Emotions are at the center of empathic communication because we are listening for the other person’s emotions, sharing our own, and managing our reactions. In order to listen well and speak clearly, we need to be able to label and manage emotions in the moment.

Without an emotion vocabulary, it is difficult to:

  • Reflect back or help label the other person’s feelings
  • Understand and manage our own reactions
  • Identify what we need
  • Communicate our experience without judging or blaming them

Without skills to manage emotions, it is difficult to:

  • Stay calm and present
  • Stop ourselves from saying something we’ll regret
  • Catch ourselves before we get lost in an emotion, lash out, or shut down
  • Manage discomfort

To learn more about these skills, check out:

Labeling emotions

Managing emotions

Now that we are aware of obstacles to improving our communication skills, we can start to build our empathic communication toolbox and shift how we think, listen, and speak.