Want to know my secret, Ninjas?

I’m always angry.

Heck, my nickname’s Fury. I didn’t make it up. It was given to me. What’s a bald Godzilla geek to do?

Truth is, I can usually keep the Fury Meter in check these days.

However, that has NOT been the case for most of my life.

I felt out of place as a kid. Even though I always had a core group of great friends, I struggled to feel comfortable with myself. I found skateboarding, heavy metal and punk rock as an outlet for my awkwardness, lack of connection and anger in my early teens. Movies and comic books were a mighty escape as well.

Through those things, I managed to find and make my closest friends. These interests also helped me find a creative way to burn off the anxiety and anger I often felt.

Now please keep in mind that I am old enough to have been involved in these things long before they were cool. So while I found peace with my friends, I still had a ton of hostility for the outside world. I felt removed from it.

I can look back now and realize that I carried that anxiety, frustration and anger with me until my mid 30s. I thought it fueled me – and maybe it did to some degree.

I’d bet that it also unnecessarily complicated my life and ruined a lot of opportunity for happiness.

When I think back on it, I had fun more often than I felt happy. Fun and happiness are different for me. Fun is in the moment and happiness is a state of being.

Can you relate to that?

Hard to stomach

In the late 90s, I found myself with some severe stomach issues. I went through batteries of tests with no real diagnosis. Someone suggested I see a psychologist.

After a few months, my stomach issues were more or less gone. I had been internalizing a lot of my stress and anxiety. My psychologist listened and offered ways to lessen the stress. It worked and was legitimate proof to me of the value in psychology.

However, like many things that are good for us, we move on when we feel good and slip back into our old habits. In this case, I saw someone to cure a physical problem – it was not something I viewed as an emotional one.

Restoring the balance

While having my kids helped change my overall rage levels and bring me to a happier place, I still carried a lot of baggage. Baggage I didn’t want to dump on my kids.

I was hating my job and having issues at home. I was super depressed and extremely angry too much of the time. A close friend suggested her psychologist.

Finally, I went and found help.

Change for the better

Friends, it was a game changer. Having an objective person to talk to and bounce ideas off of really helped me to not only reevaluate things – it led me to take action. I took action steps that changed my life for the better on many levels.

I found the following through those therapy sessions:

1. Renewed trust in my instincts.
2. A new approach to tackling big life decisions head on.
3. A sense that I was not alone in my struggles.
4. For the first time, I found a greater appreciation for the human race through the realization that we ALL struggle. We all do.
5. The realization that it is okay to be scared (it’s usually a great indicator of something grand). It is not okay to be paralyzed be fear.
6. The understanding that life doesn’t passively get better. You have to take action to make it better.

You are reading this because of those steps.

These are the same steps that gave me the strength to leave my old career and move into fitness. I don’t know if I could have made the leap without my psychologist.

I can’t even imagine where my life would have gone without having that person to talk to.

Why am I sharing this with you?

One of my friends opened up to me that they were starting to see a psychologist. They seemed a little embarrassed about seeing one and not continuing to “handle it” on their own.

Mental health has been in the media lot lately with the suicides of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. What I hope this does is open doors to people who are either too embarrassed to talk about their problem, or may feel their problem is not big enough to warrant a professional.

But you don’t need to feel suicidal to need help. You should certainly seek help if you do feel that way, but we also go through life with so many messy “feels” that we could use help sorting out.

If you think you need to talk to a professional, please do. If you think you might want to talk to a professional, please do.

Wonder if this is for you?

I can’t say if therapy is right for you, but here are some questions I asked myself:

• Does it suck to wake up in the morning? I mean it. Do you not look forward to more days than you do?

• Have you been struggling with a problem (work, family, relationships) and are still searching for an answer?

• Are you simply unhappy and not sure why?

Therapy may be an option if you answered yes to one or more of these.

Please know that therapy doesn’t have to be life or death. It should be about living a better life.

We all have our bad days and weeks. We just shouldn’t be living bad lives.

Next Steps

Looking for a therapist? Start by asking your doctor and even your friends for a referral. It’s important to feel comfortable with the person you’ll be working with. If you can’t find a referral, look online for reviews.

Here are a few other useful resources:

• NYC Well – A 24/7 talk / text / chat service that connects you with judgement-free counselors who provide coping and wellness tips, peer support, crisis services, and resources to find ongoing support.
• Talk Space – An online therapy service via mobile app or desktop that offers time with a team of licensed, background-checked therapists. The same privacy rules apply as if you were at a traditional therapy office.
• Mental Health Association of NYC – A nonprofit organization that develops programs to improve the lives of individuals impacted by mental illness. They’re the parent org of NYC Well and have several other crisis hotlines if you need to talk with someone urgently.

And feel free to email me if I can help in any way.

Life doesn’t need to be over before you want it to get better.

Big hugs!

– Fury

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Hi there! I’m Steve “Coach Fury” Holiner. My friends call me Fury. We’re friends now. I’m a fitness educator, strength coach and film nerd. Formerly from Mark Fisher Fitness, I now spread our glory via Fury Industries. I offer private, semi-private, group and online training in Midtown Manhattan and Gowanus/Park Slope, Brooklyn.

In addition to training, I also teach courses, workshops and in-services as a Master RKC, Master DVRT, Strength Faction Mentor and Original Strength Lead Instructor.

I’m also launching The Coach Fury Podcast next month!

Please visit www.coachfury.com for more info. You can friend me up on Facebook and look at square images of me on Instagram too!