Expressing Your Feelings, the Key to Intimate Relationships

The purpose of this workbook is to develop a practical, workable method to reduce anger, minimize relationship stress, and increase pleasurable experiences within the relationship.

 Two people are often more different than alike. These differences do not usually need to cause arguments and friction, but can be one of the most valuable aspects of a relationship. If these differences are dealt with productively, they will enhance a relationship significantly more often than they will stress it.

There are eight chapters, each of which is designed to help you work toward improving your interpersonal communication.

 Below is a brief description of each chapter.

• Exercising Self-Responsibility: Here you'll be learning what I mean by self-responsibility. This is a central concept, which includes everything in your life.

• Exploring the Scope of Feelings: In this chapter, you'll become aware of the vast number and variety of feelings you may experience in any given situation, but that you may not have recognized previously.

• Identifying the Sequence of Feelings: In this chapter you'll learn how to identify as primary or secondary the feelings you explored in the previous chapter. You'll learn why expressing primary feelings tends to be more constructive.

• Dealing with anger: Here you'll learn about how feelings vary in intensity. You'll learn a strategy for dealing more constructively with anger.

• Using "I" Language: This is a critically important chapter in which you will learn a "language" that will help you say things in a more accurate and constructive way.

• Identifying Defensiveness: Here you'll be learning how to recognize when you are behaving defensively.

• Identifying Vulnerability: In this chapter, you'll learn to recognize when you or your partner are being vulnerable.

• Effective Personal Expression: In this final chapter, you'll be putting together the skills you have learned in the previous chapter. You will be able to distinguish between effective and ineffective expression. This will help you become more aware of your own communication habits and improve your ability to communicate effectively.