5 Chapter 5: Recognizing and Expressing Feelings
Chapter 5: Recognizing and Expressing Feelings
“Smile!”
Have you ever walked away from a conversation thinking, “I have this feeling I wasn’t giving the answers that person was hoping to get….” or “I feel like there is this other part of the conversation I completely didn’t pick up on….”? As a Counselor, this can happen to me all the time. You’re trying so hard to focus on the persons feelings and thoughts, creating an environment of support and encouragement for the person, but you just have a feeling you’re not getting it right. What’s even worse, sometimes the person will even verbally confirm you aren’t picking up on what they want you to. When a person confronts you telling you that you’re not understanding, that’s one of the worst feelings of all!
I like to think about emotions in the way I think of the magazine or book cover. Imagine some of your favorite magazines or books–odds are, even if you covered up the part of them that had the actual title of the periodical, you still from the pictures on the cover guess that it is a science textbook, or a gossip magazine. That’s what I like to think emotions are when it comes to conversation–its the cover that contains all the detailed words in the printed material. And even though we may not know the title of that magazine or book, if we can pick up on the general emotions the person is feeling, that gives us enough information to at least keep the conversation going.
So how do we identify feelings? And, how do we show them? I found this great article online at medium.com written by Kevin Redmayne (2017) at https://medium.com/@KevinRedmayne/how-to-identify-strong-emotions-b0b35f2bb811 [1]
The author cites there are eight primary emotions: Joy, Trust, Fear, Surprise, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, Anticipation. From these eight primary emotions, all kinds of sub-emotions are derived with these emotions at their core. Its a very keenly written scientific model to diagram emotions that I like a lot.
Some of these primary eight are easier to identify than others. I bet of them, you can recognize Joy, Fear, Surprise, Sadness, Disgust, and Anger pretty easily. These are emotions we encounter in our day to day lives frequently. Trust and Anticipation are probably tougher ones. Here’s a chart I made with a few cues you might look at for help:
Emotions Scale
| Emotion | Body Language | Facial Expression | Voice Tone | Voice Speed & Eye Contact |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joy | Open arms & body | Smiling, eyebrows up | High pitched, lilt voice | Fastest, eye contact |
| Trust | Open arms & body | Smiling, eyebrows up | Average pitched, lilt voice | Average, eye contact |
| Anticipation | Open arms & body | Smiling, eyebrows up | High pitched, lilt voice | Faster, eye contact |
| Fear | Closed arms & body | No smile, eyebrows flat | Low pitched, no lilt | Faster, no eye contact |
| Surprise | Closed arms & body | No smile, eyebrows up | Average pitched, lilt voice |