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Database of Emotional Skills (100 Entries)

Emotional skills are abilities related to expressing, using, perceiving and regulating emotions. Human behavior and thinking is greatly influenced by emotions such that these are foundational social and life skills.

All (104)

Life Skills (38)

Social Skills (21)

Empathy (15)

Coping Skills (31)

Adaptability	Advocating For Others
Advocating For Yourself	Affirmations
Appreciation the Little Things In Life	Asking For Help
Awareness of How You're Being Perceived	Awareness of Your Own Reactions
Being Emotionally Available	Being Fully Present
Being Polite	Being Real With Others
Being Respectful	Being Yourself
Being a Good Friend	Bonding With Others
Building Rapport	Building Trust
Calmness	Cognitive Restructuring
Compassion	Conflict Resolution
Creativity as a Coping Strategy	Distancing Yourself From Negativity
Doing Good	Emotional Courage
Emotional Depth	Emotional Regulation
Emotional Resilience	Emotional Support
Establishing Positive Routines	Exercising as a Coping Strategy
Expressing Feelings	Expressing Sympathy
Expressing Understanding	Expressing Vulnerability
Feeling For Others	Forgiveness Practices
Genuine Interest In Others	Getting Enough Sleep
Gratitude Practices	Grounding Techniques
Helping Others	Humility
Impulse Control	Intuition
Kind Gestures	Learning to Say No
Learning to Say Yes	Limiting Self-Criticism
Love of Life	Managing Stress
Mindfulness	Motivation & Passion
Music as a Coping Strategy	Nature Appreciation
Nonjudgmental Listening	Openness to Experience
Overcoming Fears	Parenting Skills
Patience	Personal Integrity
Personal Presence	Personal Rituals
Personal Values	Perspective-taking
Physical Activities as a Coping Strategy	Positive Attitudes
Positive Humor	Prioritizing Health
Problem-Solving	Reading Emotions
Reading Intentions	Reading Moods
Reading Social Situations	Reframing
Relationship Skills	Relaxation Techniques
Religious Practices	Seeing Good Things In Others
Seeing Good Things In Yourself	Self-Compassion
Self-Confidence	Self-Control
Self-Discipline	Self-Expression
Self-Reflection	Sense of Accountability
Sense of Imagination	Setting Goals
Sharing Personal Stories	Sincerity
Spiritual Pursuits	Taking It Easy
Taking Responsibility	Tolerance
Tone of Voice Awareness	Trusting Others
Trustworthiness	Trying to See the Humor In Things
Understanding Others	Viewing Others Positively
Visualization	Walking as a Coping Strategy

What are Emotions?

Emotions are essentially states of mind that color thoughts. These give humans great cognitive and behavioral depth whereby we think and react to things differently based on our emotions at a point in time.

Emotions are stabilized by moods that are essentially sustained emotions. However, emotions will shift over time often in response to situations and thoughts. For example, you may be in a joyful mood due to good weather but then shift into a discontented mood due to a traffic jam. This is your mind adapting your thinking to each situation and is a normal thing.

Cultivating Emotional Skills

Emotional skills can be cultivated with awareness of emotions and how they influence your thinking, behavior and social interactions. For example, people will often react more to the tone of what you say and your underlying emotions than to the meaning of what you're saying.

It may be possible to develop greater emotional depth by doing emotional things such as listening to music. Likewise, just thinking about emotions and how they influence your life each day can help you to identify ways to improve over time.

Coping skills can be more difficult to acquire as emotions can suddenly derail your thinking and behavior and this can be difficult to handle at a point in time. The basic approach here is to prepare ways to rework your emotions to restore productive thinking and actions.

At a basic level, simply recognizing that an emotion has a hold on you may vastly improve things as you can feel that this will pass with time. It may also be a good principle not to take major actions while in a dramatic emotional state but rather to let your emotions cool first.