Introduction to warmth
Warmth is the pleasant feeling you experience when you have positive interactions with other people. You might feel warmth, comfort, and intimacy when communicating with your close relationships, especially if they’re positive. Ultimately, communicating warmth makes you feel connected to others and satisfied with your relationships.
You communicate warmth in your close relationships when you:
- Validate your relational partner. When you recognize and validate your relational partner’s feelings, it can lead to feelings of warmth and make you both feel closer.
- Show involvement and approachability. When you show interest in your relational partner and signal to them that you’re available for interaction or conversation, you’re displaying warmth.
- Self-disclose. Sharing information about yourself, especially if it is appropriate and positive, can lead to feelings of warmth and intimacy.
- Emphasize positive feelings about the relationship. Reminding your relational partner how you feel about them and the relationship can lead to feelings of warmth, relational satisfaction, and stability in your relationship. For example, telling your romantic partner that you love them or reminding your battle buddy that they are important to you are ways to communicate warmth.
- Appropriately address others. Warmth can be communicated by how you address others. For example, using nicknames can make you feel close to your romantic partner, family, and close friends. But it’s important to be appropriate in the way you address others. For example, if you use nicknames with your chain of command, that can be viewed as disrespectful and too familiar.
Other ways to communicate warmth can include:
- Make eye contact
- Smile
- Face your conversational partner
- Have an open body posture (for example, arms uncrossed, slightly leaning forward, etc.).
- Appropriate touch for the relationship (for example, handshake, hug, kiss, etc.)
- Display expression in your voice (for example, clarity, variation in pitch, etc.)
- Spend time with your relational partner
- Show up on time
How to use warmth
Though there are many reasons why you need to show warmth in your personal and professional interactions, these 3 ways are probably the most relevant to you as a Service Member:
- Communicate warmth to maintain your relationships.
Communicating warmth is a way to maintain your relationships. This can help you keep your relationships strong and satisfying or even deepen your relationships. Essentially, communicating warmth helps you feel a strong relational bond with your close social connections.
- Communicate warmth to improve health.
Military couples who communicate warmth in their relationships, such as showing affection for and appreciation of each other, report better health. Specifically, military couples with high levels of warmth in their marriages have better coping skills and mental health, and they report lower levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms.
In addition, communicating warmth is a strategy mental health providers can use when helping their patients with PTSD. For example, warmth can help individuals who initially seek help for their psychological distress, it can help trauma survivors adapt by feeling less betrayed, alienated, angry, or shameful, and it can decrease PTSD symptoms.
- Communicate warmth to improve military recruitment.
Military recruits expect to be treated with warmth and respect. For example, they expect a warm welcome, and they expect the recruiter to be courteous, understanding, and motivated. Meeting potential recruits’ expectations of warmth can help reduce the number of application withdrawals. And, potential recruits are more likely to feel positively about the service branch and are more willing to apply when they perceive the recruiter is warm and friendly.
Ideas for how to adapt warmth
When you look in your toolbox and pick up your “warmth tool,” you decide how you want to use it. Think about the context of the relationship to decide how to adapt warmth appropriately. For example, are you wanting to:
- Communicate warmth in a personal relationship? If so, you can communicate warmth in more intimate ways by expressing love, using nicknames, and sharing vulnerable information about yourself.
- Communicate warmth in a professional relationship? If so, you can communicate warmth in more appropriate ways by using open body language to show you’re available for conversation, communicating care, and using appropriate forms of address.
Every relationship is different, so think about what seems most appropriate for your particular interaction. The ideas above may not work for all relationships and all situations and that’s okay. Pick up the strategies for communicating warmth that work for you and your relationships and the strategies that make you feel most connected to others.
To improve your ability to communicate warmth, you can work on your active listening skills. By validating, making time for, and truly listening to your relational partner you can increase feelings of warmth and closeness in your relationship.
Reflection
To help you think about when to pick up your warmth tool and improve your communication toolbox, reflect on:
- Which strategies for communicating warmth feel appropriate for the relationships in my life? How does the appropriateness of each strategy differ based on each relationship? For example: Which strategies feel appropriate for my closest personal relationships, my less close personal relationships, my professional relationships, etc.?
- How has communicating warmth in those relationships affected them?
- Do I feel closer to that person after communicating warmth?
- Do I feel more satisfied with that relationship after communicating warmth?
- Which relationships in my life might benefit from me communicating warmth?
- How do I think communicating warmth would affect those relationships?
- What’s my plan to improve how I communicate warmth?
- What resources can I use to improve my communicating warmth skills?
- What’s my plan if I’m struggling to show warmth to someone?
- What other communication toolbox skills can I try?
Additional resources: Warmth
Check out these other HPRC articles related to warmth:
- Building intimacy in your relationship
- Questions to build your relationship health
- Validating your relationships
- Sending warmth through meditation
