See how easy? Well, in reality it is the same with the family, with the partner and with co-workers, what happens is that it is a bit more complex because it is not about relating to only one client with their specific characteristics, but with several.
But when we end a meeting with a client, we also conduct an evaluation of it, right? We do this because we want to improve as professionals.
My approach, and that of Interpersonal Neurobiology, is that we always carry out an evaluation of our emotions before and after communicating with others. Thus, we can better connect with them and communicate in an empathic and balanced way.
