What if we believe that we have “bad luck”? then everything we plan will have to do two battles: one against reality out there, and the second one to convince “luck” to bend over our desire….making everything a double challenge.

We all have a variety of core beliefs, of which some are empowering (positive beliefs) and others are limiting (negative beliefs). In the US, popular culture tends to push for more positive than negative beliefs, which promotes a feeling that most projects are possible and doable. If we grew up with the people around us telling that only men can do the things we also want to do, then we have again the double challenge: getting to have the opportunity to do those desired tasks and proving that we are as valuable as men at each step….

Every day, in fact every minute we are reinforcing or weakening them. It is an on-going process. Each time we tell ourselves that our plans are within reach, we help them be doable. Even we are influencing each other when we express those beliefs, and sometimes it doesn’t help our loved ones hearing us expressing negative beliefs about their capacities. Why, if they never did this task, how come now they think they can do it? Well, me saying that they will never learn is only a half disguised act of sabotage…Perhaps it’s best to let them try, because even trying and failing, they will know better for the next try.

As a result, we need to be aware of negative, judgmental beliefs popping up in our minds, and work actively to replace them with a more positive approach.

This reframing goes a long way: we can “reframe” failure as an opportunity for a new beginning; and we can see conflict as an opportunity to really know what we want and negotiate better what we need to receive. It’s only a matter of framing these two concepts into the right environment!

Several suggestions follow from this concept:

• Find the areas in your life you would change if you could (finances, relationships, work)
• Use each subject you have listed as a heading in a new piece of paper, and write why do you believe you can’t;
• Review the list of beliefs, find the negatives and turn them 180 degrees;
• Have a set of ideas, words and phrases that define the positive framing of each issue.
• Put those positive phrases on cards and read them each night before going to sleep.

If you do a periodic revision of your basic assumptions about life in general, and your happiness in particular, you will see that more positive experiences are happening now that you are in control of the beliefs that determine your reality.

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: attitude change, backstabbing, critique, Emotional Abuse, feelings, happiness, healthy relationships, negative emotions, rejection, resilience, workplace anxiety

When you are ready to deny them the drama and adrenaline rush (by behaving calmer and less reactive in stressful situations) they initially react very negatively, almost as if they are going through a drug withdrawal.

In fact it is possible that when you first become calmer, they may escalate the shouting in the short term. If you are patient and persevere in this non-engagement mindset, this will change in the long term.

What strategies can you use with a person who loves to and needs to have a dispute with you?

• Never yell back, not matter how upset or angry the other person might be; detach emotionally;
• The more their voice goes up, the more you whisper;
• If you feel the situation gets out of control, just escape to a safer place (the bathroom, a long walk);
• Be a good listener and parrot back what they tell you, but in a softer voice;
• Say that you really want to understand their needs;
• If you are going to work with him, there must be a calmer environment, so the person has to stop yelling.

So, even when the other person has a volatile tendency to start emotional battles, the issue resides on your capacity to detach and keep your cool. That’s real personal power!

Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.creativeconflicts.com.

Technorati Tags: aggression, anger, anger attack, attitude change, confrontation, control, Emotional Abuse, feelings, negative emotions, rejection, respect

Assertion is the art of saying what you need or believe in a way that other people can hear you clearly.

This ability is essential for effective problem-solving. The alternatives to assertion are

1.- submission, like in letting other people’s needs come always before yours, even being just or unjust. This will happen if you accept disrespectful treatment from a loved one for some time, while you grow a deep resentment;

2.- aggression – forcing your needs on another person without their agreement.

Both are lose-lose options, meaning that both sides, even the “winning one” will get less from the relationship. They are building anger, hurt and resentment instead of respect and love.

This is the way to assert yourself:

a) Get a clear idea of exactly the behavior irritating you. If he/she is not speaking to you in front of your friends, that is clearly a hostile behavior that needs addressing. What is the behavior that you want, instead of this? Acceptance, care, attention? Be clear on what you want.

b) Be clear and firm on your personal rights as a dignified person; and firmly believe that your rights, needs, and dignity are just as valid and important as anyone else’s, regardless of age, power, role, or gender.

c) You need to define the behavioral change that you need from this person or to set limits with someone whose behavior is unacceptable or hurtful to you.

HOW DO YOU DO ASSERTION?

1.- Begin describing the negative behavior in clear words:

“When you make jokes about my cooking in front of my friends, as you did last night at Alice’s party…”

2.- State the impact on you:

“I feel ignored and rejected.”

3.- Declare that you want a change:
“and I need you to (agree to make a specific behavior change):

“Remember that we are each other’s support system and we don’t criticize the other in public”

Your purpose is not to blame, but to deliver information about the impact of their behavior to the offending party. Messages centered on the “I” pro noun, delivered calmly, with steady, non-apologetic eye contact – have a better chance of being received as information, and not criticism.

The passive aggressive behavior needs someone to provide the offending person with a steady feedback on the impact of their behaviors…..which should extinguish them, if there is a willingness to change.

Want to hear more? We have good information and support for you!

Technorati Tags: aggression, anger, appreciation, Cold Shoulder, confrontation, Emotional Abuse, feelings, fight, Healthy Marriage, healthy relationships, hidden anger, Passive Aggresive Behavior, Self-Esteem

The silent treatment, also known as the “cold shoulder treatment,” consists of feigned apathy, total silence, and being distant on purpose. One person displays an attitude of complete disinterest for the spouse, as if the other person would be a complete stranger.

This form of emotional abuse can be very disorienting. Being ignored on purpose by your husband, your most intimate ally crumbles your whole being. The experience can leave you thinking that you have been reduced to the level of a ghost, if your presence is systematically ignored and turned irrelevant.

Typically, the person in control does this as a form of non-physical punishment, with the purpose of showing his anger by making you feel less worthy, not valued, unimportant, and not cared about. Is a very strong negative message delivered in a way that doesn’t leave external traces: there are no signals of physical abuse.

Between the lines, what your abuser is trying to do is to manipulate you in the area of your self image by making you feel reduced to nothing he can show interest on. If he is not seeing you, or your qualities, who are you? Not more than a shadow! Here is a female voice:

“I really don’t know what to do, or say. If I say “can we talk about this?” he will roll his eyes or tell me to shut up. He reconnects when and how he wants…while I wait in despair. I have truly lost hope. I don’t know how much more I can take. When things are good between us life is incredible, but he has this Jekyll and Hyde thing going on… and I always feel like it is my fault, because I don’t know how and why his cold shoulder towards me starts. What did I do to anger him so much as to be so cruel?”

First, this posting is encouraging you to perceive the hidden control under this behavior….by having you waiting for a connection, the more powerful person is showing his control. If you continue asking for explanations, or reasons, or “why are you doing this” questions, you keep confirming the toxic nature of this treatment.

What to do? well, you can always take a step behind, look at the behavior and ask yourself if you have a choice of answering. Perhaps choosing to ignore? changing the subject? doing your own thing? not acknowledging his treatment?
Remember, you have choices!

Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.creativeconflicts.com.

Technorati Tags: Cold Shoulder, Emotional Abuse, healthy relationships, Silence

To really know if you are in the healthy relationship necessary for your personal growth, we need to focus on the human needs we all have, and ask the fundamental question:

How are those needs satisfied through this relationship? How is the other person in your life aware of your needs, and aware of his/her role supporting your needs satisfaction?

We are proposing here that you see this partnership as a mutual agreement by which each other knows that the satisfaction of the needs of his/her partner are the essence of the relationship. If a spouse is not providing security and recognition to the other, where from this person will receive them? And how do you survive in a relationship, if you provide love, connection and recognition in a permanent way to your spouse, but don’t receive the same?

We call abuse when a person uses power to reduce the other person’s will to his will, creating a power asymmetry.

We can also call abuse when a person knows that his/her spouse’s basic satisfaction of her needs depends on him providing enough love, connection and recognition as to make her happy, but willingly denies to do so.

Want to know more? Here you have some needs, see if yours are here, and try to establish, from 0 to 5, how much satisfaction of each need are you receiving (and giving) today. Can you see the need to make some changes?

Basically they  are four important groups of human needs, to be only satisfied through the interaction with other human being:

—NEED FOR SECURITY AND CONSISTENCY

• The need for unconditional emotional support.
• The need for clear, honest and informative answers to questions about what affects you.
• The need for freedom from emotional and physical threat.
• The need for freedom from angry outburst and rage.

—NEED FOR VARIATION

• The need to be accepted when you want something different;
• The need to have your final decisions accepted.
• The need for encouragement and support when you make decisions  different from what others expected.
• The need to live free from undue criticism when experimenting.

—NEED FOR LOVE AND CONNECTION

• The need to be heard by the other and to be responded to with respect and acceptance.
• The need to receive a sincere apology for any jokes or actions you find offensive.
• The need to be respectfully asked rather than ordered.
• The need to have your work and your interests respected.

–NEED FOR RECOGNITION OF YOUR PERSON AS VALUABLE

• The need to for freedom from accusation, interrogation and blame.
• The need to have your own view, even if others have a different view.
• The need for basic good will from the others, regardless who you are.
• The need to have your feelings and experience acknowledged as real.

NOW is your time of reckoning….How well did you do? How many of those needs are in a state of starvation? How long ago did you receive (or give) your last compliment, or expression of sincere appreciation?

Perhaps now we can understand better the silent resentment that simmers in some relationships, when this covenant is not respected and we find people believing that they have no role whatsoever in promoting the happiness of their spouse by solving their deep needs.

If not them, it’s only a question of time that somebody else, by offering the unexpected compliment, could shake to the core this empty marital structure.

This is a brave way of evaluating a relationship, but please, ask yourself:

HOW WELL ARE MY DEEP NEEDS ACCEPTED AND NURTURED IN THIS RELATIONSHIP?

WHAT CAN I DO TO LEARN HOW TO PROVIDE SATISFACTION TO MY PARTNER’S NEEDS?

Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.creativeconflicts.com.

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Technorati Tags: anger, appreciation, control, critique, Emotional Abuse, frustration, Healthy Marriage, healthy relationships, loneliness, recognition, resentment

Want to know what John Shore has to teach you? Just click here now, and you will know

Once you are left without valid reasons to stay in a sad, empty and lonely relationship, you need to know how you can heal from the hurt!

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

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Technorati Tags: abuse, anger, appreciation, domestic violence, Emotional Abuse, emotions, frustration, humiliation, loneliness, Self-Esteem

This form of emotional abuse can be very disorienting. Being ignored on purpose by your husband, your most intimate ally, crumbles your whole being. The experience can leave you thinking that you have been reduced to the level of a ghost, if your presence is systematically ignored and turned irrelevant…!

Want to be able to identify and heal cold shoulder?

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: abuse, anger, Cold Shoulder, Emotional Abuse, feelings, frustration, hidden anger, resilience

Given the terrible fact that people can’t give beyond of what they themselves experienced, the odds of any baby receiving consistent good care delivered with love and respect are few. We all have been raised by parents who could not express love, or did not how, or were abused children themselves. Some of them, for reasons still not clear enough, even became abuser parents themselves.

In all the conversations about how to deal with the trauma of abuse, persisting after we grow up in hidden and obvious forms, the issue is how to heal and repair the damage. We all tended to assume that we could repair the damage through a mix of care, support and time.

Is that true? are emotional abuse wounds able to heal after some time? Are the scars left by factors like negligence, pressure by parents and peers, sexual abuse, aggressive environment at home with screams and scolding, physical beatings or public humiliations by parents or siblings able to heal and disappear?

What we know now is that childhood stress due to emotional negligence or abuse, especially when combined with genetic factors can result in structural changes in the brain and may make people more vulnerable to get depression afterwards.

The child receives, through early abuse, an indelible imprint of himself, of his parents’ image of himself, and of human relationships in general which will follow him the rest of his life and make the development of trust almost impossible.

Scientific research done on 24 severely depressed people from 18-65 years showed that abuse had caused some structural alterations of the brain, associated with a higher vulnerability to depression. They were investigated with high-resolution structural MRI and childhood stress assessments, and compared with healthy people from the same age group.

What does it tells us? That this is the most tragic event in the life of a young person. Being abused in any way is a serious violation of personal boundaries that not only attacks a baby now, but determines the future of her relationship with others and the world in her future.

We are talking here about damaging the capacity to experience love and trust in a relationship with others unhindered by fear. It is what makes us humans, the capacity to trust others and be with them. How someone is willing to trust others if the brain configuration has been altered precisely in the aspect of connection with others who could again abuse?

If you recognize the scars of abuse in your perception of the world and of others around you, (mistrust, suspicion, fear) perhaps you can explore the possibility of looking for abuse in your childhood. Going ahead, we could talk about some process that, beyond repairing your self-image so you feel that you have the right to be loved and cherished in the right way, would allow you to cross the bridge of blame and guilt and forgive.

Why forgiveness? I can’t find any other resource who could help mend the damaged relationship between the parents or relatives who abused us and ourselves. There has to be a way to clean the past, bury the abusive child-raising practices, begin a new one relating to the children now in our lives showing love and respect.

Does forgiveness help reshape the brain? We don’t know yet. Probably not, but what it can do is to manage the abuse experience as one more of the memories of our childhood and archive it. We have learned through tears our lesson: there is no growth or balance or love in interpersonal violence and abuse. We have learned resilience.

What is, then, left? You tell me, what’s your experience? from this side, forgiveness is a process that takes time, and begins not with forgetting, but with remembering our emotional abuse with the question: what do I have to learn from this experience? and how do I move on afterwards?

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: abuse, aggression, appreciation, domestic violence, Emotional Abuse, feelings, forgiveness, hidden anger, humiliation, resilience

Unlike physical abuse, emotional abuse may not heal by itself over time. Given that its impact targets more the psychic areas than the body, you could be unconsciously scarred for a long period of time.

Because the damage is on the self-esteem and identity areas, healing emotional abuse means healing primarily both your mind and soul, not your body. Healing an emotionally abusive relationship can only take place once you realize that you are indeed in a power grab, abusive control style of relationship, not an egalitarian one. Prior to this, you need to do the following:

Accepting the sad reality that you are in an abusive relationship is hard and painful, but necessary. You can’t continue thinking that he is “too tired” or “making jokes but not seriously making fun about you.” This is for real a sad place where he tries to humiliate you to keep you under his control.

Being with both feet on the reality ground will give you a good reason to fight back. At this point, the unequal relationship between you and your husband is already twisted. Whatever the explanations he would give about abusing you, he still has no right to humiliate and insult another person…

Want to read more? Here

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: anger, appreciation, Emotional Abuse, humiliation, Self-Esteem, verbal abuse

If the abuse didn’t succeeds at isolating the victim and condemning her to a life of solitude and mistrust, the accompanying anger will. It will manifest in opportunities where it’s not right, will destroy whatever relationship she is able to sustain attacking people who love her, and in a general sense will separate her from the very people who could help her heal. Sometimes people are more afraid from the anger than compassionate seeing the hurt produced by abuse. Even when the anger is adequate as a delayed reaction to the previous abuse, it lashes out at the wrong targets, so alienating her from the necessary support.

People process their righteous anger in a variety of ways. Some people yell and shout, while others surpress their anger and sulk, often expressing their anger in a passive aggressive way. When coping with anger, it is important to realize that it is impossible to suppress and deny the emotion of anger. It is normal and healthy to feel angry, even angry at situations already in the past and never compensated or healed. However, not all people know how to cope with anger in an effective way.

When coping with anger as an aftermath of emotional abuse, many people like to use different relaxation techniques. Relaxed, slow breathing and yoga are examples of such techniques. They are good because they allow the angry person to take a step back and clear their mind of the situation. Detaching, and staying calm allows the person to cope with the hurt from abuse and then react to its anger more efficiently.

Sometimes you may find it difficult to mentally remove yourself from the abusive situation in order to calm down and regain self control. If that happens, it is good to physically remove yourself as well. Simply find somewhere else you can go to have a few minutes to yourself, and detach from people who would remind you of abusive situations from the past.

The next time you are angry, stop and ask yourself exactly why you are angry. Be as specific as possible, and don’t lie to yourself. You may find that you have no real actual reason to be angry after all. A lot of times we get caught up in our own feelings coming from abusive situations from the past, that we experience again as if happening today. When you are in this kind of past anger, connecting it with the sources of the past before letting go is helpful. Perhaps telling yourself: “This is old anger produced by the abuse I received in the past…I will calm myself down and the anger will recede into the past.”

You may notice that there are also several physical changes that happen to you while becoming angry. This can include clenching your jaw or fists, an increased heart rate, and even body shaking. Being aware of how your body reacts is extremely important for coping with anger. If you feel yourself reacting to anger, try taking deep breaths to calm down. You can also close your eyes and think about the distance between your defenseless past situation and now. Imagine yourself rejecting the abuse in a firm way: “I will NOT take this abusive situation, STOP!” Most people raise their voice as they get angrier. Instead, lower your voice to calm yourself down, and repeat the “STOP” enough times to recover self-control.

Emotional abuse has the power to control lives way beyond the time it happened. It can flare unexpectedly when situations of today connect with abuse of yesterday… By learning that healing past abuse demands a caring attitude and a patient observation of our reactions, then anger will be accepted, integrated by breathing and let slowly disappear by itself.

If you feel that anger is taking control of you it is important to connect present anger with past abuse and have a compassionate attitude towards the abused person we were in the past. Both are parts of our lives and need to be accepted and integrated into a larger whole of our present happier life.

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.

Technorati Tags: frustration, negative emotions, passive aggression, verbal abuse