Tag: Living Fully

Have you ever tried to talk with a stone-faced person, showing no facial reaction at all to what you were saying? It didn’t take long before you began faltering for words, losing your train of thought, and finding it hard to carry on, did it? Why is that? Because when there’s no emotional attunement, no empathy, we don’t feel connected, understood, or valued. We need to feel like people are getting what we’re saying.

Emotional attunement takes more than looking at someone or hearing their words. It means using all of our senses to understand what they’re feeling so much that we feel it too. It takes being able to sense, interpret, and respond to someone so that they don’t feel alone any longer. Our eyes become moist with tears when they hurt or beam with happiness to mirror their joy. We lean in and touch their arm with a gesture of compassion. We reflect back to them their emotions with words such as, “That must have been so frustrating!”