Generally, there are two ways individuals react towards situations that are displeasing. Some people blow up in a volcanic manner. They may shout, scream or rave and after they have done so, they (might) cool down and return to normal. Others on the other hand, keep their anger or bitterness inside them by clamming up. They may display their displeasure in their faces or body language but they would not vocalize it or act on it there and then. They keep it inside and resentment builds up. Both types of reactions are unhealthy. Respond to displeasure in a healthy way is key to anger management and having peaceful mindset.

Many people do not want to address a conflict, and bring up strong emotions. As a result, they simply keep quiet when upset. Accordingly, they suppress their anger or other emotions. Unfortunately, this isn’t a healthy long-term strategy as unexpressed or unresolved anger or emotion can lead to resentment, future explosion and additional conflict in the relationship.

This is why individuals need to increase their level of awareness toward their emotions, particularly anger while trying to know how they feel and understand why they feel that way. Not once we don’t know why we feel angry or resentful. Other times, we feel that the other person isn’t doing what they “should,” but we aren’t aware of exactly what we want from them, or if it’s even reasonable. As such, it is important to articulate to ourselves what we need and express it in an assertive manner. This is an important component of Anger Management.

Psychotherapy in NYC was the subject of many shows, movies and particularly Woody Allen movies as well as many New Yorker cartoons. The reality is that many individuals living in New York City face high level of stress and struggle with physical, emotional and mental problems.

A Gallup poll that was performed on 2010, ranked New York City near the bottom on emotional health. The study measured level happiness, worry, anger, and stress and New York City was ranked 132 out of 162 cities. Therefore, it is not surprising that a disproportionate number of people in New York City engage in psychotherapy and counseling. New York City is full of mental healthcare therapists who want to look after your well-being. There are close to 5000 licensed psychologists practicing in New York City and many more other mental health professionals such: Social workers, Marriage and Family Therapists, Mental Health Counselors, Psychoanalysts etc. Manhattan has the highest concentration for psychotherapy referrals per person.

Why do so many people living in New York City see psychotherapists? Many indicate that life in NYC simply is stressful. Due to the fast paced lifestyle in this big city, many people suffer from stress related problems which are manifested in different ways, physically, mentally and emotionally. Some would also say that in such complex city that is driven by fast pace life style, it is harder to form deep interpersonal connections. Lack of social connection and intimate relationship may result in increase of alienation, despair, depression, anxiety, anger and addiction. And, as we mentioned, it is easier to find a psychotherapist in New York City simply because there are so many available therapists around.

So, not only do more people seek therapy in New York City, but those who do may find it easier to talk about their issues. In New York therapy is more common, and people are less concerned with what others might think of them as compare to other smaller cities and rural USA, who still view psychotherapy with its negative stigma. Of course, many people choose therapy because they see it as a mean to improve skills and enhance growth, fulfillment and happiness. They consider psychotherapy as a form of self-enhancement rather than just a place to address problems or to resolve deep wounds.

Good health is an essential ingredient to a happy and enjoyable life. Even when your schedule is crazy with too much to do and your time to accomplish everything is limited, don’t let your well-being suffer. The next time you have some type of psychological condition that you want to address, you can easily contact spiral2grow, psychotherapists in NYC to help you.  spiral2grow, located in New York City offers quality of services of highly trained psychotherapists. After all, being healthy and taking care of your well-being is a necessity.

Good health is an essential ingredient to a happy and enjoyable life. Even when your schedule is crazy with too much to do and your time to accomplish everything is limited, don’t let your well-being suffer. The next time you have some type of psychological condition that you want to address, you can easily contact spiral2grow, psychotherapists in NYC to help you.  spiral2grow, located in New York City offers quality of services of highly trained psychotherapists. After all, being healthy and taking care of your well-being is a necessity.

Anger management or the ability to constructively process our emotional state is key to our well being. Everyone gets angry, but not everyone knows how to manage it. The problem is not about getting angry, but rather what we do with the anger. The meaning we attached to the anger and taking the appropriate action is the key to managing anger.

When our view of life comes from a position of entitlement and/or high level of expectations, then when don’t get what we want or our expectations are not met, we become angry. When we require life, relationship or our partner to be an ideal, without imperfections, faults or inconsistencies, we cannot avoid of being angry. If we expect life to be fair, we cannot avoid of being angry when we are treated unfairly, or when we don’t like the situation. When we adapt a victim mentality or attitude, and see the “others” as bad or negative (the “enemy”) that want to hurt us, we feel that we are entitled to be angry since we think as a victim and need to protect ourselves.

In addition, when we suffer from lack of self esteem, poor self-image, low self respect or a negative self image, we are having difficulties in tolerating conflict or accept criticism from others. This is why healthy self esteem is important element in managing anger. The ability to resolve conflict, negotiate or collaborate is based on increased awareness, realistic perspective, self respect and empathy as well as assertive behavior.

Many people who experience anger problems do not take responsibility for their anger and refuse to see their contribution to the negative situation. They avoid seeing how their perspective effect their behavior and what is their part in the negative relationship. Every time that they insist of being right and having attachment to such unhealthy view, they take the position that being right is more important than the relationship. As a result, a vicious cycle of reactivity and anger is amplify and the relationship suffers.

To manage anger in a healthy way, we need to be able to accept responsibility to our anger and emotion, to calm down and then to express our anger assertively. Accordingly, it is crucial to express ourselves from the perspective of what is hurting us and what we need. This attitude, focus on the “I” rather than the “YOU.” It express personal needs rather than blame the other and done so in a constructive communication style. If we are able to pause, stop and think before acting rather than impulsively react on our anger, we can process our feelings, understand what is causing it, then we can better understand what stimulate our anger and express our needs in a healthy way.

We must understand that our anger emotion is the result of our own subjective perception and response to reality. Once we understand and accept that our anger belongs exclusively to us and that it is created as a result of our view of the situation, we are moving toward a positive direction of managing our anger. Accordingly, the ability to develop realistic expectations for oneself and others will help to eliminate anger problems.

This is why being responsible to our anger is the cornerstone of all healthy relationships. Accepting responsibility to our anger, being able to process it constructively increases our ability to resolve anger and conflict and develop more healthy and happy relationships.

Change is an inevitable part of life, personal growth as well as improving self esteem. Without change, we experience stagnation, depression and even death. Change is the only thing that brings progress, and yet, it is often what we resist and fear the most! As the world around us changes, we must learn to change with it or else we will experience confusion, frustration, stress and anxiety.

Yet, we can practically turn our fear of change into a constructive, energizing force for bettering our life. There is always risk involved in doing something or achieving desired goals and the only way to succeed is by acting and doing. For that we need to conquer our fear. So, remember every fear is an opportunity to grow.

To be effective individuals or leaders, we must be able to embrace change, both professionally and personally. So often, we get stuck doing things the same way (again and again), and hoping for different results and hoping it will work if we just try a little harder. This is called insanity. We often resist the idea of changing our course of actions, because a new path would be foreign to us and we afraid of the unknown. We usually prefer the comfort zone, which is known to us rather than doing something different. It is satisfying our need to avoid facing the fear, yet it preventing us from a long term growth.

To truly achieve our goals, we must ask ourselves, “Where is it that we want to go, what are we doing to get there, and what is holding us back from being there now?”  Once we know what we need, we need to make decisions and act. To be more successful we need to evaluate our actions and if needed we must do things differently. The future we will experience is the result of the choices we make this moment. To create a better future we must begin to see change as an opportunity and choose to live with courage and commitment.

Developing the courage for change will help you to create a future that is more successful and fulfilling. Walt Disney shared this belief with us when he stated, “all of our dreams can come true- if we have the courage to pursue them.“

Fear of Commitment

Fear of commitment is infecting modern relationships. Not only it is difficult to be happy and satisfied with oneself, it is even more difficult to find happiness, satisfaction and fulfilling connection in one’s intimate relationship with another person. It is no wonder that many people react to this challenge by fearing long-term commitment.

The following are few examples how fear of commitment can manifest itself:

• Fear of losing their freedom.
• Waiting for the right one; having the ideal (wrong) notion that there is only one/right person to be committed too.  A ferry tell notion of “living happily ever after.”
• Having a fear of losing their own identity if they were to allow a relationship to develop.
• Expressing high levels of criticism of a partner or relationship; finding faults with others.
• Hurting their partner (deliberately or unconsciously) while sabotaging the relationship. Effectively giving reason for the relationship to fail.
• Having extremely high (unrealistic) expectations in their partners or themselves, so that a relationship doesn’t develop. Rejecting other prematurely and does not allow a potential relationship the opportunity to grow.
• Having multiple partners, while leaving a trail of failed relationships and a lot of tears.
• Rejecting efforts from their partner to discuss marriage or other kind of commitment.
• Interacting with other people who also suffer from commitment issues, so as to avoid any relationship issues to come up.
• Ambivalence and confusion color their decision making particularly in intimate relationship. They may leave a relationship, return to it, leave again, and so on.
• Some individuals may also not be able to commit to work, hobbies, timetables, and even counseling!

Fear of commitment may be originated from several sources. It may be because you witnessed a separation of your parents or any of your near and dear ones. A confusion of social/cultural or parental pressure with your own personal needs/values may lead to fear of commitment. You may have experienced a traumatic (emotional) experience or tragic incident in life who forces you to maintain a safe distance from others. In addition, suffering from low self esteem, issue with identity, enmeshment, boundaries etc. may lead to challenges in this area.

Clear communication is an important part of assertiveness. In communication is where assertiveness can manifest it self the most (or not). This is where you show:

• knowledge – you are able to understand and summarize the situation
• feelings – you can explain your feelings about the situation
• needs – you are able to explain clearly what you want or need, giving your reasons and any benefits to the other party

It isn’t just the content of what you say that counts; it is the way you put it across (the process of how you communicate the content). Assertive communication helps to:

• be honest with yourself about your own feelings
• keep calm and stick to the point
• be clear, specific and direct
• if you meet objections, listen to the other person’s point of view whilst ensuring that your message is clear
• try to offer alternative solutions if you can
• ask, if you are unsure about something
• if the other person tries to create a diversion, point this out calmly and repeat your message
• use appropriate body language
• always respect the rights and point of view of the other person
• own your messages by using “I” – for example, it’s more constructive to say “I don’t agree with you” than “you’re wrong”
• remember, you have the right to make mistakes and so does everyone else

Assertiveness communication requires a co-operative, respectful and mutually beneficial relationships. Assertiveness is an attitude and a way of relating to the outside world, backed up by a set of skills for effective communication. By mastering effective and assertiveness communication you move forward and empower yourself despite conflicts and challenges.

Relationships are richer if they have some of each of the following types of intimacy.

Shared Intimacy: A connection we get from participating in the same activity with another person. The activity can be anything from washing dishes, going for a walk, watching a movie, having sex or parenting. The common theme here is that by sharing the activity we feel more connected. Usually connection occurs nonverbally in this type of intimacy.

Other-Validated Intimacy: This is the connection established when we share our emotional experience with another person and they validate it – they respect and sympathize with our take on it, they tell us our emotions are valuable and valid, or they simply welcome our sharing with kindness and understanding. The message we receive is that our experience is OK, we are welcomed and understood, and that it is safe to be open with this person. This is the kind of experience that draws most couples together and is what the “honeymoon” period is all about.

Self-Validated Intimacy: In this type of intimacy, we are open with the other person even though they do not validate us. Unlike in other-validated intimacy, we must provide ourselves an internal sense that our emotions or thoughts are valuable, appropriate, welcomed and understood. This allows us to be honest with our partner even when we expect them to not like what we have to say or do. This requires courage, and it is the only way that members of the couple can stop “pleasing” and really be who they are. As couples mature there is more of this kind of intimacy. In order to support your partner in self-validated intimacy, it is important to be respectful and it is helpful to not humiliate them or abandon them when they share something you do not like or agree with.

Ideally, couples experience all three types of intimacy regularly. The research indicates that happy couples have 5 times as much pleasant experience with one another than negative. So to be happy together, set time aside to have a wide variety of fun together regularly. The more you engage in the above three kinds of intimacy, you will create a greater and more satisfying relationship for both of you.

Coaching (Life Coaching, Career Coaching, Executive Coaching) is a one-to-one relationship with a pro­fessional coach/consultant who helps you clarify and articulate what you want most from life and how best to achieve it. Coaching helps you create the results you want in life, work, relationships, and spiritual growth–in spite of the obstacles you encounter.

Life coaching helps you ap­proach life, not as a series of problems to be solved, but as opportunities to create what you truly want. Living life from a creative stance ena­bles you to produce results with optimal effort and less stress, and much more enjoyment.

If you are doing well in life but recognize that you could do better, coaching may be beneficial. Coaching helps you transcend self-imposed limits and bring out the best in yourself. Coaching is particularly helpful if you have an overly complex life, work too much and play too little, want to change careers, start your own business or enhance an existing one, or want to downshift to a simpler, more healthful way of life.

Yet, it is important to note that coaching is not a substitute for therapy. It is not for people with serious emotional or mental problems who would benefit most from intervention conducted by a professional psychotherapist. It is about creating results, not dealing with crises or deep seeded emotional pain or hurt. And while coaching focuses on the present and the future, it can assist to change perspectives or attitudes resulting from troublesome past experience.

The key to continued success in life and work is not just to clarify goals, need and direction, but also to produce motivation and momentum, particularly, the ability to produce results even when motivation is low. Regular coaching sessions with a professional coach can help you sustain action through tough times, learn from setbacks, and discover your inner resources and strengths as you persist toward your goals.

Many individuals desire to build, boost, and develop assertiveness and build self-confidence . Yet, for many individuals it seems a difficult task. However, building confidence and assertiveness is probably easier than you think. ‘Non-assertive’ people do not generally want to transform into being excessively dominant people and they certainly don’t normally want to become bullies.

What they want is to be more able to resist the pressure and dominance of excessively dominant people. When most people talk about wanting to be more assertive, what they usually deeply mean is: “How can I become more able to resist the pressure and dominance of excessively dominant people?” or “How can I stand up to bullies (or one bully in particular)?” or And also, “How can I exert a little more control in situations that are important to me?”

For anyone seeking to increase their own assertiveness it is helpful to understand the personality and motivation of excessively dominant people, who incidentally cause the most worry to non-assertive people.

Most excessively dominant people are usually bullies. Bullies are deep-down insecure people. They dominate because they are too insecure to allow other people to have responsibility and influence, and this behavior is generally conditioned from childhood for one reason or another. The dominant aggressive behavior is effectively reinforced by the response given by insecure and non-assertive people to bullying. The aggressive person gets his or her own way. The bullying dominant behaviour is rewarded, and so it persists.

This is why it is important to understand where you want to be: what level of assertiveness you want to use at any given situation? The main purpose of assertiveness is to defend yourself, and to control your own choices and destiny, not to control others. Once you master the assertiveness skills, you build clear boundaries and establish healthy self esteem while creating more satisfying and fulfilling life.

Lack of assertiveness can affect your relationships and quality of life, as you fail to communicate effectively and probably end up not getting what you want. Family life, career prospects and stress levels can all be affected by non-assertive behavior.

By examining carefully the way you communicate with others, there are a number of ways in which you can begin to assert yourself, helping to improve your quality of life. In this regards, assertiveness training can provide you the necessary skills and benefits. You may read books, articles about the subject (the internet is a large resource). If you have tried to improve assertiveness but still find you are acting in a mostly passive or aggressive way, you may find talking to a trained counselor or psychotherapist useful.

Talking to a professional counselor that specializes in assertiveness training may bring back painful memories of unpleasant experiences you have had, but it can help you understand why you act the way you do. It will help you to think differently about yourself and to have constructive, assertive behavior. Many psychotherapists utilize proven cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to gain positive results and you may find it helpful. This is a therapy that involves helping you to overcome unhelpful patterns in the way you think and behave, including aggressive and passive behaviour.

Although it can be overwhelming and intimidating to start behaving more assertively, you will find that it has many benefits. When you act in an assertive way you communicate better and command respect. This can improve your relationships - both at home and at work.