Pamela Levin, R.N.,
T.S.T.A.
Pamela
Levin is an R.N. and a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst with
600+ postgraduate hours in clinical nutrition, herbology
and applied kinesiology. In private practice 48 years, she has seen first-hand the
commonalities between the emotional tasks of infants and children and those of adults. She
teaches her award-winning work on the process of healthy emotional development throughout
life in
Emotional
Development 101. [your affiliate link to
ed101]
Infants need to create successful
relationships because their lives depend on
it. And infants can't distract themselves from their feeling states like
adults can. Like it or not, their lives revolve around feelings. That's why we can
learn so much from them about the role of our emotional states in building successful relationships
- in other words, What can infants teach us about that?
Here are some of their lessons for us:
1. Feeling is central to being alive.
Everybody we have a relationship with is alive and therefore has feelings, even though they have
different styles of dealing with them. Emotional states are as fundamental as breathing.
2. Communicating feelings is as natural and basic as
breathing. Infants just flat-out express their emotional experience without
apology. They teach us that including these states as part of a relationship - both in our own
selves and with others - is natural and normal.
3. Having feeling states accurately received and accepted -
by ourselves - and by another - is massively
comforting. Infants communicate feelings
non stop... until.... yes, UNTIL they experience it's been accurately received by the other person.
Then they feel sooooo much better. That doesn't change just because we're adults. We, too, want our
emotional state to be accurately received and interpreted, both by ourselves, and by
another.
We can practice receiving and accurately interpreting feelings so we can do it well. The place to
start is with ourselves. For example:
-
"I'm so mad right now, on a scale of one to ten, I'm an
eleven."
-
"That scared me so much I'm shaking."
-
"I know I'm anxious, I just don't know what I'm anxious about...
yet."
We can also practice with
others:
-
"Wow, you're really mad about this,
huh!"
- "That sounds terrifying, were you (are you)
scared?"
If you're not sure what the other person is saying, you can gently ask
for clarification: "Are you sad? (Mad? Glad? Scared?) about this?" "Are you saying you're hurt
that..."
Doing so can dramatically improve the quality of our relationships and
significantly reduce the chances that unexpressed feelings might sabotage those relationships. To
understand and facilitate your emotional development at every stage of growth, go to
[affiliate product link][your clickbank
link].
Tags: sucessful relationships traits of successful relationships relationship support emotions in relationships feelings in relationships emotional expression expressing feelings ina relationship emotional states
|