Assertiveness is a communication style. It is the ability to express your feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and opinions in a direct, respectful and open manner that doesn’t violate the rights of others.

If we do express ourselves openly and conceal our thoughts and feelings this can make us feel tense, stressed, anxious or resentful. It possibly would lead to unhealthy and uncomfortable relationships as we don’t feel safe and loves while not allowing people closest to us to really know us.

The main effect of not being assertive is that it leads to low self esteem. If we communicate in a passive manner we are not saying what we really feel or think. This means we can end up agreeing with and fulfilling other people’s needs or wants rather than our own. Lack of expression of needs might leads to depression. This can result in a lack of purpose, and a feeling of not being in control of our own lives.

Lack of assertiveness is also very common in social phobia. People with social anxiety tend to think that other people are being judgmental and critical about them and will avoid social situations because of this.

Being assertive involves first of all choosing to communicate – being active rather than passive – and then doing so in a manner that’s both respectful and honest. Becoming more assertive is rewarding as it increases your self-esteem and social ability and allows you to have more fulfilling life.

Excessive worry effect almost every aspects of our life. Below you can find a short list of its effect.

Worry affects your physical state:

• Prevent you from relaxing
• May causes sleep disturbances such insomnia
• Makes you tired and weary
• May cause headaches or raises your blood pressure

Worry affects your thinking, feeling and behaving

• Makes it difficult to make decisions and be decisive
• Promotes pessimism, confusion and doubts and c
• Keeps you preoccupied and withdrawn
• Keeps you obsessed with negativity
• Interferes with concentration and attention
• Wastes time and energy and hinder productive action
• Lower self-confidence
• makes you anxious and fearful of taking risks
• May lead to depression and emptiness

A healthy sense of self can make a profound difference in how we feel and function. Self-esteem is how we value and see ourselves. Positive self esteem is vital in development of a healthy personality. Healthy self-esteem means self-respect, a sense of self-worth, a feeling of basic goodness about oneself. On the other hand, low self-esteem means self-doubt and self-criticism, social anxiety, anger, shame, guilt loneliness and isolation.

Your potential to excel and achieve is directly related to your self esteem. On the other hand, failure is much more likely when you suffer from low self esteem. The following is a short list of why self esteem is important:

• Self esteem makes you believe in yourself. It affects your confidence which leads to success.
• Esteem affects your way thinking and behaving, causing your outlook, attitude and behavior to be destructive or constructive.
• It affects yourself image. When you have negative self image or low self esteem, it results in a loss of confidence. Your social skills may also suffer and you will find it harder to socialize. It might, also, lead to social anxiety.
• When you value yourself, others value you. In other words, you cannot expect others to value and respect you, unless you value and appreciate yourself.
• Self esteem brings with it assertiveness. Assertive individuals behave in a way that they respect themselves and value their needs. At the same time, they respect other without being judgmental with fairness, while having a constructive attitude.
• Self esteem people are able to express themselves and to communicate openly and honestly about their needs and desires.
• People with healthy self esteem choose healthy relationships and they recognize the value of relationships. They engage in healthy behavior while respecting others.
• People with positive self esteem tend to be more ambitious in what they want. They develop the courage to experience life to its fullest and by that allowing them to create life with durable fulfillment.

A recent survey titled “2010 Sleep in America”  that was conducted by the National Sleep Foundation found that as many as 26 percent of couples report one or both partners are frequently too tired to have sex. Other studies have shown that many married couples have sex only one to three times per month.  People are busy. Somehow we manage to get through the day even though we are stretched for time, overworked and tired. Few of the main reasons that are associated with such low frequency of sexual engagement are life pressure, raising kids, demanding work or unemployment stress. All that and other reasons are energy consuming and tremendously affect the sexual intimacy of married and unmarried couples.

Exhaustion is very real and a big concern for couples. It is not surprising then that being tired is getting in the way of people having good sex on a regular basis. However, not often, it is not being tired that is preventing you from wanting sex. “We’re just too tired” is sometimes used to cover for other things that have gone wrong in the relationship or the bedroom: lack of communication, build up of resentment, boring sex, trust and jealousy etc. It is easier for a couple to avoid a huge argument by not opening a Pandora ’s Box. Agreeing that they are too tired becomes an easy salve on a big wound; however after only a short while this excuse stops working. In fact, many men and women have confessed that saying, “I’m too tired” has become a negative habit. They say it before they really think about whether they are tired or not.

The fact is that many couples have great sex lives regardless if they exhausted or not because they have healthy, intimacy relationship. In fact, some have more sex when they are tired because it is their way of relaxing and feeling good. Having sex can flood the brain with wonderful, endorphins, oxytocin and so on.

If you’re dealing more with the daily grind of life, scheduling sex is the easiest way for a couple to keep their sex life on the radar. It may not seem romantic and a couple usually feels like failures because they can no longer have spontaneous sex, however, chances are if they don’t schedule sex it’s not going to happen. They also need to wrap their heads around creating more realistic expectations on what is doable for their present lifestyle and schedule.

So the next time, when the words, “I’m too tired” as they relate to sex is still in your mind, think about how they are affecting your sex life overall. If you truly are too tired all the time, then maybe it’s time to get some balance in your life. After all, we can only hold our partner at arm’s length for so long before the relationship starts to suffer.

Developing and building self esteem can be overwhelming for many. Any change you make in your life means that you have to move out of your “comfort zone.” Sometimes you have to step on unexplored terrains to reach your goals, which could be challenging and scary.

The way to go about moving forward to reach your goals and create lasting change in your life is by taking small steps that are leading to these goals. This strategy of change is captured by this familiar and powerful saying by Lao Tzu: “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with the first step.” The strategy of small gradual changes that are done systematically with on-going improvement creates deep, fundamental progress that drives individuals toward success and excellence. It is important to note that what I support here is excellence, not perfection. Excellence improves our character and quality of life, while perfection is ideal and serves as source of disappointment s as it never can be achieved.

Developing self esteem requires hard work, commitment, dedication, patience while doing the right thing regardless of difficult emotions such discomfort, anxiety, fear etc.. It is also important to act properly in a healthy, assertive way regardless of the outcome. It is important to remember and accept the notion that we can only do what is within our power. External results are beyond our control. Therefore, regardless of the outcome, you need to continue to have the courage of doing the right thing and develop our character. This is the only way to you can grow and feel strong, flexible and fulfilled.

The goal of psychotherapy is to create a safe, accepting atmosphere to explore ones-self, explore life and find ways to create more durable and fulfilling life. The main factor to successful therapy is the quality of the therapeutic relationship. In the same manner that our deep wounds occurred in relationship, so is the healing occurs within relationship. It is hard for us to see our own defenses because many of them are unconscious. This is why a professional psychotherapist who is skilled in understanding unconscious defenses can help us work through them.

I view psychological healing in a global holistic perspective that requires the counselor and the client to attend to all aspects of life to create balance and harmony. I see the process of therapy as a journey into the painful darkness of the psyche in which we discover our hidden light and potential.

Psychotherapy generally begins in some kind of pain or unclear lack of fulfillment. Regardless of external successful (financial, position, look etc.), many are facing internal struggles in things such as relationship, intimacy, health, stress, meaningful career, compulsions, anger, anxiety and depression.

The process of the healing will take the client to unfamiliar terrains, with tremendous uncertainties, which would require the client to face his fear and pain. There is no way to heal but to find the courage and face this “night sea journey” while ultimately lead the clients from pain, frustration, and fragmentation to increasing enjoyment, vitality, and wholeness. It is a process of movement from fake to real, from dissatisfaction to fulfillment, from weakness to strength and flexibility, from isolation to a greater connection, from a shaky sense of self-esteem to feeling centered and valued.

You need to feel good about yourself in order to cope with any problems and to have honest relationships with yourself and others. Anger can get in the way of feeling good and in times when anger is not manage properly and has no place to go, it may be turned into self-anger. This means that anger is directed against you and can lead to self-destructive behaviors like excessive drinking, drug use, gambling or even anxiety, depression, physical illnesses and suicide attempts. Self-anger makes you feel like you cannot stand yourself.

The antidote for self-anger is to feel good about yourself by developing your character and building yourself esteem. The first step in improving your self-esteem is to try to recognize the things make you angry with yourself. Try completing the following sentence, “I get angry at myself when . . .“ I don’t do as well as I should; I eat too much; I lose my temper; I don’t speak as I should; When I say stupid things etc.. These self-provocations are things that make you angry and are usually things where you have no one to blame but yourself. You need to learn how to work out these self-provocations. Failure to do this can lead to anger overload that can result in self-destructive patterns of behavior.

Once you identify your self-provocations, the next step is to develop strategies to overcome them. For Example, if your self-provocation is that you eat too much, resolve that next time you will eat more nutritionally and eat less. Secondly, do not kick yourself too hard when you are not successful. Allow yourself to be human (which you are). If your problem is that you get angry, you may need to exercise some relaxation techniques. When you encounter something that makes you angry with yourself, use the following statement, “What is the best thing for me to do now?” Remember to BE WISE, NOT RIGHT, which mean engage yourself in healthy and productive thoughts and actions. Your acknowledgment of the problem, and at the same time, focusing on improving the situation and getting better is the road to overcome anger. Merely sitting and belittling yourself over what has happened is not productive and even make anger worse.

In case of situations that are beyond our control or when we cannot make changes, we can develop the strategy of either learning to live with it or leaving the situation. Once you accept the fact that the source of the problem is not within you, it is easier to accept the provocation without developing self-anger.

The purpose of of anger management therapy is not to eliminate the anger, but to use it as a signal to indicate that there is a need that is not fulfilled. Through anger management counseling, individuals are taught how to slow down their arousal when angered, so that it can be processed and acted on in a proper, constructive and healthy way without the negative consequences when it is uncontrolled.

There are many triggers that can set off anger episodes. When anger is intense our ability to think is weaken. We often react immediately and worry about the consequences later. This can be dangerous and can make us feel ashamed and guilty later. Many times old immature habits from our childhood can be triggered and reenacted. Reacting to anger situations just keeps us stuck in the past and decreases our ability to change, mature and grow. Knowing what triggers anger inside us can be useful so that we can attempt to avoid or manage those triggers in healthy ways. Anger treatment with effective therapist can teach effective coping skills to create proactive, healthy, durable and fulfilling life while anger emotion is used toward building more mature character.

Anger can be very damaging to the body, mind and emotional state. Long and continual occurrence of stress from uncontrolled anger can have very negative effects. The members of the anger management group are taught skills for relaxation as well as ways to express anger safely and assertively.

Anger that is not acted upon constructively but rather accumulated can contribute to a passive-aggressive expression of anger, or even to depression. Parts of the lessons of the anger management group are to find ways to improve self-esteem, and to endure what is often a very stressful and hectic life. The group discusses ways to learn greater tolerance, improve empathy, and to forgive when necessary in order to let go and move on.

A key element to the group of anger management is the mutual support that each member provides to the other. Members often make very useful suggestions to others about what has worked for them and how others should appraise or deal with a difficult situation. Each Anger group is unique in many ways but I always find the experience rewarding. Many times the changes are dramatic and can be very beneficial.

There has been a debate in regards to anger management program and its usefulness in changing habitual angry behaviors that have been around with most adults for a lifetime. Statistics show the positive benefits of anger management with people who are actively involved in a quality program and practicing what they are learning on a daily basis.

Anger does have a best part. The best part of your angry behavior is that you are in charge of it and you control its outcome, which means that you have the power to change your response to anger for the better. The key is to have knowledge, skills, determination and the desire to manage your anger.

People attend a structured anger management program that tells them exactly what to do and how to manage their anger. However, sometimes, this general approach to anger management is that one program does not fit all. Everyone’s needs are different and who likes to be told what to do or what is right for their own life?

So, to attain the best result of anger management, a customized program is suggested. After all, you are the expert of your life and anger management comes from within you. You just might need some shaking up.