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

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

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

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

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

Several suggestions follow from this concept:

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

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

Neil Warner

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

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

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

A new study by Florida State University researchers has found that people who were verbally abused as children grow up to be self-critical adults prone to depression and anxiety. Of the whole sample population, an staggering 30% reported that they were often verbally abused by their parents. What kind of abuse? Insults, negative comments, swearing, and threats of physical abuse, all determining an unhealthy doses of self-criticism in the children.

What happened with the people who were abused as children? We know already that it has negative effects on the personality of grown up people. Professor Natalie Sachs-Ericsson, the study’s lead author, says that the results are on the area of depression and anxiety: “People who were verbally abused had 1.6 times as many symptoms of depression and anxiety as those who had not been verbally abused and were twice as likely to have suffered a mood or anxiety disorder over their lifetime.”

Now we know for sure: parental verbal abuse is toxic, and it not only affects the emotional stability of children, but follows them as a shadow in their adult years. We are forever paying the consequences of abusive parenting. Negative self-criticism generated by parents’ comments continues into adulthood and has been shown to make an individual more prone to depression and anxiety.

Why is this? Aren’t parents the ones supposed to take care, love and protect their children? We have been silent for a long time about noxious parenting happening almost in every household.

Either it is that parents have been themselves traumatized by abuse when children or that they got to believe that stern discipline and fault finding is the best way of raising their children, this has to stop. We need more public advocacy about negative parenting, more role models for positive, self-esteem building child-raising styles and in general a deep transformation in the way we treat children.

It’s no surprise now that adult children of abuse sometimes decide that they need to separate from their parents, when the parents continue the abusive and denigrating commenting about their adult children’s lives they did in the past.

We need more public comments on how abuse from the past re-appears in the present and keeps doing psychological damage. We need to say clearly that we are only going to interact with healthy people who would not use destructive comments to hurt other people’s self-esteem. Perhaps now we can go around even feeing appreciated and loved, for a change?

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: aggression, appreciation, domestic violence, Emotional Abuse, feelings, humiliation, isolation, passive aggressive, reconciliation, resilience, verbal abuse

Let’s assume that you found him too soon in your life, when you were still very young and learning what was your place in the world…and knew very little of the right way to treat human beings, especially when you say you love them. We all know the rules about loving behavior, right?

• show support, and be there for the loved one;
• say positive and appreciative things frequently (five for each one negative critique);
• be upfront when you have a disagreement and find a shared solution;
• disclose everything; share all kinds of personal information ;
• face each marriage challenge as part of a team, and commit to work together on solutions.

If little or nothing of this is happening, you have to find answers to basic questions, such as:

1.- How can you identify when he is damaging your marriage by his resentful and negative attitude?

2.- How can you stop him and make him fulfill his role of careful and loving husband?

3.- How do you repair yourself from the damages produced by his behavior on your self-esteem?

As easy it can be to identify areas of work, it is more difficult to find effective solutions to solve the challenges. What, really can you do now?

Today, the first thing to work on has to be your self-esteem. No solution can be implemented if you don’t feel clearly that it’s your right to have a healthy, supportive and emotionally satisfying marriage. If you are still confused have to choose between thinking that his behavior is your responsibility, therefore you are the guilty person; or asserting the right to be happy, then now you know that the first task is to strenghten your self-esteem.

After feeling more secure, more accepting of the wonderful person you are, only then you can begin to think on ways of sending the message to your hubby that you deserve better than lame excuses. You want good answers, real support, information sharing and the whole marriage package.

How can you improve your self-esteem? There are several ways to go about, here we will list soon some steps you can take immediately. Just now, remember that you can construct a powerful self-image only if you connect with yourself and the power of your dreams!

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: attitude change, Healthy Marriage, loneliness, love, recognition, resilience, Self-Esteem

Very easy:
Resilience is what you develop when you learn to confront all those interpersonal obstacles with good solutions.

It is very easy to use “fighting fire with fire” reactions…it’s almost automatic, and everybody does it everywhere. A different attitude, like resilience, comes from understanding our personal conflicts as a call for another kind of action.

Here we see resilience as the final product of a long learning process:

A) We accept that there will be confrontation in our life,
B) We choose to manage confrontations by avoiding escalation, attacks and revenge, and controlling anger,
C) We learn to listen carefully to our “enemies’” complains,
D) We sincerely examine ourselves to see how, given the inter-connectedness we have, we helped produce the dispute;
E) We ask ourselves: How can I learn from this dispute? What is in me that needs change? What new skill do I need to learn now to re-connect with this person and be able work together or part in peace?

In short: do we see conflict as a signal to work in our interpersonal communication skills? Yes, indeed!

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 control, Anger Management, conflict, escalation, learning, listening, passive aggression, peace, resilience

Sometimes our strength comes from having a positive sense of self. We know who we are, we accept ourselves as work in progress, without shame or recrimination, and we have a healthy awareness of our skills.

This needs to be combined with a sense of a network of souls around us who recognize us as a valued member; who are willing to lend support and acknowledgment at any time. We are no strangers here to our inner circle.

And then, we need to know where do we want to go, what is our life purpose…Having a sense of mission validates our existence and gives meaning to a lot of daily decisions we need to do. In our personal narrative, we have to see this small, private story of us linked to a wide tapestry of other stories which are making together the meaning of our times. No life is lost, ever….and every action of ours confirms that we are part of a collective endeavor to survive and prosper.

Perhaps in this moment, what we need the most is a sense of the collective “we.” The pieces of an individualistic view of myself are fighting to keep control of my mindset, and of yours…but at this precise time, nobody will be able to survive in isolation. Fear? yes, of course, there is fear…but the old fear of the other as the enemy, the opponent, the competitor is being replaced by a shared fear of all the diverse circumstances surrounding us. From global warming to financial collapse to shocking degrees of joblessness to pandemic threats, all are coming at us at the same time.

Is it time to leave our individual, protective shell? You bet! Is it time to learn cooperative skills and stop doing passive aggression and other forms of abuse and control? Indeed!

Of course we all need time to do the transition and deal with our particular, internal demons…the only thing clear now is this: the longer you continue attached to old ways of thinking (type: “my survival over others”) the less resilient you are.

Are you still in love with your old mindset? Begin doing some steps to push the change inside: talk with your neighbors, begin a small project shared with others…whatever will get you out of your shell is a good step. Keep telling yourself: “As more aware I can be, it will help me organize and survive better…no need to hide or deny any longer”

And, of course, being part of some online community is also helping you to develop new connections. Make your thoughts heard just by answering this post, or making a comment with your reaction…Thanks!

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: attitude change, connections, healthy relationships, isolation, loneliness, recognition, resilience, Self-Esteem