Individual, Couples and Group Psychotherapy
For Anger Management, Better Relationships and Self Discovery
San Francisco- Valencia @ 23rd St. Albany, 965 Talbot @ Marin
Don't Let Negative Emotions Ruin Your Relationships: When you are held captive by anxiety, depression, repetetive negative thoughts, anger, emotional distancing or sexual dissatisfaction, your joy in living is greatly reduced. When two people are unable to regulate emotions between them, and instead trigger cycles of repetetive negative interactions, great frustration and suffering is the result.
Tools That Lower Anger & Increase Happiness: I offer a specific set of dynamic tools and mindfulness practices that decrease negative emotions. When you activate these tools in your daily life, your inner expereince and relationships will improve. You will feel more alive, more relaxed and more able to track and manage emotional challenges as they arise. Your relationships will improve as you learn to recognize and interrupt the triggers that send you into negative cycles. When you feel better, your energy will rise and you will want to engage the world more fully.
Anger Management & Emotional Resiliance: Everyone
experiences difficulty with anger at some point. Relationship stress,
parenting issues, financial or work pressures, loss, sudden changes or transitions and trauma, all
put enormous strain on your capacity to cope. The people who contact me for anger management are typically good, well intentioned people who have had an incident or incidents that reveal that they have difficulty containing anger. My approach to anger management is not a specific programed course, but it is both systematic and organic. Anger management can be done in individual therapy, within couples therapy or in one of my ongoing groups. Dealing with anger can also become part of a larger journey of personal growth where you develop emotional resiliance, flexibility, responsiveness, empathy, joy, empowerment, satisfaction and aliveness. Here is some of what you will learn:
- Learn to lower your internal stress levels and get centered in yourself
- Learn to undo your anxiety- a primary hidden trigger of anger
- Learn to explore your feelings rather than act them out
- Learn to build an inner "container" to "hold" anger and other emotions
- Identify relationship cycles, old locked roles and internal stories that trigger your anger
- Learn the difference between complaining, outrage, attack/blame and assertiveness
- Learn the link between your depression and anger
- identify old family and cultural patterns that influence your expression of anger
- identify the link between trauma- physical, verbal or sexual, and anger
- learn how to build positive emotions and how to repair miss-attunments in your relationships.
- Understand a map of system dynamics that operate in couples, families groups and in the workplace that generate anger and other negative emotions: reactivity to differences, scategoating, competition, defiance/compliance, one-up/one down, workplace dynamics of boss-employee and team dynamics.
- learn essential survival communication skills, verbal hot buttons and cool downs
- Learn constructive approaches conclict resolution, negotiation and consensus building
- Recognize that you are not alone, that anger is a cultural and systemic issue and well as one of personal responsibility.
- Learn the universal phases of system development that all relationships encounter and is the source of our anger, but also can lead to deep personal and relational development and transformation.
Men's Psychology: I specialize in creating a unique environment for men's personal growth. Men's psychology acknowledges that men have a unique journey that benefits from a unique setting. Men often feel under-appreciated for their passion to engage the world through creativity, work and in relationships. Men long to be a part of something larger and often feel isolated and left out of community. Our current society lables men as un-engaged and un-emotional, niether of which is a reality. Men seek a form of relationship that meets them and acknowledges masculine rhythms, needs and desires. On the other hand, the way men are raised does mean that revealing emotions, developing sustained intimacy and dealing with anger are uniquely challenging. A men's group expereince offers men the oportunity to journey together toward their deepest goals and learn from each other along the way.
Call or email me for a free introductory consult or come to one of my free group introductions in San Francisco or Albany.
510 526 5727 peter@peterbernhardt.com
Life presents you with critical moments of choice.
At these crucial moments, you can walk the path of doing the things you already know how to do (that often don’t work well), or you can take a step into the unknown, toward something new in yourself. You may be at such a moment in your life. Something is not working; you feel unalive, anxious or depressed; your relationships are stuck, your work is frustrating and uncreative. Or you miss a deeper connection to yourself, and sense of meaning, or a sense of community. Perhaps you’ve found this website because your work team or organization is stuck in conflict or is stalled in it’s development.
Tools to Move Ahead in the Journey
I offer you a set of tools, a method that can help you learn a new path. Unless you get new tools, you cannot move beyond what emotional or relationship skills you already have. You can’t build a garden without a shovel and a rake and seeds, and you can’t build better relationships without a new language of attunement and connection. You can’t connect with yourself unless you have new tools to explore yourself inside. Without these tools you will get hijacked by your thoughts, by the stories from the past or fears about the future.
A Fresh Start
The key to all change is to be in the moment. Deep change happens when something new arises in you and instead of ignoring it, you let it in and let it grow. Being in the moment doesn’t come naturally. It’s something you have to train. You have to get into a “Here & Now Gym” to build the muscle of living in the present moment. I teach tools that through repetition help you stay connected to yourself, get you centered, and help you launch a journey of self-discovery. As blocks arise we work together to move through them.
Individual, Couples, or Group Therapy?
Individual therapy allows a person the chance to move at their own pace in an intimate setting. The individual focus from the therapist allows the client to fully explore in a trusting environment. Couples work adds the component of being able to see live in the moment how partners impact each other. We are also able more clearly to see the system that arises from two people rather than just focus on two individuals. This is very helpful for identifying leverage points for change. Also, seeing a couple as a system which functions autonomously from an individuals best intentions, helps partners see that the “couple system” is stronger than them until they can see it and intervene. This insight allows couples to take their system dynamics less personally.
The Power of Groups
I encourage many of my clients to consider group work, for it’s enormous potential for creating the climate in which change can happen. Being with others learning to live in the present moment, working together on shared emotional barriers, is a unique opportunity for growth. The groups I run are not encounter groups or support groups. They focus instead on setting core skills in motion in such a way that members build a shared space, a group intelligence that allows new aspects of each member’s self to emerge in a safe way. The emotional climate in these groups are closest to improvised music or a shared group painting. The goal is to be surprised, to discover and to transform through shared “emergent” awareness.
A Group Imperative
It’s my experience that people want more than personal change. They long for more community or course, but they also want to see more healthy communities, workplaces and societies; they want a better world. Group work provides a profound feeling of being a part of something bigger than oneself and, on a good day, provides a map for building better community and a better world. Learning how to be a “good” member of a group gives you skills to contribute more effectively to the intimate relationships, friendship circles, neighborhoods, and the organizations you belong to.
Working With Organizations
Organizations are groups of people coming together for a common task or purpose, and are vulnerable to all the challenges of group life. I am passionately committed to helping work groups and organizations become stronger, to be better able to reach their goals by working through and becoming aware of the phases of group development. Work places are up against the formidable task of managing issues of authority and leadership under the pressure of deadlines, budgets and an increasingly difficult and complex social and economic environment. The systems map and tools that work for therapy contexts are especially helpful to work groups as well.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll be encouraged to look further into some of the options for growth and development that I offer.
Peter Bernhardt
