How Naming Your Feelings Improves Relationships (Including the one with yourself)
In sitting with clients and myself, I like to start off with the simple, yet, powerful question, “How are you feeling?”
It’s slightly different from, “How are you doing?” or “how’s it going?”
Asking yourself or others how they feel is very specific and lends opportunity for you to check in with yourself emotionally. Before rolling your eyes, hear me out.
I know talking about emotions and naming feelings can be challenging and uncomfortable. Sometimes this is because we may not have the words to name the feeling, or weren’t socialized to recognize them and talk about them, or we’re so out of touch with our feelings that it may seem like more of a headache to name them than to ignore. It’s easy to answer, “I’m fine,” or “I’m good,” to those other questions, but neither one of those answers actually name a feeling.
A feeling is an actual sensation tied to your emotional state. By answering “fine” or “good,” we’re not exactly connecting to an actual emotion. Of course, at times, this type of response is appropriate. For instance, if you’re checking out at the counter in a store, you may not want your cashier to know you’re super frustrated with your partner for not listening to you that morning. However, checking in with yourself or those you are close with can be extremely important. Naming feelings such as “I’m frustrated,” or “joyful” gives yourself a pulse on your emotional state which ultimately creates connection to self, or as I like to call it, your spirit.
Naming your emotions affords you with the opportunity of acknowledging yourself. This can be the first step to creating a relationship with yourself. Growing to understand yourself is the foundation to your mental health and external relationships. If you’re not certain of your feelings, you may not be aware of your needs and how to meet them. This makes it hard to acknowledge and navigate your moods and behaviors in a supportive way. It’s ok, we’re all figuring it out.
It feels nice to be acknowledged by someone else, why not allow that to be something you do for yourself? As Beyoncé said in her song “Me, Myself, and I,” “I’m gon’ be my own best friend.”
(The queen herself is never wrong but…I digress.)
It’s a social norm to greet or acknowledge others when we walk into a room. You can make it a similar norm with yourself acknowledge how you’re feeling from time to time. Your spirit will smile when you acknowledge it. More than likely, you wouldn’t ignore a child who is crying, a friend who seems unsettled during a social function, or a family member experiencing joy when celebrating an accomplishment. But how often do you ignore yourself? It is an act of kindness and self-compassion to not ignore your emotions.
Building a relationship with yourself is the first step to building any relationship, especially as an adult.
As adults we often navigate relationships on our own because we’ve left the guidance of our parents and caretakers. We left the nest without a proper manual for relationship building, as if a manual exists for anything in adulthood. Often times you can find that guidance in therapy along with trial and error through various relationships. Nothing beats the opportunity to build and explore the longest standing relationship that you will ever have, a relationship with yourself.
Naming your emotions with yourself can also be helpful for your relationships with others. Being clear with yourself about how you’re feeling helps you communicate to other people more effectively, and makes it much more likely that your needs will be met by the other person, and definitely will help you feel more heard, understood and cared for, even though it’s really vulnerable. Despite discomfort, you are worthy of understanding and getting your needs met, and that’s on periodt!
By recognizing a feeling such as frustration, you allow yourself to recognize this emotional state within. This invites you to potentially explore why you’re feeling that way or where it’s coming from so that you can address it. Feeling frustrated may not feel good in the moment, but processing and exploring why you feel this way can help change the feeling or care for yourself as you feel it.
Frustration signals that maybe your needs aren’t being met in the moment or you feel misunderstood by someone. Instead of potentially channeling your frustrations toward someone else in a way that isn’t helpful or intentional, you’ve acknowledged your emotion and invited yourself to process the situation. This way your emotion can be seen and validated by yourself, and then communicated to the other person.
Becoming self-aware after processing your emotions can lead to understanding yourself, connection to the physical implications of your emotional state, along with a path to finding useful coping skills when needed. Once you’ve processed what made you frustrated, you can also name your bodily responses to recognize the impact of this emotion on you physically; furthermore, this deepens your connection with yourself. For instance, when I’m frustrated I tend to get hot, my shoulders become tense, my jaw tightens, and I’m not breathing as deeply. By recognizing my physical state in moments of frustration, I’ve realized my go-to coping mechanism is to take deeper breaths and focus on my breathing pattern.
This allows for me to slow my thoughts and responses to others; as a result, I can be more tactful in my responses so the way I’m communicating will potentially be more receptive. Although breathing may not be your go-to coping skill, or how you would cope with “frustration,” in particular, naming your emotion will allow to recognize if and what coping skill you may need. After exploring your emotion, it’s beneficial to explore coping skills that work for you with various grounding techniques such as naming sensations, meditating, engaging in movement whether it be dance or taking a walk, hanging out with people who love and support you, or engaging if your favorite hobby.
You may also externalize the issue so that there’s no reason to channel frustration toward someone else or yourself ineffectively. Externalizing means to name the problem not the person.
Externalizing the issue creates room for you to detach the issue from a person to looking at it more objectively. Ask yourself, “what is the issue in this moment outside of the individuals involved?”. This helps you invite a little grace by shifting your perspective from blaming someone to instead, seeing the problem removed from the person. For instance, your frustration may not actually be with the person in the moment, but in the fact that it’s misunderstanding in communication; as a result, communication is the issue and not the person. This process can alleviate that frustration and maybe even transition that emotion to hope, or feeling as sense of clarity, after processing your emotion.
It can also help you more effectively communicate to someone what you’re frustrated about. Rather than fighting words such as, “You’re an asshole”, you can say something like “I’m frustrated because I feel unheard right now”. You’re shifting the frustration in the situation from the person to the dynamic, which can help you and the other person face it together, rather than facing against each other.
Naming your emotion may seem simple, yet, a powerful exercise that will open doors for processing your feelings and deepening relationships. This process lends itself to you becoming connected to yourself, understanding yourself, and becoming aware of your needs in the moment. Identifying what’s happening for you internally can be the first step to building a solid relationship with your spirit, with your soul, with you.
Think of how many music artists have made millions off of naming and acknowledging their feelings: Drake, Whitney Houston, Adele, Otis Redding, the list goes on. If you’re not certain of how to put your feelings into words, feel free to Google “feelings wheel,” or “wheel of emotions” or check out this blog post about it.
You can check in with your feelings anywhere, anytime. So, now I have to ask, how are you feeling?
Read about more ways to cultivate a relationship with yourself here.
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