I’m reminded of Al Bundy, patriarch of the Bundy family, from the TV show “ Married With Children.” In the show, Al’s proudest moment in life was scoring four touchdowns in one game. He didn’t achieve what he sought out to, and, long story short, ends up working as a shoe salesman. Al often spends time attempting to recapture his glory days, but usually trips himself up with bad decisions and worse judgment. Al blames and resents his family, and attributes his problems to them, which provides the crux of the show’s humor.

Al’s life ended up very differently than he planned. In high school, he shined. it was a successful football player but hopes of getting a college scholarship, but after he impregnated his girlfriend and broke his leg, everything changed. Al lives in his private world filled with the best times of his life, and it’s a place that’s too many men resort to living in when their realities prove disappointing and unfulfilling.

As men (or people in general), we have a tendency to avoid ourselves, our situations or our lives as they are in the present moment. Often times, we’re too busy living in and out our private universes of the past or of the future. We hold on to the good memories, often to escape the reality of our current situation.

We may have been star athletes, president of the debate squad, or more successful with women in the past. We may have felt happier at a time in the past where we were more secure, fitter, healthier, happier, and generally more equipped to deal with the world.

Through the process of stagnation, those experience wane over time. Maybe our lives didn’t end up the way we planned. Maybe our spouses didn’t bring us the happiness that we so hoped. Maybe our children disappoint us, or maybe we disappoint ourselves. Maybe we didn’t make a million dollars, or become a pilot or a deep sea diver like we planned when we were 8 years old.

Life is short, and it’s never too late to turn it around. So what can you do?

• Admit that you’re stuck/angry/unhappy, to yourself, your spouse, your pet iguana, whomever
• Take some time for contemplation, and start to understand if you are living in an alternative universe, where your past self (or a happy future self) take up most of your headspace.
• Get help. Seek out professional help to allow you to deal with the blocks that prevent your happiness in the here and now.
• If you’re victimizing (read: blaming others for your miseries or failures), stop doing that right now. Think of Al Bundy when you do, and realize that you help keep yourself in a cycle of avoidance and unconsciousness when you do. It may be easier to place the blame on others (your wife, your boss, your pet iguana), and it’s a hell of a lot harder to look in the mirror and take ownership for your pain, disappointment and anger at yourself.
• Understand that as long as you have a skinsuit, and fresh air to breath, you can make a change for yourself. It may be scary, and it may not be what others want of you, but it’s your life, and you choose happiness or unhappiness.
• Life is neutral. You are the decider. You can choose to work on issues and change them, or you choose to sit back and stagnate. They’re all choices. One choice is to not choose.

Depression is a problem that affects millions of Americans each year, and many more people are not aware that they may be suffering from it. Fatigue, loss of interest in usual activities, malaise, problems eating and sleeping - these all characterize forms of depression.

Here’s some tips on how to fight depression:

1. Recognize that depression may be what you’re experiencing, and decide to deal with it instead of avoiding it; stay open to feedback from friends or loved ones about what they’re seeing from you.

2. Seek out the help of a trained professional. Talk with your doctor, or seek out a psychiatrist or mental health nurse practitioner who can talk with you about a possible antidepressant medication. You may also benefit from talk therapy, or counseling, to deal with the underlying issues associated with your depression.

3. Get active: engage in moderate physical exercise daily to reduce depressed feelings. This can be difficult when you feel fatigued or disinterested, but it helps.

4. Get Vitamin D/get outdoors: vitamin D helps fight depression.

5. Take Omega-3 fatty acids, either in liquid, capsule or food form (cold water fish). Talk with a physician or a nutritionist about what’s right for you.

6. Get support from friends, family, people close to you.

7. Journal your feelings regularly to see what may be the source of your depression, if there are events or people that trigger your depression.

8. Ask yourself if there are things happening in your life that need attention, or if you are not getting any major needs met in your life at the time. Sometimes, situational depression can be a result of events that stoke depression.

There is help from depression, and some of these tips may assist your recovery. Seek our support from those closest to you, and ask for help from professionals who care.

(reprinted from January’s edition of “Mentality” for men)

Healthy self-esteem is a critical component in a well-balanced life. Guys need it just the same, and it’s a consistent practice over time to maintain and refine good self-esteem, or the relationship that we have with ourselves. The way we treat ourselves is a direct reflection of the way we attract others into our lives. Who we attract into our lives is a direct reflection of how we feel about ourselves - good or bad. Let’s take a look at some components to developing better self-esteem for men.

Here’s how this will happen: we’ll look at four common areas affected by self-esteem, and give four tips for each category.

• At Work
  • Feel accomplished by breaking up large projects into easy to manage tasks, and structure your time.
    • Check these free forms out to help get you better organized: http://davidseah.com/
  • Periodically ask for constructive criticism from superiors to do a better job. Don’t wait for your review. It’s not ass kissing if you to want to perform better, and wiser.
  • Use your lunch productively: do some stress management for yourself for thirty minutes
  • Set quarterly goals for yourself on the job, and work towards gradual achievement of them; if you’re unhappy at work, set quarterly goals to get yourself out of there and into a better job or career
• Relationship with Ourself
  • Identify and watch the toxic “self-critic”. Start to watch how it beats you down mentally, and how much of your behavior may be driven to succeed to “show” or compensate. This is the voice inside your mind that tells you “you’re not good enough, smart enough, successful enough.” Yes, that one.
  • Identify your needs and communicate them to the people that can meet them for you. Deal with the ones that can’t.
  • Identify your feelings and communicate them to the people that can listen to them. Deal with the ones that can’t.
  • Know what your limits are. Learning to say “no” is just as important for men as it is for women. Having healthy boundaries - which originate in ourselves first - is the foundation for practicing self-care, and developing good self-esteem.
• Lifestyle
  • List three things you’ve been saying you’re going to do - that you’re not already doing - and develop an action plan to start to do them. This includes interests, hobbies, investment in relationships, etc. Identify the blocks and barriers, and write them down. Repeat.
  • Consider your friendships, and how they should be mutually satisfying for both parties. Do you feel good about them, and feel like you’re getting from them, as well as giving to them? If not, is a change needing to be made? Our friends can be great mirrors of our self-esteem, if we look closely. Research shows that mental health,  like depression, can be socially contagious, so why wouldn’t positive (or negative) self-esteem? Surround yourself with well-intentioned people who are good for your self-esteem.
  • Practice 20-30 minute regular exercise routines and do it not for an end-result, but as a commitment towards greater energy and positive self-esteem. Do it for your partner (or kids) if nothing else. We’re not talking Lance Armstrong here. Shake up those feel good brain juices.
  • Align your values with your behaviors. Are you practicing what you preach? Are you doing things in the world that are consistent with what you believe in? Sometimes, recalibrating them brings improved self-esteem, when we’re living from our core values instead of someone else’s.
• Stress Management

• Practice 10-15 minutes of conscious breathing (you can do this at work) or mindfulness meditation. You’ll be able to “unstick” from negative thinking about yourself through this process. E-mail me for instructions on meditating or breathing exercises.
• • Create a “stress list”, and record the daily items that stress you. Dump the stressors onto that list, and put the list in your desk drawer, or in a glass jar labeled “To Worry About”. Don’t stress: you’ll get to them later.
  • Practice better anger. You can exercise it out, yes, but you can also get in touch with the experience of anger in yourself, and communicate your anger in a healthy way to those that are the cause of it. Don’t stuff your anger, but don’t explode either. Choose “the middle way,” and cool your anger and frustration each time it comes up. But time it well.
  • Don’t smoke, and drink a little less. Both will spike stress, and exacerbate negative thinking about yourself (especially if you then tell yourself you want to quit. This is called “cognitive dissonance”, when stress appears as a product of two competing ideas. (“I want to quit, but I’m still doing it.”)

Self-esteem is a relationship that we build with ourselves over time. It requires some work, and continuing to do the right things over and over again. If you think you have chronic self-esteem problems, and need help, contact me to see how counseling or psychotherapy might benefit you.

(reprinted from January’s edition of “Mentality” for men)

Being the social beings that they are, women are generally more predisposed than men to seek out the support of their close friends when there are problems or challenges. Women are better at seeking out friends, and knowing how to support themselves by doing it.

On the other hand, men are not wired this way. Guys in our culture tend to have more superficial relationships, based on common interests, hobbies, work and sport. Men do have “guys’ night”, but usually entails some male bonding activity through watching sports or playing poker. Men bond with activities outside of their emotions, and our culture has never been supportive of men relating to other men in any other way, especially emotionally.  Look at the abundance of “bromance” movies in the last couple of years, such as “I Love You, Man.” Culture, or more specifically, Hollywood, usually needs a comedic vehicle in which to introduce the idea of men connecting on an emotional level. It’s just too “weird” or “uncomfortable” without the humor. It’s kind of sad, because a lot of guys have nowhere else to turn for support.

On a practical level, many men do state that they want more male friendships. They often don’t know how to go about getting them, or aren’t willing to put the work in to maintain friendships. Again, this is where women do it better than guys. They can not only seek out social support from friends, and learn how to meet their needs in this way, but have the ability to maintain friendships and invest the time and energy than it takes to keep them going.

The older a guy gets, the harder it is to “teach a dog new tricks.” It just becomes “too hard” for a lot of guys to risk seeking out new friendships, and spending the time and energy that it takes to preserve them. Sometimes it’s just a little scary to reach out.

We say to ourselves that we want more friendships, but sometimes we aren’t willing to put the work in that relationships take. Friendships are similar to intimate relationships or marriages in that way: they’re good when you put the work, time and investment into them, and atrophy when there’s no investment. Even if you just “synch” with someone, you still got to put the work in to maintain friendships.

Fear is one way that we get stuck from advancing towards generating an up keeping friendships. Sometimes, fear prevents us from taking the risk of seeking out new male friendships or reigniting old ones. Laziness is also a common roadblock towards developing friendships. We don’t want to put the work in, or “have other things to do,” which is another way to say that we are prioritizing certain things in our lives over developing more room for personal friendships. It’s just one choice over the next choice.

Friendships don’t just come to us; they take a lot of work, energy investment, and mutual willingness. it’s the same as keeping a marriage healthy, and it’s a way of helping keep yourself healthy by learning to meet your needs as a man. Guys need the support just like women do, and friendships are a great way to get that support when they’re mutually satisfying.

You may be struggling with depression and not know it. Here are some of the signs to look out for if you suspect you’re dealing with depression:

1. Lack of pleasure in things you usually find pleasing

2. Significant weight loss or gain

3. Feel sad a lot of the time, for prolonged periods of time

4. Feeling unclear, fuzzy or lacking attention; inability to concentrate

5. Irritable, angry or generally unhappy

6. Feeling worthless

7. Excessive guilt

8. Feeling flat or unmotivated

It’s difficult to actually admit that it might be depression that you’re suffering from. Sometimes, we write these symptoms off to other things, such as stress or interpersonal problems we’re dealing with. For men, it’s harder to put the signs of depression together and admit that they’re depressed; culturally, depression implies a sign of weakness or inferiority, so many men who struggle with depression make it worse by hiding it or putting off treatment.

There is help for depression. A combination of antidepressant medications and professional counseling will help. A change in lifestyle, whether that’s more exercise, better sleep, social support, better dieting and nutrition, or investment in more meaningful activities or deeper relationships also ease the pain of depression. Depression is a multi-facted problem, with many possible causes and treatments. But, first, simply admitting that there’s a problem is the first step.

As a Phoenix counselor for men, I specialize in helping men deal with the difficult issues they face: relationship problems, depression, work stress, anger issues, sexual concerns and effective communication skill building.

My practice - Phoenix Men’s Counseling - also helps guys create the types of lives that they see in their minds. Working in counseling together, a treatment plan is developed, and strategies are created to work towards those end results. Forging a relationship based on trust, client and counselor proceed to identify those unconscious barriers that prevent forward progress. Without the help of a professional counselor, think of it as knowing you’ve got to lose weight or get to the gym, actually going a handful of times, and stopping repeatedly before accomplishing your goal. You don’t know what’s stopping you, and know matter how hard you try to punch through it, you can’t. That’s where Phoenix Men’s Counseling comes in.

Book at online appointment through our site today. If you’re struggling, and you want greater happiness, take the risk today. You’ll be happy you did.

If we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes the very act of making New Year’s resolutions cause the very stress they’re trying to reduce. Trying to commit to a workout schedule, or any other schedule, sometimes sets us up for failure when we burn through the initial motivating stage and land into the same stuck place we started from.

Learning how to lower the stress in our lives - and not add to it with unsuccessful New Year’s resolutions - is the goal for more successful stress management.

Taking goals step by step, and successful planning, are keys to minimizing resolutions-based stress. Being realistic about your goals (practicing what’s feasible) will help succesful achievement of your New Year’s goals. Knowing that maybe a fine six-pack might look great, but how attainable is that, considering the real day-today stressors you deal with in you life?

Great planning goes a long way in goal setting stress management. Knowing what resources you’ll need is key: time, money, support, psychic investment, etc. Being prepared for the steep hike helps when you’ve got all the gear you’ll need when the inevitable speed bumps (or road blocks) appear, including waning motivation levels.

Scheduling is another key to stress-free New Year’s resolution planning. Knowing exactly when, and how often, you’ll be advancing towards your goals is critical. Mapping out the time blocks on the calendar you use most, whether that’s your phone or physical calendar on your fridge, is helpful to knowing how to best use your time to achieve your new goals.

Finally, practice patience and compassion with yourself. Watch your aggravating self-critic trying to undermine your efforts and shoot you down. Remember: the path is also the goal. Most goals are successfully learned and practiced over the course of time, so try to see yourself advancing through the process, not specifically towards goal attainment. It’s the path that’s important to remember, and it’s less likely you’ll quit along the road if you can focus there a little more.

I think about happiness a lot. I think about it around this time of the year quite a bit, as happiness and the holidays are so closely wedded. I meditate on the nature of happiness, and how we go about seeking it.

Happiness can come from finding meaning: in the work we do, in the friendships we create, and in the intimacy we deepen with our partners. It comes when the roads of the imaginary and reality merge.

Happiness can come from being present: to ourselves, to our thoughts and to our emotions. Being present and undoing the destructive emotions and thoughts that lead to destructive behaviors can lead to happiness. Quieting the self-destructive voice inside our heads, and learning to deal with the pains of life as they arise - and not continually pushing them aside - will lead to being happy.

Happiness comes from the little joys in life, not from always trying to get somewhere or grasping at trying to accumulate more stuff. We’ve tried that as a society, and it’s gotten us into an epidemic of mental health suffering. And medications don’t always help make us happier.

Happiness is about “knowing thyself”; it’s about developing a compassionate eye back at oneself, and learning to accept oneself as one is. It’s about ceasing to compare ourselves to others for a change, and even to stop comparing ourselves to ourselves. Compassion comes when the voice of comparison quiets down.

There are a lot of distractions to happiness, especially during the holiday season. We’ve seen where our surge to happiness has brought us: into the worst economic crisis in 70 years. We buy more, and crave more, and buy more, and never manage to fill ourselves up with more, now matter how big our appetite grows. We seek solace in self-help wisdom, and cultural gurus, yet things don’t always seem to get better.

Happiness is being away of our mortality, yet not succumbing to the fear of it. It’s being aware that our days are numbered, which encourages us to enjoy our relationships, be mindful and enjoy the fleeting nature of things: good music, colors, delicious food and the mystery of nature.

Happiness is there for the taking. It’s those self-imposed obstructions that, with presence and awareness, can free us from the suffering and neurosis that keeps us stuck.

Why do men in pain hold it in up until the last minute, and then seek out help when the damage has been done? Are men naturally predisposed to pain aversion? What would happen if men were to more proactively seek out mental health counseling or therapy before an otherwise manageable problem ended up destroying them?

Men are beings not socialized to seek out resources and social support the way women do. Women can seek out the comfort and support of friends and family, whereas men tend to hide and obscure their pain in private. A lot of this has to do with the stigmatization of what it means to be a man in our culture. Men are taught, from an early age on, that “real men don’t cry”, and to stuff our emotions and shift into mastery or accomplishment mode to overcome adversity and get things done in the world.

The effect is that problems fester and grow, like mushrooms growing in the dark and dampness of a dead tree. Without light, these problems will get larger, be they marriage problems, work-related issues or general mental health issues.

Depression has many causes, but it gets exacerbated by this effect. Depression can be treated by medications and/or therapy or counseling, but many men succumb to “suffering in silence” and don’t seek it out until facets of their life start to crack at the foundations. They choose to seek pain alleviation when things are bad, and possibly irreparable.

Seeking out a professional counselor for help, and stepping out of denial and stigmatization, are huge tasks for men to do. Often, it’s the bulk of the work just getting there to want help. Seeking out that help proactively is critical in learning the skills needed to learn to help oneself, so that life can get easier, relationships better, and quality of life can be improved.

Acceptance of cheating among men has actually decreased in recent years, compared to previous decades, like in the 1970’s, but In the age of instant communication and viral storytelling, cheating has come (and stayed) in the forefront of the cultural consciousness, with the prominence of celebrities and politicians who have cheated, and gotten caught.

But why do men cheat? Do they cheat simply for sexual gratification? The answer is multi-dimensional and not as easy as that.

According to research, the number one reason that men cheat is because they no longer feel appreciated, validated or cared for by their wives. An unsatisfactory sexual relationship may contribute to it, but the vast majority of men admit that it was because they felt neglected at home, didn’t feel appreciated for their efforts or for who they were.

Here’s how it works: A marriage or relationship slowly starts to erode when partners start to distance themselves. Often times, having children takes precedence, and a marriage is redefined in a way that it becomes second priority. Men - when not getting those needs for intimacy, appreciation or validation - begin to feel angry and hostile towards their wives. They start the emotional disconnect from their wives or girlfriends, which, in turn, creates more friction and hostility towards them by their partners. The cycle continues, and many men opt for cheating or infidelity.

In my experience, men are emotional beings that have a very difficult time learning how to access those emotions, and communicate them in a way that their partners understand. Men are used to the avoidance and withdrawal, especially in the realm of getting their needs and feelings met. Often times, they don’t have or haven’t learned the communication tools to be able to fix the problem before it gets bad. They’ll avoid or repress the problem, and not deal with it as it needs to be dealt with.

Here are some highlighted reasons why men cheat, and then added points on the Tiger Woods scandal, to contrast celebrity cheating: