emotional challenges in interpersonal communication
Emotional Challenges in Interpersonal Communication
Each and every one of us faces personal trials that trigger difficult-to-manage emotions that affect our communication, relationships, and the quality of our lives. We refer to them as emotion challenges of communication. The most common emotional challenges that we all face are anger, passion, and grief. We get angry when we’re mad and even sad. We have passion in what we do and how we feel and we have grief when we lose someone or something tragic happens. These emotions are a part of life and should not hold us back from expressing our emotions, although that’s a lot easier said than done. Although there are many concepts to interpersonal communication, emotional challenges such as anger and grief and how you express them, is very important.
According to our textbook, Anger is a negative primary emotion that occurs when you are blocked or interrupted from attaining an important goal by what you see as the improper action of an external agent (McCornack, 2010). Anger is greatly driven by the perception that the interruption was improper or unfair. There are many ways to manage your anger but some people don’t always choose the best ways to manage their anger properly. The most common strategy for managing anger is suppression. Many people choose to suppress their anger rather than release it in a healthy way. Suppression often, more times than not, results in lashing out when something triggers your anger. When someone lashes out it most generally means they’ve bottled so much anger up and can simply not hold anything else in and are at their breaking point. Suppressing anger can cause physical and mental problems and you can put yourself in a near-constant state of arousal and negative thinking known as chronic hostility (McCornack, 2010). Another common strategy for releasing anger is venting. Venting is when you explosively disclose all of your angry thoughts to the person who
Each and every one of us faces personal trials that trigger difficult-to-manage emotions that affect our communication, relationships, and the quality of our lives. We refer to them as emotion challenges of communication. The most common emotional challenges that we all face are anger, passion, and grief. We get angry when we’re mad and even sad. We have passion in what we do and how we feel and we have grief when we lose someone or something tragic happens. These emotions are a part of life and should not hold us back from expressing our emotions, although that’s a lot easier said than done. Although there are many concepts to interpersonal communication, emotional challenges such as anger and grief and how you express them, is very important.
According to our textbook, Anger is a negative primary emotion that occurs when you are blocked or interrupted from attaining an important goal by what you see as the improper action of an external agent (McCornack, 2010). Anger is greatly driven by the perception that the interruption was improper or unfair. There are many ways to manage your anger but some people don’t always choose the best ways to manage their anger properly. The most common strategy for managing anger is suppression. Many people choose to suppress their anger rather than release it in a healthy way. Suppression often, more times than not, results in lashing out when something triggers your anger. When someone lashes out it most generally means they’ve bottled so much anger up and can simply not hold anything else in and are at their breaking point. Suppressing anger can cause physical and mental problems and you can put yourself in a near-constant state of arousal and negative thinking known as chronic hostility (McCornack, 2010). Another common strategy for releasing anger is venting. Venting is when you explosively disclose all of your angry thoughts to the person who
Cited: McCornack, S. (2010). Reflect & relate. (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin 's. Knapp, M., & Daly, J. (2002). Handbook in interpersonal communication . (3rd ed.). Sage Publications, Inc. Burleson, B. R. (2003). Personal relationships. (Vol. 10). Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1475-6811.00033/abstract