Healthy Relationships - Create a Unique Strategy to Manage Feelings Well in Each Relationship

Proceeding in a relationship without developing an effective strategy for managing feelings well is like asking for trouble. There's no getting around it - managing feelings well is central to having relationships that work well - that are supportive, harmonious and long-lived.

What this means is that each relationship needs its own unique elements for managing emotions effectively. In other words, each relationship worth keeping deserves its own unique strategy that addressed receiving and accurately interpreting feelings - both your own, and those of others. Your goal as an adult creating this strategy is to learn what works in each relationship so each party is handling the emotions that come up in the relationship well - in ways that are appropriate to the various situations and challenges that come up.

A good place to start is with yourself. After all, you're the only person you can decide for, and it's easy to do. Simply identify and acknowledge your own feeling state. 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."

A next step is practicing this skill with the feeling state of another, so that you learn to accurately identify and acknowledging their feeling state:

• "Wow, you're really mad about this, huh!"
• "That sounds terrifying, were you (are you )scared?

A third step is to check for accuracy. If you're not sure whether you correctly identified the feeling state of another person, you might consider gently asking for clarification if it is appropriate in that relationship and if the situation is conducive to it: "Are you sad? (Mad? Glad? Scared?) about this? "Are you saying you're hurt that... "

Fourth, stop immediately if you notice any tendency to:

• Compete. Some people operate under the hidden rule that only one person can feel, and they will fight to the death to be that person. Don't be one of them. And if you find they insist on playing that game, well, you might want to reconsider your involvement.

• Escalate above the other person's feeling state. Feelings are not cudgels with which to bludgeon another person. Put your weapons down and communicate instead. There are no losers when people share feelings honestly - only winners.

• Overpower, interrupt or in any way block or obliterate. Having feelings- even strong ones- is not an invitation to a contest. Everybody feels and everybody deserves to be heard.

Fifth, people grow and change and situations change too, which means that the game plan you made at the outset of the relationship will need updating. That's why it's better to think of feeling-management-strategies as an ongoing processes rather than something that's established and then set in stone.

Last, there will be relationships in which it is simply not safe or appropriate to either communicate your own feelings or to even acknowledge those of others. This is a sad but simple fact of life. Learn to differentiate the times, places and relationships where it's safe and appropriate - and be sure you have plenty of relationships in your life where exchanges about the feeling states of the parties involved are both safe and welcome.

Developing effective feeling-management strategies, you will dramatically improve the quality of your relationships. You will also almost magically transform them into more supportive relationships. You will increase emotional intimacy, increase your sense of satisfaction, reduce relationship difficulties, diminish relationship stress. And, you will significantly lessen the chances that unexpressed feelings might sabotage those relationships.