CREATIVE CONFLICT RESOLUTIONS » Emotional Abuse

Do you have a plan for your own life?

alfaprima — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:01:48 +0000

There are two ways of doing life:

a) Living life as it happens, in a naive way, adapting yourself to what life dishes out to you ( as the facts of family of origin; level of poverty/wealth; educational possibilities; personal health, etc), being resigned to your circumstances and seeing yourself incapable of changing anything.

b) Having a personal plan, designed by you and based on what you want from life.

Now, with so much psychological research, we get to know more about what constitutes a good life. We already know that we need some degree of peace and happiness (life stress managed and kept under control) in order to live healthy.

Because life stress and interpersonal conflict attack your life structure, they bring anxiety and reduce your life quality.

We also know that having negative emotions make you miserable, reducing your quality of life and diminishing happiness. A life full of conflict and stress is also a life full on medical and health incidents…they go together.

Knowing all this, even when our origins gave us bad health, unhappy family of origin and a lot of psychological anguish and suffering, it is now possible to make the strategic decision to focus on how to make your life happier.

First, you need to stop thinking that you have no power on the kind of life you are having, and begin accepting that you have some power on its quality. Taking responsibility for seeking to develop positive and nourishing interactions with others is the first one. What else can you do to enjoy a happier life?

You need to identify your needs, and make a plan to establish a source of satisfaction to each different need. If you have a need for security, the solution for it is different from the solution to the need for love and security, and so on…

You are also responsible for establishing links with people who can respect and appreciate you; and perhaps looking at th impact of negative people in your life, avoid connecting with the people who stop your growth.

As now your life design is in your own hands, you are responsible for making yourself grow: identify the areas where you need some push to develop further, towards a better education, a better job, or a better body, and follow the plan. Remember to keep growing, always.

Being in a better and happier place will make you more resistant to friction and conflict: learn to keep smiling while you continue your own way; no need to discuss with others to force them to change. You only can change yourself, and that is a large job!

In short: you will have to catch up in your own happy self-development, towards the person you want to be. Don’t let anyone challenge your own image of your good, purposeful life. And yes, this also means that you have to take your inner child to play!

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, by buying the ebook with solutions for reducing stress in your life and having a happier love relationship…

Technorati Tags: anger, appreciation, conflict, confrontation, critique, Emotional Abuse, forgiveness, Healthy Marriage, healthy relationships, passive aggression, recognition, Relationships, respect, Self-Esteem

Why do you need to watch your beliefs? Let me tell you!

alfaprima — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:33:22 +0000

We go through life moved by a set of automatic beliefs accepted way back in our past when we didn’t know better…Regardless of that, now those core beliefs rule our lives. Now, it’s natural to believe that we are no good at math or that with our looks nobody will feel attracted to us…once our parents told us this was the truth, and we now keep their negative images of us alive.

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

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

How to deal with emotional turmoil?

alfaprima — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 18:29:22 +0000

Conflict-seeking people have mastered all your emotional buttons, and they push them with regularity. Here, we want to remember that it takes two to tango.

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

Emotional Abuse in your Marriage?

norafem — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:35:49 +0000

In old days, perhaps it was the natural marriage relationship style, the one we saw in our parents’ relationship: the dominating husband, and the sweet subservient wife. It was the norm, and people took that as the logic, expected way to be in a marriage.

It had a dirty secret….if the wife would have different takes on a situation she would have to sneak her views into a conversation, because her husband was the one supposed to do decision-making.

She could suggest, but the final decision (and credit) was not hers. Even if she had, God permit, some really good ideas…she needed to take care of her husband’s face by attributing such ideas to his creation.

And when she felt entitled to some decisions of her own? Several heavy weight traditions would discourage her. Church would preach submission to husbands; society would control her by ridicule. There was little a husband needed to do to “keep her in her place.’’

Even if we accept the benefits of sustaining this state of affairs, times have changed, and this hyerarchical marriage order has disappeared. Has it?

Sometimes I doubt it, because we can see that this male superiority marriage model persists. How? It has taken a different form now given that it’s the husband’s job to enforce her obedience, because society and church have abandoned preaching about wife’s submission to husbands.

It’s left in the hands of a husband to make his wife comply and obey, and to support his authority in the home. How does he do it? Lacking divine authority, there is the tool of emotional abuse to help him make his wife to feel inferior.

How? How come I’m linking persistent male authority with emotional abuse in marriage? Very simple: now, the way to have her humbled and in her place is to make her feel diminished and wrong, being always corrected because being criticized by a higher authority. I know a couple, now in their seventies…she has been all her life a stay-at-home wife and mother. He stills walks into the kitchen and announces to everyone: “she is always burning the food, what is she burning today?”

Is it true? Even if it is, what is the need to shame her in front of her relatives or friends? To prove male superiority, of course! After all those years of marriage, his instincts as the last word, judge and executioner are prevalent. Could he had learned to see her skills with more love and compassion? Could he appreciate more her positive aspects? Of course he could!

What he is doing is using snide comments to inflict public humiliation on her…leting her know who is still the boss. The harsh critiques, negative comments and complaints about her only role are the ways in which she is told to keep her place; if she protests, more abuse will be coming.

Why men do this? They don’t have any obvious need to continuously prove superiority…right? Or is it perhaps their insecurity that forces them to nag, criticize and demean the people who love them the most? So they can show who is the boss?

This attitude is really pathetic and has no place in a healthy marriage… How many divorces do you know, caused by her fatigue at being treated as a lesser, never equal partner?

If you married expecting that your partner would be the person accepting you warts and all; love you and admire you even beyond what you yourself know about your skills…then this is fraud. It means that you can’t trust the person you promised to love above others, because this person is reducing you to a lesser place below him.

Emotional abuse in marriage intent is to support male superiority, but ends up destroying the relationship. Are you in a marriage damaged by emotional abuse applied to support his dominant role? If so, how do you manage to keep your self-esteem alive?

Technorati Tags: abuse, appreciation, Emotional Abuse, emotions, feelings, frustration, Healthy Marriage, humiliation, negative emotions, recognition, verbal abuse

Emotions, anger and passive aggression

alfaprima — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:09:18 +0000

There is a lot of talk about emotional health now. For the body-based emotional health system, there are no “negative” or “positive” emotions. Then, emotional health is the ability to feel and express all emotions, without repression. All are legitimate reactions of a person to the environmental (external and internal) stimulus. It doesn’t mean that all emotions have to be externally expressed, but only that the person is able to recognize and own his/her own emotions as they happen.

Now is time to include in the definition of emotional health the ability to express all emotions appropriately. Those who have this ability are surely mentally healthy, and able to keep their relationships with other growing. The opposite, being emotionally blocked and unable to know what feelings are present and how to express those feelings to others indicate lack of emotional health.

A person might be stuck in depression or in permanent stress; stuck in anger; stuck in obsessive fears, or stuck in perpetual guilt or shame. Each one of them indicates a solution that was chosen as the least of evils way back then, when growing up that now is hindering adult emotional development.

If we watch young children, as young as two years old, we can see the gamut of expressions being externalized as they happen. Emotions are there, and all the social and family education gets to work on the young person to control those expressions that are socially upsetting. Sadly, we repress emotions instead of accepting and channeling them as indicators of deep unsolved needs.

When we grow up, the most socially troublesome emotion is anger. How do we accept anger in ourselves, how to process it as an indicator of some unjust frustration suffered, and what to do to use it constructively is the challenge.
Emotionally healthy adults, with respect to anger, usually are comfortable with anger and hatred, their own and others. It’s not easy to accept, but is part of human emotions and it has a legitimate place.

The problem appears when socially we have no permission to feel or express anger. The message of emotional needs frustration is lost and can’t be solved; and moreover we suffer social rejection because of acting angry. We could even get more isolation and rejection the more the need prompts us to express anger in the wrong places.

This is one of the known roots of passive aggression: the anger gets hidden, and it can’t be expressed by normal ways. It then gets channeled in the more hidden ways: sullenness, sabotages, resistance, and emotional withdrawal…

Anger (including irritation, rage, hatred, etc.) is always based upon unfulfilled expectations. But we need to have the anger expressed, if we want to be able to offer any relief! What do you do in the case that you have only the smoke (passive aggression) but not the real, subjacent anger? Here is where you need to step in the readings about passive aggressive!

Neil Warner

Technorati Tags: anger, Emotional Abuse, emotions, feelings, frustration, Healthy Marriage, healthy relationships, hidden anger, negative emotions, Self-Esteem

Build relationship skills: assertion

alfaprima — Tue, 11 May 2010 10:17:08 +0000

We find too many times in situations where there is friction and a deep sense of frustration of basic emotional needs. In life, we deal with other people sometimes as short in skills as we are to be able to talk and express needs and negotiate positive solutions. Haven’t you found yourself in a deep shock, thinking: “If only this person had told me what he/she really wanted…it was so easy to satisfy that request! But I never knew!”

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

Emotional abuse using silence

norafem — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:04:58 +0000

Can you be mistreated not using harsh words, but by silence?

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!

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

Healthy or Abusive Relationship?

norafem — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 04:25:54 +0000

If you have been involved in emotionally abusive relationships, you may not have a clear idea of what a healthy relationship is like.

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?

Why Women Stay in Abusive Relationships?

norafem — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 18:06:18 +0000

Sometimes, help is coming from different sources, when you never expect it. There is a very detailed and extremely supportive article about the reasons women tell themselves they need to stay put in abusive relationships…and you need to read it all.

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

Is Healing from Abuse Easy?

alfaprima — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:36:33 +0000

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 very sad place where he tries to humiliate you to keep you under his control.

WANT to Know More about How to Heal from Abuse?

Neil Warner

Technorati Tags: abuse, abusive relationship, anger, confrontation, Emotional Abuse, feelings, forgiveness, frustration, Healthy Marriage, hidden anger, loneliness, love

CREATIVE CONFLICT RESOLUTIONS » Emotional Abuse

Do you have a plan for your own life?

Why do you need to watch your beliefs? Let me tell you!

How to deal with emotional turmoil?

Emotional Abuse in your Marriage?

Emotions, anger and passive aggression

Build relationship skills: assertion

Emotional abuse using silence

Healthy or Abusive Relationship?

Related Blogs

Why Women Stay in Abusive Relationships?

Related Blogs

Is Healing from Abuse Easy?