Posted by fxckfeelings on June 24, 2021
If, like your reader from earlier, you’re trying to stay positive about finding someone worthwhile after finding yourself with a string of assholes, moving forward can be tricky. Instead of trying to let go of the past, use it; mine it for lessons that can keep you from repeating your mistakes and becoming even more discouraged. So if you don’t want to let your bad experiences keep you from having the will to find something good, here are five ways of overcoming bitterness in relationships.
1) Forget Feelings of Betrayal
Having good times together, making promises of fidelity, and getting matching tattoos may make you feel as if you have a right to a good, long-lasting relationship, but you don’t. What controls a relationship, besides luck, is character, including how solid someone is and how well you work together when the times are pretty bad, the promises don’t come as easy and the tattoos get infected. Some people are deceivers—both of others and themselves—but it’s your job to look out for them, and now you know what to look for and when to run.
2) Work Past Feeling Weak
You can’t help feeling helpless when a relationship goes bad, and you’re certainly helpless when it comes to putting it back together or making yourself feel happy. In truth, however, you have a good way forward and you do know what to do, even if it doesn’t involve making your relationship, or your feelings better; you need to learn from the relationship, focus on doing everything else that makes your life meaningful, and ignore the pain until it goes away.
3) Ditch Further Discussions
Don’t expect talking about your post-breakup feelings to lead to any breakthroughs, mend any fences, or generally sort out what’s wrong. If a relationship has gone bad, you’ve already tried to express your feelings and it hasn’t worked. At a certain point, your feelings just keep getting more negative and the discussions more destructive. Shut up, restore your privacy, and communicate only what you feel is necessary and positive if you have ongoing matters together (e.g., work, kids, shared cat) that must continue.
4) Cut the Complaining
Yes, a little support from/venting to friends is helpful, but at a certain point, your friends will be sick of hearing about it and upset at how powerless they are to do anything. Plus the more you talk about it, the harder it gets for the wound to heal; your friends want to help you, but they’re not helping you if they let you keep going on about your ex and letting them live rent-free in your skull. Acknowledge your sorrow, but then invest in spending good time with your friends, not rehashing your misery fishing for good advice that doesn’t exist.
5) Get Back Out There, Whether Or Not You’ve Gotten Over It
At this point, you can’t trust your feelings, so it’s impossible to tell whether you’re still grieving or you’ve got the same dumb urges you always did. Instead, figure out what you should be looking for and go looking for it while exercising a much higher degree of caution and restraint. Use your pain as a reminder to slow down, be careful, and avoid emotional involvement until you’ve gotten to know someone and think they really check out. The best way to avoid becoming bitter about love is to keep moving; don’t dwell on past disappointment or let it define you, but do let it define the kind of person whom you think will be good for you so your next relationship will be less bitter, more sweet.
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 22, 2020
Too often, when it comes to choosing whether to be, stay, or break-up with someone, we let our hearts be our guides. But when it comes to a committed partnership, feelings are a false guide; there’s no way to share a house, family, life, savings account, and/or bathroom with someone for eternity and not feel some sort of bad a lot of the time. So, if like our reader from earlier, you can’t decide whether you can put up with your partner anymore, here are five ways to tell whether a flawed relationship is worth keeping.
1)Ask Yourself If You Were Better Off Before
Remember what your life was like back when you were single and how you hoped a relationship would make things better. Then assess whether this relationship does or doesn’t fulfill those needs, consulting friends if necessary to recall how you were living then and what your goals were. Don’t get distracted by how you wanted to feel, but on what you wanted to achieve; ask if your relationship helped you meet major life goals, like starting a family, getting an education, taking a job or living somewhere you couldn’t otherwise afford, etc. Make sure you include your need (if any) for a relationship that would offer you support and security in case of illness or possible unemployment. If your relationship hasn’t helped you achieve any those things or has even made reaching those goals harder, that’s important to know.
2) Ask If Acceptance Is Mutual
Determine how well you can accept your partner as he is and how well he accepts you. If, in spite of your best efforts to take him as he is, you find yourself cringing and criticizing, you should move on before you both become mean and awful. And, likewise, if you feel he can never really let go of wanting you to change and you often feel like you have to defend or explain yourself, you’re better off with your own company until you can find someone better. Remember, sometimes there are things about those close to us that make us nuts even if they don’t bother others, but figuring out why they’re annoying won’t make them more bearable or easier for your partner to change. If, despite your best efforts, the acceptance can’t come, then it’s time for you to go.
3) Do a Budget For Being Alone
Review your income, expenses, savings and debt and ask how breaking up would affect your finances. It’s possible that ending things, at least doing so immediately, would force you to make big sacrifices that would make it hard to connect with family and friends, live in your chosen neighborhood, create a nest-egg or just plain survive. If the immediate financial hit is too hard, you’re not trapped forever; you’ll just have to wait while you save up and create a financial plan that makes the separation financially feasible.
4) Review Possible Red Flags
Consider whether there are any “red flag” behaviors that make your or any relationship burdensome, unequal, or even dangerous. These behaviors include addictions, lying, overspending, impulsivity, and/or violent behavior. If there are no such flags, you should nevertheless ask yourself whether the relationship is too one-sided and you don’t get as much as you give. Then, if you do recognize red flags or inequality, ask a friend or therapist to help you find the strength to make a plan to move on. If you realize that you might be in danger, move quickly to get yourself and your children to safety.
5) When You Do Figure it Out, Keep Feelings Out of It
If you’re going to do a smart, factual assessment of the pros and cons of a relationship, you can do it when you’re still feeling angry, hurt, or generally upset. And in order to have a clear head, you have to figure things out when you’re calm, not moments after a fight or reconciliation. If you leave, you should believe that you’d be better off without him for objective reasons, regardless of heartbreak and the loss of whatever he added to your life. If you stay, it should be with the conviction that he makes your life better and doesn’t make it harder for you to be safe or be you. Whatever you decide, if you’ve done a good review of (over)due diligence, you’ll know you’re doing the right thing, even if it feels a little wrong.
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 5, 2020
A conflict-free relationship that hasn’t gone through hard times is like a rare, expensive sports car; just having it and occasionally driving it around the block makes you feel good and special, but if you suddenly need it for regular use it becomes a tiresome burden. So if you’re in a feel-good, low-stress relationship that suddenly becomes somewhat feel-bad, it’s up to you to decide whether what you have is worth working on and keeping, flaws and all, or whether it’s time to let it go and find something more along the lines of a human minivan.
– Dr. Lastname
My partner of some years has mild Aspergers and an anxiety disorder, and we’ve been in a long-distance relationship for most of those years (seeing each other every other weekend or so). We share the same values and enjoy doing most of the same things. Although he’s a good learner and he’s gotten better in these years, he has a lot of quirks that make me have to do more work (like saying “ok” instead of helping me to continue a conversation or accidentally teasing me in a way that hurts my feelings). Still, when I bring them up, which generally happens when I visit him, it often ends up with him not talking and shutting down, rolled in a ball, saying he’s a monster, and then I get upset because he’s not talking to me and I hate that I caused conflict. Still, when I don’t bring them up I feel resentful. It’s gotten to a point that we feel somewhat anxious around each other (though at the same time we enjoy being together). My goal is to find a way to bring up issues with him that’s constructive without being upsetting.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 3, 2020
Loving your work is nice when it happens, but when it comes to professional labor, the intended fulfillment is financial, not spiritual, or emotional; if it were always fun, worthy, and challenge-free, they wouldn’t call it work. There are a lot more important things than loving your work, like feeding your family and keeping the lights on. So if you really hate your job and want to leave, think hard about what you hate exactly and how/whether it could truly be better elsewhere. It’s all-too-normal to hate your job, but before you leave make sure it’s the job you hate and not work in general.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m in my 20s and have started to loathe my job at a very big company. My negative feelings aren’t arbitrary; my job has become very clerical and is dedicated to trying to influence a large bureaucracy with regards to projects I consider unambitious, in which I have little ownership or personal interest. I have nothing against making money or large organizations but want to work on problems that I find interesting and potentially meaningful. I think I appreciate that every path in life has some dirty work. But my sense is that my current path has more dirty work than it makes sense to accept and that the end of my current path is not one I care to reach. Even though I believe that I have logical reasons for wanting out and have made practical yet worthy plans for the next stage in my life, however, I still worry that I’m making an overly emotional decision fueled by frustration and unreasonable expectations. I don’t want to have to quit because I bought too much into feelings, or because I was a dumb millennial who thought the world would be handed to them on a silver plate after graduating from an elite college. My goal is to know that I’m making the right choice for the right (unemotional) reasons.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 6, 2020
If, like our reader from earlier, your Asshole family is wearing you down, there are ways to keep your anger at bay that don’t involve drugs, lobotomy or mass murder. So here are five ways to deal with your Asshole family. You can’t get rid of their DNA, but you can stop their dumb bullshit from taking over your life.
1)Forget Fair
If you haven’t come to terms with this fact already, it’s time to accept that your family will never play by the same rules the rest of us not-awful people do. They will bully you according to their needs, ignore usual rules of behavior, and try to turn other family members against you when they decide it’s your turn to be a pariah. As you’ve likely experienced an infinite number of times, protesting will target you for punishment and make you feel even more outraged about their unfairness, even though they have no understanding of fairness in the first place. Yes, you should still try to treat others fairly, but expecting fair enforcement of rules with these people will just exhaust you and make their behavior even worse.
2) Build Boundaries
It’s natural to want or enjoy love and affection from your family—that’s what families are supposedly for—but if you need love or anything else from an Asshole there are always strings attached, regardless of family ties. Maybe, in exchange for their kindness or basic humanity, a family member will expect you to listen to their complaints, side with them against someone else, or generally get involved with the family drama you’ve tried so hard to avoid. So learn to keep your needs to yourself or know exactly what kind of quid pro quo they have in mind before you engage.
3) It’s Pushy, Not Personal
Assholes can’t help blaming others for the hurt in their lives, regardless of actual facts, so it’s hard not to feel a little bit guilty when that blame comes your way. If you notice what they say about other people, however, you’ll see they do the same thing to everyone. So, while the criticism may feel personal, especially after hearing it for so many years, remember that their shit-list is long and all-inclusive. It has nothing to do with you and what you’ve done and everything to do with who they are.
4) Get Selective With Guilt
Remember, it’s easy to feel guilty, even when someone isn’t trying to make you feel that way. And Assholes are especially good at making you feel responsible for their feelings because they truly believe you’re the reason they’re unhappy, even if you aren’t. So no matter how insistent they are or how persistent your guilty thoughts, push yourself to think hard about whether you’ve done actually anything wrong. In the end, you’ll build up the ability to fight unnecessary guilty feelings, whether Assholes have induced them or not, and trust your own judgment before guilt gets you in its clutches.
5) Family is Figurative
If the people you’re bound to by blood are boundlessly awful, then you can make a better family of your own. This doesn’t just mean marriage and kids, but finding good, caring people who are fun to be with, trustworthy, sane and reliable. Beware of people who immediately try to get too close and have an immediate effect on you, because they’ll turn out to be exactly like the family members you’re trying to get away from. Find people to get close to who don’t partake of the usual family pastimes, like complaining, blaming, using and scapegoating. If the family you were given rejects you, make one that accepts you instead.
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 5, 2020
Over the course of our lives, we gradually age out of many things—diapers, fast fashion, the ability to use hashtags—but one thing no amount of time and maturity can confer on us is the ability to prevent Assholes in our families from getting under our skin. Age and wisdom confer no superpower defensive shield against the pain and guilt Assholes cause, especially since they won’t stop causing it no matter how calmly and maturely you approach them. So if you’re descended from Assholes, expand your acceptance to include your own feelings, namely the negative and human ones that your family will always inspire. Don’t try to achieve a state of imperturbable forgiveness; that’s an inhuman standard for controlling your feelings that only an Asshole would impose.
– Dr. Lastname
I come from a family that is violent and alcoholic on one side and borderline/bipolar/crazy on the other; several relatives are all of the above. I’m over 70 now, so I have a lifetime of experience turning the other cheek, hoping for the best, and standing up for my values with integrity. All the same, I am tired of my family and their problems (none of which I exhibit to even a small degree, luckily). Even my patience has limits. My goal is to not feel hate for the whole fam damily and to fill in the chip they’ve nicked off my shoulder.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 6, 2020
People who help troubled kids are bona fide living saints, but kids with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) are sometimes beyond miracles; kids with the most extreme form of this disorder can suck all the love and patience out of even the kindest, most dedicated caregivers, leaving them to feel burnt out and powerless. Since most of us aren’t saints, it’s important not to make yourself responsible for changing a troubled kid if you find one in your charge. Unless you include additional priorities and values in your approach and are prepared to encounter problems you can’t necessarily change, it’ll take a massive miracle to keep you from getting into major trouble.
-Dr. Lastname
My stepdaughter came to live with us two years ago. I knew there would be obstacles to overcome; we gained custody of her after a bitter, multi-state fight with her drug-addicted mother and nasty grandmother. And not surprisingly, she does indeed have a lot of issues. So I find myself yelling a lot and spending heaping amounts of time trying to help her gain some control of what her therapist calls an oppositional defiant disorder, which she certainly has. I start out trying to be kind and gentle and always end up yelling because her repeated “forgetting” of the rules of our home (100% Honest, 100% respectful) is awesomely frustrating. In the meantime, I know I’m not spending the quality time I’d like to with my husband and my other children, and I feel like shit when I finish one of these yelling sessions—they always seem to uncover lie after lie—and sad because I just don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. My goal is to get through to my stepdaughter and help her be a part of the family, AND gain more quality, happy time with my other kids and husband.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 30, 2020
As with addiction, admitting you’re depressed is merely the first step to management and recovery. After that comes the work of fighting your depressive thoughts so they no longer make you doubt yourself, your work, and your right to live. So if, as with our reader from earlier, your grief and/or depression are making your life impossible, here are five ways to prevent those depressive thoughts from becoming assumed beliefs.
1) Ignore Your Emotions
Depression is like having your own personal garbage internet messageboard in your head; it will tell you you’re bad at your job, have lost the respect of those you work with and for, and should just crawl in a hole and die. In truth, you’re probably doing a good job, given the way that you feel, so the first step is the most obvious one; learning to push back when your brain floods you with negative feedback. Just because you feel bad doesn’t mean you’re doing everything badly, so don’t let your sadness taint your impression of your performance, self, worth, etc.
2) Be Your Own Best Friend
One quick way to refute your internal negativity is to ask yourself whether you’d say something similar to someone you care about. Ask yourself what standards you would expect this friend to meet given their situation/illness, and what language and tone would be appropriate, both in terms of being kind and motivating. You’d probably conclude rather quickly that you would never been that harsh to a friend because it’d be far more hurtful than helpful, and if you wouldn’t say it to a friend you shouldn’t say it to yourself.
3) Find the Facts
The best way to combat the misinformation coming from your brain is through research into your illness, because knowing exactly how depression works, and how little you are to blame for being afflicted by it, will make the thoughts easier to ignore. You will find that illness happens and people often have very little ability to prevent it. And even when they know they didn’t cause it they find ways to blame themselves for not eating healthy or sleeping enough, even though the major causes of depression are usually bad genes or bad luck. You will also find that depression is common, can be triggered by grief, and that you can lose focus and motivation regardless of how well you take care of yourself or how motivated you are to do your work. Once you know that your illness isn’t your fault, it’s easier to take its insults less personally and be less ashamed for being afflicted.
4) Stand Up To Stigma
Even after admitting to yourself that you’re depressed, it can be hard to admit it to others, especially outside of your inner circle. On the one hand, you’re entitled to keep your personal information private. But if your depression is imparing your ability to do your job—if it makes you look angry or withdrawn, or less eager to volunteer to do your part, or harder to focus and do your job well—then calmly stating to your colleagues what you’re going through won’t just explain your poor job performance but will also probably make them more understanding, patient, and eager to help going forward. Don’t ask for help apologetically, as if you’ve messed up and need forgiveness. Instead, let people know you’re having a tough time with symptoms, but you’re still trying very hard to do a good job and take care of your problem.
5) Out of Hiding, Seek Help
Your depression may tell you that it’s not worth getting help, or that looking is too hard, or that you’ll just end up pumped full of drugs and even more miserable. But this, of course, is yet more bullshit. Fighting the negativity of depression is hard, but a cognitive therapist can help you identify and challenge those negative thoughts and prevent them from becoming accepted. Medication may also help, although it takes at least several weeks to work and often requires multiple trials before an effective one can be found. Mostly, finding outside help will give you the support to face your illness. It will give you an outside opinion to remind you that you’re not a bad person, that bad symptoms happen to sane people, and that you’re not alone. Respect your work ethic while you prepare to fight a serious illness and give yourself the support and treatment you need.
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 16, 2020
People worship self-esteem and confidence as if they signify success and are as much of a job requirement as being able to learn fast and use Excel. In reality, although skill and experience will certainly make you feel more confident, and while confidence is a useful trait, there are lots of random, uncontrollable conditions that can deflate your feelings of self-worth, like illness, depression, and loss, and they have a way of combining and reinforcing one another and making work, and life, impossible. So if you’ve built up real skill and experience and know you’re good at what you do, it shouldn’t matter if you feel terrible. Indeed, if you can feel lousy and still do a good enough job, you’re qualified to do almost anything.
-Dr. Lastname
It has been almost a year since I’ve lost my father. Aside from trying relentlessly to deal with the grief, I’ve also turned into a less confident, socially awkward person at the worst possible moment. I’m in my residency where confidence and interaction with people is highly scrutinized, along with the intelligence and capacity to handle extremely sick people. Stress is at an all time high, and I struggle everyday to remember how proud my dad was of me for achieving my goals. But now that I’m so close to completing my goals…I feel myself letting them slip through my fingers because I don’t have the will or energy to do the work. My goal is to learn how to get a grip and to not lose track of my life goals.
F*ck Love: One Shrink’s Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship
If dealing with loss and stress weren’t depressing enough, you now have actual depression to make you feel even worse. A stupid/simply as it may sound, it’s really depressing to be depressed, particularly when it interferes with your energy, performance, and ability to achieve your bigger life goals.
Unfortunately, severe depression often affects those parts of your brain that control drive, concentration and social interaction, and grief is often indistinguishable from depression, so your father’s death has, in effect, triggered a disabling illness. Then your feelings of failure about your disability are causing more depression, which makes his absence feel even more painful, and it keeps feeding itself until your career, ability to get out of bed, and will to live are completely gone.
But don’t believe for a moment that your current disability is any more significant than one caused by a stroke or concussion. Your poor performance is not a measure of laziness or incompetence, simply of temporary brain dysfunction and bad luck. Depression will tell you otherwise because it is notorious for creating intensely negative self-judgments and ruminations, but depression is also a notorious liar. So it’s important for you to confront the vicious cycle of depressive symptoms, fake news of failure, and more depression.
With the help of a friend, coach, or therapist, get help in restoring your perspective. Then let others know about your illness and its symptoms. Your colleagues and supervisors will be relieved to know why you’re not performing as well as usual and they will expect that, with time, help, and recovery, you’ll eventually get back to yourself. Meanwhile, they should be willing to give you the same support as if you were recovering from any illness.
Friends will also be relieved to know why you’ve been antisocial lately. Just as depression makes you feel like a failure, they’ve been thinking that you no longer value them as friends; your taking depression personally leads them to take your depression personally. When you let them know what’s really happening, you also block that infectious distortion, let them know you care and allow them to be helpful.
As a doctor you know that illness just happens and that it can be disabling, so use your professional experience to accept your depression as just an illness like any other. Learn to fight the feelings of failure and set up procedures and a group of helpers that will speed your recovery.
Depression hurts and disables, but it can’t do nearly as much damage as the false thoughts it creates if you start to believe them. So remember who you are and use your experience to reject false thoughts. Eventually, they’ve been so trivial and inconsequential that you’ll be able to move on in your career and from the pain of your father’s death without depression getting in your way.
STATEMENT:
“I may be performing poorly, but I know I’m impaired by depression and grief. As a matter of fact, for someone who’s as impaired as I am, I’m doing an impressive job just showing up and trying hard to get a tough job done. I can feel nothing but self-criticism, but I have good reason to be proud. I need to take good care of myself and let others know what’s happening, so they can help me get through this tough time.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 2, 2020
Figuring out what you want to do with your life—or at least choosing a career path at a relatively early age—can feel like a blessing. But, if like our reader from earlier, you get pretty far along that path before realizing you might have made a wrong turn at the start, you can quickly go from blessed to completely messed up. If you find yourself souring on the career you’ve spent years training for, here are five things you can do to figure out whether your career path is worth sticking with.
1) Don’t Ignore The Possibility That You’re Depressed
Depression, anxiety, and/or just being very, very tired can make you feel like whatever work you’re doing is useless and so are you. Even if your brain is usually reliable, the thoughts of a depressive mind are not, and taking those impulses seriously can lead you to make poor decisions that will just make you feel even worse. So give yourself time and talk things over with a friend, spouse, colleague or even therapist to see if your alienation from your field is substantial or just the result of an unfortunate mental distortion from a longlasting bad mood.
2) Partake In Your Own Personal Performance Review
Before getting fed up with everything about your field, talk over your performance with a trusted mentor or colleague. In particular, don’t take for granted abilities that you enjoy and do well just because they’re enjoyable or come easily to you; list them and think about what you can use them for, because whether you stay in this field or not, they will help guide you to wherever you belong. On the other hand, if you perform badly in some areas, ask yourself whether you’re likely to improve and whether your field requires you to do better. Then think hard about whether that improvement is something you’re capable of or are willing to put the work into.
3) Seek A Second Opinion
Beyond the cliché of the high school career test—the highly scientific survey that seems to tell most kids that they’ll end of in food service or jail—there are many, more accurate psychological tests that can profile your way of thinking style and suggest jobs that you might like or dislike. Very frequently your college or graduate school will offer you these tests for free (because your univeristy looks good if you find a good job) as well as counselling on the kind of jobs that you might prefer. At best, the test will confirm that you’re on the right track, and at worst it might say you should pursue a career in the sandwich arts but still help you to think hard about your priorities and skills.
4) Sample Shadowing
Short of actually doing a job, spending time with practicing professionals in the field is the best way to experience what your future may be like. An internship or certain other low-paying jobs can put you in their midst without requiring you to know much, and while you probably won’t get to do anything that puts your training to use (or that a monkey couldn’t do), you will get to observe what the job is like and whether you would actually enjoy doing what they’re doing. If you’re lucky, one of your superiors may treat you as a mentee and share their thoughts about the rewards and annoyances of what they actually do. Meanwhile, you can ask yourself whether they’re your kind of people, period.
5) Look for Loopholes
It’s not uncommon for someone to get a degree or go far in their field just to use their degree or experience to start a different, atypical career. For instance, some people with medical educations are more interested in doing government administration or medical marketing than in seeing patients while several comedy writers only entered the field after getting a law degree. Look through alumnae statements to find people whose careers have gone in odd directions and ask yourself whether you could use your current education in the same way. Above all, don’t feel like a failure because your efforts haven’t yet pointed you to a career that suits you; respect your determination to keep plugging away and working hard until you find something that you like.
