Daniel P. Goldberg UX - Personality Concepts ®

talk, heal, self actualize, find the doctor thats right for you.

Personality Concepts: Professional Psychotherapy Associates ®;

"Michelangelo did not create the David, he simply chiseled away everything the David was not."

Overview

The Nature of Stress

Stress, in its essence, is anxiety over the anticipation of a negative outcome. It's the fear that something bad will happen, and that we'll have no control over it. If you look carefully at any stress you've ever had, you'll notice that it always reduces to this common denominator.

The Problem

You need resolve from and freedom from past or current trauma in your life, and you've realized you need professional help to to self actualize and carve away everything that you are not; but are unsure of where to turn to.

The Solution

Psychotherapy, not Psychiatry. Talk about your problems, and become the best version of your true self.

Find the doctor that’s right for you by engaging with an ever expanding network of experienced psychotherapists, and licensed mental health professionals best suited for the needs of improving your mental health.

Discover what’s necessary to relieve your stress and anxiety from the comfort of your own home, or while out amongst the world, on your very own schedule.

Heal your past and current trauma.

Explore your freedom to change by creating new relationships and uncovering your potential to self actualize.

Find the doctor that’s right for you by interviewing them first.

Use different methods and practices that are best for your well being.

In person sessions in every city, or meet with them remotely over video/phone sessions.

Message them personally on a 1-1 basis anytime, anyplace.

Seek Group Sessions and Marriage Counseling.

Receive introductory sessions on different forms of therapy specific to fit your unique personality and life experience.

Use Personality Concepts to build your very own practice. Up to 75 Patients for every doctor.

All Health Care Providers Accepted.

Personality Concepts® is a psychotherapy company comprised of licensed mental-health professionals and peak-performance consultants.

Personality Concepts® offers:

state-of-the-art, private-practice consultations to individuals, couples, and families,

as well as managerial training seminars and communications-analysis workshops to corporations and smaller business structures

Personality Concepts® focuses on seven areas of personal development that represent the building-blocks of productive, enjoyable living:

The Elimination of Depression and Anxiety

Self Esteem Enhancement

Relationship and Communication Skills

Creativity and Flexibility

Stress Mastery

Decision Making and Effective Action

Career Satisfaction for Professional Excellence

Any individual or organizational need is ultimately reducible to these seven areas of personal development.

Personality Concepts® is a Manhattan-based psychotherapy practice comprised of licensed mental-health professionals. We offer state-of-the-art, private-practice consultations to individuals, couples and families.

In a market that's swamped with an endless variety of therapies and self-help gurus, we know that it can be difficult making a confident decision and the right choice regarding a therapist.

We also know that this could be the most important decision you ever make!

In our 17 years of working with people we've discovered a simple yet profound truth: that every thought, feeling and action, and, as a result, the very direction and quality of one's life, is shaped by the psychology of the individual. And the psychology of the individual is optimized by effective psychotherapy.

If you never had therapy, or if you've had therapy and it's been only moderately effective, this is an opportunity to make complete and lasting changes in your life. If you're looking to feel better emotionally, enhance your self-esteem, improve the quality of your relationships or career, deal more effectively with health-threatening stress, or become more creative and decisive, Personality Concepts® offers dynamic, supportive, and highly trained therapists skilled in some very powerful, results-oriented therapeutic techniques.

We know that it's easy to make strong claims. We also know that unsubstantiated claims destroy credibility, and we can't afford to jeopardize our reputation. We set only the highest standards in our work, and we can help you to achieve the highest standards in your life.

Personality Concepts® is a psychotherapy company comprised of licensed mental-health professionals and peak-performance consultants. In addition to providing managerial training seminars and communications-analysis workshops to corporate and smaller business structures, we offer state-of-the-art, private-practice consultations to individuals, couples and families.

One of our specialties is a radical and highly effective alternative to stress management called Stress Mastery ™. In contrast to traditional stress-management therapies, which are basically attention-diversion techniques that temporarily counteract stress, Stress Mastery is a therapy for lasting interpretive reorganization which actually prevents stress in most instances.

Given the wealth of research attesting to the profound medical implications of emotional duress, we believe that our approach, in its lasting and preventive capacity, represents an important advancement in the attempt to curtail the wide variety of physical diseases incurred or exacerbated by stress.

If you feel that any of your patients require our services, we are available, and at several convenient Manhattan locations.

Stress Mastery for Professional Excellence

An Alternative to Traditional Stress-Management Therapies.

Increasingly, we're becoming consumers in a market of

"stress-management therapies."

But what exactly is stress?

And what does it mean to "manage" it?

The Nature of Stress (continued)

There are two types of stress: objective and subjective.

Objective stress stems from a negative, uncontrollable situation that we confront in the real world, such as the terminal illness of a loved one.

Subjective stress stems from a negative, uncontrollable situation that we create in our minds through the act of interpretation. To interpret is to give meaning, and subjective stress is a reaction to the meaning we give to events, and not to the events themselves.

For example: I may be an unusually competent and resourceful individual who sees himself as incompetent and mediocre. When confronted with a new task or professional project, I'm likely to interpret the prospect as overwhelming ("This is too much for me."), and anticipate failure. In reality, I'm well equipped to meet and master the challenge, but I give different meaning to the event, and react with stress to a problem that exists in my mind only.

A critical fact to remember is the following: Most of the stress we experience is subjective stress.

Stress Management

Stress Management refers to any technique or suggestion that takes ones mind of ones problems. These techniques and suggestions anger from simple recreation and vacations, to more formalized methods of biofeedback and meditation. What they all have in common, which is the essence of stress-management strategy, is that they divert our attention from stressful situations by getting us to focus on something else. In so doing, they counteract the anxiety of stress, and help us to relax.

Stress Management can be applied to both objective stress and subjective stress. In other words, attention can be diverted from real problems and imagined problems.

The problem with Stress Management is that, as a therapeutic cool, it's flawed in two fundamental ways:

First, we employ Stress Management once we've already experienced stress. In other words,

Stress Management is intended to counteract stress, but not prevent it.

Second, Stress Management is only temporary. We can't take our minds off our problems indefinitely, and eventually our attention must return to the stressful situations in our lives.

Stress Mastery

Stress Mastery is a radical and superior alternative to Stress Management. Stress Mastery™ applies to subjective stress only, which, as noted, constitutes the overwhelming majority of all the stress we experience.

We said that subjective stress stems from a negative, uncontrollable situation that we create in our minds through the act of interpretation. When traditional Stress Management is applied to subjective stress, its aim is simply to divert attention from the stressful situation. The aim of Stress Mastery, in turn, is to prevent the stressful situation from ever occurring.

Stress Mastery is the act of giving new meaning to certain events so they no longer become stressful situations. It's the art of creating a life experience that's free of subjective stress.

To illustrate Stress Mastery let's return to our example:

Let's say that I've corrected my self-concept, and that I no longer see myself as incompetent and mediocre, but instead as competent and resourceful. When now confronted with a new task or professional project, I give new meaning to the event.

I no longer interpret it as overwhelming ("This is too much for me."), but instead as an accomplishable challenge ('I can do this'). Rather than nervously anticipating failure, I confidently anticipate success. Rather than reacting with stress to an imagined problem, I create a new situation that's empowering, productive and enjoyable.

In contrast to traditional Stress Management, Stress Mastery doesn’t merely counteract stress, but prevents it from occurring. Since the idea of counteracting stress implies that we must first experience it, Stress Mastery", in its preventive capacity, is vastly more effective than Stress Management in curtailing the wide variety of physical and emotional diseases incurred by stress.

Also in contrast to traditional Stress Management, Stress Mastery" is lasting rather than temporary. With Stress Mastery", the act of giving new meaning to a new event isn’t merely a tenuous, superficial response that's rehearsed and mechanically repeated when the event occurs. Instead, it's the natural outcome of a more fundamental, enduring change in one's experience of oneself and the world.

A Question of Standards

What kind of standard do you hold for yourself in your professional life? Is it enough to merely manage stress? To constantly teeter on the brink of anxiety and self-doubt, devising temporary distractions from life's problems? Or do you want to master stress? To be the author of a life experience that's empowering, productive, and enjoyable?

Think about it. It's not the events in our lives that we respond to, but the meaning we give to these events. Through the act of interpretation we literally create much of the reality in which we live. If this reality is holding us back and holding us down, we have the potential to change our interpretations, and to create new situations in which we tap the full depth and breadth of our inner resources.

So what standard do you hold? To be a manager? To "get by" by "doing the best you can" within self-imposed limits? Or to be a master? To break free from stress and soar to the heights of professional excellence? The beauty of it all is that you have a choice. Is it really even a question?

Stress, for many of us is a fact of everyday life.

We find it at home, and at work.

It can strike with the full visibility of a frontal assault, or it can insidiously gnaw away at us like an unidentified virus.

Its causes can be obvious or hidden.

It rots our stomachs, tightens our muscles, and contorts our spines.

It puts strain on our hearts and arteries.

It compromises the integrity of our immune systems, and in the long run could very well kill us.

Psychological Sculpting ®

Folklore has it that when Michelangelo was asked how he carved a figure so magnificent as the David from a block of stone, he replied, "I chiseled away everything that was not the David." In his sonnets he wrote of sculpting as the act of "liberating the figure imprisoned in the marble."

The idea of the individual as a constitutionally unique being means that the true form or personality can't be destroyed by bad parenting since it wasn't created by parenting in the first place.

It is a given, in the nature of things, and parenting can either work with it or against it. When working with, parenting cultivates the form, or allows for its fullest articulation and expression. When working against, parenting doesn't destroy the form, but rather obscures its recognition and thereby limits its manifestation.

The purest form of psychotherapy, in this regard. is akin to sculpting stone. It doesn't work to change, mold or add to the fundamental personality of the individual, but rather to reveal and liberate it by "chiseling away." or rendering transparent, everything that is not the individual. In so doing, one's center of gravity shifts from a false periphery to one's true center of being, and that which had been obscured and smothered is now allowed articulation and expression.

As a form in and of the natural world, the fundamental character or personality of the individual, in both its actual and potential aspects, is perfect unto itself, in its uniqueness. Inseparable from its social context, it can either be cultivated or subjugated. Typically it is the latter, of course to varying degrees and in varying forms, and this is the basis for what is so aptly called problems in living.

The subjugation of individuality is the foundation of depression and anxiety, the hallmarks of human disorder, and is responsible for the despair and meaninglessness or existential alienation and spiritual impoverishment.

Psychological Sculpting is the psychotherapeutic art of restoring human individuality to its rightful place, which is the forefront of human experience. Through this technique of "liberating the figure" by seeing through and overcoming that which is not the figure, human individuality is given the opportunity to fulfill itself and its destiny by enjoying the fruits of self knowledge and expansively giving itself over to life.

When we avail our senses of the natural world we cant help but marvel at the exquisite beauty and limitless variability of its forms. From the crystalline lace of a snowflake, to the dazzling arabesque of a peacock's plumage, to the intricate whorl of a human fingerprint, our appreciation of individual differences abounds. We know that no two are exactly alike, and their beauty and perfection lie in their uniqueness.

Yet when it comes to the uniqueness of personality and character we are less discerning and appreciative. Our ideas of what it is to be an individual are misleading and incomplete, and our ability to recognize individuality in ourselves and others is severely limited. Living thus, we are thwarted in the fullest expression of who we are. But this is no compromise. Indeed, it is the essence of human disorder, and a wholly unnecessary fate. With skillful parenting it can be prevented, and with skillful therapy it can be remedied. If we can scan the surface of mars while balancing our own planet on a silicon chip, certainly we can be as versed in these interpersonal arts.

First we must have a clear understanding of the nature of human individuality and how to cultivate it.

The Ideal Childhood

A child with a unique, genetic configuration is born to a world 1 of people, things and events.

Far from being a blank slate, the child already has particular temperamental characteristics undiscovered talents and aptitudes, and the potential for certain interests and personality traits.

Immediately and simultaneously child and world react to each other. In other words, as the world affects the child, so it is affected by the child. An infant is stirred by its mother's irritability, yet some of this irritability is a response to an inconsolable infant.

What becomes apparent is that the actions of the child and of the world are inextricable, and cannot be unraveled in any meaningful way. The popular question of whether personality is a matter of nature or nurture or, if both, in what proportions, is then seen to be theoretically immature and of no practical vale. The real question is how the nurturing process can work with the unique configuration of the child toward the cultivation of individuality.

The principle of working with refers to a way of relating to the world that respects the fundamental nature of things. An architect, for example, might design a home to adapt to the irregularities of a hilly terrain, rather than leveling the land first. A sailor cannot, of course, change the wind, but instead woes it by adjusting his sails.

The ideal childhood, in this regard, is one in which parents and teachers respect the fundamental nature of the child, and work with it to facilitate its development. Parenting and teaching as such are the most important of the interpersonal arts, and their success rests upon the application of three profoundly simple principles: dear mirroring, free exploration, and emotional sanity.

Clear mirroring is the act of discerning the particular talents or aptitudes of a child, and then reflecting them by pointing them out to the child. In this way, I am made aware of that which defines and distinguishes me ('I'm smart at math,' 'I'm a good artist"), and my self esteem is enriched through knowing and appreciating my strengths.

Free exploration is the opportunity for divergent experience, i.e., to think and feel expansively, and thereby come to one's own interests and ideas. Through this process my awareness of who I am is further articulated, and my self-esteem is further enriched by the implied faith of those who allow me this freedom.

Emotional security is the ongoing experience of feeling loved and protected. As the initial and ultimate foundation of self-esteem, it facilitates clear mirroring by enabling me to believe the positive evaluations of others. As the basis for feeling safe in the world, it provides the confidence needed for free exploration.

The ideal outcome of the ideal childhood is twofold:

First, because of the loving and respectful relationships that laid the path for my clarity and good feeling of self. I am able to form loving and respectful relationships.

Second, because I am clear about my talents and interests. I am able to reconcile them by pursuing that which I both enjoy and do well. In so doing, I fashion a career path wherein the line between work and play is forever blurred.

The Typical Childhood

In the typical childhood the cultivation of the individuality of the child is not the premier consideration of the parent. This can be for a variety of reasons, and its effects can vary in degree and form. The act of parenting, in this regard, works against the nature of the child by failing to apply the principles of clear mirroring, free exploration, and emotional security: This can best be understood by considering these principles in their inverted forms.

The inverse of clear mirroring is distorted mirroring. Distorted mirroring is when parents lead children to believe that they have aptitudes and talents which they do not, or that they don't have aptitudes and talents which they do. For example, I may be a frustrated musician who wishes to see musical brilliance in my child when it simply isn't there. At the same time, I may be intellectually insecure and perhaps need to make my formidably bright child feel stupid. The net effect is that the child is left with a distorted self-image, not unlike the misrepresentative reflections from an amusement-park mirror.

The inverse of free exploration is intellectual and emotional constriction. Here there is no divergence of experience as children are denied the opportunity to come to their own interests and ideas. Actual or potential interests are squashed when the child is forced to pursue activities and a career path that have no personal meaning and are significant to the parent only. This culminates in the tragedy of false ambition.

Intellectual freedom is prohibited when ideas, attitudes and beliefs are imposed on the child, i.e., presented with the imperative that they not be questioned. The very act of thinking is clipped, and there is never a completed process of questioning ideas first, and then accepting, rejecting or modifying them accordingly. In effect, the mind of the child is removed from the equation, and with little wonder, the "difficult-to-manage" child is described as "having a mind of his own "

The inverse of emotional security is fearful clinging. Having never felt consistently loved, the child feels inferior, and this feeling of inferiority endures because any praise or recognition received outside the home or later in life is inevitably met with skepticism ("How can anyone know me better than my own parents?"). Having never felt held and protected, the child feels insecure and fearful of the world. Lacking the confidence for exploration and discovery of the world and oneself, the alternative is to seek security in self-limitation by anxiously clinging to the known and familiar.

The typical outcome of the typical childhood is that, to varying degrees and in varying forms, the child does not know who he or she truly is, and, as a result, does not and cannot operate from a true center of being. The principle to be embraced is that despite the obscuring presence of false reflections and other people's ideas, interests and aspirations, the true form that lies within, in both its actuality and potential aspects.

Spirit and Form ®

On the True Meaning of Individuality and the Art of Psychological Sculpting

An exposé of the impediments to personal evolution and spiritual freedom,

and the proposal of a form of psychotherapy akin to sculpting in stone.

SPIRIT AND FORM showcases the sanctity of individuality and the issue of its cultivation or negation. The ongoing articulation of the uniqueness of form is considered the principle of spiritual fulfillment, personal happiness, and mental health. Conversely, the obstruction of this process of articulation and the consequent subversion of personality is considered the hallmark of human disorder. Accordingly, the definitive model of psychotherapy should not substantively involve such principles as "changing" or "fixing." but rather the assertion that the intrinsic form of the individual is perfect unto itself, and thus needs to be discerned, released and articulated. As there is no need for the violent principle of permutation, the aim of the therapeutic process must be akin to the art of sculpting in stone. The occlusive layers of extrinsic thoughts, feelings, ambitions and self-assessments that have peripheralized the individual are to be "chipped away," or subtracted from the equation, like inchoate rock shrouding a statue or grime on a window, allowing the light of the true form or individuality to be revealed and seek its course of outward expression.

The Spirit, without moving, is swifter than the mind; the senses cannot reach him: he is ever beyond them.

Standing still, he overtakes those who run.

Isha Upanishad