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First, men learn from their fathers how to be emotionally withdrawn from their women.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.

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.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what is takes to be a good man. I think there are plenty of answers out there: from media and culture, to our own preconceptions of what it means to be a man. But what if we truly listened to ourselves and came up with our own answers?

I’ve decided to put together a men’s self-assessment, and included five areas of life that I think are key to developing oneself as a man. Take a couples of minutes out on a break to consider your answers to these life areas.

• Living Your Values
• Do you live by what you believe in? How so?
• Is there a difference between what you believe in and how you practice your life? If yes,
• Being Genuine/Authentic
• Are you truly open and honest about your thoughts, feelings and behaviors to those close to you? If not, how do you prevent or inhibit yourself?
• Are you generally being true with yourself? If not, how are you untrue to yourself?
• Taking Responsibility
• Do you find yourself playing the ‘victim’ to others, or life in general? How?
• Is it hard to “own” your stuff, even if it’s negative, paints you in a negative light, or tarnishes your facade? Why?
• Practicing Self-Respect
• Do you practice regular self care, such as exercise, good nutrition, stress management? If not, what gets in your way?
• Can you keep healthy boundaries with others (i.e. be firm with others by saying ‘no’, not compromising your values, etc.). If not, how are you flexible on your boundaries with others?
• Do you criticize or judge yourself too harshly? What do you get out of this, if you do?
• Navigating Life Balance
• How does your life tip out of balance? What are your “traps” to fall out of balance (i.e. work, kids, etc.)
• Would others in your life consider you to be balanced in your life? What would they say?
• What is one area of your life that begs for your attention, in needing more balance? What is one thing you can do to feed that unattended part of your life?

What answers did you come up with? Were you surprised by any of your answers? It’s hard to take an honest look at ourselves, when life commands our attention, or when our perception of ourselves is filtered through other people.

If you came up with more questions, let those be the starting point to develop your next answers. How can you develop an action plan to be able to improve some of these life areas for yourself? Will it take time, money, energy, other people – what resources will you need to seek out to help you in developing these things?

Taking an honest look at ourselves takes some courage, especially if we’re not in the habit of doing so. Try to make small but incremental changes in developing your awareness. You can’t change what you’re not aware of, so stay open and get others feedback if you choose. All the luck and support to you.

In your relationship or marriage, maybe you’ve found yourself getting caught up in a rollercoaster-type experience where you and your wife, girlfriend or partner fight for some time, and then all goes back to serenity, and then it happens again and again, with constant repetition and no solution.

Fighting and conflict happen repeatedly, in a cycle format, and usually it’s tough to see what triggers your fall into fighting, conflict and attacks. When we’re in the fighting, we have no perspective. How can we help ourselves get out of it?

We’re going to talk about how to stop conflict and fightingthrough better understanding your negative relationship cycle.

As a fundamental component of the model of couples therapy known as Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), developed by Canadian psychologist Susan Johnson, PhD., identifying your negative cycle consists of looking at certain layers that exist behind the conflict you get into and actually see.

The negative cycle you and your partner get stuck in usually consists of negative behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that causes distress. We get sucked into this “vortex” and have a difficult time seeing ourselves when we get lost in our “cycle.” We often resort to reactive – and hurtful – words, actions and facial gestures when we are upset, needing something from our partner, or not feeling connected or understood.

When you get lost in conflict, look out for these things that you might be doing to aggravate your negative cycle:

• Avoiding or withdrawing from your partner
• Saying hurtful things that produce more conflict
• Feelings that bubble up that don’t get communicated
• Not feeling like you’re being heard
• Trigger words or statements your partner says that cause you to react
• Identifying what you’re telling yourself about your relationship (or your partner) when in conflict
• What behaviors you engage in when you’re upset

Here’s a free worksheet on identifying your negative relationship cycle. Download and print two copies, one for you and one for your partner or spouse. Open up a conversation around your results, and you might be really pleasantly surprised. And you might just surprise her, too.

For further help, read Sue Johnson’s “Hold Me Tight,” an excellent read to help you start to make sense of this confounding cycle.

If you’re a guy, and you cheated or had an extramarital affair, chances are that you have found yourself stuck in that place between wanting to be with your wife, and wanting to be with your partner in the affair. A lot of men that I talk with find themselves in that very space once they started an affair, and through avoidance and denial, tend to keep themselves there to not have to make a choice.

Cheating men now find themselves in a compromising position: do they try go back to their wives and children, or do they leave their family for their mistress?

Some guys don’t want to deal with this all. They get stuck between two women, and don’t know how to get out. Some guys I talk with want to keep treading water for as long as possible, until one of the women in AA in your decision for them. This is avoidance, and it’s making a decision by not making a decision.

What can you do if you find yourself in this position, between your wife and your girlfriend?

• Start to be honest with yourself: really do some soul-searching inside of yourself and see what is motivating you to stay in a the relationship. Are you staying because you want to try the keep the semblance of a family going? Are you too afraid to tell your wife the truth? Are you doing it for your children, and not for yourself?
• Consider your family of origin: did your parents not provide you a structured environment, so you may be trying to seek out the creation of structure within your family? Did your parents cheat on the other? Was it hard to work through problems or issues verbally or emotionally while growing up? I think these are all questions to consider when trying to come to a decision about to do.
• Try to be clear on your values: if the intimacy and sex with your mistress is just that, why do you continue to do it? if you have strong values, and your behaviors are not aligning with those values, there is a disconnect that will lead to indecision. Do you choose the instant gratification, or do you choose to invest in your long-term happiness and those things that are more aligned with your values.
• If your marriage is bad, come to the table and talk about it: you and your wife may need marriage counseling, or it may be too late. Maybe it’s better to start talking about separation or divorce, but really consider your motivations in continuing to not talk about it or breach the topic with your wife.

Cheating and infidelity are complex, and these bullet points don’t profess to get you to where you need to be. Ideally, you’ll invest some time and energy into counseling, whether that’s with your wife or alone. Like I wanted to counseling alone, and don’t really want to start to deal with talking about the issues with their wife quite yet. It’s important that you start to consider making some decisions, even if their minor, for your own happiness and everyone else’s.

If you’re like most men, it may take you a while to come around to the realization that there are problems in your relationship or marriage. some couples think that if they don’t fight, all is well. But is it? Are you both really okay, or is that what you’re telling yourselves?

For guys, the thought of going in the couples counseling is comparable to getting a root canal. The thought of showing up in the counselor’s office and starting to take a look at the problems, and ultimately, their role in the problems, is no picnic. Added to that, most guys think that the therapist is going to side with their wife or girlfriend, and end up attacking them.

Most of the myths that we generate about couples counseling are false. The right counselor can understand these things, and work with you to help you feel comfortable and not like you’re on the hot seat. The right approach to couples counseling is also critical for the successful goals you want to accomplish with your wife or girlfriend.

One extremely effective orientation to marriage counseling comes in the form of what’s known as EFT, or Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples. The success rate is quite high: studies are coming out that show couples have a better than 70% repair rate from EFT.

Developed by Susan Johnson, Ph.D, a Canadian psychologist, Emotionally Focus Therapy looks at the attachment bonds between couples. This is an approach that looks deeper than just building better communication skills or developing more effective negotiation or coping skills. EFT helps couples connect in an emotional way. And yes, men do want to connect with their wives in the emotional way, even if they don’t say so. It’s this emotional bond between partners that is sustainable, and many of the reactive behaviors and emotions that result are part of a complex “dance” or chronic negative cycle that emerges between partners.

The idea is to bring awareness to that negative cycle, and all work together in therapy to help couples stop fighting, reduce conflict and connected and more animate an emotional way. The negative cycle becomes the problem, and therapist and couple work towards understanding and reducing the negative cycle together.

Even guys who are hesitant to dive into their feelings talk about really making progress with this form of marriage counseling. a lot of guys really enjoy it, and not only turn around the destructive path of their relationship, but are able to improve it in ways that they never thought that they could.

Here’s a free worksheet on identifying your negative cycle with your partner. Download this and do it together to begin the process of identifying how you both get stuck in your own relationship patterns: http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/clinicalforms/negative-cycle.pdf

You don’t have to feel hopeless and trapped in your relationship or marriage situation. There is help, and options for you to explore instead of a breakup or divorce. You might be really surprised with the results.