If there are 4000 listed emotive words in the English Dictionary how many of them do you use? I invite you to think for a minute and mentally jot down all the ones you can think of.
Well, how many?
10? 20? 30?
If you were able to identify more, I congratulate you, the content of your emotional dictionary is healthy. If you were in the 10 – 30 bracket, it’s okay you are not alone.
How big our emotional dictionary is, is a good indicator of how accurate we can be in describing exactly how we feel. If I were to say to you ‘I’m really upset’ or ‘I’m so angry’ would that be an accurate description?
Being able to identify exactly how you are feeling is a skill you can learn. Let’s look at ‘being upset’ it could more accurately be describe as tearful, lost, down, melancholy, strange, let down, confused and so on.
By breaking down the word upset you may find you become closer to the reason behind why you are feeling what you are feeling.
There is always a reason behind what you are feeling. All to often many of us can become the victim of a very short list of negative feelings. We take on the feeling and hence the behaviours and thoughts without fully questioning ourselves of why it exists.
Have you ever been in company and the person has said ‘I’m fine’ and all other evidence (eye contact, words, body language, behaviour) has suggested they are far from fine. This is a perfect example of when someone is unable to look up their internal dictionary and have the emotional literacy to express how they are feeling.
Why is our accurate use of an Emotional Dictionary not strong? It may have started in your informative years. Where you ever told to ‘be seen and not heard’ or ‘when we get it here, you will behave’ or ‘dry your eyes’ or only praised for the jobs you did well?
Were you raised in an environment where the adults around were great at disguising how they were feeling, ‘not in front of the children’ or witnessing extremes of emotions: constant anger or emotional upset.
Sadly we live in a world where what we are outside is more important than what is happening inside. You only have to look at the ‘celebrities’ that are photographed when they are displaying emotions. It’s like by displaying an emotion they are failing at entertaining, because they are being human.
If you wanted to start adding to your emotional dictionary there are few things you could do.
If someone asks you ‘how you are feeling’ answer them truthfully, avoid the words fine, okay, sure you may be these things however, find an alternative, and try not to use the same word twice in any given month.
Look at where you over generalise feelings, to say you love your children and you love salt and vinegar crisps is an over generalisation of the word love. Perhaps you hate ironing, going shopping and aubergines, if you use the word hate in this situation can you use it within the context of injustice or war.
Many people don’t have a match of what is happening inside to what is happening outside. This is detrimental to your health. For example in the workplace you may be extremely annoyed, hurt and exhausted that a person has taken credit for a piece of work that you completed. And yet outside when they speak to you, you behave as if these feelings do not exist.
You are accountable for how you feel, no –one else. How can you grow and change if you cannot acknowledge and be truthful to yourself first?