About spiral2grow & Moshe Ratson, LMFT

spiral2grow

spiral2grow is a practice in Midtown New York City that provides Coaching, Psychotherapy and Group Counseling, Relationship Workshops, and a range of Organizational Development (OD) programs. Individuals, couples, and families, as well as business executives and organizations, can benefit from these services and grow stronger and more adaptive. spiral2grow strives to assist clients in achieving their goals and potential while freeing and liberating them from their internal and external constraints.

spiral2grow is conveniently located in the heart of Manhattan near Grand Central Station and is committed to providing a high quality of service. Our intervention is practical and solution-focused while emphasizing solving problems, reaching goals, and enhancing life. We employ the spiral evolution model to effect change at different system levels, starting at individuals through couples, families, and groups, and up to a large-scale system of organizational change.

Moshe Ratson

Utilizing a goal-oriented and pragmatic approach, Moshe has been successful in assisting individuals and companies in managing change and leading through change. His unique approach of helping people reach their goals is rooted in his many years of experience as a psychotherapist, coach, and high-level business executive.

Moshe holds a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) degree as well as an MS degree in Marriage and Family Therapy (MS MFT). He is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), and a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF). Moshe has also been a professional basketball player, a basketball coach, a military officer, and a Secret Service expert.

Read more about Moshe Ratson

About spiral2grow Marriage Family Therapy

spiral2grow is a practice in New York City that provides Coaching, Psychotherapy, and Group Counseling, and a range of Organizational Development (OD) programs. Individuals, couples, and families, as well as executives and organizations, can benefit from these services and grow stronger and more adaptive. spiral2grow strives to assist clients in achieving their goals and potential, while freeing and liberating them from their internal and external constraints. spiral2grow is conveniently located in the heart of Manhattan near Grand Central Station and is committed to providing a high-quality service.

spiral2grow integrates best practices from several approaches. spiral2grow emphasizes systemic and relational perspectives, solution orientation as well as the cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) approach. Our intervention is practical and solution-focused while emphasizing solving problems, reaching goals, and enhancing life. We believe that people can change, grow, and learn to lead more satisfying and meaningful lives. Through a process of self-exploration, problem-solving, and skills development, people can overcome obstacles and realize their potential. When empowered, clients can create the right conditions for themselves to reach their goals and make positive changes in their relationships and their lives.

We employ the spiral evolution model to effect change at different system levels, starting at individuals through couples, families, and groups, and up to large-scale systems of organizational change. The spiral process enables the clients to resolve their problems and overcome their challenges. It provides the clients with the path to succeed, grow, and achieve durable fulfillment.

The Meaning of the Name “spiral2grow”

spiral2grow represents the process of growth and development in people as they evolve to a higher level. The spiral illustrates the flow of physical and spiritual energy as well as the process of evolution and progress. The ancients have used the spiral image to represent the universe, the Earth’s rotation, the moon’s orbit, and as a symbol for growth. The spiral also denotes cosmic forms in motion, or the relationship between unity & multiplicity. Throughout history, the spiral has been associated with force, power, movement, and evolution.

spiral2grow employs the spiral evolution model to effect change at different systems, starting at the individual through couples, family, group, and up to large-scale organizational change. The principle of change and development applies to a single person in the same manner as it applies to an entire organization or society. Through the spiral evolution model, spiral2grow provides the clients with the path to succeed and grow. The spiral process moves toward problem resolution, enabling the clients to overcome their challenges and reach their desired goals.

As we spiral2grow and evolve to become intellectually wiser and emotionally more mature (more enlightened), we are going through infinite stages. Each spiral stage is a new, better answer to the lifelong tension between the universal human yearning to be connected, attached, and included, on the one hand, and to be separate, independent, and autonomous on the other hand.

Clinician – spiral2grow is led by Moshe Ratson (MBA, MS MFT, LMFT), who works with clients as a psychotherapist, coach (life, career, and executive coaching), group leader, and relationship therapist. He is enthusiastic, proactive, supportive, and provides a resourceful environment to help clients get to where they want to go and reach their potential.

Healthcare – Moshe Ratson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT). Clients whose health care insurance plan includes out-of-network mental health benefits can receive partial reimbursement for their psychotherapy services. Please check with your health insurance provider to determine whether you are allowed to get reimbursed for services provided by non-participating providers. You might also want to check the nature of your outpatient mental health benefits. For additional questions regarding fees, billing, and reimbursement, please contact us directly.

Moshe Ratson (MBA, LMFT)

Moshe Ratson, Founder and Executive Director of spiral2grow Marriage Family Therapy, is a licensed marriage and family therapist, psychotherapist, MFT supervisor, business consultant, and executive coach in New York City. Moshe provides coaching and mental health services for his clients. He has many years of experience as a top business executive and a solid track record of managing sales, marketing, and business development teams. His unique profile has led him to successfully enhance the performances of leaders and organizations.

Part of Moshe’s business accomplishments includes:

• serving as Vice President of Sales at a Fortune 500 Company with sales of four billion dollars;
• increasing sales by 500 percent;
• turning company’s balance sheet from loss to profit,
• building startups and organizations while selling two of them.

Moshe holds a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) degree as well as an MS degree in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT). He is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT), and a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF). Moshe has also been a professional basketball player, a basketball coach, a military officer and a secret service expert.

Personal Counseling Approach

Moshe practices integrative psychotherapy and is committed to providing quality clinical care that is based on evidence-based psychotherapy approaches. He draws from a variety of methodological approaches and brings a unique blend of extensive clinical experience, mindful presence, positive energy, and depth of knowledge of the change process to his clinical work. Moshe’s personal counseling style is direct, challenging, and engaging, while being compassionate, caring, and encouraging. He provides his clients with a non-judgmental and supportive environment while empowering them with practical tools to develop new solutions to the challenges they face.

My counseling approach emphasizes

• Treatment modalities that integrate best practices and are based on sound scientific models of human behavior
• A therapeutic process that is systemic and strategic
• Focusing on the client’s strengths rather than pathology
• Practical and solution-focused intervention
• Simplifying complex ideas and information with ease, fun, and clarity while moving from abstract to practicality
• Helping clients develop and manage change through hard work, small steps, patience, and commitment to build healthy habits and establish long-lasting change
• Guiding clients to create the right conditions for themselves to reach their goals and make positive changes in their relationships and their lives
• Disclaimer

General Counseling Goals

• Assist clients in achieving their goals and living their dreams while liberating them from their internal and external constraints
• Direct clients to build a conducive environment, leading them toward their goals
• Increase self-awareness and reflection while emphasizing strengths and positives to promote change
• Encourage clients to be proactive, reflective, creative, and constructive
• Increase hope and motivation to move toward the desired change
• Build courage to face fear, challenges, uncertainty, and new roads
• Develop purpose and meaning while experiencing a rewarding life
• Improve clients’ emotional well-being and encourage them to engage with life and in interpersonal relationships
• Help clients to realistically assess themselves and their manner of coping and perceiving their world and their actions within it

Psychotherapy: Area of Expertise

• Relationship – Marriage Therapy and Couples Therapy,
  Premarital Counseling, Infidelity Counseling, Communication Skills
• Emotional Intelligence –  Anger Management, Emotional Management
• Self-esteem and confidence, including  assertiveness training
• Anxiety–  Social Anxiety, General Anxiety, Worry, and Fear
• Anger Management

Coaching: Area of Expertise

• Executive Coaching, Leadership Skills, Performance Management
• Career Coaching, Career Development, Career transitioning, Job satisfaction
• Life Coaching, Work-Life Balance, Decisions, and Life Transition
• Family Business Consulting
• Communication Coaching –  Interpersonal and Professional Communication
• Dating, Finding a Life Partner, Intimacy Coaching
• Self Confidence
• Assertiveness Training and Boundaries

Contact Information

Moshe Ratson, MBA, MS MFT, LMFT
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

260 Madison Ave #8023
New York, NY 10016
(917) 692-3867
info@spiral2grow.com

Media and Press

Moshe has written for or been quoted by HuffPost, the New York Post, wikiHow, Marriage.com, YourTango, GoodTherapy, and The Good Men Project, and has appeared on television and in videos and podcasts about relationships and anger. See the full list of articles, interviews and TV appearances.

Speaking Engagements

Partial list of speaking engagements includes:

American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, New York – September 18, 2020 – Lecture on anger transformation

American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, New York – March 14, 2020 – Lecture on anger transformation

92Y – May 25, 2020– Lecture on anger transformation

New York Open Center – June 4, 2019 – Lectures on anger

92Y – October 22, 2019– Lecture on anger transformation

New York Open Center – June 4, 2018 – Lectures on anger

American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) – March 22, 2018 – Lecture on anger

Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) – 2017 – Seminar on business leadership purpose

Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) – 2015 – Seminar on life purpose

Ramaz High School – 2011 – Lecture on ADHD

Israeli Consulate – 2010 – Lecture on relationships

IBM – 2010 – Lecture on business leadership

Stephen Wise Free Synagogue – 2009 – Lecture on intimate relationships

Seminars and Workshops

92Y – March 18 and 25, 2019; April 1, 2019 – Workshops on anger transformation

New York Open Center – June 11, 18, and 25, 2018 – Workshops on anger transformation

Group Workshops on Anger Management – ongoing; conducted twice a year in my facility

Seminars on Anger Management – ongoing; conducted twice a year in my facility

Conferences

The author regularly attends the following conferences:

The Psychotherapy Networker Symposium

National Anger Management Association(NAMA)

International Coach Federation (ICF)

International Society for Emotionally Focused Therapy (ISEFT)

The Center for Self-Leadership – Internal Family Systems

PESI HealthCare

Anger Is Your Compass (2023)

Editorial Overview

Keynote

Practicing psychotherapist and anger expert Moshe Ratson shows readers how to use their anger as a tool for personal transformation by treating it as an inner GPS that can orient them to unmet needs for safety, positive regard, integrity, and freedom and set them on the path toward constructive action, peace, healing, and growth.

The Premise

Anger is often believed to be a destructive force, and anger can indeed cause great suffering. When people act out of anger, they may make impulsive decisions and violate their values. Whether it is extreme and disproportionate or chronic and habitual, anger can destroy anything in its path: marriages, family relationships, friendships, businesses, careers, and health.

For these reasons, anger is usually seen as an emotion that should be eradicated, controlled, or at least managed. Self-help books for anger typically teach readers how to relax and think more rationally, but they are limited in their effectiveness because they do not get to the root of what makes us angry, nor do they show us how we can use our anger for good.

The Promise

In Anger Is Your Compass, Moshe Ratson dismantles common misconceptions around this powerful emotion and shows readers how to unlock the transformative potential of anger. Anger is an internal GPS that reveals our core hurts and needs. If we ignore or suppress our anger—or just relax and think more rationally, as many self-help books teach us to do—we will miss out on the wisdom that anger carries. But if we learn to listen to anger and use it wisely, it can show us how to live our values rather than violate them. It can help us become our best selves.

Anger Is Your Compass shows readers how to tap into the vast potential beneath their anger. It teaches a transformative three-step process for interpreting the information signaled by their anger, and then consciously and mindfully moving toward the aspired self. When you unveil the wisdom underneath anger, you become the fullest expression of yourself, a warrior-philosopher—someone who’s courageous, wise, and disciplined. The principles and tools in this book empower readers to enhance their self-awareness, build confidence and self-mastery, live with purpose, experience inner serenity, and positively influence others by sending ripples of peace and harmony outward into the world.

The Content

Anger Is Your Compass offers a radical new framework for understanding and responding to anger. The book opens by validating readers’ struggles with anger and inviting them to consider the idea that in spite of these problems, anger might not be something to get rid of but potentially a positive force for healing and transformation—not an obstacle, but a gateway to one’s better self.

The foundational chapters cover the basics of the human brain and mind and briefly explain the role of emotions—including anger—as a kind of personal GPS. The author approaches these topics in a way that blends Eastern philosophy with Western psychology and neuroscience. Understanding the protective and adaptive functions of emotions helps readers begin to see the hidden purpose and value of their own anger.

Part 2 lays out the three basic principles for working with anger:

Responsibility, or shifting from blame to accountability.

Mindfulness, or nonjudgmental awareness of what is happening internally and externally, here and now.

Compassion for both self and other.

The author uses the metaphor of the warrior-philosopher to show readers what they can achieve and experience when they live by these principles: courage, discipline, insight, dignity, self-mastery, and harmony.

In part 3, readers learn the three-step process for using their anger as a force for personal transformation:

1. Temper Your Temper. Just as a metal becomes stronger and more flexible by being heated and then cooled in air, anger can make us stronger when we take charge of its heat and intentionally cool it down again. To work skillfully with anger, readers must first notice that they are angry. Once readers learn to recognize their anger cues, they can temper their anger by pausing, breathing, slowing the experience down, and separating thoughts, emotions, and actions. This is also the point at which readers can use emotional-regulation strategies like relaxation or investigating distorted thinking. But unlike many other self-help books, the approach in Anger Is Your Compass does not stop there.
2. Think Compassionately. Anger always points to our core hurts and needs. Step two is to interpret the anger to identify these unmet needs. Just as GPS locates objects in four dimensions—latitude, longitude, altitude, and time—anger indicates our location in four dimensions: safety, positive regard, integrity, and freedom. Readers learn to ask themselves,
   
   • Has my physical safety or well-being been threatened? Has a personal boundary been crossed?
   • Do I feel hurt, insecure, disrespected, powerless, rejected, or taken advantage of?
   • Have my personal values been violated? Is something unjust happening to me or someone else?
   • Has someone blocked me in something I want or need to do?
3. Transform Anger. Once readers have identified what need is not being met—safety, positive regard, integrity, or freedom—they are prepared to decide on action that will be in line with their values and consistent with the aspired self: assertive, compassionate, and wise. Readers learn to take the next steps, then let go and accept the outcome.

Anger Is Your Compass shows readers how to transform an experience that may seem unacceptable into a rich resource for cultivating clarity, equanimity, harmony, and emotional freedom. Readers who practice this three-step process will discover an internal guidance system that is always available to them, showing them how to be the person they truly wish to be—strong, confident, joyful, authentic, compassionate, and loving. Anger Is Your Compass goes far beyond merely managing anger; it shows readers how to use anger to transform every aspect of their lives.