When I teach to families, one of the workshops that I truly enjoy teaching is Communications. Our focus during this class is to learn how to speak, using our core emotions to convey our thoughts. For example instead of saying I am mad that you missed curfew, what you are really feeling is fear and frustration. Fear for your child’s safety and frustration that they are disrespecting you and your values by not abiding by your rules as the parent.
So we practice saying things that convey the real issues. It’s hard, it’s awkward and at times a person has to really think and dig to figure out what they really feel. It appears at times that we have become a two emotion society – if we aren’t pissed off, then we are complacent. When something takes away our ability to be complacent, then we are pissed.
Granted, emotions can be very basic, but come on…… to position ourselves where we only operate off two emotions!!! How do we allow that to happen?
Also, if we can not get past knowing if we are mad or complacent, meaning if we can’t even define our own emotions, how do we begin to read the emotions of others?
The first step to developing empathy is being able to understand the other person’s position, how they got there and what it feels like. If we can not even do that for ourselves, is it any wonder, that political correctness has become the safe replacement for true empathy?
And the irony of this is, that once you are put back on the path of being able to empathize, the gift is not to the person you are empathizing with, it is to yourself. And you know how I know this? By the looks of calm, peace and relaxation that comes to the people as they practice their new, core emotions based communications. They are better able to express themselves, better able to understand the other person and ultimately, get better solutions. Now why wouldn’t they feel better?
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