Emotional Volume

Video Transcription

Hi, I'm Julie Tietz. And welcome to Conflict Resolution-- putting the pieces together. Today, our topic for a discussion is emotional volume. Is the loudest emotion the important one? So let's dive into this topic starting off with our key terms.

Emotional volume-- the intensity with which an emotion is expressed. We display our emotions in very different ways. And sometimes we display them with more force or volume than others when we are feeling less intense about a particular emotion that we're expressing.

So for example, let's say that your parents surprise you with a family vacation. And you on the outside are acting all excited that you get to go on this fabulous vacation. But on the inside, you're feeling kind of upset because you were going to plan this other fabulous vacation with your friends which you would have been a lot more excited about going on a vacation with than your family. But you're displaying excitement when you're feeling more disappointed.

Or maybe you're only displaying a slight smile when on the inside, you're intensely happy, and you're giddy, and you're feeling like you want to jump up and down. But you're being a little bit more reserved with a slight smile.

Or maybe you're shouting. And you're being a loudmouth. And you're expressing emotions very loudly and expressly when maybe you're feeling cool as a cucumber. So it's important to remember that what we express on the outside may not be as intense on what we're feeling on the inside.

So we also can experience multiple emotions. So you can be happy and sad at the same time. Well, what's all that about? An example of this could be let's say your grandma is dying. And she has cancer. And she's been in pain and suffering. And she's finally passed away. You're happy that she's no longer in pain or suffering. But you're also sad because you've lost somebody that you love and that you really care about.

And so this is just one example of how we can experience multiple emotions. And so I want you to think about a time or period in your life where you've had multiple emotions. And remember how that felt to you.

When we are in conflict, there are definitely some strong emotions involved. And we display our strong emotions often when we really mean something else. So we're having an underlying emotion here. So in a conflict resolution process, when we are displaying an emotion that is not as relevant to us, then we are in effect overpowering our needs.

And so we can't understand what the real party needs when they are displaying these strong emotions. And we can't reach real understanding when we're overpowering our needs. And so if we-- let's say we are hurt by the other party's actions. But we are saying oh, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. We're not really getting down to the bottom of the matter. And we're not having a real understanding in the process.

And this could involve the conflict to escalate even further or possibly resurface in the future. So to prevent this from happening, it's the role of the intervener to decipher these emotions in the process.

And so in this process, they may try and uncover the needs of the parties through questioning and maybe outright asking them, what do you need from this process? And trying to figure out what the real issue is here at hand and making sure we're meeting the needs.

And then also, we need to find a way and question the parties on how to prioritize their needs. So we may ask them to list what needs are most important to them. And then we also need to address the emotions. So if somebody is crying or is having an outburst and yelling, we need to address it. And in doing so, we can uncover the underlying emotions, which can uncover the underlying needs, which can lead to an effective resolution.

So now that we've covered emotional volume, let's go over our key points. Oftentimes our less intense emotions can be expressed more loudly. So our feelings that or emotions that maybe are not as important to us are expressed more loudly than the ones that are important to us. And overly-expressed emotion can get in the way of understanding our needs. So it can overpower what we're really trying to achieve and what we need from other parties.

And the conflict intervener's role is to help parties stress important emotions. So it is their role to find the true emotion so we can uncover the needs and effectively resolve the conflict. Thank you for taking the time out to view this tutorial. I really hope you've learned something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.