Emotions are a fundamental reason we have relationships because of the satisfaction we get from interaction and the fulfilment of our needs it provides. Understanding emotions in your relationships helps you diagnose relationship problems. There is a peculiarity with emotions that they infect a relationship either damaging it or enhancing it. The impact of negative emotions in your relationship is damaging but knowing some tips to deal with such situations will give you fulfilling and intimate relationships.

Have you ever noticed how we feel in our interactions with other people are not just dependent on our internal self? How the other person is feeling, their body language, verbal communication, and the spoken words infect our feelings. Our emotions are not purely derived from our inner self, as people we interact with “inject” their emotions into us. Elaine Hatfield is a professor at the University of Hawaii and said, “We reflect what they feel.” I’ve coined this emotional injection to signify transferring emotions to other people in our relationships.

“How the other person is feeling, their body language, verbal communication, and the spoken words infect our feelings.”

Emotional injection just doesn’t occur in other people injecting us with their emotions. We also influence other people by the feelings we are communicating. Aggressive communication like a loud voice, fast hand gestures, and a forward posture will infect the other person you are communicating too and often will make him/her passive or the person will reciprocate your aggression. This is what happens when a simple disagreement escalates into a larger argument. One person injects their aggression in their partner making this person also aggressive. The newly infected partner then becomes a carrier infecting other people or reciprocating the infection to the original aggressor. It’s a downward spiralling cycle that damages relationships.

You maybe thinking that if negative emotions can be injected into people, is it just a matter of being positive and that will contaminate the aggressive or unhappy individual?

Rarely so is this true. In most cases the positivity and forcing your emotions on the unhappy individual is more counter-productive then useful. Seldom does positiveness alone overrule negative emotions. It is a poor conflict management technique and effective communication needs to be learned instead of simply attempting to transfer your emotions onto other people.

A good foundation for decontaminating poor emotions in other people whom you have a relationship with is to connect at their level. It is an emotional lifting technique where you adjust your emotions to reflect theirs and then you can slowly raise your emotions and simultaneously theirs until reaching a desired level. You should not reciprocate their aggression or depression, but having a lower emotional level will build empathy and help them feel more understood. It also helps to learn how to be assertive and develop conflict management techniques. Having these skills will help you defuse others emotions you do not want in your relationship.

Knowing how to decontaminate poor emotions in your relationships will give pathway to positive emotions. Effective communication skills will present you with a profound ability to further destroy poor emotions in your relationships. Adjusting your body language and words to empathize with the other person and using other effective communication techniques is a great way to improve emotions in your relationships.