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

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

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

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

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, abusive relationship, anger, confrontation, Emotional Abuse, feelings, forgiveness, frustration, Healthy Marriage, hidden anger, loneliness, love

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

Passive aggressive behavior does not happen in a vacuum; it requires an adequate partner to play the game with. This interaction is created between two people-one person who resists proximity and responsibility and the other one who accepts too much frustration to feel a minimum of “love,” “acceptance,” or “company.” Do you want to know more?

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, Healthy Marriage, hidden anger, Passive Aggresive Behavior, passive aggressive

Are you kept by your loved one in hurtful, frustrating, and confusing isolation, and you don’t know why? Have you always been afraid of confronting someone you love, because he/she ignores you and gives you the silent treatment on purpose?

Are you getting the cold shoulder, and don’t even know why? Is someone who’s normally eager to speak to you now keeping your conversations to the bare minimum? And, as a result, are you unsure of how to respond in a way that gets you accepted back in important conversations, allowing you to feel included and respected?

Moreover, have you ever been afraid of interpersonal conflicts and their consequences? Unsure of how to respond in a way that promotes a normal, respectful interaction? Are you in a relationship where there is a lot of isolation and rejection on purpose, so you are put in a hurtful, frustrating, and confusing situation? Are you feeling hurt and lonely in an intimate relationship?

Here’s how to confront the person who’s ignoring you without making things worse.FIRST STEP: Learning to assert yourself

Probably nobody taught you in the past how to assert yourself, and in this way you did not had the skills necessary to face difficult interactions….ending in a place where you feel scared, controlled or abused.

Well, here is a way to build your self-esteem and know how to respond to the silent treatment and other exclusionary tactics in a way that respects what you do need, and also takes care of the relationship.

In the past, you could even have developed a way of denying conflicts in order to escape from all confrontations, and ended up forcing yourself to hide your deep frustrations, because you feared that escalating arguments would take the discussion into emotional abuse or any kind of violence? In this way, you explained away and denied the emotional abuse suffered by the cold shoulder you received. If it has happened to you, you know that this is the worst loneliness… the scars of mistrust and anger are still there, waiting to heal. You need to remember that negative emotions have a lingering impact in your overall physical and emotional health.

Now you can begin to see those scars as produced by a passive aggressive method of spousal abuse: rejection by silent treatment. This rejection is insidious because it’s hard to punish someone for not making eye contact or ignoring another person. If the person is confronted by your asking, “Why are you not talking to me?,” the person can easily deny the accusation, explaining it away. You continue feeling isolated and left out, but now, you could even be seen as inventing things!

Well, now there is a better way to react than denial, so you can stop feeling scared or pushed into a little corner…, no more! Now you can learn how to turn around a situation and use it for better purposes. Then, you can learn how to use these easy methods in every aspect of your life: work, family, love.

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 submission (letting other’s needs come before yours, which will happen if you accept the cold shoulder treatment for longer time) and aggression – forcing your needs on another person without their agreement. Both are lose-lose options.

SECOND STEP: This is the way to assert yourself:

a) get a clear idea of what is 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.

Also, 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.

You need to define a change that you need from someone, and/or to set limits with someone who’s behavior is unacceptable or hurtful to you.

b) Begin describing the negative behavior in clear words: 
“When you ignore me in front of my friends, as you did last night at Mike’s party…”

then state the impact on you: “I feel ignored and rejected.”

then declare that you want a change: “and I need you to (agree to make a specific behavior change: “remember that you are not alone in the party and behave as part of a couple with me)”

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 continued use of this response is necessary to provide the PA person with a steady feedback on the impact of their behaviors…..which should extinguish them, if there is a willingness to change.

To your happiness!

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.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Are-You-Getting-the-Cold-Shoulder-from-Your-Loved-One,-and-You-Dont-Know-Why?&id=380824

Technorati Tags: angry husband, backstabbing, Cold Shoulder, Healthy Marriage, hidden anger, loneliness

The ones that bother most are not the openly competitive people, because you know what they want, and there are no surprises in them getting ahead to snag the best projects, and commissions. What you don’t prepare for is the slow sabotage of certain people who feign cooperation and dedication, only to produce consistent failures.

If you were expecting someone to do a shared project, and your own evaluation is supposed to be in the whole project, but one part is not forthcoming, then what do you do? There were lots of promises, guarantees and strong words, but no results. And you don’t know if to believe this person, or to accept that the project is doomed and you are responsible very soon to report a failure.

Here is when the rubber meets the road: you are realizing that his delay is intentional and focused on making you fail! Difficult to believe, but no other plausible explanations are around, so you need to accept you’ve been blindsided by this person.

What do you do: have a strong discussion or say nothing? Knowing that a passive aggressive person won’t fight back, they can clam up, give you the cold shoulder, tell you what you want to hear, or burst into tears and run away.

If you show your anger, the PA will be less cooperative, stop communicating and confirm that you are his enemy, so becoming more hostile and resentful, even to the point of planning his revenge. Then, how do you manage this potentially explosive situation?

For some reason we have been conditioned to avoid any kind of open confrontation, even the healthy ones, and to try to keep up with a forced situation that doesn’t deserve to be called “peace,” but an angry truce.

Let’s go back to the basic situation, where you are a team leader, or a manager, and you have someone in your team behaving in this way. Of course, you know that this person is immature, that his PA behavior is a defense mechanism, and all that. Anyhow, this person is not responding to you!

Now, it becomes really personal…and you shift from an outsider’s view to a very interested insider, because the action is against you or your work objectives…You suddenly realize that the passive aggressive person’s goal is an attempt to control his environment, meaning by that you and your responses. He is controlling at least the time of delivery of this shared project!

What can you do? If you have identified already the presence of this kind of behavior, you know that you have always to design an alternative plan “B” which can provide you with the extra help needed to deliver the project done in time and quality.

If not, then the choice is to continue expecting from him the delivery of his task, or replacing him. In both ways, the “solution” will leave a bad taste in the relationship. The first lesson, “never trust your own evaluation to the hands of other person who cold be passive aggressive,” is learnt. In brief, control your expectations, parcel out important tasks so there are several responsible people involved, and re-check frequently to see how much delay the PA can generate before you stop him.

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: backstabbing, confrontation, control, hidden anger, passive aggressive, resentment, Sabotage, workplace anxiety

It all begins, of course, in infancy, where we all as children have a keen sense of what is just. A lot of things that happen to us are basically gross unfairness. Being told that we are stupid, or lazy, or worthless by the same people who are supposed to love us; being denied acceptance or appreciation and affection are all crimes against young souls that can’t defend themselves…only register the hurt. So we can share the basic definition of anger, as:

“Anger is the emotional response to real or perceived injustice.”

Now, whenever we don’t receive what we think is fair, or just, we get angry in such a way that people see us as having anger problems.

What we don’t perceive today is the hidden pressure of the old, childhood anger…If we did not have the opportunity to reckon how wrong we were treated when growing up, and heal our anger issues, then we pile up a long repressed sense of “world injustice done to us” and are more prone to react with strong feelings to any present provocations…

This old anger has been for a long time in need of healing. If we can come across this process of searching for and identifying the old wounds and accepting them, we can be in the best path for dealing with anger in the right way. We need to face old feelings of resentment because being mistreated and humiliated. It will allow us to reconnect with repressed aspects of our self, and with the true sense of what was just (or not) done to us, but also with forgiveness and appreciation.

Want to let go of resentment? Then stop controlling anger and begin accepting that you have deep reasons to be angry, that you are angry with people from your past, not people from your present, and that the situations and people of the present who make you angry now are poor substitutes for your real targets.

Basically, the best anger management process is locating the first hurts received in our lives, processing them by forgiving our parents for being so horrible raising us (they did the best they could, which wasn’t a lot for most of us) and letting go of the historic injustice.

Then now you can look around at your anger targets of today, and laugh at them because they can’t be worst than your parents, even if they try!

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: angry husband, emotions, forgiveness, hidden anger, humiliation, negative emotions, resentment, Self-Esteem

Let’s unpack what is underneath this sense?

Our way of thinking and perceiving the world determines our reality; there is no other way we can understand the world if it is not through those dark lenses of our mindset…

Our definitions of what is life, of the world and who we are in it, of what a relationship is, are all part of the mindset that creates our reality. If we are filled with emotions like anger and resentment, these are going to tint the glasses in a special way…shaping the quality of our present life.

Chronic anger is highly visible for the people around us, which respond in turn according to what they perceive. Our negativities and resentments define our relationships with others, even without our conscious participation.
What is resentment? a combination of the emotions and actions and thought patterns resulting from our unresolved anger at a past injustice.

Families have multiple special ways of delivering injustices at us…
we all have our own. Children have a basically strong sense of what justice is, and they perceive when their basic needs are not solved and upon that, when they are humiliated because being “needy,” adding insult to injury.

Those early lessons of how we were inept, not deserving to be loved or helped, stupid, worst than our brothers, and a punishment for our parents, are still will us. They are the fuel under any injustice feeling of today…which just hits on the old wound to reappear now.

The chain of perceived injustice, anger and resentment, leads naturally to revenge. Here is the hidden knot of suppressed anger…if you are so far from your own chronic anger, that you don’t recognize it, you could be doing small revenge acts to force the world, only this time to pay attention, to give you the care and appreciation you are missing from ever?

The only problem is, that being our own anger so repressed, we can’t have the luxury of asking for the tender mercies of others. It has to be given to us without asking, as if this episode is in the past and we receive as children the care that is naturally our birth right…

In the grown up world, where we assume that each person knows how to care for herself, this hidden rage, resentment pushing into actions has a short life; and more frustration ensues. If we don’t ask, nobody can give us anything, then more frustration (real and present now) develops…what can a good passive aggressive person do now?

Well, there is always revenge, right? That negative consequence that pops up and surprises the blind partner with its intensity, is o more or less than a hidden message:

“Please, take care of my hidden needs for attention and love, even if I myself can’t ask for them and moreover, will never thank you afterwards, or you will suffer the consequences!”

Here you have the hidden transaction of a passive aggressive daily, methodical and relentless revenge mindset. Pretty complex, you’d say? yes, but take the time to soak it in, because it can be the key to unlock so many actions that now surprise you.

At the least, if you take from his hands the “surprise effect,” you will have some advantage over your present situation, right?

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: attacks, chronic anger, Cold Shoulder, hidden anger, resentment, revenge