Emotional Support- What is it and Why is it Important?
Emotions are behind all decision making and behavior, even down to what outfit we pick out or what we plan to make for dinner. The more we know about ourselves and the emotions we experience the more connection we will experience in our relationships.
Emotions
Emotions are our body’s reaction to what it thinks is going on around and in us. Meaning, if our body senses danger it signals the amygdala to release quick hormonal reactions–in less than a 12th of a second–to move us into fight, flee, or freeze mode depending on what our body decides is the safest in the moment. If our body senses connection and joy based on our experience, our brains will associate these to previous experiences and interact to release hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, and serotonin. The challenge is, if we don’t learn to identify the emotions and the body states we are experiencing we can be prone to communicating through reactivity, which may not always help us get what we most need and want in the long run.
Building internal awareness of our emotions makes self-regulation, communication, and collaboration more possible. The first step to building awareness is non-judgemental curiosity about our body’s experience when you are in conversation. Do you notice a change in your heart rate, flushing in your skin, pressure in your chest, tightness in your throat? Can you track and name your experience? How we name our experiences depends on culture, language, and previous experiences. For instance, how an emotion is felt and expressed through body language is different culture to culture, family to family. The most important part is learning how to identify our experiences, and then finding ways to communicate those emotions thoughtfully with others. The better we get at understanding our emotions and communicating our experiences the better support we can give and receive.
Emotional Support
Emotional support is an act of caring for and about your own or someone else’s emotions through expressions of curiosity, empathy, validation, and supportive gestures.
Curiosity: Slow down and really listen to what the other person is expressing and what their experience tells them about what they need or care about.
Empathy: Requires curiosity, compassion, deeply listening for what the other person really is saying, and connecting with your felt experience of the emotions they are sharing about.
Validation: Helps the feeler experience understanding that it is okay to feel that emotion. It does not mean you have to agree with their thoughts/ perspective, but it is helpful to validate their emotions. This requires listening and being able to name the emotion they are feeling. For example, “It makes sense you feel sad, you care deeply about your friends and don’t want to see them hurting.”
Supportive Gestures: Find what your loved one feels comforted by, it may be that simply sitting alongside them is enough. Some are comforted by touch, listening, a random check in call, a cup of tea, a meal made for them.
A theme across each of these is deeply listening to the other person, and not just looking for a quick solution.
Emotional support is NOT…
taking on another person's emotion by trying to fix their situation for them.
minimizing their emotions or telling them they don’t have to feel a certain way.
solution finding or problem solving with someone (unless they are specifically asking for your ideas).
guessing someone’s emotions and trying to avoid them from ever feeling difficult emotions (this will get a whole post sometime on what I call “emotional labor”). It is helpful to know what behaviors, words, etc. are hurtful and take accountability for those, but you can’t prevent someone from feeling difficult feelings all the time, and it is not your job. Taking that on can sometimes prevent you from sharing something you need out of fear it will upset them. Preventing emotions is not the goal, it is caring about them, understanding them, and letting the energy they create move through us. You can validate their emotions while still caring for yours.
The better we are at naming emotions and building helpful skills for regulating and responding to our feelings, the better we will be able to communicate them with others and the more emotional support we will be able to experience.
If you want to learn more, consider joining the Online Couple’s Workshop that starts next week!
