It’s the shock a woman feels the first time he screams, calls her a name or insults her. He is angry, shouting and facing her down with his entire wrath. Let’s remember this shock; the first sign that the promise of marriage (“to be together to love and respect each other”) was not taken seriously, but were only words.

As a spouse, you have to feel shocked, hurt and totally blindsided by his attack. There is no way we can cover up and deny the total effect of this aggression on us. It is sudden, unexpected, and leaves us with a sour taste afterwards… how do we make sense of this aggression in the midst of a marriage we believe “reasonably happy”?

How to recover the lost sense of security from being with him, when you don’t know if this terrible anger episode will repeat itself?
What if he is harboring a LOT of anger against you, and he is unable to process and release it? You don’t want to consider this possibility!

Almost by mandate, we immediately try to forget the incident or make excuses for his behavior to cover it up.

Why would a spouse cover up this abusive behavior?

It is too big a signal that there are huge hidden personality issues not recognized, but working underneath. Either because there is fear of the unknown aspects, or inability to discuss them; we choose denial and cover up by saying: “he was stressed out, too tired, under a lot of pressure, etc.”

This is the first mistake of an emotionally abusive relationship: not taking this violation of interpersonal limits seriously. Without that, taking care of healing the verbal and emotional abuse impact is not taken seriously, either.

By staying passive and not drawing a line, you are sending him the message that says it is ‘OK’ to treat you this way. You tell him that he has not crossed your boundaries in a way that is not acceptable, and give him permission to do it again. And he will… The more deep interpretation of this interaction can be this:

- He is yelling at you;
- You accept, understand him and forgive him;
- He is testing your limits, seeing how far he can go dominating you with his anger or cold anger explosions;
- You show that there are no protective limits around your self; you show yourself to be weak and not self-protective.
-He feels it as a one-upmanship game: how far can he go putting you down up until you react?

Let’s see how far down can she go? And he ups the ante with the violence. You think you are showing him love by staying put; he sees only one thing, you are just as weak and pathetic as he thought you were.

The truth is that his behavior shows that he has an internal problem of self-control and respect for others and you can’t fix it by staying. There is no amount of “love” you can give him that will solve this challenge; he needs to work at self-control and respect everybody, not only you.

In your marriage, it ‘never’ gets better and it ‘will’ get worse.You have to trust that the ‘first shock’ is the right answer, stop the denial and act on it by leaving. Either you continue or not the relationship, this is the only unequivocal message that tells him: “Abuse is NOT allowed here.”

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The American Management Associationbreaks it down in this way:

1.     ”This is what I think.” (Assertive)
2.     ”This is what I think—you’re an idiot to think otherwise.” (Aggressive)
3.     ”This is what I think, but it’s probably not important to you.” (Passive)

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion.
You don’t have to suffer alone in an unhealthy relationship for one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.You can begin with our passive aggressive system created just for men, at Stop Your Passive Aggression, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

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If you could change something about your relationship, what would it be? More respect? More trust? More commitment?

We all have times where our partners don’t give us what we want, but sometimes we also don’t get what we need - the basic foundation traits of a healthy relationship. Without our basic relationship needs being fulfilled, it’s hard to function as healthy, happy people, isn’t it?

Now a permanent part of our sibling site, National Relationships Month, the Deep Love Needs Survey offers you the opportunity to explain your deepest relationships needs to us. We’re listening to you! We read your responses every day to get an idea of what new resources we can create to help you, so that we can help you on your way to achieving relationship happiness! 

You’ll also get a free coaching session for taking the survey!

Ready to go? Visit us today at the Deep Love Needs Survey

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Today we’ll highlight an issue that affects most of us: balancing workplace conflict with our home life. We’re all guilty of letting our frustration at work spread to our homes, but do we always notice it? And what are the effects?Here’s an interesting article from Scientific American that might open your eyes. “If you think that nasty co-worker is creating problems for you alone, think again. His rudeness may have a ripple effect that extends as far as your spouse’s workplace.

A recent study at Baylor University found that working with horrible colleagues can generate far-reaching stress that follows you home, causing unhappiness for your spouse and family and ultimately affecting your partner’s job.”

The study was published in August in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. According to the author of this study, Merideth J. Ferguson, exposure to rudeness at work resulted in stress for the family as well as the partner. What she also discovered (but you probably know already) is that there is a direct relation between rudeness experienced at work, and how stressful the workplace felt.

What we may not think as deeply about is what else Ferguson found: when you are exposed to rudeness on a regular basis (in the form of unkindness, humiliation, etc) you can lose self-esteem, or become anxious or depressed.

As we discussed on this blog before, low self-esteem and anxiety can cause you to behave in ways that aren’t conducive to your life emotional balance or your family’s. You may be irritable, aggressive, use the silent treatment, avoid conflict, or be excessively critical of others. All of that creates hostility at home, which is the last thing you need!

So, what can you do if you are being exposed to rudeness and conflict at work?

Ferguson suggested that being mindful of where you are (home, not work) and what you are doing can help you separate things in your mind. However, sometimes it’s hard for us to concentrate fully on our family and friends when our day has been really stressful. For that reason, it’s important to find someone you can talk to about the issues you’re having and how they’re making you feel.

Keep in mind that if your behavior towards your family has been negative because of your stress at work, they may not be receptive to you at first. It’s important that in this case, you talk to a counselor about your stress. They can teach you stress-management techniques that you can use directly in the workplace.

If you’re struggling with rude or aggressive behaviors in the workplace, we also have a resource available for your use, at Passive Aggressive Workplace.

Quotes from: Workplace Rudeness Has a Ripple Effect

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.We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation at Conflict Coach, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

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Isn’t it wonderful how we submit to the pixie dust of year end’s magic? besides running here and there to present our best image, our best table and food, our best dress, house, etc, we also enter into a magic territory when it is necessary to design vital goals for us. Because? Just because now, only now, there is an open door to making them happen!

Yeah, right.

Year after year we have promised ourselves to exercise more, eat better and fight fair with our loved ones. It’s not that we ignore the improvement areas in our lives, far from that! Is that it looks more and more like a dialogue of deaf people, an impossible conversation between out higher self images, provided by the more developed parts of our brain, and an old, reptilian core of primitive survival forces located at the base of our head.

We, rational beings, know exactly how much good it would do us to keep an exercise structure…and cherish this wish as if we had an only rational decision-maker in our brain. What is what we deny or ignore? Other parts of our brain…

Even when we don’t know it, we are split and two parts of our brain compete for dominance. Facing a threat to the status quo, your reptilian brain reacts automatically to this planned change as an imaginary attack to the status quo.  What are the choices that the rational, thinking cortex has of winning and imposing an excellent program of exercise over this primal resistance? Almost zero.

The brain stem is the oldest and smallest region in the evolving human brain. It evolved hundreds of millions of years ago and is more like the entire brain of present-day reptiles. For this reason, it is often called the ‘reptilian brain’. Group of cells in the brain stem determine the brain’s general level of alertness and regulate the vegetative processes of the body such as breathing and heartbeat.  It’s concerned with fundamental needs such as survival, physical maintenance, hoarding, dominance, preening and mating. The basic ruling emotions of love, hate, fear, lust, and contentment are generated from this first stage of the brain.

Everything else, (including our self improvement plans) the reptilian brain ignores or leaves behind.

How can you convince your primitive brain that losing weight and starting a running program will be beneficial? Not with logic, of course! The primitive brain continues to feel only basic emotions….so you need to make a nice package:

Wanna change a big part of your personality, like beginning therapy, stoping smoking or controlling anger in your relationship? These are major changes, so you need to plan for the component of seducing your older brain into loving the new activity.

~Convince yourself that you are not changing your life because of running, you are only “adding up to life maintenance routines” feel proud about that;

~Remember the previous (and smaller) behaviors in each time of your life (like when you did learn meditation), recover that attitude and then teach yourself anger management techniques…they are only a continuation of what your brain already knows!

~ In short, you are embracing the basic brain reactions, and building upon them, not uprooting them. We yield to our primitive, survival emotions by accepting them and building upon them…Nothing wrong to include a plan to deal with our basic resistance while dreaming with new behaviors promised in our new year resolutions, but keep in touch with your reptilian core…and throw it a bone! Otherwise, your dreams will go up in smoke as last year!

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.We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation at Conflict Coach, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

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This learned process allows the child to know where the parent is, and how to get close to the parent. With that knowledge, the child can successfully go to the parent during times of distress, discomfort or hunger. Attachment strengthens the relationship the child associates with the parent: a relationship of security and safety, a base from which to build later independence.

It all seems pretty uniform, right? Not after we look at how delicate this sense of security and safety is. During the first few months to the first year of a child’s life, the strength of those secure feelings relies almost solely on how the parent (attachment figure) acts. The parent has to repeat again and again those experience that make the child feel safe – feeding, rocking, playing, etc. It’s like building up muscle – you have to work out the same spot over and over to build strength!

When the parent reinforces this attachment bond, this strength of security, the child can grow up with a better feeling of well-being. This enables them to explore their world with confidence, as well as being self-assured when making new connections with people they don’t know. When a parent doesn’t reinforce this bond, the opposite happens; a child lacks an internal sense of well-being and self-esteem, which leads to lost opportunities in life as well as strained relationships fraught with mistrust.

This latter style of attachment between parent and child is called avoidant, in which both parties avoid closeness and emotional attachment at all costs. The sad part is that parents who are avoidant are often children of avoidant parents themselves – the cycle just continues, with parents, children and grandchildren all behaving in way that they themselves don’t understand the severity of.

Anxious (also called disorganized or ambivalent) attachment is a mix between the two other styles, where the parent behaves in a disorganized way that leads the child to associate intense emotions with fright and disorganization. They grow up suspecting others of foul play or double-intentions, imagining or even creating unreliability in relationships.

We can use our primary attachment, learned in infancy, to analyze how we approach social relationships. Those attachments we make with parents repeat with friends, teachers and later romantic partners, until we are in a cyclic routine that seems to have no source (or end). It just becomes our “way of being.”

Sometimes, we will have clients come to us who feel that the world is basically emotionally barren (avoidant), where finding any measure of love or trust is impossible. Other times, we have clients who feel that the world is chaotic, full of unreliable emotions and two-faced people surround them… (ambivalent).

We truly feel that although the world is what you can make of it, according to this primal attachment model that you received long time ago,  it doesn’t have to be exactly what your parents and past life made you experience. One of the first ways to re-examine your outlook on life (if you need a boost in your career or love life, for example) is to re-examine your attachment style. What is important to see is that our old attachment models determine the amount of trust and intimacy we can get today with our present partners. If those models have so much power, then surely, changing those models out for better ones has huge potential for your personal and marital growth! And we have even the support of neuroplasticity, the brain’s own ability to grow and change,  to be assured that we can change old attachment patterns by rewiring our brain.

Are you concerned about the lack of trust and intimacy in your relationship? Are you afraid this situation will be permanent “for the rest of your life”?  Do you feel you don’t have the confidence and self-esteem needed to make that next big step or decision in your own life? Conflict Coach can help you identify and re-examine your own personal attachment style, in order to re-invent the attachment models your decision-making brain relies on.

Visit Conflict Coach today for a complimentary coaching session!

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. 

We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation, followed with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude change, confrontation, critique, emotions, loneliness, love, resentment, respect, trust

At the heart of the human experience is the need to feel loved, and to feel love for others. This connection in its multiple forms goes to the heart of our own identity. What kind of relationships? Better them to be healthy and meaningful, we wish….But in all cases, we tend to reenact the primal experiences we have had when children, (that is what we know, of course) and so our present relationships duplicate the anxiety and the pain and the difficulty of previous ones.

Here is the core of our situation: If each one of us has such a strong need to give and receive love, what are we doing when we sustain unhealthy connections that prevent and thwart our growth? Why is there so little love in the world?

It has to do with an imbalance between what we can give and what do we need…to keep the flow of connection alive. In healthier family systems, it is more important to be emotionally close, and resolve negative feelings with each other. It is also easy to admit when mistakes are made, feelings are hurt and situations demand a heartfelt apology…

In such a family, keeping well nurtured a member’s self esteem is more important than any single behavior, and each one of the members cares about keeping each other’s healthy feelings. Some individuals could even apologize for hurting the spouse’s feelings even if he believes the other person “should” have known better. One could decide that it is more important to be close to the loved one, than to be right. Educating the children in how do you resolve this right/close issue is usually essential for their future ability to build good relationship.

The primary factor in determining whether there will be trust, goodwill, and emotional closeness in a couple or family group is whether each person is convinced that the other cares not just about his or her own well being, but about the other person’s as well.  There has to be a perception that everybody’s feelings count and need to be taken care of, either them being adult or children.

The more family members have an understanding of the basic conflict style they use, the greater their chance of not acting them out in the relationship in a destructive way. If they know that there is a tendency to shouting, then they can establish ways of reminding each other that “here we care not to shout to each other, because we know how much it hurts.” This kind of shared understanding invites gently each person to take care of his/her own feelings and its management.

Relationships is the real way and a unique opportunity to understand ourselves in a new way, and to discover the best and most noble parts of ourselves. We are as trusting and caring in our lives as our past conflicts have been resolved, and the flow of care for each other has been maintained.

The reverse is also true, however. If we reject taking ownership of our own frustration and negative feelings, and blame the other person for how we feel and respond to her in a violent way, we stop the learning process and end up feeling angry, and often victimized. How we choose to deal with our own painful feelings from our past, as well as negotiate our present relationships, and how much we are able to love and empathize with another needs for love and connection, ultimately determines the outcome of the relationship, as well as our own spiritual and emotional growth.

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 Conflict Coach

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Is it possible to condition and program our brains the same way we would on a computer? The answer is yes! (And don’t worry, you don’t need high-tech skills to do it!) We are conditioning our brains every day, without realizing it. We do this when we use phrases and expressions to talk about ourselves. The little chatter in your head that says, “This I can do, this I can’t, this I’m good enough for, this I’m not,” etc. can make or break your self-esteem.

Why does this little voice have so much power? Because, if we analyze it, these opinions about ourselves don’t come from us. they come from years ago, when the first chatter was children, parents, and others evaluating us according to their standards. Gradually, their voices became the one we use to talk to ourselves! Think of it as living in a certain area for so long that you begin to pick up the same accent as the locals.

So, do you have a problem with speaking in public, because you are extremely self-conscious about your voice? Well, chances are that somewhere in your past, someone teased and judged you about your voice, and now that opinion has been taken up by your brain as true.

This is how smart your brain is: it can take up the smallest instances and fool you (and itself) into making them valid. However, if it’s smart enough to do this in the first place, it’s smart enough to reverse it as well, right? To be more confident about yourself, you need to become self-directed and watch carefully the things you say to yourself (i.e., the inner voice your brain is supplying you with). Are there lots of critical statements? Dismissing comments? Ironic appraisals and accusations about your own capacity?

Once you become aware of this internal negative chatter and where it can be coming from (an unreliable source), you can see how these comments can chip away at your self-esteem. Your communication processes (internal images, thoughts, feelings) need to screened and moderated, so that they can be transformed into a self-building stream of positive reinforcement.

Usually, we dismiss the power of this kind of self-programming. We think that we can’t teach our brain to think in new ways and break out of old routes of logic. If you have been raised as a person not confident about yourself at all, you will be attuned to those negative comments and validating them as real truths.

But you know what? Those “truths” are constructed anyway, so what is preventing you from feeding yourself (constructing) new positive comments?

I know a person who always says things to herself like “Hey, Queen Brilliant,” and “Hey, smarty pants,” and in those moments, she can feel how she becomes extremely happy! We all need to create that powerful state of esteem for ourselves so that excitement and significance are reinforced. That way, we don’t go back into old programmings, those feelings that we are not good at anything that someone, sometime ago, installed in our brains.

We need to program our brains the same way we would a personal computer. We should install the feelings we want, the images of ourselves we want, and the strategies to create the states we want to exist in. Similarly, we need to scour our systems (physical, mental, and emotional) for things that don’t belong and are only slowing us down! If we don’t, everything will be random and eccentric; we’ll never have the ability to access good feelings on cue, and they’ll never stick around.

I have had some wonderful results as I teach these new “programming” or conditioning techniques to my clients and readers. It’s not an instant process, because you actually have to reinforce the nerve cells in your brain while you reinforce your good behavior. However, just by teaching them that low self-esteem is never permanent, they are gaining better self-esteem and self-awareness , and feeling like completely new people because of it! It’s a great thing to see!

If you have low self-esteem and are struggling to find solutions, please contact Coach Nora today for a coaching session, where you’ll learn more about re-programming the negative messages that are keeping you miserable!

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! Visit http://conflictcoach.me now.

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• Are you accessible when I try to reach out to you?
• Will you be responsive to my needs?
• Are you committed to this relationship?

In other words, beneath the content of words spoken in fights, partners are looking for answers to questions of:

• Are you there for me?
• Are you emotionally present?
• Do you see, value and love me?

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!

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude change, conflict resolution, confrontation, control, critique, Emotional Abuse, forgiveness, happiness, Healthy Marriage, hidden anger, love, recognition

By MARIE HARTWELL-WALKER, ED.D.

For some people, this is a truly radical idea: There is no need to fight with your partner. Ever. Accusations, recriminations, character assassination, threats, name-calling, and cursing, whether delivered at top volume or with a quiet sarcastic sneer, damage a relationship, often irrevocably. Nobody needs to be a monster or to be treated monstrously. Nobody who yells will ever be heard. In the heat of a moment, it is always a choice whether to go for a run or run your partner down.

On the other hand, no two people in the world, no matter how made for each other they feel, will ever agree about everything at all times. (It would be quite boring if they did.) Couples do need to be able to negotiate differences. They do need to have room for constructive criticism. They do need a way to assert opinions and to disagree. And they do need to have a way to express intense feelings (that the other person may not understand or support) without feeling that they will be judged as lacking for doing so. READ MORE HERE:

http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/10-rules-for-friendly-fighting-for-couples/

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