I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how communication is one of the most important reasons as to why we have and experience emotions. I was in a conversation the other day with someone who kept talking at length about the exact same topic, going on far longer than I really felt like listening. I was tired, had spent much of the day talking with other people, and frankly was not all that interested in the topic. Normally, I would rise to the occasion and actively participate in the conversation, but on this particular day, I was a little more on the nonresponsive side. The less I responded, the more the other person talked! It soon became clear that the person I was talking to was trying to get a message across and to feel heard and understood. Indeed, I’ve often told therapists and trainees that, when a client repeats her or himself or seems to be expressing the same thing in a more and more intense manner, it could be that she or he feels like the message is not getting through. This is particularly the case when people are talking about emotional topics.
One of the most important reasons as to why we have emotions is to communicate to other people. People who study emotions often describe this in evolutionary terms. In past human history, social connections to your own tribe were critical for survival. Emotions conveyed through facial expressions, body language, and voice tone, can help to communicate a variety of important types of information, including your needs, wishes, preferences, danger and threats to survival, and so on. Emotional expression and close relationships can help people understand and feel closer to one another. Experiments have even shown that, when people avoid expressing their emotions, this makes other people uncomfortable and less interested in spending time with them. Therefore, it seems clear that emotions help us to communicate and connect with other people. And, as you may have noticed, when the message gets through, and the other person conveys understanding, often the emotion diminishes. When the opposite happens, and the message does not seem to be getting through it all, the emotion usually sticks around and even intensifies. Consider this the next time someone close to you is trying to communicate something that seems emotionally important to her or him. Try to find a way to convey that the message is getting through, that you have some understanding of what the person is trying to communicate, and that you are interested and listening. Even these simple strategies, often referred to in psychology as validation, can go a long way in maximizing the communication potential of emotions and improving relationships. – Alexander L. Chapman, PhD., R.Psych., March 6, 2015.