 In our other videos, we've talked about emotion and specifically we've talked about Understanding emotion. What is emotion? How do we define it? Where does it come from those types of things? And then we've also talked specifically about what are some of the influences on our emotional expression But in this video, I want to talk about the next step. What can we do to improve our emotional expression? What can we do to improve our relationship with emotions in general? So if we're going to improve our emotional expression first, it starts with expanding our emotional vocabulary When your kid, maybe you had some of these charts in your parents We have you point to these things like how are you feeling or your teacher may have said point to the You know motion you're experiencing are you angry or you scared or you whatever, you know And essentially we need to kind of start with that, but we need to move beyond that You know, we know that for every emotion there are a variety of different Kind of shades to that emotion different levels of that emotion. So there's not just one word for angry, right? There's a difference between grumpy and frustrated and spiteful and irritated and offended and all those things As we can see here just these couple of words. There are a variety of different Words and that we can use to more specifically Identify so instead of just saying all the time. Oh, I'm angry. I'm angry. I'm angry What kind of angry are you and why let's let's expand that emotion of vocabulary So that people can have a more accurate understanding of exactly what it is We're feeling and what we're trying to express there. So we need to start by expanding our emotional vocabulary Once we've increased our emotional vocabulary, we can focus on then recognizing our feelings, right? We can we can identify those feelings more accurately. We can expand our understanding Of you know and and our vocabulary within ourselves About those feelings and about those emotions, right? We need to be better about Differentiating between the different emotions that we're having and our ability to recognize those And identify those and be be honest with ourselves about what it is that we're feeling what emotion we're experiencing I'm sitting to understand that we have the ability to experience and then to share Multiple feelings at once and we're not just limited to one thing You know if your friend is supposed to be at your house at eight o'clock one night and they don't show up They don't show up. They don't show up. They show up at like two in the morning And you haven't heard from them and you they didn't show up until you know much later You're entitled to feel a variety of different things when they finally do show up at your door It's okay for you to be angry. It's okay for you to be Frustrated with them for not being there on time It's okay for you to be relieved and joyful that they are safe That they are there you can experience all these things at once You can even express these multiple feelings that we sometimes get in this habit of saying well I've got to pick one and I've got to express it and I've got to stick with it No, it's okay for you to say look I'm super happy that you're here I'm so happy that you're safe and relieved But I'm also really frustrated really kind of pretty pretty angry with you right now for not contacting me and making me worry like that So we can share Multiple multiple feelings and we don't have to be just limited to to sharing one feeling at a time We can we can identify and express and share those multiple feelings We also need to take control of our self-talk right our self-talk has to do with How we talk to ourselves about these emotions. How do we how do we? In our own mind Experience those emotions we talked to another video about cognitively. How do we you know? What are our cognitive interpretations of an emotion when we experience these things physiologically and and and we You know have these emotions come upon us. They're triggered within us Then what do we tell ourselves about it? Are we you know and how long do we experience? So we let this thing kind of spiral out of control and and get out of our you know Reasonable control through without controlling that self-talk we need to take control of that self-talk And understand that we are in charge of our emotion now that emotion came to us because it was triggered by a specific event But we are in control of how we Express that emotion how we manage that emotion and a lot of that starts with how we talk to ourselves About that emotion and how we process it cognitively within our own mind We also need to accept responsibility like in this kind of relates back to controlling the self-talk But accepting responsibility, you know, we have this habit of saying Well, you made me feel this you make me so angry you make me so i'm nobody makes you anything Emotionally, I think and do things you don't like but in the end you are responsible for your emotion Nobody's made you do anything made you say anything made you feel anything They've done this thing you didn't like it or whatever But you are in control and we have to accept responsibility for For how we treat that emotion how we experience that emotion ourselves how we express that emotion with others And so we have to be in charge and accept responsibility for those emotions and We have to understand that not every feeling requires action Just because we feel something just because we feel an emotion doesn't necessarily mean we have to take action on it We want to process that emotion within ourselves, but it doesn't mean we have to tell everybody every emotion that we have Or really, you know Do something about every emotion that we have not every feeling or emotion requires an action If it does then we need to choose the best time and place for that Sometimes we get the feeling you know, we we get into the um into the habit of saying well this happens So I've got to do this right away. You know, it's if this happens. I have this feeling I've got to take action right now You don't have to do anything right now. You maybe you should maybe that's the right time in place But maybe not So we need to keep this process in mind that there's an event that happened that triggered an emotion or a feeling Within you right Then we need to think about that think you know process that what is this emotion? What's the best way for me to to manage and express this emotion? And then we can take action if if needed if we think that's required if we think it's appropriate And it may be right now is the right time to do that But it may be that waiting and cooling off or letting things settle a little bit or Waiting until you're alone with that person where you can express it privately or something Maybe better after we've had a chance to think about it and process it But we don't have to do things right now. We can choose What is the best time and place for me to? Express this emotion and follow up on that then So hopefully now we have a little better understanding of emotion not only what it is But how we can improve some things we can do to take more control of our emotion To manage them more effectively and productively and to use them more constructively and express them constructively within a relationship If you have questions about emotion or anything related to emotion and interpersonal communication Please feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you in the meantime I hope that we will give much greater thought to the skill The skill set that really is emotion Again, we can't control what other people do and we can't always control what emotion that brings out on us But beyond that point we do have every control over how we experience that emotion how we express that emotion And so we can learn to improve our ability to both process and then express those emotions with great time and great thought and and more experience And and skill we can develop that greater emotional intelligence