M4_3 Emotional Expression Mentee
Lesson 3
Discuss -> Manage qualifying the emotional expression of a mentee:
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2. Identify 3-5 Key Learning Points from watching the video
3. Read the Notes and Additional Resources below - if available
4. Summarize your learning
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Notes
Define emotions:
- a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.
- instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge.
Define emotional expression:
- Those expressions in people while talking observably verbal and nonverbal behaviors are that communicate an internal emotional or affective state.
- Emotional expressions can occur with or without self-awareness.
Identify negative and positive expressions of emotion:
- Negative
- Sadness
- Pessimism
- Guilt
- Anxiety
- Mindlessness
- Anger
- Jealousy
- Positive
- Sadness makes you pay attention to detail
- Pessimism prepares you for anything
- Guilt improves your moral compass
- Anxiety turns you into a problem-solver
- Mindlessness heightens your creativity
- Anger motivates you to patch up conflict
- Jealousy forces you to work harder
Discuss appropriate ways for emotional expression in the mentoring arrangement:
- Avoid the word “that” as it means that what is about to follow is a thought and not a feeling
- Using the words “I feel” are a good way to start
- Emotions need to be expressed and not bottled up
- Both participants in the arrangement need to work together
- Pause to look inside yourself and label your internal feeling.
- Anger invites defensiveness. If your feeling is “mad” or “angry”, calm down before you start talking. An angry voice invites an angry voice in return.
- Then, to optimize the likelihood you will be heard without defensiveness, choose a word other than a word from the anger family for the feeling that remains, a word like “sad” or “scared..” .
- Launch what you say with “I feel….” “I felt…” or “I have been feeling….” e.g., "I feel discouraged about ..."
- Explain more about the source of the feeling. A good sentence-starter for this explanation is “My concern is ….” e.g., "My concern is that I don't see an end in sight for your having to bring work home to do at night."
- If you need to specify your partner’s role in the feeling, start that sentence with “When you..” for instance, “When you came in so late last night from work I felt very scared.” Continue then with “My concern was…” and you are on the road to mutual understanding.
~~~ Consider: Negative emotions have become a sign of weakness and inadequacy, forcing us to internalize how we're really feeling and creating even bigger problems.