The qualities that make us the men that we are are largely attributable to the relationships that we have with our fathers. We take on mannerisms, traits, quirks, behaviors and emotions. Our intimate relationships, in many ways, are also results of our relationships with our fathers.

Too many men have difficulties being the fathers that they should be to their sons. Many times, they never got the right role modeling from their parents. Without the right tools, or no tools at all, problems get created. Men go on to have imperfect relationships, and don’t know how to be effective intimate partners to their wives and girlfriends.

First, men learn from their fathers how to be emotionally withdrawn from their women. They learn from the environment they grew up in at home, over time, to shut down, stay in their heads and generally not be present to their feelings. This is the nucleus of the problem. Men have learned a lot of negative coping skills to gets their needs and feelings met, and sometimes that comes out as anger, rage, substance abuse, violence, criticizing or judging, or just avoiding and withdrawing altogether from their women.

Second, as children we model behavioral patterns from our parents. As boys, we model the ways of being in a relationship from our fathers (and mothers). Many times, our fathers never got it right, so we simply take from them what we see, because unconsciously, if we do what they did, we just might get our needs met after all.

This is child’s logic, and somewhere down the road, we fail to drop those tools when they don’t work for us anymore. As kids, they might have had some basic effectiveness, but now they just don’t work anymore.

The key is to understand and deal with these negative behavioral patterns, and the emotions that we avoid buried underneath. In seeing these, often for the first time, and experiencing them in the present moment unconditionally, they begin to transform themselves and set us free from the patterns that keep us stuck in conflict and unsatisfying relationships.

We can work towards freedom from these problems if we can first see them. Our fathers might not have been able to do it for themselves, but we can for ourselves. We can change those relationships by digging deeper, so we don’t have to create those same relationships for ourselves, and so the problems don’t get handed down the generations again.

In honor of an early Father’s Day, here are some parenting strategies that you can use to right now to give your child a real gift back. Parenting is a real struggle for some men, and a lot of guys that I talk with feel like they’re not giving their kid everything that I can, or aren’t there for their child as much as they’d like to.

There are plenty of distractions, from keeping a demanding work schedule, domestic responsibilities, and a happy marriage. We want the very best for our kids, and want to give them more, but sometimes don’t know exactly how to do that.

To make matters worse, sometimes our kids elicit those negative parts of ourselves that we don’t really like, which make it all the more confusing and frustrating to know how to “do it right.” We think we’re doing the best job we can, but it doesn’t always feel that way.

Here are five strategies to be a better dad that you can use now, to improve the relationships with your kids:

• Keep your anger in check: Most frustrated guys that I talk with say that their kids are too well versed in pushing their buttons and getting deep under their skin. For men, it’s easy to get frustrated and explode, or take it out on their kids. Learning how to divert your frustration and anger, so as to not bring it down on your kids, is really important to building a better relationship with them. If we’re already angry about the numerous life stressors that affect our lives, it’s sure to be made worse when our kids upset us. Kids will internalize your anger, and translate it to mean that it’s something wrong about them, or how they aren’t “good enough” for you. Try to practice using a soft tone, and communicate with your kids with your feelings, whether you’re frustrated, concerned, afraid that they’ll hurt themselves, or whatever. Watch this short video on “Supereasy Anger Management Tips” I shot a while back to help cool some of the anger you might be putting on your kids.
• Use natural and logical consequences: Teaching your children to experience the natural or logical consequences of their actions is one way that you can help promote acceptance of responsibility. The idea here is that there are real-world consequences for certain behaviors, and allowing your child to experience them on their own, without parental intervention, is one approach to helping children learn from their own actions and behaviors. Here’s more information on using natural and logical conquences with your child.
• Be consistent with your spouse on parenting: A lot of times, spouses are not on the same page about how to parent their children together. With this inconsistency, kids often seek out the cracks in parenting, and go to more permissible parent to get what they want.This sets up a problematic family system and bad family dynamics, and it’s then one parent against the other. Your kid ends up fueling further marital tension. Get on the same page with your wife or girlfriend, and create a parenting alliance so there’s no misunderstandings between anyone in your family. Decide early on how you will parent your child around the issues that matter most, whether that’s on homework, eating, sleep times or other areas of life that will inevitably come up.
• Validate and affirm your kid: Your son or daughter wants to know that you care about them, and that they feel special to you. Too often, we either inadvertently criticize or judge our kids, even when we’re not meaning to, or are so busy that we don’t attend to our kids. Overparenting, or underparenting, can have negative effects on your son or daughter. Kids need to feel that you care, and that they are worthwhile to you. Make regular time with your kids, but make the time focus on making your kid feel good. Really practice the “quality” in qaulity time. Validate their efforts in school or play, and tell them things that make them feel loved and cared for by you. For some men, this is really hard if they didn’t get it from their parents growing up, but it’s super important so that your kid grows up feeling good about themselves, and has high self-esteem and competency.
• Watch how you overcompensate from your own childhood: Problems we experienced as kids, growing up in our own family of origin, usually leave deep impressions on us subconsciously. The dads that I talk with have some awareness about the effects those problems have on them. Most times, they overcompensate with their own kids, which is to say that they do the opposite of what they received as kids. For example, if they were neglected and invisible as kids, they will make it a point to work to extremely (if not too) hard to make their own children feel visible and important. This can create its own set of problems. If you’re not resolved around your own childhood issues, they’re probably spilling out onto your own parenting and onto your kids.

I hope these parenting tips help. If you’ve got other suggestions that work, leave them in the comments.

Pleasing others sure has it’s benefits. People think well and highly of us, we get to do good for others and feel good about ourselves, and it leaves the world in a generally better place. Right? Not so fast.

Helping and giving to others certainly is honorable and selfless, and others certainly do like us much more. But, for those that fall victim to people pleasing behavior, effects can be just as harmful as they are pleasing.

For those who fall victim to the “disease” of people pleasing, saying “no” to others is like the kiss of death. For guys, just like women, being driven by the need to please other people, or the fear that they will fail to do so, keeps people in this cycle of pushing aside their emotions and needs and giving their power over to other people.

Dealing with Guilt

For people pleasers, guilt is a familiar emotion. A lot of times, we feel guilty because there’s a part of our brains that feels we need to, should or have to do for other people or give to people in certain ways. competing with that experience is that voice inside of ourselves that knows what we really want for our own selves, that may be different from pleasing others.

When those voices stay in conflict, life becomes really challenging. We stop listening to ourselves, and push that second voice away, leaving the people pleasing voice to act and behave in the world (and if you’re wondering, no, you’re not schizophrenic).

I believe guilt is the byproduct of these two voices clashing. Guilt is highly associated with anger, and when we feel guilty about something, there’s probably a “should” or “have to” associated with it. What we really want is to not indulge in the pleasing behavior, except were not listening to ourselves, and feeling guilty as a result. people pleasers off and just carry around the guilt, without really attending to what it is that they truly want for themselves.

Fear of rejection

A lot of times, people pleasers are deeply afraid and insecure of others rejecting them. It’s the fear, or better yet the avoidance of fear, that promotes the people pleasing behavior. for some people pleasers, being afraid of being rejected by others in their lives is tantamount to death, and would do anything to avoid putting themselves in a situation where they felt rejected.

The people pleasing behavior arises as a way to manage the fear and help you keep it in check, ensuring that the pleaser doesn’t set himself or herself up for a situation in which he is rejected. work on the fear, and you start to chip away at the people pleasing behavior. Most often, our fear of rejection comes from early childhood experiences, when we felt rejected, or were actually rejected, by a parent or a parent figure.

We develop the people pleasing behavior as a way to deal with that original rejection, and grow up into adults that perpetuate people pleasing with those in our lives. The best ways to deal with people pleasing behavior are to get to the root of the issues, which are often fear-based, and start to work on those.

Journaling, talking with close friends or family, or seeking out counseling to work on those issues are all effective. challenging and training yourself to learn to say “no” is difficult, but it’s essential to breaking the habit of people pleasing.

Additionally, learning what the differences are between “should” and “want to” Is equally important to busting up this cycle. identifying what you really want, aside from what others want from you or what you think others want from you, is also really crucial to ending the people pleasing behavior.

Anger is an emotion that, if left unchecked, can greatly undermined or ruin the closest relationships that you have. It can also have the power to motivate and transform us into a positive force. Unfortunately, a lot of guys react out of unconscious anger, and often end up falling into the destructive kind of anger.

Rage and physical violence also stem from uncheck anger. For some guys that have grown up in an abusive household for seeing one of their parents react out in physical violence, it can seem almost common to explode in reactive anger. Hitting things or people, putting your fist through the wall, or generally blowing up without getting physical are all ways that anger can feel out of control in those moments where it takes over.

Here are six tools to start with to learn to deal with anger more effectively. If you start using it on a regular basis, you’ll be able to control your anger and stop alienating those closest to you.

1. Stop anger from turning into something verbal or physical.

Saying something that you regret, or putting your fist through a wall, may alleviate some of the angry pressure immediately, but it may have longer-term effects. It teaches you to depressurize yourself through releasing anger, not working through it for a better resolution. Learning to differentiate your anger from the reactive behaviors that result from it is really important. Reacting on the anger, or doing or saying something you’ll regret, is pretty common for men, but trying to develop your awareness not not act on it takes more courage and strength.

2. Use your anger instead of turning away from it.

Especially in intimate relationships, communicating your anger tells your partner that you are fully invested. According to recent study in the Journal of Family Psychology, women tend want to engage with men around conflicts. They want to see men’s ability to communicate their feelings, even if those feelings are negative, which means to women that their partner is invested in the relationship. Women want to see men engaged in the conflict, or at least available, and when men withdraw or avoid their anger, it can be more damaging to the relationship than one would think. Men want women to be happy, and to do that means to engage more around the conflict. IT may be tough, but it will stave off more conflict to come.

3. Don’t identify or label yourself as “the angry guy” if you’re angry. 

Identifying ourselves as “the angry guy” is not beneficial. If we’re angry, were angry. Don’t make a big deal about it, and let yourself be angry. It doesn’t mean anything about you as a person if you get angry. Challenge beliefs that have been indoctrinated into you from growing up, and challenge some of the ideas about getting mad. A lot of us men have dysfunctional messages about what it means to be angry, because anger was not acceptable to express in a lot of our early childhood experiences. So, getting mad is not the same as being an angry guy. One is the feeling; the other is an identity label. Don’t confuse the two, or it’ll be made worse.

4. Find more constructive ways to deal with your anger.

Try journaling, or hitting the gym, or learning to develop your communication skills so that you can get better at learning to speak your anger. Learn to work on identifying those points in time where you do get frustrated or angry, and resolve to make it a habit to do something different instead of unconsciously reacting. Practice deep breathing, or mindfulness meditation, or get better at controlling your stress in the other parts of your life. Treat your anger with understanding, kindness and inquiry.

 5.  “Own” your anger.

A lot of guys ask me what this means when I say this, and owning your anger is the same as taking responsibility for it. When we’re angry, we get into this habit of blaming our anger on other people for their behaviors that caused it. We fixate on the ways that people have upset us, as the reason, as opposed to learning to identify our own anger as a result of someone’s actions. There’s a difference. Learning to take responsibility or “own” our anger is learning to be responsible for our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It’s also going to stop blaming other people for our anger, or victimizing ourselves because we think we’ve been wronged.

6. What’s underneath your anger?

Because anger is empowering, and intoxicating, it also helps men feel in control. That’s why a lot of times when men and women engage in conflict, anger is the place that men feel more comfortable in, because it’s empowering. The fact of the matter is, most of the more essential emotions lie right underneath our anger. If we can learn to tap in to those underground emotions, and learn to identify them, we can start to open up the conversation and transform it, and not just limit it to just our display of anger. Women want to hear from our emotional hearts, and often get put off or intimidated by just seeing or hearing or anger over and over again. Learn to dig a little bit, and you might discover hurt, fear, shame, or some other less “powerful” or less “masculine” emotion. it maybe difficult to feel, but it’s a little more authentic than is just our anger on its own.

Consider the six steps before you get reactive and angry in your next conflict. There are ways through just getting angry and exploding. Anger is a very neutral force, and if you can learn to become more aware of it and make it conscious, you can start to use it for the good instead of falling victim to it’s consequences.

There’s no greater saboteur than ourselves. Others may make life difficult for us, but it’s often ourselves that hinder our own selves from getting what we want in life. From getting the right job, to improving the relationship we’ve got, we constantly undermine ourselves and impede our forward progress into getting our needs met.

1. Fear: often times, fear is a more powerful motivator than anything else. When we’re afraid, of either failure or of success, we devise strategies to get in our own way. For example, a lot of guys need affirmation or validation from their wives or girlfriends, yet are too afraid to speak up and get it. They turn to other women outside of the relationship where it’ll be safer to get affirmed or validated, thus eventually undermining their existing relationship when the other partner find out.
2. Stress: Stress management is a difficult thing to employ. We’re busy people living busy lives. Too often, getting the right sleep, eating right or just generally taking good care of ourselves get sidelined. When we’re stressed, our tolerance thresholds are lower, and we’re more immune to poor mental health, anger, interpersonal conflict and physical ailment. Maintaining your well being and keeping stress under control are essential to not undermining yourself. Keeping a positive outlook and good mental health are ways you can promote yourself, and not get in your own way.
3. Making the Wrong Choices: Either out of impulsivity, or just making decisions that aren’t in alignment with our long term goals and life vision, making poor choices undermines our forward progress. Taking a job because it pays better, but may not provide the kind of work you love, could eventually pan out to be a poor choice. Keeping friends who use you instead of give to you may be another. Making clear, solid decisions is based on what you value for your life: do you value your work to be personally meaningful? Do you value mutually giving and reciprocal relationships?
4. Not finding resources or support: The world is interconnected, and there are things you can’t do alone. If you’re impartial to asking for help from others, it may be hurting you. Everyone needs help. Whether you need to find better ways to network with others for professional purposes, need counseling for a personal problem, or want to start dating again and need some help, asking for help is
5. Worrying about what others think: I recently shot a two minute video about how to stop worrying about what others think. When we fall into this kind of thinking, we give other people power over our lives and decisions. I think when we worry about what others think, our mental energies are distracted, when they could be used to help us help ourselves instead. Worry a little less about what others think, and you might find you have available energy to improve your own life.
6. Falling into acts of anger: Anger in and of itself is not harmful – it’s what you do with it that creates problems. Usually, we fall into anger and end up reacting, whether it’s alienating friends or family, or getting angry on the job, anger is a force that, if left uncontrolled, can leave us undermining our own chances of success. It’s a huge impediment to good relationship building. Learning how to deal most effectively with anger, and learning how to harness it, communicate it and make it work for you is no easy task, but it’s something that could go go from a liability to an asset in your life if you know how to use anger effectively.

When I talk with couples, what I hear sometimes is “Well, we’re fine – we don’t fight.” Or, “there’s nothing really wrong with our relationship. We never argue.” Or,  for the couples that knows something’s wrong, I may hear “we just never talk about.”

There may be a problem with “not fighting” or “never arguing” in your relationship or marriage. For a lot of couples, when there’s problems in the relationship, too often one or both partners fall into a withdrawal pattern, and push aside the issues that they’re having with the other. This creates deeper problems, as constant problem avoidance festers and grow over time.

Men’s Avoidance and Emotional Withdrawal

Men can be notoriously consistent in relationship struggles by withdrawing emotionally from their partners and “checking out.” We come to know the “man cave” metaphor in popular culture, but do we realize that men hide when there are problems or difficulties in their marriage? I hear men taking about not wanting to get into a fight, not wanting to upset their wife, girlfriend or partner, or feeling afraid of their own anger. They may be too ashamed to talk with their partners, and hold or stuff the problems they’re having. This can be a slippery slope to other problems.

The Effects on Your Partner

The partners of the emotional withdrawers often complain that they “can’t access” their partners, or talk about feeling unloved or disconnected from their guy when he’s emotionally withdrawn. This creates other problems. The partner who has such a difficult time accessing their withdrawn partner will react in their own way, creating problems on top of problems. A vicious, negative cycle thus ensues, and the withdrawn partner continues to distance himself.

How to Help Yourself

Consider that the storyline you’ve been telling yourself about your relationship might be flawed. Every couple gets into a reactive cycle, so it’s important to come to understand your own. How do you contribute to it? Do you withdraw and avoid conflict? Do you end up pursuing a hard to reach partner in the distance? Considering that by “not fighting”, you still may be locked in a struggle, albeit a silent one.

I work with an increasing amount of guys who find it really hard to say ‘no’ to others, even if it means foregoing their own wants, needs and desires. For these guys, they swallow their own voice to meet the demands of others, usually with women in romantic relationships, but more commonly with coworkers, service providers, people on the street… whomever.

The “nice guys” out there look unassuming on the surface. They’re extra friendly, people love them, and their generally non-toxic to others. It’s when it comes to themselves that the problems begin.

Here are some features of the “Nice Guy”:

• Has a hard time saying ‘no’ to others, including intimate partners
• Doing for others until they’re tired, or exhausted
• Have a high degree need for appreciation or validation, and will work hard for it
• Not feeling in control of relationships
• Carry around guilty feelings
• Being dependent on others – including women – or “orbiting” them like a human satellite
• Deals poorly with rejection
• Takes many things very personally
• Tries to be the life of the party, make others laugh, take on other’s personalities

Fundamentally, Nice Guys don’t know how to meet their needs, because if their needs are known, they could not be met by those who are in the position to meet those needs. Instead, they end up playing games – sometimes through coersion or manipulation – through playing the role of the “nice guy”. They’re not straight with others, or themselves. It’s too risky to be oneself, because the role or mask is the one they think gets all of the attention and validation. Nice Guys forget that pleasing other people is not pleasing themselves.

The other issue is anger. Anger gets stuffed within nice guys, but ends up seeping out as passive aggressive behavior. Their anger cannot be communicated directly, because of the risk that runs of being rejected or abandoned. But, it has to go somewhere, and so it gets filtered through other ways like the passive-aggressive approach. This can be displayed through constant joking, sarcasm, not being straight with one’s anger, playing the victim, etc.

A good book on the topic of “nice guys” was written a couple of years back by Dr. Robert Glover. “No More Mr. Nice Guy” explains these types of issues that guys struggle with. It’s worth a read.

If you think you’re a “Nice Guy” and want to start to break the cycle, start by understanding how you can’t say ‘no’ to others. Is it fear? Is is rejection? Are you taking too much ownership or responsibility for other people?

• Practice saying no in small ways, and try building up to the big ‘no’s.
• Start monitoring your anger and seeing how it might leak out in less direct ways, as mentioned above.
• Work on validating your own self more, instead of being dependent on other’s to fill you up
• Start to differentiate between those people that are truly your friends, and those people who are friendly with you because you do things for them solely. If the relationship isn’t reciprocal, reconsider your investment in it.
• Look at your schedule, and determine which activities, chores, events, etc. you do that’s for others, and really reconsider what you’re getting out of the deal? Is it worth my time? Does it prevent me from taking care of myself adequately

I was once a “Nice Guy,” and let me tell you: it’s a lot better on the other side. People still like me, even more so than when I was trying to be nice and cordial all of the time. I understand the struggles, and reform can happen if you work at it.

There are some things that are meant to be avoided in life: traffic jams, flight delays, credit card fees and death. Some people may even add taxes to that list. But, men that avoid their problems in life find that they come back to haunt them, sometimes in a big way.

Some guys that I talk with avoid their problems – and the consequences that come – at all costs. They’ll do anything to avoid, distract, not deal, think about other things or generally try to forget about the problems that life inevitably distributes. Whether that includes problems with work, money, sex, relationships, or taking care of themselves, avoiding your problems leads to even bigger ones down the road.

It’s the same as car maintenance: if you hear an abnormal sound,  or instinctively know something’s wrong, and you  choose to neglect it, it can be a lot more expensive as time goes on. The same thing with avoiding our problems.

You see, life’s problems have a way of staying dormant only so long. They’ll inevitably creep back up, whether we like it or not. The resulting symptoms manifest as constant money woes, having the same types of conflicts with your relationship partner over and over again, choosing the same type of partners in different relationships, or suffering from the same types of health problems.

Are you guilty of avoiding your problems? Is the reality of your particular situation to difficult to look at? sometimes, when a problem is been avoided for so long, it becomes increasingly more difficult to look at and deal with, because it’s festered and grown worse. The more it grows, the more we want to avoid it, and the cycle continues.

How do you break out of the cycle, then, and start dealing with the issues you’re confronted with?

1. Breakout of the avoidance trap, and admit you got a problem.
2. Lay all of your cards out on the table, and take a look at what resources you’ll need to help yourself.
1. Do you need more time? Money? Better communication skills? More discipline?
3. Ask for help: there have been other people in your situation before, and they’re willing to help you. Ask for help from the people that care, or pay to get the help that you need from a professional.
4. Set goals and chunk it out: do a little bit at a time. Attended a problem bit by bit, and make it a habit to constantly attend to it.
5. Try to take a look at “how” you’re avoiding your problem: is it fear? is it rejection? is it shame?
6. Pat yourself on the back, instead of shaming yourself, for dealing head-on with your problem. It’s been habit- forming for you to avoid your problem, so praise yourself for having the courage to start to attend to what you avoided.

Take it one step at a time when you are starting to open up a problem that you have attended to. It’ll take some time to reorient to the problem, without avoiding it or not looking at it. Take it easy on yourself, and take it slow, and you’ll have started to retrain yourself to deal with problems or tasks as they come up.

Making a decision is hard enough. Having the wrench of guilt thrown into your machinery while you’re making a decision is even worse. Many times, were not even aware of the guilt that we carry, and it operates beneath our consciousness and controls our thoughts, feelings and decision-making skills. When we indulge in our guilt, we are generally not making the right decisions for us, or what’s in our best interest as individuals.

When we try to adhere to other people’s desires of us, whether it’s family, friends, or our significant other, we sometimes get lost in trying to both please them and ourselves. The friction that’s created is where guilt lies. Guilt is more about “should” or “have to,” rather than “wanting to.”

Guilt is corrosive. When we let it fester, it eats us up inside. It stops our better judgment of how best to live our own lives. I think guilt is more related to people pleasing, and when we: the people pleasing, we lose our own voice.

What we call ‘guilt’ is usually representative of a blade within us, between pleasing some outside person or entity and ourselves. The more we can learn to tune into what we really want, the more will find happiness, contentment and confidence. We’re certainly not going to find those things if we endlessly tried to attend to or appease others, or try to do their agenda. Ultimately, will fail, and fall victim to addictive people pleasing.

Ask yourself: “what is it that I really want, if I can cut away trying to always please others?”. if you didn’t have to deal with guilt, what would your certain outcome or decision actually be? Would it looked different than how you’re used to doing it? Are you prepared for that outcome?

If we actually take the risk of listening to ourselves and what we truly want, and not others, what are the risks? usually, there is fear or panic about letting others down, or doing the opposite of what others want from us. When we grow up, we often develop guilt from interacting with our parents. They usually have a certain agenda for us, and we usually just learned to absorb it. As kids, we never really considered doing things our own way, or if we did, it was usually in a defiant or flippant way.

I think the first way to successfully deal with guilt is to start to recognize what it is that you actually want. What would your relationship look like if you really wanted it to be free of guilt? Would your friendships change? would you end up dropping friends who you didn’t feel guilty around?

On the other end, sometimes guilt is flared up by others manipulative tendencies. Manipulation and guilt are bedfellows. Where there is manipulation, there’s often guilt. if you’re feeling manipulated by someone close, it’s important to start to understand that dynamic in your relationship, and start to address it head-on. If you allow yourself to be manipulated, the end product will probably be guilt. And guilt is extremely corrosive to the soul.

New! Affordable Counseling Services in Phoenix – Starting Today! Now only $60 a session!

If you’ve been putting off counseling, and expenses have been an issue these days, we’ve got just the deal for you. And it’s gotten a little better.

Phoenix Men’s Counseling expands it’s service menu to include affordably priced counseling for individuals and couples.

Counseling services will be offered by Trent Leupp, a counseling student intern from Argosy University in Phoenix, under the direct supervision of a licensed professional counselor – yours truly. Sessions are now priced at $60 for a 50-minute counseling session with Trent.

Appointments are currently being set up, and there are a limited amount of bookings available.

New to counseling? Been hesitant to give it a try? This is your opportunity to start to make a real investment in your well-being and your relationships.

Contact Jason at 602.309.0568, or visit us at www.phoenixmenscounseling.com to book an online appointment.