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The Secret Power of
Communicating Feelings
PowerPhrases to Say
What You Feel
99
“We don’t cry or lose our temper because we express our feelings too of-
ten but because we express them too rarely.”
—Difficult Conversations,
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patterson, Sheila Heen
In my experience teaching seminars around the world, I have
learned that feelings are one of the hardest things for people to
communicate. People often speak fromfeelings, but it is far
more difficult for them to speak aboutfeelings. Hey—I can
relate! I used to spend an entire hour with my counselor pres-
suring me to identify and express a single feeling before I would
admit to feeling anything.
This is not unusual. Many people don’t know what they
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