How to learn to express your thoughts and feelings correctly?

“Show your loved ones how you feel,” the girl reads out loud the leaf from the fortune cookie. He crushes it and throws it away. After a while she will come to the psychologist and ask:

– How can I become more open?

This is one of the most common psychological problems - a person can feel, but cannot show.

Do you have similar problems with emotions in the presence of people important to you? Are you considered a cold and distant person, although the elements are raging inside? It's time to learn how to express your feelings correctly!

In this article:

Why do you need to show feelings? Showing feelings starts with yourself Open the world of your own emotions Acknowledgment of negative experiences Time to show vulnerability Emphasis on the positive

Why do you need to show feelings?

Photo by Sam Lion: Pexels
Every person experiences negative and positive emotions. Some of them make you feel insecure. Sometimes it’s normal not to want to reveal them. By opening up to others, you can also show your vulnerability. This is not always appropriate.

But the inability to express what is happening inside becomes a problem in communicating with a loved one, with family and closest friends. Strong inner detachment not only harms communication, but also guarantees that deep affection can never develop in such relationships.

Having to constantly guess other people's feelings and needs is a very exhausting process.

5 reasons to learn how to express your emotions correctly:

Confidence. On the one hand, it is not always appropriate to demonstrate your emotionality. On the other hand, in a family it is a necessity. It is important for a partner to see that they trust him.
Empathy. A person who hides his true feelings also appears cold towards other family members. You can still cope with this as a couple, but having children also requires certain emotional conditions: the ability to sympathize and understand other people’s emotions.
Proximity. What connects us with the people we love most? That's right - feelings, desires, preferences, goals, fears. Only by voicing this can close relationships be built.
Honesty. Others know nothing about character if it is not reflected through emotions. How then can we learn to appreciate and love each other?

How to express positive and negative emotions?

Health. This last point is very important. Many physiological problems are associated with unexpressed feelings. Even if diseases do not develop, failures still often occur. Many people are no strangers to eating disorders. One of its reasons is the replacement of emotions with food. In addition, suppressing emotions causes many painful sensations throughout the body. Headache can also be one of the signs.

Waiting/Anticipation

Anticipation is an emotion involving pleasure, excitement, or anxiety when we wait for something to happen. Physiologically, it can feel similar to fear—rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms—in this case, we understand what kind of emotion we are experiencing based on the context of the situation.

If you are about to buy your dream car it will be excitement , if you are about to go on stage and speak in front of a large audience it may be anxiety and if you are about to go on a first date with someone it may be a mixture of both .

Each person will react differently to the experience of anticipation. Stage fright is a good example of how much this emotion can change our physiology - the inability to speak, the “frozenness”, the blankness in your head in the exact place where you previously remembered the words.

If you find yourself experiencing too much anxiety (before the same performance), here's what you can do to get your anxiety under control:

Start breathing deeply
Relax the muscles (start with the toes and end with the muscles of the upper eyelids and brow muscles)
Start counting the objects in the room you are in

Open the world of your own emotions

The ability to recognize your feelings is not only possible, it must be trained. To do this you can:

Observe what bodily sensations occur in a certain situation. For example, a common feeling is a lump in the throat. You need to track this and try not to suppress it - go for this discomfort and allow it to manifest itself. Let the tears fall - if necessary.

Observe what bodily sensations occur in a certain situation. For example, a common feeling is a lump in the throat. You need to track this and try not to suppress it - go for this discomfort and allow it to manifest itself. Let the tears fall - if necessary.

Observe what bodily sensations occur in a certain situation. For example, a common feeling is a lump in the throat. You need to track this and try not to suppress it - go for this discomfort and allow it to manifest itself. Let the tears fall - if necessary.
Observe what bodily sensations occur in a certain situation. For example, a common feeling is a lump in the throat. You need to track this and try not to suppress it - go for this discomfort and allow it to manifest itself. Let the tears fall - if necessary.

These workouts will give good results over time.

Fear

We become afraid when we encounter things and situations that we do not understand, cannot control, and/or suspect will cause us harm. In our modern world, many of our fears do not seem logical. Does it make sense to be afraid of a spider curled up in the corner of our bathroom? Or what's the point of having social anxiety when we go to a big event with a lot of strangers?

These days, probably not, but like all your emotions, fear has evolved to protect us. Your tiny bathroom neighbor poses no threat here, but it would be a different story if you encountered a poisonous spider in the rainforest.

What are you most afraid of?

Here are the 5 most common fears, according to research. People are most often afraid of:

1. Public speaking

2. Heights

3. Bugs and snakes and stuff like that

4. Water

5. Blood, needles and injections

With the exception of water, other things...how often do we encounter them in everyday life? For most people, the real threat from snakes, needles and jumping from heights is minimal. But we still react to them as if we are constantly in danger because of these things.

How to deal with fear

Just because fear is a natural reaction doesn't mean you can't limit its power. Here's how:

Preparation: If you're afraid of what you're about to do (interview for a new job, say no to someone...) the best way to cope is to prepare. Rehearsing what you will say or do, or at least thinking about what will happen before it happens, removes much of the uncertainty from the situation that causes fear.
Find your points of control: Fear comes from a lack of control, so if you focus on the things you can control, you can reduce the power of fear. If you are afraid of something important that is not in your power to control, find one small thing that you can influence (your appearance, for example. And this is already a lot!) and focus your attention on it so that the fear does not weigh on you on you.
Relax: Scientists have proven that it is easier to let go of your fear by doing something that calms and relaxes than by trying to talk yourself into not being afraid. Find yours: prayer, meditation, yoga, hobbies, studying, ironing, tidying, walking the dog...everything is fine if it calms you down. Invest more time in this when you are scared.

Recognizing Negative Experiences

Many psychological attitudes originate in childhood and adolescence. One of the most unpleasant, but at the same time widespread: “Why should I express my feelings, no one takes them seriously.” Most often this is started by parents, but it can also “grow up” at school.

Another belief is often instilled among children: “If I behave sincerely, everyone will laugh at me.”

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These psychological traps can haunt you throughout your life. There is a certainty that emotions are dangerous. But, if you look around, it becomes clear: such thoughts are no longer relevant.

Master the anchoring technique

This technique comes from neuro-linguistic programming, but it has taken root in the acting world because it easily helps you enter the desired emotional state. Its essence is to perform certain ritual actions.

Think back to a time in the past when you experienced a particular emotion. Close your eyes, immerse yourself in the memory and find the necessary feeling within yourself. When the emotion becomes strong enough, do something: cross your fingers or stamp your feet.

To consolidate the effect, this exercise must be done several times. Now you can easily enter the emotional state you need when needed.

Time to show vulnerability

An effective way to get rid of old attitudes is to recognize them and take a step towards them. Afraid of being vulnerable? No problem, I'll show it. You can start slowly and carefully with everyday situations:

honestly tell your loved one that today the mood is at zero;
allow yourself to be indignant that the garbage has not been taken out, despite the agreement;
I must admit that it’s a shame when someone forgets an important date.

The main thing is that it must be sincere. Suppressing feelings is really just a means of self-defense. It is everyday situations that show that nothing bad is happening. Self-confidence will gradually appear.

Here we must admit: in some relationships, when showing feelings, there is a feeling that the wrong person is nearby. The more you try to be honest, the worse it gets. Who should not open up emotionally and what relationships should you gradually leave?

In such situations you need to be wary:

when a person abuses trust and distributes personal information without permission;
when a person does not take feelings seriously;
when the interlocutor is too self-centered and turns an important conversation to discussing his problems.

If this is repeated systematically, contact must either be interrupted or kept at a distance. Yes, that's possible. To free up time and energy for people with whom relationships develop the way you want.

How to learn to speak beautifully

It is impossible to learn to swim, ride a bike, drive a car, etc., by mastering theory alone without practice. In the same way, you cannot learn to speak beautifully if you do not practice speaking as often as possible. For those who want to master the art of eloquence, it will be useful to enroll in public speaking training, the program of which includes a large number of individual speeches.
Those who are unable to attend training can practice their conversation skills on their own. In conversations with friends and family, we usually relax and do not monitor our speech, so we often use filler words that clog it and prevent us from grasping the meaning. We don't notice these words in our speech, but they irritate us when we hear them from others, for example from TV screens. Some people manage to repeat useless “nuuu”, “uh” almost every other word. It’s interesting to record your speech, and then listen to it and determine whether we are one of those “ekanya-makanya” lovers. If yes, then you can ask someone close to you to control our speech for a while and focus on such moments. For example, every time we pronounce a filler word, turn on an unpleasant sound.
Some people have a habit of speaking too quickly. Perhaps they do this under the influence of emotions, or they subconsciously fear that their speech is uninteresting and will not be heard to the end. You can get rid of this habit by quietly taking a deep breath before each sentence. You should also convince yourself that our speech is interesting and no one is going to interrupt us.
Our voice should not be quiet and uncertain, otherwise we will not be heard or believed.
To feel confident, you need to understand the topic of the issue and have the appropriate knowledge, so you need to constantly develop and deepen your knowledge. They say that those who think clearly speak clearly. If a person's thoughts are confused, then his speech will not be of interest.
Our confidence should not develop into self-confidence. The tone of the conversation should be calm and friendly, not arrogant, even if the other person is wrong. In any dispute, you should mentally ask yourself: “Do you want to be right or happy?”
During any speech or conversation, eye contact with the audience or interlocutor is important. A shifting gaze or looking at surrounding objects distracts attention and prevents you from concentrating on the topic of conversation.
Every person should be able to carry on a conversation, even when among unfamiliar or unfamiliar people. To do this, it doesn’t hurt to have several ready-made topics in stock that are not alien to the interests of any person, so as not to get into an awkward position and not engage in a painful search for words, trying to fill an awkward pause.

Good luck in your studies. And most importantly, remember: to learn something, you need to do it, even though it is hard.