We often hear from clients that the boundaries (or the lack of)  set up by their partners are causing trouble in the relationship. However, did you know that emotional boundaries are a necessary part of being a healthy human being?

We set boundaries to prevent ourselves from being vulnerable, easily hurt, or easily upset. A healthy amount of separation from the intensity of the moment (and the other person) helps us to make decisions and objectively from our own values, not from other people’s pressures.

Dr. Cheryl MacDonald backs this up in “How Self-Love and Boundaries Mix” with an interesting point about those people involved in harmful conflict:

People who feel emotionally vulnerable or those who desperately want to seek approval from others are most susceptible to losing their sense of self because the protection, the “bubble wrap”, their emotional boundary was not noticed, properly set, or communicated. Be cautious about making too many compromises, as the “bubble wrap” can expand to the point of breaking, and may cause people to question their own thoughts, feelings and identity. This questioning leaves a hole in people’s self-esteem. Emotional boundaries are flexible; however they can break under stress …

Boundaries are thus something that each person in a relationship needs, and those boundaries must be properly communicated. Boundaries are defined differently for each person, but it boils down to those things you like and those things you don’t.

When you don’t like something, and you make this clear to your partner and other people, you are setting an emotional boundary. As long as this boundary is set up to keep your self-worth (not push the other person away), this boundary can help you keep up a healthy sense of self. Remember that being in a relationship doesn’t mean becoming one person, but sharing a life. You can still be your own person while also being in a relationship!

You may struggle with emotional boundaries if you were not taught sufficient self-love and independence (essentially, self-love means that you decide how you think about yourself, a form of setting boundaries between your opinions and others’ opinions). Dr. MacDonald points out in her article that:

“If people had a healthy, nurturing childhood, they probably grew up feeling grounded, and learned how to protect their sense of self-love, self-worth and have a sense of feeling internally proud. They learned how to set emotional boundaries, and learned how to say no, because they felt loved as a child. In their childhood experiences, there was no need to scavenge for affection, or try desperately to please, just to gain attention and love.”

What about you? Have you been struggling with emotional boundaries in your relationship? Perhaps you experience the autonomous decision-making of your partner as cold, isolating and feel pushed away? It could be that you need to negotiate better your reciprocal emotional boundaries?  You can talk to us about the boundary problems in your relationship by talking to Dr. Nora, our conflict coach.

Nora Femenia is a well-known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and sign-up free to connect to her creative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! 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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According to a new research study conducted by the American Psychological Society, men and women have different criteria for feeling happy in a relationship.

Yeah, shocker, right? However, the criteria this particular study found is interesting, and could help you understand better what your partner needs from you during conflict.

Couples were brought in and videotaped having a discussion about a recent conflict in the relationship. What research found was that men are happiest when they can accurately tell that the woman is happy. However, women are happiest when they can accurately tell that the man is unhappy. In other words, we finally know the answer to the question of “what do women want?”

They want to know that their partners are open enough to share not just happiness, but the harder-to-express unhappiness. Think about how this could apply to your own relationship with your partner. Are you continually feeling dissatisfied with the way that conflict is handled? Do you think it could be because one or both of you is not expressing your true feelings accurately? Men, think about whether or not you’re “holding back” to “prevent” conflict – what if you’re causing more? Women, too, can be inadvertently causing the man to think he has to hide his feelings, depending on how you react to his criticism or negative emotions.

Another interesting facet of this is that when women are expressing unhappiness, some men are not as comfortable or satisfied with the relationship (perhaps because they worry that they, the men, are the cause of the unhappiness?) This also has to do with the fear some people have of being “empathetic” to another person. In some cultures or families, a man feeling empathy for a distraught woman is seen as “weakness” or “vulnerability.” However, this obviously creates dissatisfaction for the female partner, because the man a) doesn’t want to share negativity, and/or b) doesn’t want to hear it. This is unhealthy for both sides because it halts growth and impedes solutions. Now, of course, we are left with the ultimate question:

How do we help men to face negative issues and feelings without escaping, denying or twisting those issues? We know this part os necessary for growth, but….Please, could you share your experiences below? We want to hear from you!

(Read the entire article about the study here)

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! 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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What if you could harness them to get what you really want out of life? Dr. Silvan S. Tomkins has suggested through his work that we do the things we do in our lives because of how we feel. That is, we are not all as rational as we thought!

 Our emotions, even when we don’t recognize them or define them consciously, drive us to make decisions and choose actions.To understand this better (perhaps you’re saying, “No, I’m completely rational!”), think about it in this way. Dr. Tomkins states that being interested in something is a feeling or emotion. That interest then motivates you to act or speak.

So, think about the last time you were interested in doing something. Did you come up with that interest in a logical way (reason), or was it a gut instinct/attraction (emotion)?This, in the end, helps us to understand that when we plan out our lives, and live them each day, our deep interests and desires are driving us to act.

 You might think that working a 9 to 5 job is not the result of your emotions, but if you employ your reason, you will probably find that it is: perhaps you are interested in the money, which translates to happiness for you. Perhaps you are interested in the power of one day getting the top position at your company, or the distant possibility of doing something great in the company’s market sector. Or… perhaps you are hiding in a cubicle because you fear that you will fail if you try to do greater things.

 When we are infants and young children, we feel more often than we use cognitive processes (think). Our interests are simple: food, shelter, warmth, play, love… i.e., – HAPPINESS!    Those feelings still drive us (because who doesn’t want to be happy?), but as adults we’re taught to “think logically” and not let emotion rule us. We think you could have the best of both worlds instead of being pulled in opposite directions.

If you put your brain to work, and look deeper for an explanation of what you’re feeling and why, you could end up creating a life plan that actually makes sense to you, that gives you actual fulfillment by pursuing it. Remember, pursuing happiness can be just as rewarding as achieving it!

If you need help getting your emotions to “explain themselves,” you can talk to one of our coaches in a private, one on one phone session.

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! 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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Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude change, emotional decision-making, emotions, feelings, healthy relationships, negative emotions, reconciliation, resilience, Self-Esteem

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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According to an article on Live Science by Jennifer Welsh, the part of your brain that deals with memory (the hippocampus) can be damaged during childhood abuse, neglect, and/or maltreatment. The damage seems to occur when exposed to high levels of stress during certain ages. With that damage comes a lower ability to “talk” to other areas of the brain, like the brain’s reward center (dopamine system). In the article, a researcher from Harvard University suggested that this may be why many victims of abuse are at greater risk for depression, drug abuse and mental illness in adulthood.

Read the entire article at Live Science.

These findings are extremely important for telling how the brain reacts to its surroundings – if a child is especially vulnerable to stress-based damage in his/her early years, learning how to interact and deal with conflict in a healthy way can protect your children. If your child is often exposed to loud, explosive fights or is humiliated or embarrassed by punishment techniques, what could the effects be later on in life? This is not to say we’re all turning our children into drug addicts later on – but new research consistently shows us that our brains are always watching and making note of our lives.

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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Technorati Tags: abuse, appreciation, Emotional Abuse, emotions, feelings, frustration, hidden anger, humiliation, isolation, respect, Silence

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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Technorati Tags: anger, attitude change, confrontation, critique, emotions, feelings, fight, frustration, happiness, healthy relationships

We wanted to challenge the “End of the Year Blues”, as we realized how many issues are still without resolution when it comes to important relationships…

With this in mind, we are proud to announce that December will be

“National Relationships Repair Month“

This FREE program spans over 4 whole weeks for a good discussion and healing of the issues that form the base of our relationships, so hidden we usually do not take the time to reflect on them…

We provide here good reading materials for you to learn from, questions and answers and finally, a good plan to restore your relationships. We count with your participation!

Get a good look at this new offer, and hop on board! Here is the link, and remember that we are waiting for you!

http://nationalrelationshipsmonth.com

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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All humans are social creatures at their core – even if those hermit-like people among us don’t realize it. As social creatures, we are hardwired to show our emotional states to others in every facial expression, tone of voice, gestures, and how fast or slow those are shared. The language of our bodies and expressions can change the way we feel about or react to another person.

Within relationships, it often happens that two people who know each other very well come to naturally recognize and understand each other’s body language. However, even then, we’re not always aware of the signals we ourselves are giving off to others. It’s important that even the happiest couples learn to reflect on both their signals and their partner’s, in order to reach better understanding and needs fulfillment.

Some experts have explored an idea they call “feeling felt.” This is when you have the sense that your partner feels your feelings (attunement) and is able to respond in the appropriate way. “Feeling felt” is something that we all instinctively need, emotionally. And we need it at every stage of life.

Relationships where each person has this need satisfied are usually relationships where positive emotions run high and negative emotions are rare.

If you’ve been following along with us for a while, you’ve probably read this and already guessed that “feeling felt” is pretty much dependent on having a secure attachment to one another, right? It’s true that someone with a passive aggressive or avoidant partner isn’t going to “feel felt” very often.

What is interesting about feeling your partner’s feelings is that it’s often non-verbal. In classic empathy between those who don’t know each other well, you can understand where people are coming from or feel sad when they do, but they have to verbally say, “I’m feeling this” first. When a couple is properly attuned with each other, strong positive (or strong negative) emotions can be sensed in a way that isn’t expressed in words. Rather, it’s expressed in body language, expressions, gestures, and tone of voice.

Want to get to know your partner well enough that you can both know what it’s like to “feel felt”? Perhaps you want this, but you’re not sure your partner understands the importance of it? We can help! Please visit us at Conflict Coach to learn more about what you can do to find attunement and secure attachment in your relationships. Our coaches are standing by!

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 your Conflict Coach session, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

Technorati Tags: attachment styles, attunement, commitment, communication, emotions, empathy, feeling felt, feelings, Marriage and Comunications, marriage crisis, passive aggression, passive aggressive, Relationships

What are some rules that we recommend?

Well, for intense emotional issues and conflicts, there are two rules that we think are non-negotiable – you can’t go without them.

• Confrontation is by appointment only. Conflicts can occur at any time, we know. However, there is a time and a place for discussing problems and issues that are bothering us (i.e., McDonalds over lunch is not one of them). All parties should agree to briefly describe the problem, then make plans for when is a good time for all to talk. This can be as simple as saying, “I’d like to talk about what happened just now. Can we speak at home?”
• Everybody has the right to a time-out. Sometimes things get out of control when emotions like anger or fear escalate. Realize that every person has the right to feel overwhelmed, and the right to ask for a break to calm down and recollect. However, it also that person’s responsibility to make clear when you will reconvene (minutes or days later).

Need more ideas about coming up with family rules? It may help to divide into a few categories: rules that keep the conversation constructive, rules to handle disruptive emotions like anger, rules to improve communication, and how-to rules for reaching solutions that please both parties.

Here are some good examples of rules that pertain to the first category – maintaining constructive conflict:

• Confrontation by appointment only – we talked about this one. Just as a reminder, don’t make an appointment to sit down and talk right before bed, work or school.  There should be enough time to both talk out the issue and mentally unwind afterward.
• Optimal location – location has a lot to do with how constructive the confrontation is. A lot of interruptions will impede the flow of ideas, so pick a quiet place. Avoid the bedroom, which should stay associated with peace and rest. A good place to talk about issues is a calm, neutral, pleasing place. Moving while you talk can keep endorphins going at a nice pace, so a park is often a good place to go. If all else fails, phone conversations can remove a physical space that feels threatening.
• Start on a kind foot – Show your desire for mutual respect and peace by taking their hand, offering a gift or compliment, or anything that you feel is appropriate to diminish hostility. Just don’t go overboard into making it seem like a bribe! Your main objective is to show that you are opening the conversation on a sure ground by professing that you want to protect your relationship’s underlying values. In short: you are saying: we want to improve the good relationship we already have…

Need help creating rules for conflict in the other categories, like reaching workplace resolutions? Visit our conflict coach today to receive a free consultation. Coach Nora can send you on your way to a healthy relationship in no time at all!

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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.

Technorati Tags: appreciation, attitude change, brain, critique, emotions, feelings, happiness, negative emotions, respect, self-awareness, Self-Esteem, understanding