When Bad Behaviour Is A Call For Help

We often think of bad behaviour as a great inconvenience, whether it is from our teenager, our family member, our colleague or friend. It causes us great inconvenience because it just means we have to clean up their mess, and right the wrong.

Sometimes these bad behaviours even cause us great embarrassment and we just want them to pay for it. Or sometimes, their bad behaviour just hurts other people with rippling repercussions.

It is "almost natural" for us to feel victimised by other people's bad behaviour, we feel as if we are at their mercy (yes even our teenagers) because we feel helpless and we are not able to control them.

But what if, their bad behaviour is a call for help?

What if, your adult friends or colleagues have huge insecurity issues, power struggles, a need to be in control, are simply unhappy with themselves because they do not have inner peace, and they lash out and start behaving like rebellious teens? What can we do for these overgrown teens? What is it that they want?

Bear in mind that their mindset and psychology is still like a teen, so it is challenging to speak to them like equal adults because firstly they do not wish to be treated like one. Secondly, they are asking for attention and throwing a temper tantrum.

How would you care for a teen who is asking for help via bad behaviour? They want attention, they want love, they want to be listened to. So this is exactly what you can do for your overgrown teenager friends/colleagues until such time when you realize that they have much deeper issues and a professional therapist is needed.

What you can do:

• Give them time to talk
• Guide the conversation to make sure it is a productive conversation and not one for ranting
• Assure them that you care and that their views are taken into consideration
• Crack them with lots of love and attention (not romantic love, obviously)
• If needed, send them to a professional

How would you know if they have much deeper issues?

Just look at what is going on in their lives. Do they have an addiction/bad habit that is consuming them? Do they have a happy family life? Are they facing tremendous pressure in the workplace to keep up? These are some telltale signs that their bad behaviour actually stems from a self-destructive mode. It goes way deeper.

I've witnessed enough of my clients, friends, family, colleagues who under such deep inner pressure just want to destroy themselves from the inside because they cannot take it anymore. And this, of course, impacts all of us around them. And I've sent countless people to therapists whom I work with to make sure they get back on track.

As a life coach, I coach people towards various life goals, but sometimes, these bad behaviours get in the way, and we have to make adjustments accordingly. The goal they want may not be what they need.

Not all goals we want in life should be achieved. Not especially if they are at the expense of our inner peace, inner love, inner power and inner wisdom.

Judge not those around you who are behaving badly, they may be choking in their call for help.

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How To Identify Your Habits In 3 Easy Steps

As I mentioned before, all habits can be dissected into 3 parts: Cue, Habit Routine, and Rewards

So if you want to expose your bad habits so you know the exact behavioral pathway to change, here are the 3 simple steps you can use today.

Step 1: Log The Cue In A Journal

Janet L. Wolfe, PhD, a clinical psychologist in New York City and author of <What to Do When He Has a Headache> said that if you "... put down the antecedents, the emotions surrounding the knuckle cracking [i.e. bad habit] and what goes through your head when you crack your knuckles [i.e.do the bad habit]... This will make your bad habit more conscious."

So the first step is to make a record about your bad habits in a journal for at least 7 days.

In doing so, you'll discover the hidden triggers of the bad behavior, the underlying reasons behind, and the repeated patterns that occur again and again.

Step 2: Expose Your Habit Routine In The Light

A habit routine is the exact behavioral process you perform after you right the Cue so as to obtain the Reward.

These are the unhealthy actions, the cravings, the detrimental activities that you unconsciously do to satisfy temporary needs while harming your future well-being.

When you figure out what exactly it is you're doing when the bad habit is in progress, you'll be able to come up with strategies to break the automatic step-by-steps down to change your behavior.

Step 3: Detect The Reward

Whatever we do (good or bad habits), we're almost always satisfying certain human needs.

American Psychologist Henry Murray had published in Explorations in Personality in 1938 about a theory of personality that was organized in terms of motives, presses and needs. He suggested that our personalities are a reflection of behaviors controlled by needs.

So Murray found that there are 27 psychogenic needs (in 6 categories) human universally have. The following list is very useful to see what needs your bad habits are satisfying you:

Category 1: Ambition needs

1. Achievement - To accomplish difficult tasks, overcoming obstacles and achieving expertise.
2. Exhibition - To impress others through one's actions and words, even if what is said or done is shocking.
3. Recognition - To show achievements to others and gain recognition for these.

Category 2: Materialistic needs

1. Acquisition - To acquire things.
2. Retention - To keep things that have been acquired.
3. Order - To make things clean, neat and tidy.
4. Construction - To make and build things.

Category 3: Power needs

1. Abasement - To surrender and submit to others, accept blame and punishment. To enjoy pain and misfortune.
2. Aggression - To forcefully overcome an opponent, controlling, taking revenge or punishing them.
3. Autonomy - To break free from constraints, resisting coercion and dominating authority. To be irresponsible and independent.
4. Blame avoidance - To not be blamed for things done.
5. Contrariance - To oppose the attempted persuasion of others.
6. Deference - To admire a superior person, praising them and yielding to them and following their rules.
7. Dominance - To control one's environment, controlling other people through command or subtle persuasion.
8. Harm avoidance - To escape or avoid pain, injury and death.
9. Infavoidance - To avoid being humiliated or embarrassed.

Category 4: Status defense needs

1. Counteraction - To make up for failure by trying again, pridefully seeking to overcome obstacles.
2. Defendance - To defend oneself against attack or blame, hiding any failure of the self.
3. Infavoidance - To avoid being humiliated or embarrassed.

Category 5: Affection needs

1. Affiliation - To be close and loyal to another person, pleasing them and winning their friendship and attention.
2. Nurturance - To help the helpless, feeding them and keeping them from danger.
3. Play - To have fun, laugh and relax, enjoying oneself.
4. Rejection - To separate oneself from a negatively viewed object or person, excluding or abandoning it.
5. Sex - To form relationship that lead to sexual intercourse.
6. Succourance - To have one's needs satisfied by someone or something. Includes being loved, nursed, helped, forgiven and consoled.

Category 6: Information needs

1. Cognizance - To seek knowledge and ask questions about things in order to understand.
2. Exposition - To provide information educate others.

While I believe there are usually defects or flaws in any psychological explanatory models, there's no need to waste time debating the imperfections and disregard the usefulness of it.

So I suggest you take use this 27 needs model as a reference to see what your bad habits are satisfying after you've logged your cues and dissected your bad habit routine.

Take action and use these 3-steps process to pull out your bad habits today!

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Identify-Your-Habits-In-3-Easy-Steps&id=9534955

Find a Way to Avoid the Negativity That Comes With Dealing With Negative People

When dealing with someone who knows the things that annoy you it can make for a downright testy relationship at times. You must always be aware of the fact that they know the things that will set you off in a moments-time and be careful when dealing with them from a place of frustration.

Now knowing your triggers will help you to become more aware during times when people are trying to antagonize you. Usually during the course of a conversation going wrong or heated debate and/or discussion they will constantly refer to those things that annoy you. This is the time to exercise restraint in not falling prey to their attempts. I know it can be rough because the more you try to avoid becoming agitated in the conversation; the more they make certain inferences to draw you nearer to your boiling point. You try to ignore them and yet they will continue to make comments and insinuations to further antagonize you to that place of discomfort especially when you're trying not to get angry.

Knowing your triggers and the things that agitate you will assist you in not being drawn into unnecessary conflict. When you sense someone attempting to take you to a negative place and you have identified what they're trying to do, either end the conversation or change topics. But by all means don't be drawn into the negativity. Over time you will find that most people who try to use insults and what they perceive to be your short comings to annoy you as well. Most of the time these people have their own issues that they're dealing with internally and for whatever reason, if they're having a bad day they want you to have one too.

Sometimes you can rise above it but sometimes you just can't. I find that it's best to limit your contact with people who behave in this manner. Or sometimes you have to sever ties with these people altogether because you will find yourself being on the receiving end of their malice comments and bad behavior more often than not. It's not always in your personal relationships either. This issue can arise in business as well,especially if there is some kind of inferiority involved. You may have that business associate who is just looking for an axe to grind and then you show up. "Game on,".

Surprisingly though depending on the person and the caliber of your relationship you can actually speak to them about the behavior they're displaying and bring it to their attention so that they can correct this issue. In some instances they aren't even aware that they're doing these things to you and if you don't say anything they will continue to do the same things over and over again.

The best thing to do here is to know yourself and the people you are dealing with. Essentially this will help you to navigate through these situations and also help you teach others to deal with their own issues as well.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Find-a-Way-to-Avoid-the-Negativity-That-Comes-With-Dealing-With-Negative-People&id=9297087