Recently, I’ve been reading many updates from colleagues and friends expressing feelings of gratitude, hope, and anticipation of reuniting with friends and families after a much-prolonged time apart, now that we’ve come to a significant milestone in these post Covid19 times. I’m also finding that I’m sharing in a lot of these sentiments myself, so I thought, what better than writing about them!
When you hear someone talk about feelings, they’re talking about emotions and how they experience them. In our human systems, this happens in 3 particular ways. We have a subjective experience that also has a physiological response and results in an output of a behavioural response.
Before we get further into this article, indulge me, will you? Grab a pen and paper and write down your answers to these three questions:
When you feel you’re in a state of calm, peaceful and untroubled – do you think content, serene, relieved, blissful, delighted or none of the above?
A feeling of embarrassment or guilt because of your actions, characteristics or association is a shame.
And the combination of suffering, fear, and unhappiness is dread.
Subjective experiences:
So why did I ask you to answer those questions? Because although the dictionary may define those words, the emotions you associate with those feelings are your feelings! Emotional experiences have labels – joyful, shameful, serene, mortifying, exciting, compassionate, depressing, lonely, stimulating. Yet, every person’s experience of a labelled emotion is unique – it’s your own subjective experience. For example, the feeling of slight agitation and frustration that I call “anger” is different from the feeling of hate, hostility and wanting to explode that Joni calls “anger.”
The moral of the story?
Your experience of an emotion is just that – an experience. It is neither good nor bad. It is contextual to your life and perceptions of those what those emotions are ‘expected’ to be. This is an excellent thing because it means we can:
- Learn to experience emotions differently.
- Change our relationship to a given feeling.
- Remind ourselves that emotions are transient.
Now what? You ask.
Physiological Response:
Well, we dive into the physiological response to an emotion – it’s an automatic, instinctive, physical response to a trigger—translation: how your body reacts in any given situation.
Physiological responses are mediated by our sympathetic nervous system, our fight-or-flight experience. According to the Cannon-Bard Theory of Emotions, the physiological response and subjective experience of emotion in response to a stimulus occur in sympatico. Essentially, you experience emotions in your body, in your mind and your spirit.
So, what gives – why is this important? Well… knowing you have a physiological response and developing your awareness of it can help you create a more aligned mind-body-spirit relationship, which eventually leads to more balance and harmony – in our work and personal lives.
Practical tip: Body Scan
This technique focuses on different parts of your body, where you move your attention progressively, head to toe, ultimately making your way throughout your entire physical being. Body scans bring your awareness and attention to physical sensations that tap into your “physiological response.”
If body scans are new to you, you may think I’m out to lunch asking you to put yourself through this discomfort; but guess what – life begins at the end of your comfort zone!
Body scans help you:
- Connect to your body (mind-body-spirit connection)
- Notice tension that you may not even have realized existed.
- Release pain that may be amplifying your emotional experience
- Increase mindfulness and reduce stress
- Counteract your negative feelings
- Tap into your body’s sensations and needs in day-to-day life
- There are lots of body scans out there. But here are some videos that can support you with body scans.
Behavioural Response:
Now that we’ve covered the first two, we’re onto behavioural response – the actual expression of an emotion. While the subjective experience and physiological response are internal experiences of the overall emotional experience, the behavioural response is the external experience. All behaviours (conscious or subconscious) are forms of communication. Think about it – when you swap your sneakers for a pair of 5-inch stilettos, you may be telling the world, “I feel confident” or “don’t mess with me today”, or when you ignore your boss’s texts after hours, you’re telling them you have boundaries between work and life. Whenever we “do” something, we try to “say” something – a thought, a feeling, a need – something! This is “behavioural communication”,; a psychological construct that influences individual differences in the expression of feelings, needs and thoughts, as a substitute for more direct communication – fancy, huh?!
This “communication” can be verbal.
What you say or don’t say – using words – or the lack thereof #silenttreatement Or can be non-verbal.
- What you do or don’t do – body language, facial expressions, movements, actions, etc.
Regardless, there are 4 “styles” we use to communicate.
- Passive: don’t express your thoughts, opinions, wants or beliefs and often act indifferent
- Aggressive: is often loud, demanding, and intense, like commands versus a conversation.
- Passive-Aggressive: you appear passive, but your internal experience feels emotional and aggressive – you know what you want, but you choose not to use your words.
- Assertive: you say what you mean, and you mean what you say (in a firm and friendly way!).
This is the goal!
Challenge time:
To wrap up this post, pull out that piece of paper and pen again and reflect on these questions:
- What are you saying: this about an action you took today: start with “today I ….”
- If your action could speak – what would it say? “My action would say….”
- What style of communication were you using? Passive, passive-aggressive, aggressive, assertive.
- Identify one thing you could have done to be more assertive: “to be more assertive. I could have….”
Are you feeling gutsy? Join us in the comments – and share your communication style with us.
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If you want to learn more about how your emotional responses tie in with your leadership style and how you can move from being reactive to being responsive and proactive AND lead your teams better – go ahead and click that button!
