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.

• Acknowledge your achievements. In the endless quest for perfectionism, you completely lose track of all that you have achieve, and all the progress you have made. To combat this, keep a chart for your milestones, and each time you achieve something, jot it down on your chart. Each month, review how much you’ve created and achieved. You’ll be surprised how much you’d been overlooking, blinded by those perfectionist ways. Learn to appreciate and honor your effort, the journey, and your accomplishments.
• Set Goals and take action towards them. What have you always wanted to do, but didn’t because you were afraid of failing? Don’t worry if you fail and have to try again. Accept mistakes; learn from them and despite feeling bad, move on to what is actionable. Reflect on how this process of learning from failure applies to other areas of your life. Focus on your positive attitude and effort, which will lead you toward fulfilling life.
• Set realistic expectations. A shortcut to misery is setting completely unrealistic expectations for your work. It’s good to have ambitions and aims for your work, and to push yourself to do the best you can. Perfectionists have expectations and goals that simply can’t be met! To overcome perfectionism, you need to balance great expectations with reality. Accept that your limits – and other people’s limits – are real. You simply can’t create perfection.
• Stop comparing yourself to others. We are each unique in our talents, abilities and personalities. When you compare yourself to others and wish you were as creative/talented/successful as them, you completely overlook your own strengths and abilities. It’s great to be inspired by other people, but use that motivation to fuel your own work while you focus on your best.
• Recognize the ideas are directions, not absolutes – Continue to hold your ideals and set goals because these serve as growth-levers and motivation sources. The goals are not the problems – it’s the attachment towards the goals which you need to work on. Accept your goals as directions to work towards and not absolutes which you need to achieve. Commit yourself to pursuit your goals. However, it does not matter if you do not reach the goals because the goals are just pointers toward where you want to be. They are not who you are or who you should be.
• Enjoy the process and look at the big picture – The big picture matters more than the tiny details. The process is the longest part of achievement – enjoy it! Find ways to lighten it up – learn to laugh at yourself, take things positively, rest/eat/sleep/play when it is time to, take part in enriching recreational activities.

Some of the reasons for perfectionism are listed below:

• Fear of failure is among of the reasons for perfectionism. Often times, perfectionists blame their failures to lack of personal worth.
• Another reason is being afraid to make mistakes. For perfectionists, mistakes and failure are the same. They miss opportunities to learn and grow by living their lives avoiding mistakes.
• Fear of rejection is a one of the most common reasons. Perfectionists are often afraid that if other people will see their flaws, they will be rejected.
• Rigid Rules. Perfectionists live with rigid rules structured by a never-ending list of “should.”

When measuring yourself by what you don’t accomplish rather than by what you do accomplish, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration. The need to be perfect quickly leads to a distrust of the ability to judge what’s good and what isn’t. When you can’t trust your own feelings of self-worth, you look to others to define and affirm your self-esteem. Perfectionism only allows one way to enhance self-esteem — that’s by being perfect. As such, when a perfectionist believes she isn’t perfect, she feels guilty, frustrated and unhappy. Perfectionism is a never-ending negative cycle of self-abuse.

Procrastination is a habit, a learned response to anxiety-producing situations or tasks. It is an avoidant behavior we adopt when we are to do a task which reflects our abilities and we feel afraid/anxious that we will not measure up. Fear of failure or of success, cultural limitations or imagined disabilities all contribute to a person holding them self back for fear of finding out that they will fall short and thus it will prove without a shadow of a doubt that they are worthless individuals.

Personal competence is the antidote to procrastination and comprises of five elements: emotional strength, well-directed thought, time-management skills, control over habits, and task completion abilities. Therefore, most strategies for overcoming procrastination are based on improving these five skill areas, and involve: improving emotional control and adjusting one’s underlying attitude, focusing attention and thinking rationally, learning executive (self-management) procedures like planning and scheduling, learning habit-changing methods, and acquiring better task completion and problem solving skills.

Nonassertive people may be passive or aggressive. Passive individuals are not committed to their own rights and allow others to infringe on their rights rather than to stand up and speak out. On the other hand, aggressive persons are strongly defending their own rights but are also violating the rights of others. Additionally, aggressive individuals insist that their feelings and needs take precedence over other people’s. They also tend to blame others for problems instead of offering solutions.

Lack of assertiveness promotes also low self esteem and social anxiety. While engaging in assertive behavior is rewarding and leads to positive self-esteem and more fulfilling life. Whenever you see someone being assertive, rather than passive, aggressive, or both, you are witnessing an act of healthy self-esteem. Whenever you see someone verbally attacking others to get what they want, or being indirect about what they want, or silently enduring something they don’t want, you’re witnessing the result and perpetuation of injured self-esteem. So, while it’s clear that having high self-esteem makes it easier to practice assertive communication, it should also be noted that acting assertively promotes healthy self-esteem.

The following are few ideas to help you overcome the alcohol abuse:

• Determine the negative effects that alcohol has on your life and list down your reasons for quitting. It could include the effects of heavy alcohol use such as liver problems, gaining too much weight or personal reasons such hurting your family, or not able to achieve certain goal. Think of what you can gain by overcoming the addiction habit.
• Maintain a sober lifestyle by taking up new, healthy hobbies such as sports, art, music and volunteer work. Fill your time constructively, something recreational like painting or learning a new language. Sport activity or work-out routine could help you overcome your addiction since you can see the negative effects of exercising then drinking afterwards, and clearly, these two don’t match.
• Join a support group and attend the meetings regularly. Surround yourself with people that that healthy goals and willing to support one another. Remember how it feels when people say “I understand.” Talk with people after the support group. Find someone you can call and talk to when you feel the urge to drink.
• Eliminate things from your life that encourage you to drink. Recovering from an addiction to alcohol means making significant changes to your life. Throw out your alcohol. Stop hanging out in bars or pubs. Avoid hanging out with friends or family members who like to drink alcohol in large qualities. If you have a spouse or roommate who drinks, ask them to support you by not drinking around you. This is a step you must take if you’re serious about quitting alcohol.
• Create reasonable goals toward quitting drinking. Keep goals obtainable. Don’t set your goals so high that you can’t reach them and leave you frustrated. Maybe you can’t just quit all at once. At least set a goal of having one less drink today and then one less than that tomorrow. Small steps are the way to go and obtaining it motivates you to make greater improvements.

Overcoming addiction is difficult and yet possible. Remember that it is normal to relapse, feel down and challenged mentally and physically. Yet, never give up and do not lose the sight why you do it. Picture yourself how you would look in the future when you’re completely alcohol-free. Visualization is very powerful in helping you make the right decisions.

There is a certain set of characteristics that every healthy person has in common. If you are able to understand what some of these traits of healthy people are, you too will be able to adopt these practices and finally achieve some of the success and happiness that you’ve always wanted.

The following is a partial list of habits of healthy, mature and successful people:

• High level of integrity
• Set vision, goals and priorities
• Look at life as a journey for growth
• Develop courage and act despite fear
• Focus on the solution rather than the problem
• Being proactive rather than reactive or a victim
• Focus on opportunities (to grow) rather than obstacles
• Develop organizational, planning and time management skills
• Work methodically, systemically, yet creatively (think out-of-the-box)
• Align themselves with people with positive character
• Make difficult decision and accept its consequences
• Are lifelong-learners
• Avoid procrastination
• Look at the big picture
• Focus on half glass full
• Practice what they preach
• Open minded and open to feedback
• Focus on being wise and not on being right
• Be assertive (not aggressive and not passive)
• Effective communicator and thoughtful listener
• Identify and follow their core values and believes
• Are adaptable, resilient, flexible while embracing change
• Focus on changing themselves rather than changing others
• Develop their emotional intelligence (IE) and Social Intelligence (SI)

By developing healthy habits that you practice continuously on a daily basis, you can increase your chances of living a long and vibrant life. That is why establishing an early foundation of healthy habits can last a lifetime and will lead you to a become a better person who has better life.

Building self esteem is probably the most important factor that leads to happy and fulfilling life. Healthy self esteem requires self knowledge, self acceptance, empathy, compassion, self respect and personal understanding. To achieve these states, it requires ongoing personal work. This work can be enhanced by a competent psychotherapist who can guide you through the process. Self esteem is founded on a fundamental understanding of who we are, what we need, where we are and where we want to be. Self-esteem is the psychological foundation that our personality is built upon. The stronger our sense of self, the more we will be able to withstand the storms and difficulties that come along with life’s challenges.

Improving self esteem and building confidence requires the development of abilities such flexibility, durability, acceptance, engagement and being present while developing appreciation. By building our character, we improve our self value and enhance our internal strength and internal freedom, rather than allowing our externals constrains to limit us or control us. This in turn leads to the creation of a durable, flexible and fulfilling life.

Self esteem is knowing how life really is, and accepting life as it is. It is not about imposing our expectations or idealized notion of how life should be. It is not about blaming ourselves or others when life doesn’t turn out that way. Learning to live with how life is, and developing an understanding, compassionate relationship with ourselves is the key to healthier self esteem. As such, healthy self esteem is based on the ability to develop realistic goals while acquiring abilities and skills to construct a satisfying life.

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.

The Greek philosopher, Epictetus said, Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them. In other words, our emotions and moods are actually not caused by the events happened to us directly, but rather our emotions are affected by the meaning we give to the events themselves. As such, we get upset, angry, content or happy as a result of the way we inter-operate and think about the events.

This old yet revolutionary knowledge has a tremendous power. It allows us to change our position from a passive and victim view to a proactive and responsible view. It gives us the power to change the way we feel by changing the way we think; to choose healthy and constructive thoughts that lead to durable and fulfilling life. It allows us to move from a beyond our control position to within our control position. The within of our control position does not mean necessary to get what we want, but rather to do our best (within our power) to get what we want and to accept what is beyond our control. In other words, accept the things you cannot change (beyond your control), and change the things (within your control) that you cannot accept. Again, the adaptation of this philosophy builds self esteem and self confidence and creates durable and fulfilling life.