Emotion Literacy

In this analytically society based on reason and science, there are oasis of emotional communication.  Some are bars, sports events, clubs, religious get-togethers, game night, or a dinner party.  At these we let our hair down and say what's on our minds with little consideration of the consequences.  We communicate our fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams.  It seems we need an excuse to communicate emotionally.  What if society communicated emotionally on a daily basis?  What if our fears, concerns, hopes, and dreams could be related every day to our friends, co-workers, and love ones?  Sounds scary?  Well, it could be at first, but I believe it could revolutionize our society.  Opening up communications about our concerns can be very therapeutic.  It can also give new ideas to businesses, shore up risks, and foster synergic efforts.  In order to do this people need to be educated on Emotion Literacy.  Emotion Literacy is all about reading people and their emotional state, interacting withe them using empathy, and build solutions and conclusions out of the conversation.

 How do you read people?  For Empaths it comes naturally to read and listen to people's emotions.  For non-Empaths it may take more of an effort, but it can be done.  The key to reading people is first to shut up and second to consider the other person.  To all my fellow talkers and extroverts, I say with all the love and humility in the world, "SHUT UP!"  When you have someone in front of you, you need to be quiet and listen before speaking.  Knowing when to speak, is a key skill to be heard effectively.  To the introverts I ask to withhold judgment until you get the full message.  Often times people need to vent about something that is causing them stress in their lives.  Listening to them eases that stress.  When you listen to someone remember to take in the whole person, that is not only their words but tone as well, their body language, and their facial expressions.  Empaths also take in the person's emotion since they can feel what the person feels as the conversation progresses.  You may ask yourself what is this person actually saying, and how do I summarize what their message is?  These are key questions to answer as your listening.

How does one interact with Empathy?  This Empathy is 'walking in their shoes'.  This means to imagine going through what they are saying they went through.  How did they feel?  What were the circumstances?  What was the outcome?  What could have been done better?  I think this is also as skill Empaths need to learn.  Empaths naturally will listen and not do much else.  They will feel emotion of the person and thus have a deeper experience in listening, but they tend not to think about how things could have been better.  Yes, this skill normal people call Empathy requires analysis.  You have to use the analytical brain to interpret what is going on and what could be done.  The outcome of using Empathy puts you side by side with the person as a friend, confidant, and guide.  That means there is an amount of responsibility on your part.  The other person most always appreciates any Empathy they can get even if they don't say so.

How do you build solutions and conclusions?  This skill is an active one.  You listen and you submit ideas and opinions.  You also acknowledge all the points of the other person.  You make known the points you agree with.  All the while you keep using both reading and empathy skills.  Where you end up in the conversation may surprise you and the other person as well.  What your doing is building.  You are building up the person and yourself at the same time.

The Emotion Literacy I'm defining here is made up of reading people, using empathy, and actively building.  I just looked up Emotion Literacy and got a wiki page. I believe that what I wrote here is in concert with the definition of that wiki page.  The difference is that I'm giving practical advice to use in an interpersonal communication setting, that is talking to someone one on one.  Like any interpersonal communication skill, using the advice here takes practice.  I believe you would see how effective this is.  I use this on a daily basis with people I meet, and the rewards are many.

Interpersonal For A Better World....

Remember the saying 'Can't we all just get along?'  It used to be a popular saying in the '80s.  Ok, why can't we?  I have one idea, that people are in their own worlds and are disconnected emotionally from everyone else, or at least from people around them everyday.  Social internet was supposed to connect people, and it does but mostly in a superficial way.  It's that way not because of the internet, but because of the habits people have developed in communicating.  The worst habit of all is not listening.  Listening is fundamental to empathy.  Listening requires being quiet and contemplating what the other person's position or argument is.  It requires some halt to self, and some pause on our impulse to comment.  Now, most people think that listening involves ears.  Well, it does, but not just ears, it also involves eyes, nose, touch, the brain, and even emotion.  Yes, emotion.  How does one listen to someone's emotion and what does it have to do with people getting along?

Let's tackle the first part of the question.  Have you ever had a nagging feeling that someone was watching you, and then you looked and someone was staring at you?  Well, you've picked up on their emotion.  People transmit brain waves all the time.  It's not a hard stretch to realize a brain can receive brain waves from another brain as well as transmit them.  So when your conversing with another person realize that the feelings you feel are not only yours but theirs as well.  This becomes clear when you pause your thinking brain and just listen.  The process of transmitting and receiving emotion is an on-going one.  People have emotions, and they transmit them, and it just takes a listening brain to start to interpret them.  The biggest hindrance to interpreting emotion is unbelief.  Unbelief stems from selfishness.  That is being concerned mainly about ourselves.  Putting that part of ourselves on hold is key.  Once that is done, we are ready to get those brain waves to help us experience what the other person is experiencing.  This is not mind-reading as depicted in movies.  These emotions are on the current emotions we all experience.

What would the world be like if we really listened to each other's emotions?  Listening involves all inputs including listening to emotion.  What we are talking about is interpersonal communication.  Listening to emotion is different than hearing what a person says, than a person's facial expressions, than picking up on subtle odors, or even than feeling them tremble.  Listening to their emotion lets us have a sense of experience to what their talking about.  It's like the difference from reading a good story to seeing the story as a movie, or seeing the story as a movie and playing the story as an immersed 3D computer game.  We're there.  This will innately help us understand the other person.  This is true empathy.  I believe that the act of listening to one another's emotions fosters reason rather than competition, intelligent argument rather than heightened emotions, and a spirit of working together rather than working against each other.  Being heard and understood is a basic human social need.  When that need is met we feel we are part of a community, and when that need is not met we feel we don't belong.  Listening has the power to create community.

By listening to one anther and listening to each other's emotions is key to fostering community.  So to answer the question 'Can't we just get along,' we can if we listen.