In childhood, the way we're "trained" to understand and respond to emotions sets the foundation for how we relate to ourselves and others throughout our lives. The two primary realms of this emotional training are intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional awareness. Both are important, but often people develop strengths in one while neglecting the other, especially when early emotional training is shaped by trauma, emotional immaturity in parents, or caregiving roles thrust upon them.
Intrapersonal Training: Tuning Into Ourselves
Intrapersonal emotional training refers to how we learn to identify, interpret, and respond to our internal emotional experiences—our own energy shifts, bodily sensations, thoughts, and feelings. It is about self-awareness and emotional fluency within ourselves. This training fosters:
Emotional Literacy: The ability to label feelings accurately (e.g., "I feel anxious," "I'm sad," "I feel content").
Self-Regulation: Learning how to soothe, calm, and validate ourselves when emotions arise.
Mind-Body Connection: Understanding how emotions manifest physically, such as tightness in the chest for anxiety or warmth in the chest for happiness.
Boundary Setting: Knowing where we begin and end emotionally in interactions, which helps us not to take on others' emotions as our own.
When children are taught to tune into their own feelings and energy shifts, they develop a strong sense of self. This is often nurtured by emotionally attuned caregivers who ask questions like, "What are you feeling right now?" or "What do you need?" They allow the child to explore their internal world without rushing to fix things or dismiss emotions.
However, when a child lacks intrapersonal training, they might struggle to understand or express their feelings, leading to repression, confusion, or difficulty self-soothing.
Interpersonal Training: Focusing on Others
Interpersonal emotional training, on the other hand, is about how we learn to read and respond to others' emotions. It’s focused outward, requiring skills like:
Attunement to Others: Picking up on others’ emotional states through facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, or microexpressions.
Empathy: Understanding and feeling what another person might be experiencing.
Social Awareness: Knowing how emotions affect group dynamics, relationships, and interactions.
Caretaking of Others' Feelings: Sometimes this becomes an exaggerated focus when children are responsible for managing others' emotional states, particularly when parents are emotionally immature.
Children who are overly focused on others’ emotions may have been conditioned to scan the environment constantly to maintain emotional equilibrium at home. This hypervigilance can develop if a parent was emotionally volatile or unable to manage their own feelings. The child may have learned that their own emotional safety depended on closely monitoring and reacting to the caregiver's microexpressions, moods, or behavior. As a result, they become highly attuned to external emotional cues, often at the expense of their own emotional awareness.
How Trauma Plays Into This
When children are held responsible for the emotional well-being of emotionally immature parents, it can warp their emotional training. Instead of being taught how to navigate their inner emotional landscapes, they are trained to be hyper-aware of others’ needs, moods, and expectations. This leads to a range of things:
Emotional Enmeshment: The child grows up not knowing where their emotions end and the caregiver's begin, leading to confusion about their true feelings.
Poor Boundaries: They may struggle with setting boundaries, constantly feeling responsible for others' emotional states or taking on emotional labor in relationships.
Neglect of Intrapersonal Awareness: Without practice in tuning into their own emotions, these individuals often disconnect from their internal experience and may find it difficult to name their own needs or desires.
In trauma scenarios, the child learns to focus outward, ignoring their own emotions as they try to predict and manage the behavior of others. This survival mechanism might have been necessary in chaotic or emotionally unstable environments but becomes maladaptive in adulthood.
The Impact on Emotional Fluency
Emotional fluency—the ability to identify, understand, and express emotions—depends on a balance between intrapersonal and interpersonal training. Ideally, a person learns to:
Recognize their own feelings and needs (intrapersonal).
Understand and respond empathetically to others’ feelings (interpersonal).
Navigate the dynamic between internal emotions and external relationships without sacrificing one for the other.
However, when there's an imbalance—such as overdevelopment of interpersonal awareness at the cost of intrapersonal awareness—people may experience:
People-Pleasing: Focusing so much on others' emotions that they lose track of their own boundaries and needs.
Emotional Suppression: Pushing aside or being unaware of their feelings because they've been taught to prioritize others' emotional states.
Burnout: Carrying the emotional labor of others while not attending to their own emotional well-being, leading to exhaustion.
Difficulty with Self-Care: Not knowing how to self-soothe or fulfill personal emotional needs, relying instead on others to validate or regulate their emotions.
Navigating Deficits and Expanding Emotional Awareness
If you recognize a deficit in one of these areas, there are ways to nurture the neglected side:
For Expanding Intrapersonal Awareness:
Mindfulness Practices: Start tuning into your body’s sensations and how emotions feel physically (e.g., tightness, warmth, tension).
Journaling: Regularly reflect on your day and ask yourself, “What was I feeling in that moment?” or “What do I need right now?”
Therapy and Self-Reflection: Engage in therapy or self-inquiry to explore and name the emotions you're feeling, especially if you’ve been out of touch with your inner world.
Emotional Vocabulary Expansion: Learning to expand your emotional language can deepen your understanding of subtle emotional experiences.
For Expanding Interpersonal Awareness:
Empathy Building: Practice deep listening when others speak, focusing on understanding their emotions, not just their words.
Emotional Attunement: Observe the microexpressions and body language of others, not to take responsibility for them, but to build awareness of emotional undercurrents.
Asking Open-Ended Questions: Invite others to express their emotions by asking how they feel or what they need in a non-judgmental way.
Healing from Childhood Trauma
For those who were conditioned to focus on others’ emotions at the expense of their own, healing requires a process of:
Reclaiming the Self: Learning to prioritize your own emotional experiences and needs without guilt or shame.
Setting Boundaries: Establishing emotional boundaries so that you’re no longer responsible for managing others' emotional states.
Trauma Recovery Work: Unpacking the ways in which your emotional development was shaped by being responsible for caregivers’ feelings and reclaiming the ability to feel your emotions fully.
Intrapersonal training involves tuning into our internal emotional experiences, while interpersonal training focuses on understanding and responding to others' emotions. Both are crucial for emotional fluency. Trauma, especially from emotionally immature parents, can skew this balance, leaving some people highly attuned to others' feelings while neglecting their own. Expanding awareness in both realms is key to achieving emotional balance and healing from past experiences. No matter where you are in this process, there are ways to support building skills in either area. To learn more about these skill-building and mapping your own patterns of relating to emotions, feel free to reach out to Sarahbeth at sarahbeth@connectedresilience.us or by text/phone at (804) 220-0388.
Sarahbeth Spasojevich, Resident in Counseling, MEd, MA, MBA, NCC
Under the Clinical Supervision of Megan E MacCutcheon, LPC, PMH-C , Lic #0701005482
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