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The worse thing in the world is to feel controlled and manipulated. Each waking day, our minds are challenged by forces that try to identify and dictates to us what we need to do. Whether we know it or not, the forces of manipulation and control are always at work even before we get out of bed in the morning.

As soon as we turn on the morning show to watch a little T.V. before we go to work, we are always dealing with control. There will always be influences that try to get you to give up a piece if your mental sovereignty. It’s like the famous saying… “A mind is a terrible thing to waste!” The issue and elements of control and domination is an element of life that people battle with on a daily basis.

Nothing is more challenging than putting up with people who have power and control issues. This is one of the mysteries of life, which is, how does this kind of behavior exist in human beings and how can this behavior be corrected to advance the world into better relationships between countries, families, friends and strangers. The answer is not an easy one.

Controlling behavior and people kill relationships and can actually cause angst and anxiety. Here in America, it can also be linked to status and social problems.

People who are controlling are actually fearful and scared. To them, it’s easier to go the route of controlling people instead of dealing with people from a level of self respect and dignity. To them, having a controlling attitude saves energy and time. These people have visions of acting like an all powerful God with an overruling dominance over the lives of others. Life, to them is no sweat when giving the commands rather then receiving them.

Gangs such as the Crips and the Bloods use the art of psychological control to intimidate weaker members of the gang and enemies of the gang. Controlling people violates the moral code of others without any respect to their human nature yet people allow them to continue to control.

Most of us are controlled on a subliminal level. There are mechanisms that were created to separate you from your money (loud television ads), national gossip magazines and journals (junk food for the mind) and other things that invade your peace of being. The result is a reaction to being controlled with trying to become controlling in our own lives. The result is negative.

All emotional and verbal abuse is looking for an element to control. It’s like a negative energy attaching itself to a positive energy only in a controlling atmosphere; it drains the life out of you. All people want the edge in life and they will use control and manipulation to get what they want. We’ve been taught materialism and capitalism promotes status. How wrong we are!

Behavior that attempts to control you - regardless of the intensity - breaches your emotional borders and becomes abuse.

Being used or using others in this level of abuse is more than the obvious problems. Bullying takes effect when someone is called a name or made fun of. It also is part of things such as temper tantrums. On more obvious levels, this abuse can be seen in forms of physical violence that is used to intimidate others. Intimidation and bullying can even take place at higher levels, where individuals will use their status to place themselves above others. Despite what many have come to believe, control and abuse have become a part of culture on several levels.

Subtle controllers, subtle manipulators

Emotionally mature people raise children with respect for the lives of others, dignity, self worth while making others around them feel comfortable. These people do not show their children how to hate, intimidate and control others that are different from them or others that they might want to use as a crutch for their emotions.

Subtle controllers can be the worst because they basically don’t talk at all but you can see their disposition in their actions towards people or another person. These are the individuals that you never want to ho to help for because they will hold it over you for 100 years or more and they will, in essence, try to control their relationship with you via money and materialism.

These types of people seem to be okay on the outside but on the inside of their heart, they are full of deceit and lying. Their type of behavior comes on display after the light is turned on in your mind and sometimes our minds are sending us messages that we fail to listen to.

A relationship or friendship with a controller is always unhealthy and will take eventually, lead to the person being controlled, seeking counseling for their problem. When you feel off balance and that you don’t have the freedom to be you or feel that something is rotten in Denmark, then it’s time to check and getting rid of situations that are fully of trouble and contempt.

Self Check Analysis – What goes around comes around

Sometimes, we can be controlling and not know it. If you do have that problem, consider these things:

• Am I sincere in what I’m thinking or doing?
• Am I trying to hold someone hostage?
• Am I being prejudiced?
• Do I hate the person for no reason at all?

You know what goes around, comes around. I am a firm believer in Universal Law and karma. The karma will follow you like a wet blanket until you realize that you have to be baptized into all truth. This truth is the truth about ourselves. Once we are baptized into the higher knowledge of divine knowledge of the soul, then a person has a chance to learn and grow within themselves.

Protecting Yourself from Controlling Behavior

The damage of being controlled even once by someone will persist as long as you remain in the presence is having active communication with the person. Even if the person has perceived to be changed, they could pretty much be the same lame person that they were before and even lamer this time around!

Keep yourself free from these people and you’ll see your environment and health improve.

Joshua Uebergang gives people free interpersonal relationship advice. His work is recognised by communication, personal development, and psychology experts, authors, and public speakers. Signup now to his free newsletter at: http://www.free-relationship-advice.org and receive a special bonus that will help you get great relationships.

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Everyone has their own different style of parenting that fits their family and their situation. It all depends on background, tradition and culture or how an individual goes about in dealing with the personality of the child or children. One thing is for sure and that is the fact that there is no instruction manual that comes with parenting. A lot of it is on-the-job-training.

Family Psychologists have identified four types of parent styles which are:

• permissive
• authoritative
• authoritarian
• uninvolved

The permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian styles are a spectrum of parenting styles and throughout the life of a child, a parent may stick to one style of may go through all of the styles at different phases of the child’s upbringing. Authoritarian parents are at one end of the ledger and this brand of parenting usually focuses on a structural environment with minimal responsiveness and communication.

On the other end of the spectrum are permissive parents which I call “in the red”. This parenting style has low behavioral structure but a high responsiveness. I think that permissive parenting is the worse not unless you have a child that has high self discipline which in America is hard because of the mentality of society that hypes success and peer pressure. Children that usually have their own way end up on a path of destructive behavior.

If you are not involved with your children, you are giving up your role as a parent. Children who are approached by the permissiveness will often feel abandoned because of this style. The result is children who grow up with low self-esteem, problems with trust and with continuous thoughts that they are not liked. In the long run the children are harmed emotionally but psychologists are now finding out that some parts of uninvolved parenting can actually be turned around benefit the child, providing them with insight and an ability to make decisions that are more solid than their counterparts.

Authoritative parenting tends to be located in the middle of the ledger, and is a balanced parenting style. It’s really a give and take situation in which all parties have equal input and come up with the best solutions as how to act and handle certain situations. It can be the most rewarding of them all if the environment is balanced. It doesn’t take a mother and a father to make this successful. That is a desirable trait but more Americans are getting divorced than ever before and the authoritative style of parenting seems to work in those situations.

Authoritative parents are the type that will work continuously to meet their children half-way. This means that at one end, they establish a relationship that provides nurturing responses to build the child’s self-esteem. However, this doesn’t develop into passive parenting, or a relationship that develops into a ‘friendship style.’ There are still expectations for the children to do specific things, follow the rules of the household and to develop the necessary disciplines to be effective in their life. The result is a balanced way of teaching children how to approach situations in their life. While this style of parenting is known to be one of the most difficult, it is also the most effective.

One of the important concepts to link to authoritative parenting is the ability to establish policies that are effective in the household. The major trick to this is to make sure that there is room to move within these policies. For example, if you have asked your child to clean their room, but something occurs that stops them from this, you can change the policy just enough to help adjust under the circumstances. These adjustments may be because of personalities or simply because something has happened. The balance is to create rules that every child understands, but not to make them so rigid that a child is not able to gain their own independence. The result is a two-way relationship, based off of clear communication and an understanding of what is acceptable.

If you are working towards this method, you can do specific things to ensure its success. For example, if you have asked that something is done, but the child rebels, you can help them to develop by asking them why and allowing them a place to speak before the rule is changed. This will give you the flexibility that you need in order to help your child develop while keeping an understanding that the rules are the foundation of the household. More than anything, it is important that the parents not only develop this flexibility, but also follow by the rules of the household themselves. Providing an example for the children creates a communication and understanding that the rules of the house are balanced and fair.

Another practical step to creating an authoritative household is to build a structure. Setting rules and limits that are the foundation of the household is the beginning to this. The child should learn that if they don’t follow these actions, there will be consequences. This can further be developed by setting schedules and organization for the children. This will provide them with a support system that builds into stability and discipline. Even though this may seem harsh, it actually creates a sense of security for the children, as well as an overall better environment. Children want to feel stable by having set rules that they can work with. They also want to know that these rules can be questioned and talked about.

The thin line between authoritative parenting and other parenting is that there is room to move. If there is a question about the schedules and organization, the children will have the right to approach their parents about these questions. The parents, in turn, will not ignore them or punish them for asking, but will respond and value the voice that is being heard. This allows children to feel safe with their own independence. At the same time, parents have a direct understanding that the children are developing ways to speak about their emotions and ideas, meaning that it is important to listen to.

In the end, both the child’s side and the parent’s sides are spoken about. The decisions that are made from this are made as a collective whole. While the children have a place that allows for independence and changes in the rules, the parents will also have an input that describes why certain ideals are in place in the household. This will create a balanced relationship with communicating what is being felt on both sides, leaving the final decisions with complete understanding of what is happening.

Authoritative parenting is based on the idea of communicating as a team. There is room for both discipline and independence. Children are able to develop emotionally and with their ideas and parents are able to balance out the rules of the household. Everyone is able to develop with their personalities and ideals, creating a safe place for the entire family.

If you’re reading this right now and you’d like to learn more great parenting tips and strategies for raising happy children who have great relationships with you, then I highly recommend “Positive Parenting” which you can get today by clicking here.

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Joshua Uebergang can give you more great parenting advice and tips for improving your relationships with your children.

When we are clear and focused within ourselves, boundaries automatically emerge and begin to move into place. In other words, boundaries are to some extent established subconsciously, as a result of mature self-love. Another dimension of boundaries requires our consciously focused attention and effort. We will look at these two levels in terms of our commitment to ourselves and to our relationships.

Picture three concentric circles. The inner circle represents commitment to self, the next ring represents the role we play in the relationship and the outer ring represents our commitment to the relationship itself. You will notice there is no mention of commitment to the other person–that’s their job.

1. COMMITMENT TO SELF

Our first priority in a relationship with another is our commitment to ourselves. This is not selfish, it’s merely practical.

Your best friend has just been in a car wreck and needs your help. You want to get there as fast as you can, but it’s a few miles away and your car’s gas tank is on empty. Do you ignore this and zoom off to the rescue? Of course not. You get some gas before making the trip. By the same token, we each need to take care of our own needs to some extent before we go about trying to give to others. It’s really very simple. You are the center of your universe. Everything you see, hear, feel and experience goes out in concentric spheres from your point of awareness there in the center of your world. This is not some weird idea, it’s pure rational fact.

Your self, your universe as you perceive it, is what you carry into any relationship you enter. All of your cumulative life experience, your “family baggage”, your emotional and behavioral patterns are part of what you bring.

You are responsible for what you contribute to the relationship. The other person is responsible for his or her own contribution. This means simply that you have the job of maintaining your own physical, emotional mental and spiritual health. That way you bring a healthy person into the relationship, which is a true gift to your partner. Let’s look at some of the inner dimensions to your relationship with yourself. The physical self is closer to the surface and more observable than any of the other aspects. We share our thoughts and ideas more easily and readily than we do our emotions, so the mental self would be next.

Our emotional self goes very deep into our being and much of it is subconscious. Our emotions are more private than many of our thoughts, so we may see them as closer to the core of our being.

You might say that the spiritual self or the spiritual aspects of love are at the heart of who we are. Our spiritual feelings, experiences and beliefs are deeper and more private than perhaps any other aspect of who we are. The spiritual dimension naturally expands to include the emotional, mental and physical self as focus and development occur at this deepest level of relationship. This is our first work in creating a healthy relationship with another. It takes two basically healthy, growing people to make a healthy relationship.

2. COMMITMENT TO ROLE

We are each responsible for the role we play in our relationships. It is a mistake to make our role totally dependent on the behavior of the other. For example, “I would be a better husband if she would only . . .” The truth is that you are responsible for the kind of husband or wife you are, no matter what your spouse may or may not do. Your role is your creation and responsibility.”

By taking charge of defining your role as husband, wife, lover, friend, mother, father, son, daughter, boss or employee, you are empowering yourself in the relationship and removing yourself from the victim position. The tricky part about this is that our basic training for these roles was in our family of origin and early childhood experience. This is one of the reasons that family-of-origin work is so important as a part of any couples or relationship counseling process.

Here are some ideas to help you clarify and take charge of the roles you play in your significant relationships:

a. Write down what you learned about the roles of wife and mother from your mother, and husband and father roles from your father. (Add any other roles you are interested in exploring, the source being your primary role model in that area.) This will give you an idea of your subconscious mind-set regarding these roles. b. Write new definitions of these roles for yourself, using your own knowledge and goals as guidelines. c. Next write about all the reasons you feel you cannot fulfill the ideal roles you have defined for yourself. Consider these to be some of your barriers to intimacy, and use the skills you gain in this book to overcome them. d. Create affirmations in first person, present tense to form new attitudes and beliefs about yourself and your ability to fulfill your own ideal role in your relationships. Use your negative and self-limiting beliefs as a springboard for arriving at these new beliefs. e. Plan specific behaviors that will help you to actualize your ideal role fulfillment. This is a further extension of what you offer in your relationship. Your commitment is to bring into the relationship a healthy, growing individual who is further committed to being the best spouse, lover, parent or friend possible. All of this happens before even considering the influence of the other person.

3. COMMITMENT TO THE RELATIONSHIP

This is where we really begin to give consideration to the thoughts, feelings and needs of the other person. We each have individual responsibility for ourselves and our roles, and we share mutual responsibility for our relationships. When our commitment follows this priority, we bring a healthy person with well-defined functional roles into the relationship. Therefore, our contribution to the relationship is the best we have to offer and we are responsible for our contribution.

There is a tremendous amount of material that could be covered under the heading of boundaries and this covers only a small part of that subject matter. The point here is that emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health automatically create a powerful basis for functional boundaries. In making your health your responsibility and your first priority of commitment in your relationship, you are taking an important step toward creating healthy boundaries.

With these steps taken, we are ready to invest all that we choose in our relationship, making healthy intimacy a very real possibility. Imagine your relationship as a third entity in your marriage, friendship, etc. Together with your partner, invite a loving spirit (God, your higher power or the loving deity of your choice) into the relationship. Decide that your behavior toward each other is always going to be governed as if you were in the presence of a divine, loving being. Bring only the best of yourself to this sacred space of your relationship, and when bringing other aspects than your best, do so with the utmost respect and sensitivity. Treat your partner as an honored guest at all times, and together invite the honored guest of a loving spiritual presence into your relationship. This can become an ongoing meditation and/or prayer for the health and success of any relationship.

Without at some point claiming our anger and its sense of empowerment, we do not feel the strength and courage necessary to risk true intimacy, sharing our deepest feelings, thoughts and dreams. Without healthy anger, we certainly will not have healthy boundaries.

With healthy anger, you can expect better boundaries, greater intimacy and more fulfilling relationships. Make up your mind to heal your anger and create the life you choose.

William G. DeFoore is a counselor, executive coach, author and speaker. He has 34 years of experience in helping people achieve healthy, happy relationships. Get free information, watch videos and purchase books, CDs and downloads at www.Goodfinding.com. Contact Dr. DeFoore at ippd4@aol.com.

In America, single parent families are really frowned upon. The family is supposed to have a mother and a father and anything less is unacceptable in the eyes of most people.
Young mothers who head single family homes are looked at as being in another class level in America. Many children are born out of wedlock in the United States:

There are various reasons why there are single family homes in America. The variables depend on race, culture, heritage and traditional values. The effects can be damaging or can turn out to be good. It all depends on the individual and their will to make any situation better.

African-Americans – A Case Study

African-Americans have the largest numbers of single family homes in America. The question is why and what has caused the average African American family to have a single parent home. If you look at the African-American family from a historical, cultural and American point of view, the facts will shock you.

First of all, African-Americans are an entirely different race with different values than their African counterparts. Factually, many African-Americans don’t have any connection with the continent of Africa alone. Not all people of dark skin come from Africa. There are many Indians, South Americans and Aztecs that the African-American race originated from so there is confusion about the origin of identity.

So identity plays a big part of the makeup of the family unit. If the family unit struggles with identity, then it could take generations for identity and purpose to be developed and found without mental tampering or influence from other cultures. This influences relationships and puts barriers up to what real love comes through which is individual purpose.

So many African-Americans don’t have roots to Africa at all which impacts the way that family and relationships are viewed. The African-American male is seen as irresponsible and not able to sustain a family but is this true.

The myth is that African-American families had strong ties until slavery but this is really a myth. Even before the great Transatlantic Slave Crossing, it was the women in most African tribes that had the power over the children and the family. The man was seen as someone who worked within the village while the woman ran all the affairs of the household and educated the children. For the most part, the man was silent unless he met with other men from the community and tribal villages and he could also easily be divorced from the wife who in turn would have the village help her nurture and take care of the children.

Parts of Africa were a dominant Matriarch society. This carried over to the slave trade in which women had more power than men and could actually get their men sold off to other plantations. This is a hidden taboo that is not talked about in slavery because most of the history is slanted. Some slave owners took Indians and other people from other cultures as wives and not all slave owners were white. There were black, Indian and Caribbean slave owners in the deeper South in places such as, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia.

In African-American relationships, the woman has always bared the brunt of the responsibility and had more opportunities while the male has struggled to find a place in American society that would accept him but is this really a problem in the 21st Century or is just a matter of updating old belief systems?

Many young black men are incarcerated at an alarming rate. This leaves a shortage of African-American males to head families. The reasons for incarceration are various but many feel that in the black community that there is a deliberate plan to foster single family homes by rendering the black male inoperative in American society. Sadly enough, in many cases, the African-American woman has participated in the system of downgrading the African-American male because of the lack of understanding of individual and corporate purpose and what it means to a relationship.

Many African-American women have raised single families that have turned out to be successful because of their belief in God and community. Many celebrities come from single parent homes that had strong religious backgrounds that kept the fabric of the family together. This attribute is from the spiritual strength and know how of bringing things together even when there’s nothing there all the more powerful and to be respected.

You can have a happy family life and get more free relationship advice online by visiting Free-Relationship-Advice.org

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Most would say that it is an understatement when someone says that children are difficult to raise. There is a continuous struggle to define and re-define boundaries, as well as to discover what appropriate behavior is and what is more difficult. One of the problems that many parents have is with children exploring and taking advantage of the emotion of anger. Learning about anger management strategies for children is an effective way to get your children ready for a more expressive future with better boundaries.

What Does It Mean to Be Angry?

The first concept to recognize about anger is that it is a natural emotion that all children, and adults, are learning how to control. When you recognize this, you can learn how to deal with anger effectively. This does not mean stopping children from expressing their anger, but instead, finding more effective ways to allow your child to say exactly what they mean.

It is said that children will express anger in three different ways. The first is through an emotional state. When a child is at this point of their life, they will most likely describe anger by being aroused in a situation. If a child becomes frustrated because they can not reach a goal, they will react by feeling the emotion of anger and responding automatically. Most school fights, verbal aggression and conflicts occur from this state of anger.

The second type of anger moves from the emotional state and into a mode of expression. When your child shows anger this way, they will most likely express the anger through facial expressions, crying or temper tantrums. Instead of creating conflict with others, this type of anger will cause self-infliction, which will isolate the child or cause resistance from the situations that they are in.

The third type of expression with anger is when one is able to evaluate and understand anger in a completely constructive way. When a parent is looking at ideas of anger management, it is this level of expression that becomes ideal. When a child is able to express anger through verbal expression, interpretation of why they are angry and by evaluating what has led the child to this point, there is the ability to use the emotion of anger in an effective way.

Introducing Anger Management to Your Child

If your child is expressing emotions of anger, is acting out anger or expressing anger, you want to make sure that you can find strategies to deal with this. By doing this, you will lead your child into understanding what anger is and how they can deal with the emotion more constructively. There are certain ideals and concepts that you can use in order to get your child to the third phase of anger, where they can manage the emotion through expression, interpretation and evaluation of what is occurring.

The first practical tool that you can use with your child is to stimulate the memory that has led them to points of anger. Asking them about what caused them to be angry will help them to recognize exact points that led to the anger. This gives you the ability to validate the emotion as well as allow the child to recognize that there are more constructive ways to deal with anger.

The next step is to begin communicating with your child through specific language about the problem with anger. If your child is feeling angry about something, you can approach them by talking about the emotions and how they have caused them to react. If your child can begin to understand when they are responding out of anger, and can identify it through words, than it will become easier to monitor the behavior. When your child can begin to learn how to express the anger that they feel through words, instead of by direct reactions through emotions, they will have the ability to respond without negative or emotive responses.

The third way that you can get your child to evaluate the emotion of anger is by finding constructive ways for your child to regulate their behaviors. For instance, if they are acting out in anger, as an emotional response, you can begin to introduce more concrete ideas to them. For example, you can show them that instead of responding to another person with anger by physical resolve, they can control how they react with language or evaluation. This will allow the child to begin practicing more constructive behavior while still giving them the ability to express their anger.

The Importance of Anger Management

If a child does not learn how to control their anger at an early age, it can lead to severe consequences later in their life. It is said that if a child does not learn how to control their anger at an early age, it can lead to aggression and frustrations later on in life. If the strategies and interventions aren’t established, then it can be difficult for the child later in life to express what is needed, leading to violent reactions or isolated behaviors that stop them from progression.

Establishing future relationships and ideals with your children does not begin when they move out of your house. Instead, it begins when they are in your home and learning about how to respond and communicate with the world. If you want to be effective in your child’s behavior, you can begin by teaching them about emotional responses, such as anger, allowing them to evaluate and examine their emotions and behaviors in a healthy manner. The result will be a child that grows up understanding the balance between emotional responses and how to express and evaluate these responses.

If you’d like to learn more about managing anger in children, then I highly recommend “Child Anger Revealed” which you can get today by clicking here.

Joshua Uebergang can give you more great parenting advice and tips for improving your relationships with your children.

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