1. Communicating My Feelings

2. Explain In the last activity you learned how to identify your emotions. Now you’ll explore how to express those feelings in healthy ways. Good mental health includes taking responsibility for your emotions. Communicating your feelings appropriately helps others understand you better, helps to alleviate stress, and allows you to develop and maintain long-term relationships, which improves your health.

3. Share Think back to the last week. Write down some of the emotions you went through and the circumstances that caused them. Did you think you expressed your emotions in appropriate ways?

4. I-Messages I-messages are a way to appropriately communicate how you feel. Using the word “I” allows you to take responsibility for your emotions. I-messages don’t blame or attack the other person.

5. Read and Complete Let’s review some appropriate I-messages. Turn to “What Can I Say?”

6. Complete Other strategies also can be used to help express emotions appropriately. Turn to “Self-Talk & Body Language”.

7. Ask and Discuss How can I-messages help you communicate your feelings in an appropriate way? How can self-talk help you understand your feelings before you express them? What aspects of body language are important in communicating your feelings?

8. Summarize Communication is most successful when people stop and think about what they want to say and how they want to express their feelings. You can develop skills to help you communicate emotions appropriately.