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Does Speaking a Feeling Change a Feeling?

Case example: Imagine that I’ve been angry for a month, and I finally pass the woman I’m angry at, so say, “I’m angry at you.” Once I say it, I’ve actually changed the emotion.Now it’s harder to comfort or kid myself about it in secret. Once spoken out loud, an emotion is a different animal--now it’s information between us, which people can argue about or laugh at or critique.Talk with others changes the very thing we’re dealing with.

Talk changes the actual size of emotions. If I tell a friend I’m scared of something, my fear gets bigger or smaller, depending on the language we use to talk about my experience. And if I tell someone I’m lost, I’ve already done something practical to improve my situation. Conversation changes our emotions by changing our relationships and our practical options.

Modern psychology is doing very neat work with this idea.For instance, psychologists working in Narrative Theory study the influence of the words you choose on your own behaviors.The phrases you speak out of habit can change your tendency to do one thing or the other.This might seem obvious: If the youngest kid in the family is nicknamed the “grouch,” she’ll start expecting and excusing her own grouchiness. And if her older brother is routinely called “the disciplined kid,” he expects and pursues harder work. A large part of changing behaviors is changing the stories with which we explain our lives to others. If I change my story, I change my own expectations and tendencies.