>Thought: ‘I feel that you aren’t taking this seriously.’
>Emotion: ‘I feel frustrated.’
I definitely agree that the "emotional" way of looking at this statement is better. The "thought" here is accusatory and puts the other person on the defensive. Moreover, like the article says, saying the person is not taking things seriously is just an evaluation of their actions; you don't know that its true, you don't know how the other person feels and its not good to tell them how they feel. That evaluation is based on how YOU feel, so its more honest to just share that than your own theory on how someone else feels.
In other words, it helps get past your own assumptions about people and deal with what you actually know.
The example starts from the point of "let's express an emotion", and shows two sentences, right and wrong. Without trying to say "I feel", while following the other steps, there's no opportunity to even make the mistake of choosing the "wrong" one. That's why I asked why the article bothers describing step 2. at all.
I agree that evaluating the actions of the other person is not useful for resolving the problem, but the article also doesn't provide a justfication for sharing my own feelings (thank you BeetleB for shining some light).
Personally, if someone from the management told me "I feel X", I would completely discount it, because first, I don't care, and second, they have an incentive to be dishonest if it reduces the trouble they have to deal with.
>Thought: ‘I feel that you aren’t taking this seriously.’
>Emotion: ‘I feel frustrated.’
I definitely agree that the "emotional" way of looking at this statement is better. The "thought" here is accusatory and puts the other person on the defensive. Moreover, like the article says, saying the person is not taking things seriously is just an evaluation of their actions; you don't know that its true, you don't know how the other person feels and its not good to tell them how they feel. That evaluation is based on how YOU feel, so its more honest to just share that than your own theory on how someone else feels.
In other words, it helps get past your own assumptions about people and deal with what you actually know.