If we learn to strengthen our emotional vocabulary, we will improve the quality of our relationships, defend ourselves with confidence, be more empathetic, and express our needs effectively.
Strengthening our emotional vocabulary is critical to improving the quality of our relationships. This involves knowing how to express yourself, defend yourself; it’s tuning in to your own needs and those of others, translating your feelings into words, generating empathy, and building bridges based on respect and assertiveness. Few skills are so essential in our daily lives.
- Many times.
- When we talk about this dimension.
- It is common for us to focus on children.
- Today families and teachers understand the importance of teaching this skill from an early age.
- Emotional literacy and its relationship to language.
- In fact.
- Is an area of great interest.
- Interest that has yielded very interesting results.
So, studies like the one carried out by psychologists Luna Beck and Irina Kumschick, from the University of Minnesotta, in the United States, show how to improve children’s language skills when we teach them to recognize and express their emotions in the first years of school. lifetime.
So there are many advantages we can find in fostering this kind of skill in children, but what about adults?What happens, for example, to those who are unable to express their fears, needs, or frustrations to their partner?
Not all people who are now adults have had the opportunity to experience successful socio-emotional development, in our turn, do we not all have regulatory mechanisms or the fluidity of communication that allows us to translate our words?And labyrinths in which emotions are preserved. .
“We are not responsible for emotions, but we are responsible for what we do with them” – Jorge Bucay-
By strengthening our emotional vocabulary, our overall vulnerability also diminishes, because putting an emotion into words is giving you visibility, it means validating yourself, yourself and others, it’s about shape the sensations and sharing them. It unravels internal threads, harmonizes chaos in simple words to be understood and understood.
In fact, there is some magic in this process, for example, we all live everyday realities that we don’t really know how to convey to others and we can’t because our language often doesn’t allow us to. the Tagolo language, a dialect spoken in the Philippines, there is a beautiful word: kilig. It expresses the feeling of joy we feel when we talk to someone we love.
In turn, in Dutch, there is a term, uitwaaien, which describes the experience of enjoying the wind and sensations caused by this phenomenon, having appropriate words that allow us to integrate these realities is exceptional and even cathartic. the opposite is usually the case.
Many of us not only don’t find the right words to classify how we feel, but we also don’t know how to identify exactly how we feel. Lack of emotional literacy leads us to states where we end up suppressing feelings because we don’t. I don’t know what to do with them.
So let’s look at the secrets to reinforcing our emotional language
Charles Darwin has already spoken in his time of “emotional expression”, defending it as an inner state sense and, at the same time, expressed, so the first step is to become aware: to connect with that bodily state in which emotion leaves its first note, which in many cases is not comfortable or rewarding, is the case of emotions such as fear , sadness, anger, disappointment, etc.
Each emotion has a physiological correspondence; you have to accept it first, then understand your message and finally give it a name (what I feel is anger, envy, etc. ) There’s no point in repressing or hiding.
On the other hand, to strengthen our emotional language, it is also important to know how to recognize each other’s needs, to be receptive and empathetic. Be sensitive to the emotions of others to adapt to your reality so that you can communicate better.
One thing many experts in this field recommend is literacy in emotional vocabulary. We need to use so-called ’emotional verbs’. It is a very effective mechanism to convey feelings, to be honest and open, an example of this characteristic are verbs as I feel, I want, I love, I am afraid, I want, it annoys me, I envy, etc.
On the other hand, in addition to using this strategy, it is necessary to train our verbal fluency, there are people who have a great oral ability, are great communicators and conversationalists who, however, lack verbal control over emotional issues. ?
Basically they do not know how to express in words what they feel, what they need, nor are they competent to dialogue with other people about the emotional and personal aspects, it is this kind of fluency that we must make sure to strengthen. our emotional vocabulary.
Each of us creates different types of stories and we tell ourselves by integrating our experiences. We are all a story, our history, to do it in the best possible way will allow us to respect each other even more, take care of ourselves and value ourselves as we deserve.
One way to do this is through emotional intelligence, knowing each other, offering us what we need, practicing self-pity, self-affirmation and empathy will allow us to create a more respectful and, at the same time, integral narrative of our history. All of this will become our concept of ourselves to better communicate with others.
We are all emotional beings who, at all times, learn to reason, better management of this inner universe will make things easier, hence the importance of strengthening our emotional vocabulary.