Anger in the Age of Entitlement

A burning question in human relationships—at least those who present for couples counseling—is how to get your partner to do what you want. We've evolved a few tricks over the millennia to be sure, but most of them are not adaptable to complex modern relationships.

Techniques for getting behavior change: Read More

The road to bad sex, divorce, alienated children, aggressive driving, business failure, community disintegration, and violence begins with resentment. Read More

People are naturally emotionally attractive. It's anxiety and dread of failure or rejection that make us emotionally unattractive, by making us focus too much on the impressions we make, particularly: Read More

Under sufficient stress, most people in love relationships fall into the trap of substituting power for value. We really want to feel loved and valuable, but instead, we try to feel more powerful. Read More

Emotions are more contagious than any known virus. Although it influences everyone, emotional contagion affects some more than others. Aggressive people may be most affected. Disrespecting a "reactor" on the street can lead to child abuse later that day. Read More

Dwelling on the possible causes of emotional pain is more likely to exacerbate than ameliorate it. This is especially true when the hidden purpose of examining the possible causes is to assign blame. Read More

When emotions are predominantly negative, we're almost always violating our deepest values, ignoring them, or grieving the loss of someone or something of significant value. Sadness is the natural reaction to loss. Add violation of deeper values or inattention to them, and you will likely become depressed or, if you blame the loss or violation on someone else, chronically resentful. Read More

Personal power is the ability to do what is in your long-term best interests. Values are the built-in regulators of personal power, ensuring a sense of self-enhancement and integrity when adhered to and emotional turmoil when violated. Thus personal power comes from one source: creating value and staying true to the deeper values you create. Read More

Here are a couple more ways that toddlers in love shoot themselves in the foot. Read More

Falling in love is as natural as death. Staying in love is as natural as good diet and healthy exercise.

We can eat, exercise, and love well in the short run, but over the long haul of everyday modern living, we tend to shoot ourselves in the foot. That's because, like toddlers, we try to do these things in the wrong part of our brains. Read More

A previous post described how pain becomes suffering when we fail to act on its natural motivation to heal, correct, or improve. A common way of turning turn pain into suffering is to perceive a need for validation, which substitutes the approval of others for the empowering motivation to heal and improve oneself. Read More

As a life-saving alarm system, pain keeps us focused on distress, for the purpose of relieving it. Pain motivates behavior that will help heal, repair, or improve. A pain in your foot, for example, will motivate you to take the rock off it, get more comfortable shoes, soak it in a tub of warm water, or visit a podiatrist. Read More

Our smallest emotions (low intensity, largely outside awareness) are the earliest guardians of the most important things to and about us. Unless there is palpable threat in the environment, those subtle emotions tell us relatively little about the world, compared to the volumes they speak about the current state of our values. Read More

What is the most important thing about you? What is the most important thing about your life, your relationships, and the next thing you do? Read More