When you’re bombarded with life chores and events, creating a space to plug out and decompress is hard. It’s easy to get caught in the whirlwind of daily life, but creating a regular space and time to fill yourself up could give you that extra charge you need by doing very little.

See, most men are task-oriented. It’s inconceivable for some guys to think of decompressing and doing nothing. And I’m not necessarily talking about kicking back with a drink or two (or three).

Men can be just as guilty of giving out more than they’re taking in. We end up neglecting ourselves and our need to recharge, which creates problems down the line. When we fail to meet this need, it appears as stress, physical problems, anger, irritability, frustration and feeling generally short with the world. We feel worn out, chronically exhausted and not at rest.

One related issue is that there are some guys who need to be busy 24/7. Some find that they can distract themselves with an ever greater to-do list, or can avoid their problems at home with burying their head in work. I talk with others who “thrive on chaos,” except it’s the chaos that eventually wins in the end.

What to do when creating time alone:

• Recognize that there’s a difference between finding alone time, and disconnecting from your relationship or marriage (if you’re in one). It’s a fine line, and it takes some time to do, but navigating the fine line between finding alone time and still staying connected to your partner is key.
• Communicate with your partner about this need for “plugging out”, and assure them that you are with them, you love them, and you need some decompression/time for yourself. They’ll understand if you communicate this clearly, and if not, they may think you’re avoiding them.
• Identify what makes you happy with the time you’ve got: do I like to just veg on the couch? Do I want to lift weights? Do I want to sit and read, or just contemplate? It’s up to you, and getting in touch with what works for you is important, because it’s different for each person.
• Clearly draw the line in the sand between personal time, work time and family/relationship time. It’s too easy for those lines to blur, and then you go back to feeling irritable and frustrated.
• If you don’t know what that time looks like, or how to just be with yourself, think about it over the next week. Ask yourself “at what points in time do I feel relaxed (when not on vacation)?” “How can I create more of that feeling of relaxation or rest in my home or on my free time?” And, “what’s preventing me from doing more of it?
• Get support from your partner or mate: they’ll understand that need and care for your well-being. Plan on creating both of your alone times at the same time, before you reconnect.
• If you need to immediately decompress when you come in the door, and you’re in a relationship, make that need know when you’re not just walking in the door. Discuss it with your partner at a different date, and tell them it’s important for you to disconnect before reconnecting and talking.

What not to do:

• Fall into smoking pot or drinking for your alone time. If you’re not careful, you may be inadvertently avoiding your pain or problems in your life. Watch out.
• Just expect that the time will present itself to you. You need to take the bull by the horns, and block out the time every week, or every day if need be. You know yourself, and it’s different for each guy.
• Stop communicating your need for time alone on a regular basis with your partner
• Stop planning your schedule to include personal or free time.
• Start planning out more things to-do, because this is your down time
• Fail to create and execute what your down time looks like, because without sketching out what your time looks like, it may not appear.

1. Not overworking to the point of exhaustion. Ask yourself, “Are there parts of work I can do less of for my own health and happiness?”
2. Eat right: There are foods that will aggravate stress, and foods that will sedate stress. Try cutting down or quitting caffeinated and sugary drinks and foods that increase stress levels. Try eating more complex carbohydrates, lean meats and fish, and vegetables and fruits.
3. Getting daily exercise: This is a tough one, because it’s really hard to make a regular schedule to exercise and get to the gym. It can be work in itself. This is a lifestyle change, not an instantaneous  “hit the gym once in a while” thing, so pace yourself. Stress happens over time, and your stress combat plan should develop over the long term.
4. Practice relaxation: Yoga, meditation, even mindful breathing are all superior techniques to help reduce stress.
5. Network development: Many times, guys don’t have anyone to talk to. They might not talk with their other male friends, and their wife or girlfriend may be stressed in her own way. Making the outlet to talk and creating a support network is essential to stress management. Without it, we end up stuffing stress, letting it fester and building it up over time to create much worse problems.
6. Develop routines: stress is a part of everyday life, and those that have the plans most easily executed will come out on top of their stress. See the lifestyle changes you’re making as integral to your lifestyle, not a temporary thing or fad. If you set your sights on stress management as a high value for you, you’ll start to choose behaviors that reflect that value.
7. Practice positive psychology: Thinking positively – while hard for some – trains your brain to see things through a different scope. Choose optimism over negativity.
8. Reduce alcohol consumption: Alcohol is a depressant, and it also affects your sleep by increasing the body’s stress hormone epinephrine, which stimulates heart rate and stress. Alcohol, in moderation, can take the ease off stress, but, for the long term, it’s not the best solution.
9. Say ‘no’ more: Too many guys are just as guilty of not saying ‘no’ as their female counterparts. When we can’t say ‘no’, we guilt ourselves into accepting more and more from others, whether that’s doing favors, taking on more work, or generally stuffing our own need to do less. Learn to take on less responsibility, and learn to say ‘no’ – the world won’t end if you do.
10. Manage your time: The inability to manage time erodes our foundation to deal with stress. Not being able to deal efficiently with all that’s thrown at us in a day can shut your whole machine down quickly. Learn to manage your time, and you’ll immediately experience better stress reduction. Use lists, calendars, and your phone. Plan commuting times, cook on Sundays for the week’s worth of lunches, and generally start to visualize your upcoming week, so that you can do what you need to do before it needs to be done.

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It’s certainly to stereotype men to say that they’re afraid of counseling, self-help, or any other growth-promoting task. In an age of Dr. Phil, Oprah, Eckhart Tolle, and others, the psycho-spiritual consciousness has been raised, and so have the stakes. More is expected of men, and men may simply not be ready to get the help that culture, and their partners, expect them to get.

Historically, this pressure to self-actualize has not been apparent: traditional roles of men were more clearly laid out. Men fulfilled the breadwinner role, and knew what to expect of themselves in marriage. There was no need for emotional disclosure, or “connection” with their wives. Men simply didn’t do it, and women didn’t expect it of them. Depression, although still a phenomenon decades early, hadn’t been given the same legitimacy as it has been in recent years, thanks to Big Pharma and antidepressant medications. The cultural pressure, and subsequent pressure on men by their spouses and loved ones, is much greater now, and many men aren’t well equipped to deal with the pressure, or their own problems in general.

David Wexler, Ph.D, author of “Men in Therapy”, identifies several factors that inhibit men from taking action and getting the counseling help that they need (also Noyes, 2007).

1. Men can often go several years contemplating making a change, so the decision to finally get to therapy is a truly difficult one.
2. For a lot of guys, they aren’t educated about what therapy truly is. Often times, men get their ideas about therapy from the media, or from people they trust, but still lack understanding about how counseling really goes. A lot of men have confusion about the strange process of counseling, and what actually happens in it. It’s vague, and some men need better definition, and a better sense of knowing what they’re getting into.
3. Anxiety is a factor in not going. Wexler mentions that it takes men a large amount of emotional energy for them to actually get in the door for an initial session.
4. Even though some men (Noyes study, 2007) reported positive experiences in the therapy room, they still indicated that they would rather be able to take care of their own problems and not seek counseling again.
5. Being stigmatized is a real fear for guys. They don’t want to be thought of or labeled “crazy”, “problematic”, “dependent” or “unsuccessful”. These are real threats to some men’s identities.
6. There’s also the fear of being changed against his will by the counselor or therapy experience. They “worry that some fundamental aspect of themselves will be stripped away” (Wexler, 2009).
7. The fear of not being understood by the counselor or therapist, especially by being labeled clinically or just not truly empathized with.

There are plenty of barriers to counseling, but sometimes the weight of unattended issues and problems is just too great to bear. Phoenix Men’s Counseling understands these things, and wants to help you with the things that are burdening you. It takes a lot of investment to get help: admitting that there’s a problem, asking for help, summoning the resources to come into counseling. It takes a lot to get here. Men aren’t used to doing this, and sometimes, we simply don’t have the tools that we need for functioning the best that we can, in our lives, relationship, work settings, or as being the best parents we can be.

If you’re looking for Phoenix, Tempe, or Scottsdale therapists, and you’re a guy, give us a call. We’d like to help. Or feel free to book an online consultation through our website, using the big green button at the top of the page. We look forward to serving you.

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Our time is crunched, and we only have so many hours in the day. Sometimes, even that’s no enough. Unless we’re super-organized, lack of time management can overwhelm us and suffocate us. It adds unneeded pressure to an already pressured lifestyle. Guys have many different roles to play: employee, husband, boyfriend, son, and friend. We’re constantly challenged to successfully meet the demands of those roles, and then some. Sometimes, due to poor time management skills, we can barely give more than the minimum to any relationship.

Stress is a byproduct of poor time management, and so is poor sleep. When we’re overloaded, and have too much to do, we constantly worry and ruminate on those things we still need to do. Our sleep gets affected, and the vicious cycle begins. We’re only giving a fraction of ourselves to others and commitments when we’re not fully rested, and when we’re spread too thin.

For you Valley guys, seeking out Phoenix therapy to help deal with the underlying causes of poor time management is going to the root of the problem. Even iPhones and Droids don’t help with everything; there’s still a human component to time management problems behind the device.

Staying organized and identifying and prioritizing those things in our lives that need more of our attention are the first two things you can do to reduce time management problems. Keeping a to-do list is good, but not if you’re not going to use it or if it’s going to become a hindrance for you. It’s important to find a system that will work well for you, so that you know what dates and appointments to expect before hand. Remember, as goes in health: proactivity is better than reactivity. Time management stress only appears as a reactive symptom, when you’re not doing anything to help yourself.

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Ah, the sounds and sights of summer. Beach time. Grilling. Good friends and family. I was always looking for an excuse to bring my boombox somewhere when I was growing up, so that I could play my dubbed tape I worked weeks on. I had to wait for just that right moment when I knew the radio would be playing my song. It helped if I could break through the phone line to the station, to request it first.

Times have changed, boomboxes have shrunk to iPhones, and radio requests, well, it’s not as thrilling with streaming music. But the music and the feelings never changed. To honor the symbol of summer – the mix tape – I present to you a list of timeless classics, and new finds, to match any mood you might be experiencing this summer. And it’s just for guys. (And, no, I’m not serenading you).

These songs don’t fit the bill for you? I’ll post this on my blog, so head on over and add your favorites. (This was the best of my iTunes for summer, so it’s a limited stock). Or, check out Tom Moon’s 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die.

Here goes:

Pure Summer Fun:

• “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” – Lucinda Williams
• “Desert Island” – Magnetic Fields
• “Running on Empty” – Jackson Browne
• “I’d Run Away” – The Jayhawks
• “Honey” – Moby
• “Golden” – My Morning Jacket
• “Deadbeat Summer” – Neon Indian
• “I’m Getting Ready” – Patty Griffin
• “Statesboro Blues” – The Allman Brothers Band
• “My Girls” – Animal Collective
• “California Stars” – Billy Bragg and Wilco

Depressed:

• “Fade to Black” – Metallica
• “Comfortably Numb” – Pink Floyd
• “Sour Times” – Portishead
• “Manic Depression” – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• “When The Stars Go Blue” – Ryan Adams
• “The Tracks of My Tears” – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
• “Skinny Love” – Bon Iver

Happy:

• “My Favorite Things” – John Coltrane
• “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” – The Eagles
• “Feeling Alright” – Joe Cocker
• “Perfect Day” – Lou Reed
• “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” – Beach Boys
• “Joy” – Bettye Lavette

Testosterone/Adrenaline Jolt

• “Tom Sawyer” – Rush
• “I Got Stripes” – Johnny Cash
• “Communication Breakdown” – Led Zeppelin
• “Negative Creep” – Nirvana
• “Jesus Built My Hotrod” – Ministry
• “Anarchy in the U.K.” – Sex Pistols
• “Born Under a Bad Sign” – Albert King
• “Lust for Life” – Iggy Pop

Problem Relationship Songs:

• “Human Nature” – Michael Jackson
• “Cure for Pain” – Morphine
• “I’ve Got My Mojo Working” – Muddy Waters
• “Respect” – Otis Redding
• “This is Hell” – Elvis Costello
• “Love Hurts” – Gram Parsons
• “Trouble” – Ray LaMontagne
• “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” Wilco
• “Evil” – Howlin’ Wolf
• “Jealous Guy” – John Lennon
• “Dyslexic Heart” – Paul Westerberg

Good Relationship Songs:

• “Love Keep Us Together” – Martin Sexton
• “Sweet Caroline” – Neil Diamond
• “Lady” – Fela Kuti
• “You Make Loving Fun” – Fleetwood Mac
• “I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl” – Nina Simone
• “Love and Happiness” – Al Green
• “I Want You” – Bob Dylan

At Night:

• “Harvest Moon” – Neil Young
• “Pink Moon” – Nick Drake
• “Nightswimming” – R.E.M.
• “House of Cards” – Radiohead
• “Wild Night” – Van Morrison

There’s a big difference between being stuck in a rut, and being depressed. The latter is chronic, the former is temporary. We all get stuck in ruts from time to time. We can’t always bring our ‘A’ game to everything we do. Our biorhythms, our lives, our minds: everything is cyclical. One day we’re flying, and another day feeling a little unmotivated and sluggish.

Popular culture professes to have many instant cures for feeling stuck in a rut, and this blog post is not one of them. Let’s talk a little more about what being in a rut might mean:

• You simply don’t want to do whatever it is, say go to work, take care of yourself, stop drinking, etc.
• Some outside entity forces you to change: girlfriend, paying your mortgage, getting to work to pay that mortgage
• We lack the creative “spark” or energy to invest in whatever task or activity we will do – we’re simply not inspired
• There’s a “should” or “must” attached to it; rule number one about humans is that we create an opposite reaction to forces telling us what to do. The energy is there – it’s just pent up and going the opposite direction. If we “have to do something,” it’s more likely we’ll drag our feet, or simply not do it altogether.
• We’re not in touch with what flows, or what’s fun. Our sense of play has diminished, and our sense of obligation overrides what we really want to do.

Here’s some ways to remedy that sense of being stuck in a rut.

• Start communicating with yourself. Ask pertinent questions like, “Why am I wanting to do this? What do I get out of doing it? What would I rather be doing, and could I be doing it that way?”
• Try not to “push” yourself through to the other side, and make yourself unstuck. This tends to create a behavioral pattern over time, which encourages chronic “stuckness” over the long term.
• Take time out, and brainstorm your values. If you don’t know what your values are, take some time to come up with them. Write down values like, “exercise” or “personal time” or “time with my family/wife/girlfriend”. Try create ones like “creative time” or “do-nothing on purpose time”. When you get to the root of what you’re about – your values – and you’re doing activities that align with those personal values, you help yourself de-rut.
• Identify the areas where you’re stuck, such as relationship, work, personal life, money, mind. Create an action plan to work towards solutions to address those specific area. Watch for overwhelming yourself by thinking in a ‘black or white’ mentality, and lumping everything together as a problem. You’ll overload yourself, and stay stuck. Maybe this is what got you into the rut in the first place.

Activating ourselves from the inside is most important, because others – whether they be our wives, girlfriends, bosses, or personal trainers – can only motivate us from the outside so much. Taking ownership for our situation, and making a commitment to ourselves to change is tough, but ultimately much more rewarding.

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(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.

Alcohol has a particularly important presence in our modern American culture. We use it to entertain, connect with others, make family gatherings lighter, engage in business with it and rally around our favorite sports teams while drinking it. Multi-billion-dollar industries have been created around beer, wine and spirits, and popular culture has produced a number of timeless celebrity icons who indulge in: Hemingway, the Rat Pack, Keith Richards, Hank Williams…hell, even Ulysses S. Grant.

Our culture is totally schizophrenic around alcohol: it promotes it to no end, and yet ignores the repercussions of consuming it. Domestic violence, broken marriages, infidelity, depression, and divorce, among other things, result in the overindulgence of booze. Socially, it’s really hard to break away from the attractiveness to it. The parties we go to, the people we hang out with and the advertisements we encounter all promote it, and yet it still continues to get us into trouble.

Men tend to avoid their feelings, and therefore, the problems that those hidden feelings create. Alcohol has always been the socially acceptable avoidance strategy for many men. To find and connect together, alcohol as a social lubricant that allows men to do what comes more naturally to women: seek social support. Women have known this, but to prevent isolation and loneliness, men usually only rally around each other when it involves sports or some like-minded activity. Feelings are rarely discussed, but alcohol allows for “loose lips” contact. Men are much more free and open while drinking to connect to other men emotionally, because it’s not something that men do while sober. Culture doesn’t allow for it, so most men don’t do it. Alcohol provides the social bonding outlet, as well as an opportunity to “speak one’s mind”.

Things to think about:

• Do you find your self drinking alcohol to avoid people, situations, or feelings?
• Have you fought with your wife or girlfriend around alcohol? Do you fight more with her when you both been drinking? Is your relationship taking a hit because of your drinking?
• Are there competing voices in your head, one of which says to slow down or quit drinking?
• Have you experienced the blues, feel down, isolated and alone?
• Do you have a family history of alcohol abuse or dependence? Did you have a mother or father that drank heavily?
• Are you lying to cover up your drinking, or minimizing the number of drinks that you consume?

A friend asked me this really great question: “What are the specific challenges that men face in relationships at during each decade?” The question naturally led me to want to blog about it, and share it with you all. I accounted for three periods: 20′s, 30′s and 40′s, as these are generally the periods of life I work with, but feel free to add your own experiences/other decade challenges.

20-30′s: Still settling down, and finding themselves. Work and jobs are sporadic, so lots of long-distance relationships and conflict as a result. Guys in their 20′s are still into hooking up and partying, so they’re looking more for women who fit this bill (generally). Some get married, but are unhappy because the marriage is too early, or it wasn’t right for them (maturity levels low).

30-40′s: Settling down, getting married and having children. Guys have to deal with their lost youth and death of the “wild horse” mentality. Some guys hold onto youthful entrapments, such as partying, alcohol, video games, etc., which creates relationship/marriage tension and fighting this way. This is where the communication problems and issues start to ferment, for problems later into the next stage. Not knowing how to deal with everything: being a new dad, added responsibilities with their work/careers, and juggling it all creates stress and relationship strain. A lot of guys tend to start having problems, because they didn’t learn how to take care of themselves earlier on, or didn’t really have a need to take care of anyone else (e.g. wife, kid) other than themselves.

40-50′s: Kids are growing, and problems have fermented another decade. Couple has drifted away from each other, and the problems that have arisen in the 10-15 years since marriage have been avoided, or not dealt with. Money, things, trips have all been used as “happiness surrogates,” and are employed to stave off dealing with the real problems of unhappiness, sexual problems, loss of love, etc. Some men start to have affairs (although earlier stages, too) or lose themselves in other diversions other than their marriage, because that’s what they know, and that’s what culture encourages (alcohol, sports, video games, porn, etc.). Couple needs to reinvent their marriage, and create a reason to be together, other than “for the kids”. Men will also lose themselves in work and career, which is a socially-sanctioned place to go, yet slowly erodes a relationship over time. A lot of men who over-identify themselves with their work and careers unconsciously avoid their wives and their problems by dedicating themselves to their work. Phsycial problems can start to manifest as a function of problems not dealt with, with leads to depression, stress, pain, fatigue, etc. The body speaks, even when men are not.

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