Learning to Make Better Choices in Romantic Relationships

As a psychotherapist in New York City, over the years, I've see many clients, both men and women, who come to therapy in despair because they continue  to make unhealthy choices in their romantic relationships.

Learning to Make Better Choices in Romantic Relationships

Most of them want very much to be in healthy, loving relationships, but they keep choosing the same type of romantic partners who are almost certainly guaranteed to disappoint and break their hearts. Usually, they say they'd like to be with a kind, loving person, but they're often attracted to just the opposite type of person--emotionally unavailable, selfish, narcissistic, mean or abusive.

Looking at this phenomena on the surface, you might wonder: How can there be such a disparity between what they say they want or who they're attracted to?  It just doesn't seem to make sense. But looking below the surface at the underlying reasons that drive the attractions, we find the unconscious forces that make these unhealthy choices so compelling.

Usually, when there's such a disparity between the type of romantic partner someone says they want vs the type of people they're actually attracted to, these attractions are driven by early, often preverbal, bonds to their earliest caregivers, usually a mother or father.  

Of course, this isn't always a negative thing.  Many people were fortunate enough to have loving, nurturing parents. But if you weren't so fortunate, your early bonding experience might be getting in the way of your h making good choices for yourself.  You might be caught in a cycle of basing your relationships on unhealthy attractions.

For people caught in this cycle of wanting a healthy relationship, but continuing to choose emotionally unhealthy people, the dilemma becomes that, on the one hand, even when they meet people who are potential health partners, they're not attracted to them. There's no spark or chemistry, so there's little motivation to pursue these relationships.  On the other hand, when they meet the type of person they say they want to avoid, fireworks go off.

This can be a very discouraging dilemma.  But it is possible to change these dynamics  in therapy.  Using hypnotherapy, Somatic Experiencing therapy and dynamic talk therapy, it's possible to not only understand why you're continuing to make poor choices but also to learn to have attractions be more in synch with what you know is emotionally healthy for you.

About Me:
I am a New York City psychotherapist who provides therapy for individuals and couples, including dynamic talk therapy, hypnotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR.

To find out more about me, visit my website:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Overcoming the Fears that Keep You Stuck

Fear can be a debilitating force that keeps us stuck and immobilized. We might want to accomplish certain goals, but overwhelming fear can keep us from even finding out what we need to do to get on the right path to achieve those goals. Sometimes, years go by, and the fear makes achieving our goals seem like an impossibility.

Overcoming the Fears that Keep You Stuck

On my first day registering for college at Hunter College of CUNY, I met a woman who was getting the paperwork to apply to the college. She told me that she'd been waiting more than 10 years to apply to college. Going to college had been her dream for all that time, she told me in a nervous and excited tone. She'd spent those years working and saving her money so she could go.

During those years, all she could get were dead end jobs that she hated, but she persevered with her goal in mind. In order to save up for four years of tuition, she made a lot of sacrifices. She kept a very strict budget: She hardly ever went out socially; she didn't buy any new clothes; and she watched every penny she spent. Now, after saving all her money, she was finally ready to get the information she needed to apply. No one in her family had ever gone to college, so this was a very big thing for her.

As listened to her more, it became evident that she'd had so many fears about going to college, even in terms of the application process, that she never found out about financial aid, scholarships or loans. Her fear for something she very much wanted kept her from even getting basic information that could have saved her from delaying all those years and making unnecessary sacrifices.

 She had been told by her parents that college was very expensive, out of reach for them and probably out of reach for her. So, she avoided getting information and doggedly set about saving every penny, convinced that she had to sacrifice everything in order to begin the process of applying for college.

As she was telling me how she scrimped and saved, I wondered how she was going to feel when she found out she didn't need to wait all those years to make her dream come true. As it turned out, I saw her a few months later, after she had been accepted to the college. She told me how shocked she was that she was entitled to a substantial amount of financial aid, and she didn't need to sacrifice all those years, staying home, and depriving herself. She realized that, during all those years, she allowed her fear of even getting information to keep her stuck, and when she finally mobilized herself to pursue her dream, it wasn't nearly as daunting as she anticipated. She regretted self sacrificing needlessly and wished she had looked into things sooner.

Even though I didn't know this young woman well, I never forgot her story and the lesson it provided. When we're fearful of pursuing our dreams, they often seem so much more daunting than they turn out to be. Often, when we're finally on the path where we want to be, we say to ourselves, "Wow! This isn't as bad as I thought! Why did I wait? I could have started sooner."

You can overcome fears that keep you stuck

Of course, it's not always so simple. Overwhelming trauma often creates fears that make it very difficult to overcome. We can't always "bootstrap" ourselves along to overcome our fears. Sometimes, we need help. Not knowing this young woman well, I don't know what possible traumatic events might have occurred to her parents to cause them to feel that college was an almost unattainable goal for their daughter. I don't know what fears this young woman might have taken on from them or developed on her own. But I could feel the regret and disappointment she experienced for allowing her fears to overcome her.

Letting go of your fears

Working with a skilled hypnotherapist, it's possible to overcome long-held fears that keep you from achieving your dreams. As I've mentioned in other blog posts, clinical hypnosis isn't a "magic bullet." It's not something that's done to you while you passively observe. But it can be an effective form of therapy to help you overcome the emotional obstacles that keep you stuck.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  

I work with individuals and couples.

To find out more about clinical hypnosis, you can visit the professional hypnosis website: American Society of Clinical Hypnosis

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Hypnosis: Developing the Confidence to Succeed at What You Thought You Couldn't Do

What is clinical hypnosis?
Clinical hypnosis is a form of therapy which has been known to help clients to develop self confidence. As I've mentioned in prior blog posts, while hypnosis isn't a quick fix or a magic bullet to resolving problems, it's often more effective than regular "talk therapy" in helping clients to overcome obstacles.

When performed by an experienced and skilled hypnotherapist, clinical hypnosis can help clients to access the unconscious mind where people often have untapped resources they are unaware of in regular waking consciousness. With regard to developing self confidence, clinical hypnosis allows clients to access other experiences where, initially, they might have doubted their abilities to succeed, but they succeeded nonetheless. It can be a very uplifting experience to succeed in an endeavor where, originally, you thought you wouldn't be able to do it.

Using hypnosis to access these emotions is more than just remembering what it was like to succeed. Hypnosis can help you on an unconscious level to use the felt sense of that successful experience to develop self confidence in the present. Hypnosis can help to amplify your former state of self confidence in a particular situation from the past and use it in the here and now.

Why affirmations often aren't enough
Many people use affirmations to help overcome a lack of self confidence. Affirmations can be helpful but, for many, they often remain a superficial experience that doesn't go very deep. The advantage of using hypnosis is that it can help you to access deeper states of consciousness where you can often bypass the negative thinking that creeps in on a conscious level.

Are you giving yourself negative hypnotic suggestions?

You might not even realize, until you experience hypnosis, that you are giving yourself negative hypnotic suggestions. As strange as that might sound, most of us have experienced times when we've engaged in automatic negative thought like, "I can't do that" or "I'm not good enough to do that" that keep us trapped in a state of low self confidence. If this type of thinking is habitual, it can be a powerful way to keep us in that state.

Break the cycle of negative thinking
Breaking the cycle of automatic negative thinking can be a challenge, but it can be accomplished.

Having access to the felt sense experience of earlier successes from any time in your life and being able to apply it to a current situation can help you to overcome emotional obstacles that keep you stuck in your current situation. It doesn't matter if it was a feeling of success that you experienced yesterday or when you learned to ride a bike when you were five. It doesn't have to be related to what you want to accomplish now. It can be any experience in your life. It's all stored in your unconscious mind and accessible through clinical hypnosis.

Lack of confidence is often related to earlier trauma

For some people, their lack of self confidence is related to earlier trauma. If this is the case, a skilled hypnotherapist can help you to overcome the trauma. Once again, this isn't magic and it's often not quick, especially if there are multiple traumas. For other people, their lack of self confidence is part of their depression. Hypnotherapy can also be helpful to overcome depression.

How long does it take to develop self confidence?

There's no way to tell in advance how many sessions might be needed to overcome a lack of self confidence. Everyone is different. There can be many factors involved, including the client's level of motivation and willingness to change.

Developing the self confidence to succeed at what you thought you couldn't do through clinical hypnosis can be a life changing experience.

Choose a licensed therapist

When you're seeking clinical hypnosis treatment, make sure you choose a licensed psychotherapist who has the clinical skills and expertise to help you. There are many hypnotists who have learned hypnotic techniques, but they're not trained mental health professionals. If more complex underlying psychological issues arise, they don't have the skills to deal with it. When in doubt, ask about licensure before you start treatment.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist. 

 I provide psychotherapy services to individuals and couples, including clinical hypnosis, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing and dynamic talk therapy.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist & Hypnotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Are Your Core Beliefs Keeping You Stuck in Your Life?

As a psychotherapist in New York City, I often see clients who have core beliefs about themselves and about life that keep them stuck in their lives. Many times these are unconscious beliefs that they don't even realize they have until they begin psychotherapy and we begin to explore why they're not where they want to be in their lives.

Are Your Core Beliefs Keeping You Stuck?

One such common belief that often keeps people feeling stuck or trapped in habitual ways of responding to life is "I have to put other people's needs first." 

This is the type of underlying belief or attitude that often goes unrecognized until people come to therapy.

The following vignette, which is a fictionalized composite of many different cases with all identifying information changed, illustrates how underlying core beliefs about can keep you feeling stuck in your life:

Mary:

When Mary first started coming to therapy, she felt frustrated and discouraged about her life. At age 35, she wasn't where she hoped to be in her life. Having completed graduate school more than 10 years before, she hoped to be further along in her career. Instead, she was stuck in a low-level supervisory job while she watched her peers get promotions throughout the years to senior managerial positions. She knew she was just as capable as they were, but she remained stuck in the same job while their careers were taking off.

In her personal life, she had hoped to be married with a couple of children by the time she was in her 30s, but she kept having one unfulfilling relationship after another. At the point when she started therapy, she wasn't in a relationship, and she felt discouraged about the prospect of getting married.

As we began to explore Mary's underlying beliefs and attitudes, it became apparent that one of Mary's beliefs was that she had to put other people's needs before her own. Raised in a devoutly religious home, Mary was taught that putting your own needs first was self and wrong. Without realizing it, she learned to sacrifice her own emotional needs so she could please others. This belief showed up over and over with family members, friends, colleagues, and especially in romantic relationships. She never learned to say, "No" when almost anything was asked of her. It was mo wonder she was exhausted and felt stuck.

At work, she often gave her colleagues and bosses ideas that they presented as their own without giving Mary credit for them. She thought of this as just helping them out without realizing that she was sacrificing her chances for recognition. It was such an ingrained pattern that, at first, Mary didn't see it.

In her personal relationships with friends and men she dated, she was always too ready to put her other people's emotional needs before her own. If there was any type of conflict, she would be the first to apologize and take the blame for the problem. She was barely aware of her own needs, and people frequently took advantage of her. Even when she did recognize that the other person was being unkind or selfish, due to her attitude that other people's needs must come first, she pushed down these feelings. It was more important for her to see herself as being "a good person" by taking care of others than taking care of herself.

As we continued to work together, Mary developed an increasing self awareness as to how she would sabotage herself in her personal and work-related relationships. At first, she was confused about what to do about it. Her belief that she was "a good person" was very much tied in with gratifying others and neglecting herself. It took a lot of work in therapy, even after she became aware that her lifelong belief was keeping her trapped in her life, for her to change. She had to learn that she could still be "a good person" and put her own needs first. Then, even more difficult, she had to learn to put this into practice.

Ingrained beliefs and attitudes about yourself and how you "should" be in the world can be difficult to change. It often forces you to question and challenge long-held beliefs and family traditions. Your loved ones, who are accustomed to your behaving in a certain way, might not like these changes. It can be an uphill battle within yourself and with others.

What motivated Mary to change is that we clearly defined where she wanted to be in her personal life and in her career. With clearly defined goals as her guide, she was able to start looking at and letting go of beliefs and attitudes that were keeping her from achieving her goals. She started by learning to say "No" to unreasonable requests from friends and family members. Progress with this type of change is rarely linear. So, it was to be expected that there would be some back sliding along the way. But, overall, Mary made progress. She was amazed, at first, at how much more energy she had when she wasn't saying "Yes" to everyone's needs.

At work, Mary began putting her ideas in writing to her bosses rather than giving them away to colleagues or allowing others to take credit for them. She was an intelligent and creative thinker. Over time, she began to get the recognition she deserved, and she was soon promoted.

With regard to her romantic life, as she began to feel she was more deserving, she also began to make better choices in men. Whereas she used to choose men who tended to be selfish and narcissistic, she now chose men who were more empathetic to her needs. After a year or so, she met the man who would become her husband and the father of her child. She was still challenged from time to time, especially when it came to balancing her needs with her family's needs but, overall, she made a lot of progress in this area.

Looking at how your core beliefs might be keeping you feeling stuck and trapped in your life isn't easy. Letting go of beliefs and changing your attitude is even more challenging. But if you want to live a more fulfilling life, being willing to change is vital.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist who provides psychotherapy to individuals and couples, including dynamic talk therapy, EMDR, clinical hypnosis, and Somatic Experiencing.

I am certified in mind-body oriented psychotherapy.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Relationships: Are You and Your Spouse Constantly Arguing About Money?

Are you and your spouse constantly arguing about money? If you are, you're not alone. Arguments about money often bring couples into couples counseling when the couple can't find a way to compromise on their differences. It's one of the main reasons why people come to see a couples therapist. It's also one of the main causes of breakups and divorce.

Arguing About Money

What I'm referring to is not the occasional disagreement that many couples have from time to time about money. I'm talking about a pattern of ongoing arguments where there are fundamental differences in values and major differences in how each person relates to money.

People Often Don't Talk About Money Before They Get Married

Often, before people get married or enter into a committed relationship, they neglect talking about money and each of their particular views about it. It's very easy to get so caught up and swept away by romantic feelings that money issues might seem too mundane to talk about at that point. 

 For many people, talking about money is still somewhat taboo. So, both people enter into the marriage blissfully unaware that they might have completely different philosophies about money.

For instance, one person might be more of a saver while the other person is more of a spender. Until you live with someone and share bills, you might not really see certain patterns they have with spending or saving money. But once you're together, these issues start to come up pretty quickly with regard to both short-term and long-term money issues. 

 It's not unusual for a spouse to discover shortly after being married that his or her partner has a lot of credit card debt that was never mentioned before. There have been times when I've been amazed at the lengths that one spouse has gone to, even long into the marriage, to keep large debts a secret until they've become really out of control.

Money Can Take on Different Symbolic Meanings

Money often takes on different symbolic meanings for people. For many people, money is symbolic of self worth. The more money they have, the better they feel about themselves. 

 Conversely, having less money (either due to a job loss or other reversals in fortune) erodes their self esteem. To rely on how much money you have to determine how you feel about yourself is a very slippery slope. 

 When one or both people feel this way in a relationship, it becomes a big problem when they experience a financial downturn, and this often leads to arguments. Without strong internal resources, an over identification of money and self esteem is often a recipe for disaster.

Arguing About Money

For many couples, where one person relies on overspending to shore up an otherwise poor sense of self, hidden emotional insecurities (that were formerly kept out of conscious awareness by overspending money to feel good) come to the surface in unexpected ways when he or she can't continue overspending due to financial problems. When overspending money is no longer available as a quick fix habit to feel good, this often leads to arguments. The person who is overspending might not even realize that being unable to rely on this quick fix is causing him or her to feel irritable and unhappy.

In many couples, one or both people feel that when a spouse spends a lot of money on them, it's symbolic of how much they are loved. If they have to cut back on their spending, it feels like the spouse loves them less. Most of the time, these are unconscious feelings and they can be very powerful. At that point, the couple is challenged to find something more intrinsically meaningful in their relationship. Of course, this isn't such an all-or-nothing problem most of the time. It can be much more subtle than that. But it can still be a problem.

Getting Help in Therapy

When couples are unable to work out their differences about money, they often find it helpful to seek couples counseling. 

 A couples counselor won't provide you with financial advice, but he or she can help you to understand the emotional aspects of your problems and how to negotiate and compromise about money issues. A skilled couples counselor can also help you to see the underlying emotional issues that might be fueling your problems.

I've only touched the surface in this blog post with regard to all the different problems couples often have around money. The important thing to realize is that arguments about money, although unpleasant, are not unusual, and many couples are helped in couples counseling to overcome these problems.

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist. 

 I work with individuals and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Overcoming Emotional Trauma with Somatic Experiencing Therapy

As a psychotherapist in New York City, I see many clients who are seeking help to overcome emotional trauma. Many of these clients have already tried conventional talk therapy, but they've experienced little if any relief from that treatment, and they're interested in experiencing a mind-body oriented psychotherapy, like Somatic Experiencing, EMDR or clinical hypnosis.

Overcoming Emotional Trauma With Somatic Experiencing

Emotional Trauma is Stored in the Body
Conventional talk therapy often helps clients to become intellectually insightful about their trauma. However, in many cases, it doesn't help clients to heal from the trauma, which is why I prefer using mind-body oriented treatment modalities, like Somatic Experiencing, clinical hypnosis or EMDR, which I have found much more effective in helping clients to heal.

In prior blog posts, I've described Somatic Experiencing in detail, so I won't focus on that here. For anyone interested in finding out more basic information about Somatic Experiencing, I recommend Peter Levine's books, Waking the Tiger - Transforming Overwhelming Experiences and In an Unspoken Voice as well as the Somatic Experiencing website: Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute.

Feeling Cut Off from the Body Due to Emotional Trauma

In this blog post, I want to focus on a common problem that traumatized clients have when they begin treatment, which is feeling cut off or dissociated from their bodies. The degree to which a client might feel cut off varies. Some clients, depending upon the depth of the trauma, might feel significantly out of touch with sensory experiences in their bodies most of the time. Other clients might feel out of touch with sensory exeriences at times and with. only certain parts of their bodies.

Dissociation Can Go Unnoticed in Traditional Talk Therapy

Very often, in traditional talk therapy, this dissociation goes unnoticed, especially for very intellectualized clients who can talk intellectually about their problems with the therapist, but who might be emotionally and physically cut off from their trauma. If the therapist is not trained to notice what's happening physically in clients, this dissociation is often not apparent to them.

 A client can go through years of conventional therapy in this state, gain intellectual insight, but not still not overcome the trauma. At the conclusion of what the therapist perceives as a "success" therapy, the client is often left wondering why he or she still feels as traumatized at the end of treatment as he or she did at the beginning. Some clients end up blaming themselves for this, which could be a life long pattern due to a history of trauma.

Somatic Experiencing as a Gentle and Effective Therapy

So, if traumatized clients are often, to some degree, dissociated from their emotions and their bodies, you might wonder how they could participate in Somatic Experiencing.

The answer is that, initially, for clients who are significantly out of touch with their emotions and physical sensations, the Somatic Experiencing therapist helps them to start getting these experiences back "online." There are Somatic Experiencing techniques that gently and safely help clients to overcome their dissociation.

As an example, one technique that Somatic Experiencing therapists use is helping clients to become more aware of tension in their muscles.

 For people who are cut off from the sensory experiences of their bodies, they often don't realize how tense their muscles are. 

Their muscles have become like body armor without their even realizing it. Helping clients to learn how to relax their bodies is one way to begin the process of reacquainting them with their bodies and gradually bringing various parts of their bodies back "on line" again.

Often, the parts of the body that are dissociated are the parts that "hold" all or part of the emotional trauma. Somatic Experiencing is a gentle and safe way to help clients to reintegrate emotionally and physically.

 The Somatic Experiencing therapist is observing and tracking what's happening for the client on an emotional and physical level. Before any work is begun, the therapist ensures that the client has the internal emotional resources for doing the work. If not, the therapist works with the client to develop those skills.

My original training after graduate school was in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. 

Early on, when clients with significant trauma came to me, I found that psychodynamic therapy had its shortcomings in helping clients overcome trauma, which is why trained in various mind-body oriented treatment modalities, like clinical hypnosis, Somatic Experiencing, and EMDR.

 I still use psychodynamic psychotherapy with some clients, but I now use it in a much more dynamic and contemporary way.

Getting Help in Therapy

If you are seeking to overcome trauma, you could benefit from attending treatment with a Somatic Experiencing (SE) therapist. 

About Me

I am a licensed New York City psychotherapist. 

I provide psychotherapy services, including Somatic Experiencing, clinical hypnosis, EMDR and contemporary talk therapy to individuals and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also, see my article:  Overcoming Childhood Trauma that Affects Your Adult Relationships

Workplace: If You Want Your Employees to Treat Customers Well, Treat Your Employees Well

It seems it should just be common sense that, as a boss, if you want your employees to provide good customer service, you should model this behavior by treating your employees well. And, yet, many workplace managers just don't get it. There's a big disconnect between the behavior they model with employees and their expectations about how they want these same employees to treat customers.

If You Want Your Employees to Treat Your Customers Well, Treat Your Employees Well

As a psychotherapist, I hear from clients all the time about managers who are verbally abusive or who mistreat employees in other ways. These managers model bad behavior towards their employees, but they expect their employees to turn around and provide excellent customer service to customers.

When I refer to treating employees well, I'm not necessarily referring to giving employees big salary increases. Of course, it's always great to get a raise.

 But, based on what I hear from clients, money is important, but it's even more important to be treated, at the very least, with basic respect and common courtesy. This should be a no-brainer, but for many managers, it's not.

As a consumer, I often observe this phenomenon for myself in many different kinds of stores. You can often tell when you walk into a store (or any other workplace setting) whether employees are being treated well.

 Employees who are being treated well by management tend to be more open and helpful with customers. They often want to go the extra mile with customers. In those same work settings, there's usually an overall pleasant and professional environment.

In workplaces where employees are not being treated well by management, you can almost always feel it in your interactions with employees.

For instance, a cashier, who is belittled and demeaned by the boss, frequently doesn't make eye contact with customers. He often seems harried. The overall environment is usually tense and unpleasant. The owner might be ingratiating with customers, but if you observe his behavior with employees, it's often gruff and condescending. It's not unusual to see him standing over them and micro-managing their work.

As a customer, this is a very unpleasant experience. When I encounter this, I don't want to linger to browse--I want to get out of there as soon as possible.

I can remember times, years ago, when I was a human resources manager, when employees in these types of workplaces would offer me their resumes when the boss wasn't around.

They would tell me how unhappy they were, and they'd asked me if I had any openings or if I knew of anyone who had job openings. My heart went out to them, but I didn't have jobs to offer them.

Aside from how indicative this is of poor employee morale, what does this say about management? My sense was that these employees' supervisors, who weren't treating employees well, were also not being treated well by their managers.

There's an old Italian saying, which my grandmother used to say in situations like this, "The fish rots from the head down." Often what you observe on the lower echelons of management, with some exceptions, you will find on the upper end as well.

I realize this is a generalization, but poor management often cascades from the top, especially where mistreating employees is tolerated. In well-run organizations, managers who don't know how to maintain good employee relations with the staff are let go.

Well-run organizations don't tolerate a manager's bad behavior towards employees, if they know about it. And if they don't know about it, they should.

 In a well-run organization, top management knows that how they treat their employees will affect the bottom line. They don't have to be altruists to know that reasonably satisfied employees usually reflect their satisfaction in their work and interactions with customers. It just makes good business sense.

When I was in my 20s, I worked for an exceptional manager who took an interest in the career goals of each person who worked for him. We were part of a hospital, which gave the same across the board salary increases based on whatever unionized employees received, even though we were not unionized employees in this department.

So, other than getting a promotion, which I did over time, this manager couldn't reward us with extra money. But, he knew that treating employees well in other ways would, most likely, boost morale and ensure that we would provide good service to our "customers" (other departments within the hospital). He was an unusually creative manager and he found ways to incorporate tasks that were of interest to his employees.

For instance, if an employee was interested in improving her public speaking skills, he would give her the task of doing a small presentation during the staff meeting.

Needless to say, the overall work environment was very good, and this manager's boss was also a supportive individual who encouraged growth and development from the people who reported to him. This engendered loyalty and hard work among employees.

In some companies, where there are 360 performance evaluations (where managers rate employees, employees rate their managers, and peers rate each other), managers are usually more aware of how they treat employees because they don't want poor evaluations.

Anecdotally, I know of managers, who were in companies where they do 360 evaluations, who were fired because their employees gave them poor evaluations. Top management wasn't t interested in keeping them on and risking employee lawsuits.

So, while it might not be "rocket science" that you need to treat your employees well if you want them to treat your customers well, many short-sighted bosses just don't get it. This often results in unfavorable consequences for their employees, the business and, often, for themselves.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist who provides psychotherapy services, including dynamic talk therapy, EMDR, clinical hypnosis, and Somatic Experiencing. 

I work with individuals and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.