Developing Emotional Sensitivity for Better Relationships

Are you Sensitive to your Partner's Emotions in your Relationship?

Emotional Insensitivity

Many of us are insensitive to the emotions of our partners in our relationships-be it a husband-wife, friend-friend, colleague-colleague, peer-peer or parent-child relationship. Some people are blind to the emotions of the others, sometimes. Some other people are blind  to the emotional state of others all the time. Or  Some others can tune into the emotional state of the partner, but they cannot empathize or respond appropriately to their partners. 

I would like to give some examples of emotional insensitivity from my counseling experience:

• One client I was counseling confessed to me that her husband has never understood her feelings for the last fifteen years. 
• A student I was counseling told me that she has been trying to get a hug from her mother for the last 9 years, but in vain.
• A parent told me that his son was grossly insensitive to the emotions and concerns of the parents in the family.

How does it Matter?

Emotional Sensitivity Matters. For, If you are insensitive to the partner's emotional state, you cannot respond to it appropriately. As a result, the relationship gets deteriorated.

• For example, your partner is angry with you for something. If you also get angry with her just because she is angry, then it leads to a clash. In this case, you are not taking time to understand why she is angry with you. As a result, you never get a chance to understand her emotions and you never get to bond with her emotionally.   

On the other hand, if you are sensitive to your partner's emotions, you can respond to the emotional state appropriately and the relationship gets strengthened.

• Taking the example given above, your partner is angry with you for something and you take time to tune into her feeling of anger and you discuss with her and tell her that you understand her feelings, then the emotional bonding strengthened between you both.  

Tuning into the Emotional State of the Other Person

Emotional Sensitivity

The ability to sense the emotional state of the other person is called empathy. Empathy is the ability
to get into the perceptual world of the other person and experience their feelings.

Five Things you can do to Develop Emotional Sensitivity

1. Listen not just to what the other person is saying, but also to what they are feeling: When we listen, focusing on feelings is more important than focusing on content or information because relationships are all about emotions rather than information.
2. Experience the emotion of the other person by imagining yourself in their position: This is what is called empathy, the ability to get into the emotional world of the other person.
3. Focus especially around the eyes and lips of the speaker while they are talking: Observing the eyes and the lips is essential to understanding the emotions of the other person because the eyes and the lips are the areas where the subtlest of emotions can be gauged.
4. Tell them that you understand their feelings and show it in your later interactions: This communicates that you are sensitive to their emotions and that you care for their feelings. 
5. Spend time with the people in your relationships:  For,  spending time with the people in your relationships not only shows that you care for them, but it can also help you to enhance your emotional sensitivity towards them.

The more you do the things above, the more you expand your Emotional Sensitivity Radar (ESR). We will discuss more about the ESR in the later posts...