How connected are you with your own emotions and emotional needs? How do you go filling your own emotional needs in healthy ways? First and foremost you have to start there. Reconnect with your emotions, sit with them, every day, and just really listen to them. You don't have to do what they say, but they're an important form of communication from your instincts and human needs, to you and for you. Your emotions are for you.

Emotions are kinda like, when you put your hand in the shower before you get in, to test the heat, imagine ignoring that, wouldn't go well. Emotions come up to tell you something about your environment and what you need from that environment.

Sometimes your emotions just need reassurance. If you're in the practice of ignoring your emotions, they get loud, and eventually fester, so it's important to listen to them, validate them, acknowledge them, and then they usually move on, that's all emotions want. if it's an inconvenient emotion for your situation, acknowledge it, notice it without judgement, remind yourself that you are not your emotions, you are the entity observing your emotions, and that one doesn't serve you right now, thank it and let it go.

Connecting with your own emotions in a healthy way and sharing them, is part of emotionally connecting with others.

The other part is connecting with their emotions and caring for those. Make space for people to have emotions, all of them, be curious about people's emotions, ask questions, validation their experience (because all emotions are valid, regardless if they're showing up at what is considered by some as the "right time")

When someone is talking about their emotions they may want you to validate and acknowledge, sometimes people fall into the trap of trying to "fix" the issue associated with the emotion or situation causing the emotion, but actual emotional connection is validating and acknowledges that emotional response and making space for it to exist.

Imagine the emotions people are feeling are like a huge meal they've painstakingly cooked and put all their effort into. If someone came along and said it was bad or threw it straight in the bin, that would be really dejecting. Take time to work through each piece of emotion that crop up in a situation, for people around you, and the effort and energy that comes along with each step, like you would ask how they make each part of the dish, break it down to beginning to now, in process. You don't want to just sweep it off the table. When did the emotion start, go back to then, and then relate, you can understand feeling like that, and it's understandable for anyone and just leave space for them to talk. People are kinda using others to emotionally regulate, so letting them know their emotions are welcome and safe to express and validating them, makes them see you as a safe person.

It all starts with connecting with your own emotions, so practice makes perfect, keep at it!