Introduction

First of all, I really want to express my emotion. Since I started blogging, I have really come into contact with a lot of new vocabulary about emotions. We have talked about the emotion wheel before, which is used to test emotions. We also talked about the blue emotion among color emotions. People with blue emotions are representatives of reason. Every noun about emotions has increased my knowledge a lot.  And what we are going to talk about today is emotionally available. I really don’t understand it from the literal meaning, let’s analyze it in detail below!

What is emotionally available?

“Emotionally available” is a concept used to describe a person who is emotionally capable of empathy and communication. It manifests as a person’s ability to establish deep emotional connections with others, including listening, understanding, and responding to the emotional needs of others, and being able to express one’s own emotions and needs.

Emotionally available people have the following basic characteristics

• Express emotions: They are able to express their emotions, including joy, anger, sorrow, fear and anxiety. Be willing to share your feelings when appropriate rather than hiding or suppressing your emotions.
• Listening to others: Emotionally available people are good at listening to the needs and feelings of others. They don’t just listen to what others say, but truly understand and accept the emotions of others, and can give others attention and support instead of despising or ignoring other people’s emotions.
• Build Deep Connections: Able to build authentic and intimate relationships, emotionally available people are willing to invest time and energy in building relationships of mutual trust and understanding with others, rather than focusing solely on their own needs or interests.

The importance of being emotionally available

Build and maintain healthy relationships

Such people can have true and meaningful relationships with others who feel emotionally available as well. As long as it is reflected in:

• Build trust: It entails having an open heart wherein one is free to express his/her own feelings as well as listening to those of other people. The ability to listen in this way is instrumental in building trust among friends and allows one to establish stronger friendship bonds with individuals.
• Effective communication: It means that one can voice out his or her own emotional needs and opinions but at the same time be aware of the emotional needs of others. Good communication skills helps you solve many issues and prevents possible misunderstanding. It also makes it possible to understand other person’s opinion.
• Support and understanding: They offer comfort, listen keenly, are empathetic and can help friends solve their problems.

Improve personal happiness

• Emotional support: Emotionally available people tend to be more fulfilled and joyous as they often want others to share their joys and sorrows leading to emotional support and understanding. This support could lead in improving wellness and lowering stress.
• True self: In this regard, they are not restraining themselves but instead displaying it all out as they’re being natural by nature. People who are emotionally available, can share what they emotionally need or what they think and get a sense of acceptance in return, and understanding feeling.
• Self-growth: People who are ready to meet their emotion never opt for running away in any emotional crisis. These individuals are optimistic and keep on exploring new opportunities.

Helps with mental health

• Emotional expression and emotion regulation: People who are emotionally accessible share feelings about their emotional needs as well as communicate their own opinion without suppressing or hiding emotions. Such type of emotional articulation facilitates venting out one’s personal feelings and leads to a balanced state within emotional regulation, lowered level of fear and stress, and sustained state of sound mind.
• Emotional support and emotional dependence: Emotionally available people are willing to accept emotional support and understanding from others, and provide emotional support and understanding to others, which helps individuals establish healthy emotional attachment relationships and enhances individuals’ psychological resilience and ability to cope with difficulties.
• High emotional intelligence: People who are emotionally available usually have high emotional intelligence and can better understand and manage their own emotions and the emotions of others, which helps individuals cope with challenges and solve problems more effectively, and maintain the stability of mental health.

How to become an emotionally available person?

Cultivate curiosity

Making the transition from judgmental to curious is a crucial step for anyone who wants to become more emotionally available. Whether with friends, colleagues, or complete strangers, people habitually judge others based on their own experiences. So we can start by cultivating “curiosity” and moving from thinking we know what’s going on to wanting to know what’s going on. This shift in thinking may seem subtle, but it can change our perspective in a big way.

Case presentation

Suppose you are shopping in the supermarket right now and see a toddler crying, while his mother just stands aside and does nothing or says anything.

Judgmental perspective

This is a terrible mother. The baby was crying like this and she just stood there motionless, some people shouldn’t have kids before they’re ready.

Curious angle

When the child cried, the mother did nothing. I wonder what happened to her? Maybe overwhelmed? lack of sleep? Or are you physically and mentally exhausted and don’t know what to do? Maybe she needs a hug right now, someone to reassure her that “everything is going to be okay”?

Widen your circle

Empathy begins with contact with different people, especially strangers. Research has found that contact with people of different races increases their emotional availability to them at a neurological level. In an interesting study from the University of Queensland, psychologist Yuan Cao and colleagues found that when spending time with a different racial group, seeing or feeling pain from other racial groups increases feelings toward others. Empathy among racial groups.

Therefore, broadening your circle – in the broadest sense, interacting with more people, especially from different “groups” – can help you become more emotionally available.

Lose yourself in a good book

But be careful, you have to choose one, not just any book.

Reading literary fiction has been shown to increase emotional availability—a finding that comes from an interesting series of studies led by social psychologist Emanuele Castano of the New School in New York.

In the study, participants were divided into different reading groups based on the type of reading they read: popular fiction, literary fiction, non-fiction or nothing at all – and then tested on their ability to infer and understand the emotions of others.

The findings are significant. When participants read nothing, or read a combination of popular fiction and non-literary fiction, the results were less impressive. Reading literary novels, however, greatly improves readers’ empathy.

What is the reason for this?

In fact, literary fiction tends to explore the psychological complexities of its characters. These interesting, complex characters drive the story and we, the readers, become emotionally involved with their desires and motivations. The inner lives of the characters in the book are not easy to discover, but they are worthy of in-depth exploration. These are presented in layers in literary novels. In addition to this, we can also practice enhancing emotions emotionally available on “virtual objects”.

For example: Although we have no experience in the world of martial arts, we can still feel the tragedy when Qiao Feng committed suicide; even though we may not have experienced war, we can still sympathize with people who have suffered from war. By reading literary fiction, we can practice being emotionally available “all over the world.”

Conclusion

Emotionally available is actually something that most people have. However, in recent years, perhaps due to the increasing pressure of life and work, more and more people have lost their ability to be emotionally available and become emotionally unavailable. Such people are not Will respond on an emotional level and often feel lonely. The next article will introduce what emotionally unavailable is. Finally, I hope everyone is happy every day~