How nice it would be to be able to deal with our emotions all the time. To understand how we feel sometimes, what drives us. Body signals and emotions are inseparable and they are also reflected in our communication.

What one hears is not always what the other really means – and vice versa.

The psychologist, Paul Watzlawick put it this way: “Every communication has a content aspect and a relationship aspect, such that the latter determines the former and is therefore a metacommunication.” Content aspects run on the factual level (e.g., what do I want or not?) and the relationship aspect describes how the sender relates to the receiver and how the information is to be understood. Pure, factual communication does not exist.

Here find you the sender-receiver model.

Spoken words are always connected with emotions and they are reflected in our body language. Science is also searching for the emotions, feelings – see here: Positive Psychology – Body-Mind Integration: Training Attention for Mental and Physical Health

Antonio Damasio (1944) is a Portuguese neuroscientist who proposed the hypothesis of somatic markers (soma [Greek]: somatos – body). This hypothesis states that emotional experiences are embodied in people and thus influence decisions.

Body and mind are closely linked. This raises the question: are we rational beings?

It would be so if body and mind existed separately, but every reaction result from thoughts and feelings (you can read more about this in my book).  

When we have emotional chaos and our emotions are not clear to grasp, a relaxed body posture can definitely have a calming effect on our emotions (“take a deep breath, catch your breath and “air out” your head for 10 minutes). Or we bring forward our favourite routines that have a calming effect on us: Drinking coffee, listening to music or crawling under the covers and putting a piece of chocolate in our mouth 😊 The main thing is to clear our heads.

Emotions cannot be erased but they can be influenced and changed. The first step is always to accept how you felt and behaved – even if, paradoxically, it makes us feel worse (e.g.: Why was I so ugly again?). If we sweep them under the carpet, they keep creeping back and won’t leave us alone until we notice them.
They will keep knocking on the door of our mind….

Only then are we able to identify the emotions: were we angry, disappointed or afraid? Emotional reactions always show a need. A need arises when we lack something (and I don’t just mean a piece of clothing or food), but a lack of appreciation, love or friendly, respectful reactions, encounters. With the “why” questions we can be analytical but also use our gut feeling. More often we know instinctively what was right or wrong. Our life experiences can always help us answer the “why” questions.

And they are valuable… 😊