Helping Men to Be Confident

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming (EMDR)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprogramming (EMDR) is based on the idea that the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) that happens during the dreaming phase of sleep causes our brains to process unresolved emotions. The therapy attempts to resolve emotional trauma by inducing the same healing mechanism while conscious in the therapist’s office.

The therapist asks you to rate how anxious you feel about a situation that troubles you, then waves something in front of your eyes for several minutes while you focus on it, allowing your eyes to dart from side to side rapidly. At the end, they ask you to rate it again. Normally the rating goes down.

Some therapists use other parts of the body than the eyes, and claim it’s just as effective or even more so. It sounds a little hocus-pocus, but even mainstream therapists like Dr Paul Dobransky describe it as “extremely powerful”. Often used as an adjunct to other therapies.

Advantages:

  • Fast and simple

  • No need to tell the story or relive the traumatic situation

  • Easy to administer

Disadvantages:

  • Considered unscientific by some

  • May be a placebo treatment

  • You may be unconsciously tempted to rate the situation as less troubling simply because you want to please the therapist

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Primal Therapy

You spent over a decade being socialized by the school system: told to sit down, shut up, keep your feelings to yourself and be a good boy. Sure, you’re a social being and a member of the tribe… but really deep down you’re an animal. Primal therapy gets you back in touch with your animal instincts and your primal roots through a combination of anger expression exercises, chanting, dancing, and other primitive tribal rituals.

Advantages:

  • Hugely cathartic

  • Learn to express and release anger

  • The next best thing to an exorcism

  • You get in touch with your power as a man

Disadvantages:

  • How well would a raging beast of a man really function in today’s society?

  • Some research suggests that expressing anger just makes you more angry

  • Disturbing the neighbors

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Exposure Therapy

The key to dealing with any form of debilitating anxiety is to expose yourself to a mild dose of the situation that makes you just a little anxious, but not overwhelming so. The anxiety subsides naturally as you master the situation, building your confidence. You then increase the intensity of the situation, always remaining below the level at which you feel overwhelmed.

Psychologists call this Systematic Desensitization or Exposure Therapy. Psychologist Dr Russ Harris described it in our interview as “The most powerful technique in all of psychology”. It works extremely when done correctly, and my online confidence building course is based on applying this technique in the real world.

This is usually an adjunct to other types of therapy.

Advantages:

  • Extremely powerful

  • Cures phobias

Disadvantages:

  • You have to expose yourself to the very thing you fear

  • Can re-traumatize you, if not done gradually

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By Graham Stoney, ago

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

This therapy integrates the most useful parts of Western psychology, and Eastern philosophies. It includes the Buddhist idea that most human suffering is caused by an attachment or desire for things that are often temporary or unattainable. So you start by accepting everything exactly the way it is, without trying to change it. Fighting against reality is the cause of a great deal of our angst and suffering.

Having accepted that things are the way they are and you are exactly the way you are, you can then learn some new skills to help deal more powerfully with life. This is the paradox of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT); but get the balance right, and it works. Integration of other Buddhist and Taoist concepts like mindfulness, expansion, and going-with-the-flow distinguish ACT from other therapies.

An underlying principle is that happiness comes from doing what works in practice, rather than from what we think should work. Ask “Does that work?” instead of “Is that right?” Let go of the need to be right, and of your hard luck story. Letting go of beliefs based on the way we think things should be helps relieve stress and anxiety. Being truly confident means being able to go with the flow, and not needing to be in control all the time.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT)

In Cognitive Behavior Therapy, the therapist challenges your unhelpful thinking patterns to replace them with more constructive ideas, while also encouraging you to change the way you act in the world. This is the most common form of therapy out there these days, having combined the best aspects of Cognitive Therapy and Behavior Therapy, thus ending the dispute about which was better. (more…)

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Heal Emotional Pain

Traumatic or emotionally painful events in our past can leave us with emotionally charged memories that get triggered whenever we find ourselves in similar circumstances later in life. This will undermine your confidence in these situations, as the powerful emotions triggered quickly become overwhelming even though there’s no real threat present.

Crying heals the emotional pain of past trauma

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By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Gain Confidence by Public Speaking

Public speaking is often seen as the ultimate in self-confidence. After all, if you can get up in front of an audience and talk from a platform, surely you must have amazing confidence. Well, yes and no. The truth is that public speaking is a skill that anyone can learn. You don’t have to have amazing confidence to do it. But like learning any new skill, particularly one that involves overcoming a fear, this will boost your general level of self-confidence; which is why learning public speaking is so appealing.

The key to effective public speaking is to tell stories in which you have some emotional investment. Your emotions are what connect you with your audience. If you can get up on stage an relive an exciting or emotionally engaging story, and tie it to some lesson or point that you learned, people will want to hear what you have to say. The secret is to avoid going into presenter mode where you lecture people, which audiences hate. And the way to avoid lecturing is to tell stories.

Storytelling is fun, entertaining, and helps you overcome your self-consciousness in front of other people. Plus you’ll find that if you tell personal stories, other people will relate to what you have to say and you’ll get positive reinforcement from them, further adding to your growing confidence.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Overcome Low Self-Esteem

Life is difficult when you don’t feel good about yourself. Low self-esteem can lead to a lack of self-confidence, difficulty in relationships, social anxiety, depression, and a general sense of unhappiness and disillusionment with life.

Self-confidence is the antidote to low self-esteem.
Image courtesy Pixabay

But you don’t have to suffer from low self-esteem. Here are some steps you can take to build high self-esteem and greater self-confidence:

Work Out What Is Important To You

When we know what we stand for and what our basic values are, we’re much less susceptible to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Even when things don’t go our way, we’ve still got our core values to fall back on. Values that are important to us also act as a guiding light to help us make decisions, and recognize when we’re acting out of integrity. The more we act in integrity with our basic values, the more self-esteem we tend to generate.

Spend some time writing down a list of values that are important to you, like happiness, love, respect, success, relationships, family, friends, etc etc. Prioritize the list by asking yourself “Would I give X up for Y?” as you work your way down it.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Overcome Social Anxiety

Social anxiety and the sense of shyness that it causes can be one of the most frustrating aspects of a lack of self-confidence. Much of our joy and happiness in life comes from our relationships with other people, and shyness cuts off many of our opportunities to meet new and interesting people before we’ve even begun.

In this age of computers, iPods, the Internet, chat rooms, online forums, Facebook, Twitter and other social media web sites, we’re getting more and more used to relating to other people electronically. That means we’re getting less and less practise at social skills, so naturally we’re gradually becoming more socially anxious.

But like any form of anxiety, social anxiety is treatable if you approach it in the right way. You don’t have to be held hostage by your fear of other people in social situations. I’ve been working on this for a long time myself, and here’s what I’ve found most helpful:

Understand That It’s Normal

Firstly, understand that some degree of social anxiety is normal. We’re all biologically programmed to be wary of people we don’t know, and to suss them out to work out whether they’re friend or foe before trusting and being able to fully relax around them.… Continue reading…

By Graham Stoney, ago

How to Recognize and Overcome Perfectionism

Perfectionism will undermine your self-confidence like nothing else. Trying to maintain a facade of perfection all the time and holding yourself to unachievable standards is exhausting; I know, I’ve tried. But before you can do anything about perfectionism, you need to be able to recognize it.

Here are some clues that you might be suffering from perfectionism:

  • A deep fear of failure, and sense of devastation when it happens

  • Getting upset when you don’t win all the time

  • Feeling ashamed of your thoughts and emotions

  • Holding back on expressing how you really feel

  • Fear of what others might think of you

  • A sense of self-consciousness

  • Using sarcasm or passive aggression when relating to others

  • Communicating non-assertively

  • Being driven to high achievement all the time-to-time

  • Difficulty relaxing

Any of this sound familiar?

Ok, so now we can see the problem, here are two different ways of looking at it:

  1. You’re not perfect, and never will be. Neither is anyone else. Pretending to be perfect when you’re really not is living a lie. It cuts you off from relating deeply to other people, because they can’t relate to your facade of invulnerability. As a result, you sometimes come across as distant or aloof.
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By Graham Stoney, ago