Emotional Intelligence and feeling words
November 16th 2007 by Megan Bayliss in Child Abuse
Words cannot explain how I feel. This sentence is much overused in our daily lives. This is not good emotional intelligence modelling to our children if we are telling them we are not smart enough to explain how we feel .
We have words to assist us explain how we feel. What we are deficit in is the uses of those words to adequately capture our feelings. Emotional descriptions are neither prized nor welcomed in many situations so as a group we have trained ourselves not to use emotional words in fear we are neurotic, girlie or silly: outcasts in a world that values non-emotional language.
The English language has over two thousand words to describe feelings. Typically, any of us will use only six words in our entire repertoire of descriptive feeling words. Of those six words, they fall into three sets of opposites, for example happy/sad, upset/calm, scared/peaceful.
Emotional intelligence includes being able to clearly articulate how we are feeling. Emotional intelligence, in part, is the ability to express our deep grief, fear, sickness, disillusionment and bewilderment over any of the dreadful world occurences that assault us on the news nightly or the soul attacks that we live with on any given day. Emotional intelligence involves pinpointing how we feel and giving those feelings a voice.
Without a voice, the feelings grow and take us over. The feelings prevent us from doing certain things because we may be scared, confused and emotionally impoverished. Likewise, without a voice to say how they are feeling prior to bad things happening, our children may be at grave risk of harm.
Do not allow your children to develop a monotone, “words cannot explain how I feel,” dialogue. Give children the tools to identify and articulate the feelings inside of them. Teach them the subtle differences between feeling layers. Teach them a multitude of words so that they can adequately explain to you how they feel about the behaviours of another person. The more emotional language children have, the more their messages of concern have positive action impact prior to bad things happening. Emotional language is a preventative tool that every child needs to be gifted with.
To manage personal risk to another person, we require knowledge of how that person is feeling. We can only definitely know how others (our children) are feeling if they can clearly communicate what is going on in the space that nobody else can see: their emotional self.
The formula for clear communication is:
- I feel (insert a feeling word, not a thought)
- when you/I (state the behaviour of the other person)
- because (your thoughts on the way you see the situation).
I feel desolate when I hear that others have inadequate words to describe their feelings because emotional intelligence can help to keep people (particularly our children) safe.
Emotional intelligence is a tool we can gift our children to offer them control from emotional perpetrators in an out of control world. To learn more about how to do this, practice the suggestions in Teaching Emotional Intelligence for Personal Safety and Clear Communication.
Right at this moment, can you name ten emotions that you have felt today? No….you are not alone, few people can. Print off the list of feeling faces (in our resources section - see the tabs at the top of the posts) and practice identifying how you feel at any given time. Once you know what it is you are feeling, you will be helping your child to develop a type of intelligence that will act to keep them safe.
Article by Megan Bayliss first appeared in a similar form at her earlier site as Words to Explain Feelings Following Virginia Tech Shootings.
Stumble it!
November 16th, 2007 at 10:46 am
I read the book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
by Daniel Goleman about 10 years ago and being a school teacher it was my bible….I have tried to instill a lot of those principles (in the book) into my 2 teenage children who I’m happy to say are emotionally open and articulate…..my daughter in particular who stands up for other’s rights and is very protective especaially when it comes to bullying….
I love the smilies graph….and will print out…..Megan…..a peaceful day to you
November 16th, 2007 at 11:10 am
Thank you Kim.
Emotional intelligence is so important, and fun to teach. I LOVE it.
We played word games when my kids were all little. I would often pick a feeling word as the word of the week, define it and our practice was to use the feeling word correctly as many times as we could.
When in London, I met up with one of my daughter’s childhood friends. She said she fondly remembered spending weekends at our home and being part of our Word of the Week games. She said she has never forgotten what perpetrator, sex predator, narcissistic personality disorder and emotional intelligence is. I laughed that she had remembered most of the technical terms (no feelings) and that she got good kudos from others when she could speak on those words with a degree of authority. Oh dear….the places our games end up!
November 17th, 2007 at 7:58 am
you’ve explained this concept really well, it’s so much easier when we can identify what we are feeling first, and then be able to express that. So many kids (and adults) are not familiar with the whole womderful palette of feelings possible or communicate clearly.
it’s also great to see a lot more focus on emotional intelligence amongst teachers and a willingness to look at how they can implement classroom strategies to develop it. I am working with a teacher at the moment on developing a project for a specific class, I am very fortunate to work with passionate teachers who will try new things!
I rememeber feeling very proud recently when a teacher came and told me one of the students ( with a multitude of problems) said to her ” I like it that you care about me, but when you say…. I feel….. I would like it if you could …. thankyou” she was stunned but impressed! (and so was I!)
November 17th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Thanks Louise. I love emotional intelligence stuff and I love to hear how it has worked for others too.
That is so cool that your young person was brave enough to use the tenets. Well done to you.
Have you checked out the resources I’ve got uploaded to our resource section? You may find some handouts for your work. I am so busy with a counselling, supervision and assessment load that I can never get back to my filing cabinet to pull out more resources to put up. Bear with me. I will get them done. Have another two counsellors starting so it will give me more web based time.
Keep up your excellent work Louise.
November 17th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Thank you so much for sharing this. I use to have the poster but with moving I lost it. Having two children who were abused using the steps to communicate helped a lot. I plan on finding it and putting it back up to help teach the my younger two children. This article touched me in so many ways I really appreciate finding your blog and look forward to reading more. Thank you
November 17th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Great post Megan, I love your work.
November 18th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Thanks Tamara and Joh. Can you imagine how safe our kids would be if every home taught a little emotional intelligence and resilience?
November 19th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Great post. My son’s school has the same poster up on their walls and we all got a copy when we did behaviour/communication classes with the school last year. It’s a great learning tool and can really open up some wonderful conversations