Relationship Counseling Manhattan: Doing What We Do

By Michael Mongno Ph.D, Manhattan Relationship Therapy Practice.

As human beings, our behaviors and actions emanate from these primary emotional states. Emotions are always fluid, they come and go and can take many forms, slow or flurried, intense or gentle, dramatic or even. Watch a child, even for mere minutes, and you’ll see a continuum of different emotions being expressed. It’s often hard for children to manage their emotions so we teach them impulse control. They are taught how to let go and come back to the present moment, sometimes even by distracting themselves from uncomfortable feelings or circumstances that are out of their control.

In the relationship counseling and therapy (in Manhattan, NYC) I practice, I often tell people that part of maturing into adulthood is learning how to manage our emotions through healthy self-differentiation, which is a balance between our cognitive thought processes and the powerful energy of our emotions. When we’re not in balance we find that our behaviors are not productive and can be hurtful and destructive, both to ourselves as well as to others. When that happens we are not expressing our real or authentic selves, but a conflicted part of ourselves that is usually suffering in some way. And when we’re in pain there is almost always some kind of fear associated, be it nervousness, anxiety, agitation, irritation, frustration, annoyance or edginess.

Most fear has to do with not having our basic needs met and little hope or trust that they’ll be met, which then propels our actions. Maslow describes a hierarchy of human needs, from the most basic of physiological survival and safety, and then on to love and belonging, followed by self-esteem and self actualization. There is also the potential for living the added value of a meaningful vocation, causing all of one’s endeavors to be socially significant and impactful, leading to transcendence. The more basic the need however, the more primal the emotion; i.e. we’ll do almost anything to survive; it’s in our very physical constitution. When our needs are continually thwarted we feel discomfort or hurt and then become resentful, passive-aggressive, or angry and act out in an effort to change the status quo. The longer our important needs are not met the more intense our acting out becomes, which can escalate to the point of violence. If one is approaching this breaking point, it’s critical to seek some kind of help so as to interrupt and stop what can become a very destructive cycle.

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