FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Jason Fierstein
602-309-0568
jfierstein@mac.com

May 28, 2009

The ‘Joe Six Pack’: Results-Oriented Counseling for Gun-Shy Guys

Phoenix -  Some guys complain that counseling drags on and on, without hope or help – “Joe Six Pack” aims to do something different. Jason Fierstein, Counselor for Men, is pleased to announce the “Joe Six Pack” counseling package this month for men seeking help with their wives and their lives. This results-oriented bundle helps make counseling more accessible for gun shy guys who know they have to take the first step to get help, but don’t.

“I have been seeing counselors for years and you were able to help resolve my issue in only six weeks. I will be forever grateful for that. You did in only a few weeks what no one else could do in years of therapy,” said David H., Phoenix, of the counseling package.*

The “Joe Six-Pack” Special Counseling Package includes the following:
- Six-pack of individual counseling sessions, including first intake session
- Six individualized progress checks every session
- Two complimentary 20-minute phone or Skype “tune-up” sessions
- “The Guy’s Airbag: A Relationship Crash Course” interactive cd- a $15 bonus
- $100 off standard counseling rates – a great deal!

As “the man that men will talk to,” Jason Fierstein, MA, LPC, has made counseling accessible for men who wouldn’t otherwise commit. In his private practice, Jason has been counseling men (and the women who love them) who are seeking happier and more fulfilling relationships with their partner. His office is located at the Chinese Cultural Center in Phoenix, near Sky Harbor International Airport. For more information about Jason Fierstein and his counseling services, call 602.309.0568 or visit www.phoenixmenscounseling.com.

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*Counseling success is based on individual progress, and results may vary

They may not have fangs and live in coffins, but you know the type: those people who, when you walk away from a conversation with, it leaves you feelings drained, depleted and angry – almost like you had the blood sucked out from you. These so-called “emotional vampires” are there to instictually stun you, drain your essence and leave your carcass in their wake.

What to do? How to fend yourself? It takes a little more creativity than just wrapping a garlic bulb necklace around your neck, so let’s talk about what to do.

It all kind of depends on the type of a relationship. Emotional vampries can range from your social vampire at a party, to the best friend vampire who drains you over the course of years. Maybe you know both types, and maybe you fall prey in both ways.

Learning to disengage from the person, and to say ‘no’ is the first step. There are classy ways of making yourself “extinct”, especially at parties. A quick excuse, or the old “pick and roll” (finding another victim, introducing them to your new vampire acquaintance, and then sliding out of the way) will work at a party.Kindly (and gently) stepping out of a conversation with that person, as to not hut their feelings, yet keep you protected behind your forcefield, is essential to taking care of yourself.

On the other hand, having a close friend who is avmpire is trickier. I would suggest that you have an honest conversation about your feelings, and admit to them that you feel invisible, drained and unimportant when you talk with them won’t hurt anybody. Being able to create airtime for yourself is taking care of yourself, and pushing back against the torrent of words is tricky but not impossible. Also, setting boundaries about what is talked about in conversation is important: telling your friend that you don’t want to talk about a certain topic anymore, or that you feeling uncomfortable or are confused about what they want from you, are good segways to changing the conversation.

These are quick fixes, but standing up for yourself and for getting what you want take some time. Be patient with yourself, try and try again, and know that you can’t count on people changing – you can just change your own perspective and how your engage with that person.

To start, a couple needs to mutually agree that counseling is what they want to do, and how they want to go about helping their marriage. Often times, one partner is hesistant or resistant to coming in and starting the marriage counseling process. Men have resistance to the process, as sometimes they think that the marriage counselor will side with the wife, and will malign against them. Having two marriage counselors works, and, as a counselor for men and couples here in Phoenix, Arizona, I can tell you it’s a lot easier to get men to come in when they think that a male counselor both understands their side and is less likely to side with their wife and against them.

How will you know if you need marriage counseling? A lot of couples report fighting incessantly over the same things, time and again. Fights and conflicts start from the smallest things, where it used to take quite a bit in the past to get a fight going. When communication is shut down, or nonexistent, then it’s usually time to seek out the help of a professional counselor or therapist. When joy and fun have waned, it’s probably time to seek out someone’s help. If you think that all you have together are external things, such as the children, house, car, lifestyle, or anything else outside of the relationship or marriage that keeps you together, it’s probably time to get help. The marriage needs to be happy on its own, and stand on its own two legs, not on outside things that prop it up.

Admitting that you both need marriage counseling is the hard part. Actually saying to yourself, and then to your spouse, that you think you both need help is a big step in the process of reparation and healing. Making the call is the next step.

Getting men into counseling is sometimes one of the harder aspects of counseling. Men who will commit to the process are sometimes resistant to get help until the problems have accumulated to the point of breaking – often the 11th hour.

One of the problems that men experience is a failure to diagnose the problem as it is accumulating. It’s hard for anyone to be able to be fully aware of what the problem is, when we’re in it. Our perspective is pretty skewed when we are in the midst of our own problem, yet for men, it’s difficult to ask for help, which compounds the problem.

Taking the first step to ask for help is half the solution. Just getting into talk with a therapist or counselor is a great start, but making the commitment to come in on a regular basis is just as important. At times, especially for a guy in a relationship, they think that having a “good week” with their wife or girlfriend means that they can quit counseling. Not true. Just because the week might go well, which is good, doesn’t mean that men have their relationship problems solved. Sometimes, the counseling work in do with men in Phoenix, Arizona, is deeper than than, and requires more time commitment.

A lot of time, it’s the wife or girlfriend who initiates the first step to get counseling for their guy. Then, the guy will come in, often times as a couple. Women often are the initiators to getting help to fix or save their relationship, but not always. As the traditional caretakers, I often talk with women who are more outwardly concerned about preserving their marriage than their guys are.

Men work very successful in therapy when it is solution-focused, and there are skill-building exercises and homework for them to do. They feel most successful when those things produce results in their relationship, which spurs them on to continue with the counseling process.

Here’s a little video on some ideas about the role of pornography in men’s lives, as related to their romantic relationships. I hope you like it. Comments? Questions? What do you think?

Men, Pornography and Relationships

I thought that this article could relate nicely to the article on “yes men.” It’s about getting what we really want with our lives, and our jobs.

Can you see yourself not at your job in six months? Are you experiencing that dread, that low level chronic dissatisfaction that starts to snowball into anger and general irritability?
I’ve totally been there. I used to let “life” happen to me, meaning that I would kind of wait it out, for that “right” moment or opportunity to come in and whisk me away. Guess what. It didn’t happen.

I had to come to the conclusion that, in order to be happy in my work, I had to take the bull by the horns and start to activate. The hardest part, for me, was taking responsibility and ownership for the fact that I am the only author or my life, and other people, situations, and job settings were merely the supportive or background players. It was up to me to start to make the leap over time.

So, with that in mind, if you are not enjoying your current job and want to get out, consider these 5 questions to help:

1. Consider happiness/money formula: Can you live with the money, or is the money getting old and you want some “soul satisfaction”? Is the money all that great, that you sacrifice other things, like your time, happiness, relationships, stress, whatever?
2. What can you really see yourself doing for work? (This is a tough question, so sit with it). If you’re not doing what you really love doing, then what keeps you in your current job, and how does it keep you? A lot of times, guys I counsel don’t know what they want, but they just get attached to the suffering in their current lousy job. If you found your passion, what would that look like? Sketch out that plan on paper, and share it with someone close.
3. What resources will you need to start to put your plan into action? Money? Time? Family/friends/partner support? A new resume? A vague sense of what you really want to be doing? More education? There are lots of possible resources that you might need, and the trick is to identify them and get them down on paper.
4. What are the pros and cons to staying in your current job? List them out. Do a massive brainstorm to list out every possible factor that contributes to your happiness or misery, and then weigh them against each other. Rank them according to importance.
5. Lastly, what are the barriers to your professional “end zone”? Look closely and carefully now. What walls, fences, blockades do you put up in front of yourself mentally, that end up undermining your own success? This is a harder question, so I want you to sit with it for longer. Sometimes, we don’t even know how we keep ourselves imprisoned. Sometimes we play the victim. Sometimes we make excuses. Sometimes we wait for the world to happen, like me.

With these 5 questions in mind, start to consider making the change that you’ve wanted and thought wasn’t possible. Start to “live your bliss” and do the work that you were meant to do, and the world was meant to have you do.

Are you the type of person who, when it comes right down to decision making time, pushes aside your own desires and needs to meet everyone else’s? Do others say you’re you just too damn nice?

“Yes Men” are in abundance just as much as women who can’t say ‘no’, and this may be you. Being unable to say ‘no’ can happen to you anywhere: at home, at work, with your family or friends.

The basic idea is this: you succumb to the fear of not saying ‘no’ by saying ‘yes’ when you don’t really want to. Saying ‘yes’ is easier, and allows you to not deal with the fear of saying ‘no’.

By saying ‘yes’ all of the time to people and situations that we really don’t want to, we collude with our fear of being abandoned and rejected by others. When we say ‘yes’ when we don’t mean to, when we’re doing what others want us to do, we lose our spines by not standing up for ourselves. By being “yes men,” we become “less men.”

Learning to take a stance and say ‘no’ is important for our growth as men, and as people, partners, employees, sons, etc. To learn to assert oneself and to understand that saying ‘no’ is actually practicing self-care, we start to look at our dilemma through a more positive lens. To continue to say ‘yes’ when you don’t mean it, it’s not honoring yourself.

When we stay true to ourselves, we can compassionately learn the difference between what we want, which is good for us, and what we don’t want, and how to communicate to others that difference. When we’re confused about what we want, we allow others the opportunity to exploit that indecision, and then we give up and hand over our power to others.

When we know what we want, others respond accordingly. I know we fear taking a stand, but it actually works in reverse. People and situations bend towards us, as opposed to other way, when we know what we want, communicate it and act upon it. Taking stand won’t kill anyone, so, as the mystic Bob Marley once said: “Get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights.” I’m sure ol’ Bob would support your efforts.

Change of Season

A quick way to bust up a little stress relief for you.

Our culture has taken a real interest in all things spiritual. Eveywhere I look, I can find someone meditating, doing yoga, chanting or promoting something with one of the spiritual arts. I think it’s great that we’ve embraced spirituality in our culture, but mindfulness is different from just “leading a spiritual life.” It’s not so much about “being” spiritual, as it is being present to our lives.

When we are truly present to our lives, we’re aware of our minds and what thoughts they produce. As our actions and behaviors are based on our thoughts, being mindful is not about doing anything special. Mindfulness is about waking up to what is already going on. We don’t need to add anything to our “selves” to be more mindful. We don’t need to spend a lot of money, or enroll in another training program to give us more information. If we are still, and present, we can start to wake up to that which is right under our noses.

Because mindfulness is about being present to what is happening in the now, like Eckhart Tolle says, it’s a “no-brainer”. No brainer in the sense that it doesn’t need our brains to intervene and do anything special. We don’t need to think about, or conceptualize, anything new. Mindfulness is not another concept; it is a direct experience of our awareness, which encompasses our thinking minds. It is greater than our thought process.

Experiencing that presence, we lose the reliance on our thoughts, which is good because we tend to put much stock in them to fix or solve problems that we can’t seem to shuck. I know for me, out of that still place, answers can come forth when my mind is settled down and not as chaotic. The problems that we create are a function of that chaotic mind. The Buddhists call this “monkey mind”, which leaves us prone to confusion, fear, anger, and a host of other problems and negative experiences.

Starting with the breath, being mindful is a matter of experiencing the joy of the present moment. It is about being in your life, not thinking about it or losing yourself in thought patterns about the world. It is a direct experience of life, which is beyond mind and beyond the concepts that we frame the world around.

Another entry point is the body. Experiencing negative feelings in the body, say in the heart, stomach or chest region, is a way to be present to what is. A lot of the time, we avoid the painful emotions and feelings that reside in the body and flee to our minds, where we try to work it out “rationally”. This can be difficult to do, because the mind is responsible for those problems initially.

Relationships are the ultimate awareness experiences, because if we can see our partner as a mirror to our own experiences, and if we can summon the courage to walk through the fire, we can achieve awareness and clarity about the problems we bring into our lives.

Ready to break the chains of relationship boredom? Have you been stuck in a rut for some time now, and haven’t known how to get out? It’s possible that, for some, that you didn’t even know you were in a rut in the first place, which makes things even more difficult to fix (when you can’t even diagnose it).

Here’s 4 quick tips to crawling out of the pit of a relationship that fell asleep:

1. Make yourself more interesting: It’s easy to look upon our spouse, or our relationship, as the problem, and then blame our boredom on those, because they’re convenient. It’s harder to take responsibility for our own boredom, and do something about it.

I propose doing something radically different. I invite you to take a look at your own individual life – aside from the relationship – and ask yourself, “What can I do to make myself more interesting – to myself?” When you can generate answers to this question, you’re starting to make something happen. Maybe it’s learning to communicate differently. Maybe it’s learning how to speak Portuguese. Maybe it’s taking up reading about topics that once interested you, that got pushed aside by a busy life. Or maybe it’s getting involved in volunteerism. But working to make yourself more interesting is by far a major step towards developing renewed interest in your relationship.

2. Talk about the boredom: Too often, couples who are bored make it worse by failing to call the elephant in the room what it is. If boredom is obviously a problem in your relationship, why you you keep contributing to it – because it’s easy? Quit having the same doldrum conversations, and say to your partner, “We need to talk about something that needs to change for me in the relationship.” Make it a priority, and have a conversation to get the ball rolling.

3. Come up with a list of boredom breakers together: Get together (even after the conversation above), and brainstorm about the things that you both enjoy doing together. The very act of brainstorming together will remind you both of the “getting to know you” process that you once enjoyed, before the stalemate set in. Coming up with activities that you both love to do is key. Bonus points: come up with right brained activities, or fun things to do to get you out of your head. Try indoor rock climbing, creating art or music together (there’s Taiko Drumming here in Phoenix – bash on those big old Japanese drums together), or doing something “non-intellectual” or for pure fun.

4. Talk about the anger: Often times, boredom is really anger that’s been frozen. If there is anger between you two, air it out. Talk about it, melt the anger or tension, and get back to spontaneity and fun. Boredom is an intellectual, or mental, way to express anger sometimes, and it’s a way (esp. for men), to distance themselves from their partners. Talk about anger if it’s a problem for you, and you may see boredom start to blow out of your relationship with that simple change.