Should I show my emotions?

23/06/12 10:31 Filed in: myself | communication

When I started out working as a youth worker I wanted to be seen as a calm and collected. To look like I was never ruffled and so started going about my work trying to look like nothing ever got to me. It took about 3 weeks before the cracks appeared and for me to realise that this was never going to work. How was I ever going to role model responding effectively to issues if I presented as a robot!

In those early days I leant the big difference between showing your emotions and letting them take over and create more difficulties for yourself. It became obvious that to encourage people to want to change their behaviour, I needed to let them know how that behaviour effected me emotionally. That did not mean loosing it or getting to worked up about things. Because doing so made it harder to think clearly and come up with assertive responses. But it did mean expressing my feelings. And for some people that is hard.

You need to be honest - well up to a point - with yourself and with young people about what you feel. When they can see you are human, that you can display emotions and still communicate respectfully and assertively they will learn lots from that experience. Emotions are okay and yes you should show and tell people how you feel. It is the behaviour that is driven by the emotions that we really need to be more careful about.

Tags: emotions, assertive