Emotion Work

The area of Social Influences in Emotions and Communication is an area that I feel could use further discussion. My reasoning behind this is that I feel that so much of the way we communicate is guided by the the framing rules and feeling rules that we live by that we would all benefit from learning as much about them as possible. If anything we may gain a stronger understanding of why people are acting in ways we like or dislike. Emotion work, which Wood (2010) explains as the "effort to generate what we think are appropriate feelings in particular situations"  is something that we all do even if we may not be aware. There are times when I question how others might view me if my communication (both nonverbal and verbal) were an exact reflection of how I actually felt inside. There are times when I am working on my emotions just to correspond with what I think is appropriate for each interaction in my life. An example of this is that I have empathy for others, and sometimes so much so that when a person is telling me something sad that happened to them I feel my tears wanting to come out yet I hold them back because I feel like this is inappropriate and may come of as "fake". I have also noticed that people often refrain from speaking ill of people in situations where they think they might offend someone else. I think that people can benefit from honesty even in situations where we believe that we must engage in emotion work so that we are doing what we think is the right thing for that moment. One example is that I wouldn't want a good friend to tell me that "things will get better soon "if they honestly believe that things won't get better soon. It would feel better to hear their true feelings and then an explanation of that truth than to hear something artificial and constructed.