Feelings can be very abstract and hard to tackle, especially when you’re trying to explain them to somebody else. Many of us wonder if such intangible concepts living in our minds are worth expressing at all, and often choose to stay quiet on the subject. They’re not facts, some think, they’re just feelings, and who am I to impose mine onto other people?

Others take the opposite approach, and find it important to assert their feelings openly whenever something is on their mind. Though communicating your feelings is truly a good and important practice, when you overdo it and become unnecessarily hurtful, it becomes a problem.

Effective communication finds the balance between saying whatever is on your mind and keeping it all to yourself. Expressing yourself healthily is an important part of self-esteem, so here are three steps to help you master this tricky practice:

1. Name your feelings
   When describing how we feel on any given day, we’ll normally use one of two words: ‘good’ and ‘bad’. To communicate effectively, it is helpful to dig a little deeper and get in touch with the specifics of your feelings. If you’re feeling bad, what does that mean for you in the moment? Are you feeling afraid? Insecure? Resentful? And if you’re feeling good, are you feeling confident? Loved? Excited? Developing your vocabulary of emotional words will help to better understand your feelings, which will make it so much easier to express them!
    
2. Work through it on your own (or with the help of a therapist)
   Once you identify what you’re feeling, it is a good next step to pinpoint why you feel that way. What is causing you to feel this way? If you can access a strong understanding of what events or situations are causing your feelings, you’ll be much more likely to communicate them to another person in a way that they will understand. If you don’t understand your feelings, how will they be able to? For some people it can be incredibly helpful to talk their feelings out with a therapist or friend before communicating to others, but just make sure whoever you’re brainstorming with is someone who will be helpful by asking and answering questions, and not someone who will interject with unsolicited opinions or advice.
    
3. Stick to your own point of view
   After you name your feelings and understand where they’re coming from, you’ll be ready to sit down to talk them out. Whether you’re upset by something someone did, the current political climate, or another issue entirely, it is crucial that you express it from your own point of view. For example, if you’re angry at a significant other for saying something you didn’t like, you may find yourself in defense mode and criticize their word choices with statements such as “that was mean,” or, “that was offensive,” or, even, “how could you say something like that?” All this does is make the other person feel attacked, and will put them in defense mode. This is how arguments get started. Instead, speak from your own perspective by phrasing your sentences to be strictly about your experience. For example, you could say, “When you said that, I felt disrespected.”

Effectively communicating your feelings can be thought of as teaching. You’re teaching somebody about what’s going on in your mind so that they can better understand you, and perhaps understand their role in your life. Just like anything else you’d want to teach, you need to know as much about this subject as possible. The more you know about your feelings, the easier it will be to communicate them. When you understand your feelings and discuss them from your personal perspective, you’ve done your part in the effective communication process.