Advantages & Disadvantages of Expressing

Feelings
Expressing your feelings is an important part of maintaining relationships, both personal and
professional. Expressing yourself allows you to let another person know how you feel about a
particular action or event and ensures there is no miscommunication between the two of you.
Though you make think your feelings are clear, the other person may not understand what is
going on until you make an effort to talk to him about it. However, expressing your feelings can
come with certain risks.

1. Communication
o Talking with someone about your feelings is critical in keeping your
communication open. When you discuss your feelings, you let other people know
exactly where you stand without the worry of interpretation or bottled-up feelings.
This type of open communication improves your relationships and strengthens the
bonds between friends. If you are honest about your feelings, your partner should
always be able to understand where you're coming from.

Emotional Health
o Expressing your feelings keeps you emotionally healthy. Storing your feelings
away or bottling them up can lead to higher stress levels. If you are upset about
something but are not discussing it, people may think that you are being rude or
passive-aggressive. When you are open and honest about your feelings, you may
find it's easier to let things go and you feel better in the long run. Tucking your
feelings away can lead to major problems down the line.
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Over Sharing
o When you discuss your feelings, you are sharing an intimate part of yourself with
another person. This expression may not always be appropriate. For instance, your
 boyfriend may want to hear about an argument you have with your parents, but
your boss may not want to engage you on such a personal level. You have to be
aware of your situation before sharing emotions that may be seen as inappropriate
or may make your business contacts uncomfortable.

Unintended Consequences
o You must always weigh the potential consequences of expressing your emotions.
As an example, if something one of your co-workers does annoys you, sharing
that emotion may cause permanent damage in your relationship with that person.
The same can be said for expressing your passionate love for a friend or your
complete disappointment in a family member. Expressing your emotions is
usually good, but you have to make sure you consider the emotions of others
before you begin sharing.

The Advantages of Expressing Feelings

Expressing your feelings openly is beneficial to all honest relationships.

The truism "honesty is the best policy" is often recommended as the best way of dealing with
interpersonal relationships. Dishonesty usually fosters mistrust and uncertainty in any
relationship, regardless of whether the dishonesty is discovered. Expressing yourself clearly and
dispassionately will help develop and maintain healthy relationships both professionally and
personally.

1. Increased Self-Awareness
o Articulating your emotions is one way of clarifying them. Humans are creatures
of language, and when the power of speech is used to put feelings into words,
often your listener will understand your feelings better. Hearing the words spoken
helps reinforce what is being felt. Sharing feelings with others helps a person to
become more self-aware. Usually the listener will assist in this process by re-
framing and repeating what was said as the speaker reflects upon the words and
emotions that were expressed.

Improved Relationships
o When feelings are shared, both communicators are likely to feel an increased
closeness as a result. The listener might be flattered that she was chosen to be the
recipient of this information and might volunteer some of her own feelings as a
gesture of reciprocity. Conversely, when a relationship is based merely on
 superficial dialogue and feelings are never shared, a lack of camaraderie is
evident, and the relationship will be lacking in depth. Emotions are personal and
usually kept confidential. When shared with someone trustworthy, the trust
between parties increases.

Greater Emotional Well-Being

o The old expression, "unspoken feelings never die" is true. Harboring a grudge
without ever informing the other party of how you feel they wronged you can
increase resentment. The expression "clearing the air" does exactly that. Once the
feelings have been expressed, the person divulging his emotions feels a sense of
relief and peace of mind. However, these feelings must be expressed in a non-
aggressive manner or the effect might be a negative rather than positive one.
Another expression, "getting it off your chest" alludes to the suffocating,
oppressive, negative feeling of bottled up emotions. Expressing these emotions
appropriately can be cathartic. If the person carrying these emotions does not have
a trusted friend, a professional therapist will serve the purpose.

Physiological Benefits
o You might experience a mind-body connection (Reference 3). Stress caused by
upsetting events in life as well as pent-up feelings could lead to ulcers,
sleeplessness, and headaches or lower the immune system's resistance to
infection. As a result, the threat of colds, the flu or even more serious health
complications increase. Doctors often recommend exercise as a healthy stress
reducer because exercise releases endorphins in the brain which lead to a greater
sense of well-being. A Psychology Today website quoted Nathaniel Thom, a
stress physiologist, in a New York Times Sunday Magazine article titled "Phys Ed
- Can Exercise Moderate Anger?" stating that that exercise reduces anger.
Exercise can therefore allow you to express your feelings without anger, which
will likely lead to a calming effect on your life.

The advantage of using emotions as part of a management styles is to avoid misunderstanding

between colleagues or misunderstanding between employers and employees. Facial expressions
that displayed by the employees can indicate their emotions and moods. Harsh criticisms or
funny jokes can be avoided before it triggers anger or sadness of another party. Furthermore, if
an organization is using emotions as the managing styles, employees can understand everyone
personalities well.

Expectations, attitudes, habits and practices of an employer can clearly showed by emotions.
Employees' experience is the main factors that will prevent them from making the same
mistakes. Besides that, if positive emotions are being brought to work, the working environment
will become livelier and employees were be satisfied and happy to continue their works. When
everyone in the organization shares positive emotions when greeting their customers, the
satisfaction of the customers will indirectly brings loyalty and profit to the company. When the
employers happy with the performance of the employees, incentives might be given to all the
employees.

If employers were overreact their emotions at the workplace, it may bring disadvantages. The
grudge of an employee or employer can cause conflict in the organization whenever they show
disgust or dislike emotions. They also will hurt the other party’s pride or feelings whenever they
voice out their emotions and feelings to their peers. As emotions can be easily express and
influence by other factors, the process of decision making might be affected too. Rumors that
bring negative emotions will cause the working environment tense yet uncomfortable.
Employees might suffer trauma and fear. Then, problems start to appear and this will lead to the
highest occurrence mistake done by the employees. These problems will lead to bad performance
and low productivity of an organization. In addition, this will result high job turnover in the...
Em
otional Clim
ate 1
This is a pre-copyedited version of a manuscript published in
International Review of Studies on
Emotion, 2,
197-218. Edited by K. T. Strongman @ John Wiley & Sons Ltd. (1992)
Emotional Climate: Social Structure and Emotional Dynamics
Joseph de Rivera
Department of Psychology
Clark University
Worcester, MA 01610, USA
Em
otional Clim
ate 2
The basic idea of emotional climate is relatively easy to grasp. I have in mind
an
objective group phenomenon that can be palpably sens
ed-as when one enters a party or a city and
feels an atmosphere of gaiety or depression, openness or fear-only, as the
term "climate" implies,
I am less interested in temporary moods than in more pervasive emotional
phenomena that are
related to underlying social structures and political programs. I have in mind,
for example, the
climate of fear which existed in Chile during the Pinochet regime and which
has recently
changed to a climate of hope (see, for example, Becker
et al.,
1990).
THE CONCEPT OF EMOTIONAL CLIMATE
While emotional climate is an appealing idea, it is an idea that is relatively
difficult to
make into a precise concept that can be objectively measured. How does one
distinguish between
temporary moods and pervasive climates? Is an emotional climate objective
or subjective? How
does a national mood differ from an individual's em
otion? How can climates be described? And
how can one measure an emotional climate when people in different
neighborhoods, regions or
social classes may feel quite differently? How does emotional climate
function, and how does it
relate to underlying social-political structures? I shall attempt to deal with
these issues but they
are inextricably interwoven and this paper is a heuristic enterprise rather than
an attempt to
answer definitely the problems that are posed.
Emotional atmosphere, climate, and culture
An emotional atmosphere or collective mood-as opposed to an emotional'
climate-
pertains to the collective behavior that a group or society may manifest when
it is focused on a
common event, rather than to the emotional relationships between members
of the society. Park
{1967) describes such emotional moods, when a crowd becomes a mob, or
when a group attends
a funeral or a wedding, or when an entire society develops a collective
attitude.
Em
otional Clim
ate 3
Speaking of the development of a mob, he notes that the attention of every
individual is
focused on some exciting object or incident and
then, "the excitement of every individual is
intensified by the response each unconsciously makes to the manifest interest
of every other
individual. The crowd assumes under these circumstances the character of a
closed circuit, each
individual responding to his own excitement as he sees it reflected via the
attitudes and emotions
of his neighbor...until the crowd is a collective unit." (Park, 1967, p. 257.) In
an analogous way,
a society may become mobilized. In fact, Park notes that every society, "faces
in the direction
from which the news comes," and alters its attitude to conform to what is
reported in the press.
This, of course, may be manipulated by the political leadership. Thus, Park
quotes William
Schirer's
Berlin Diary,
"the purpose of all the ceremony and ritual of the Nazis is it creates an
atmosphere, a tension, an expectancy, which, in focusing attention upon the
things hoped for,
will effectively inhibit any consideration that runs counter to those hopes."
(p. 259)
Emotional atmospheres are important in their own right and may blend into
some of the
climates I shall discuss and be reflected in attempts to measure climate.
Furthermore, a shift in
emotional atmosphere may herald a change in climate. Thus, Park mentions
how Franklin D.
Roosevelt's famous fireside talk of March 12, 1933
began to turn a climate of depression into one
of confidence, restored morale, and promoted unification. However, an
emotional climate is
more lasting than a local emotional atmosphere and does not simply refer to
collective feeling
and behavior but to how the people of a society emotionally relate to one
another-for example,
whether they care for one another or are afraid of each other. Thus, an
atmosphere of joy, or one
of fear, might exist if the people of a nation focused on a common victory, or
on an impending
invasion, whereas a climate of joy, or one of fear,
might exist if the persons of a nation met each
1. What factors do you think make some organizations ineffective at managing emotions?
Firstly, I think that the complex human thinking is one of the factors that make the organizations
hard to manage the emotions. Every person has his or her own emotions. Although in a same
situation, they may not act in the same way. Thus, the organizations face difficulties when they
are dealing with their employees. This problem is even becoming worse when the organisation is
very large and contains many employees from different background. Furthermore, the authority
of an organisation sometimes finds out they themselves cannot control their own emotions as
well. Besides, due to the business culture and etiquette which are still remain poorly in some of
the organisations, it becomes a problem for the organisations to manage the emotions effectively.
Some of the organisations have not practised the suitable business culture. For example, they will
yell and shout at the employees when things go wrong just like the second case mentioned. This
shows that some of the organisations still do not concern to manage the emotions effectively.
Moreover, emotions are automatic physiological responses to the environment. It will be very
hard for one to control his or her emotions by hiding their true feelings within their heart. It
revealed automatically. Even people that are trying to cover their true emotions can be
discovered from their facial expression. Thus, this is not the fault that the organisations cannot
manage the emotions effectively. This is because it is not an easy work to control the emotions of
whole organisations.

2. Do you think the strategic use and display of emotions serve to protect employees, or does
covering your true emotions at work lead to more problems than it solves?
By covering one’s emotions can sometimes ensure a work to be done perfectly. However, people
that are always covering their own emotions will always find themselves in a stressful situation...