Posted by fxckfeelings on December 21, 2009
Even if none of us has spent Christmas with our entire families, most of us feel like we should help make it happen and feel terribly guilty if we can’t (I just feel guilty for taking their money, but only a little). We have some illusion that the holidays are the time for our criminal or alcoholic or crazy relatives to put their behavior aside, slap on a Christmas sweater, and join their loved ones around the tree and we feel bad if we can’t make the reunion happen, or even let it happen. But fear not, there’s a way to make excuses tactful and blameless without bringing down everyone’s holiday cheer. Gaw bless us, every drunk and lawless one.
–Dr. Lastname
Please note: There will be no new post on Thursday, 12/24, due to the holiday. Please continue to write in, however, because there will be a new post on 12/28. Thanks, and happy holidays!
My ex-wife was always a wild outlaw in high school, (I got the kids), she’d show up from time to time, but rarely when she said she would, and you never knew when she’d be high, so the court imposed supervised visitation. I want my kids to have a mom though, but when she no-shows, the kids are crushed. Of course, the kids want to see her, particularly for Christmas, but what they don’t know is that she and her current boyfriend were caught on video robbing a liquor store, so if she’s going anywhere, it’s probably straight to jail. . My goal is to figure out a way to break this to my kids so that they don’t hate their mother (even though I sort of think they should).
You can’t protect your kids from the hurt of loving an outlaw mother, any more than you could protect yourself for falling for her years ago. Telling your kids that she’s a bad person inflicts a worse kind of hurt, because it devalues the love you and the kids have given her (which, as you know, you can’t get back).
Even if you can’t protect them from hurt, you still can and should protect the value of their love for her and whatever is meaningful about hers for them.
To begin with, don’t buy the idea that outlaws are regular people who make bad choices. That’s one of those stupid, false-hope ideas that assumes that everyone has the choice to be good or bad and can redeem themselves by making better choices. It’s sort of a hybrid of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Santa’s “Naughty/Nice” list…and it’s bullshit.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 14, 2009
As Christmas gets even closer, we have to help our readers with even more holiday-inspired, toxic self-reflection. The holidays have the unfortunate tendency to push people to examine and confront their hurt feelings, when really, the best gift they could give themselves is to ignore their feelings and just enjoy their friends, family, and seasonal baked goods.
–Dr. Lastname
I consider myself to be a pretty thoughtful gift-giver—I pay attention to what other people need, things they don’t even know they need, their birthdays, their anniversaries, and I usually get it right. My husband, on the other hand, isn’t sentimental at all about birthdays or anniversaries and doesn’t remember them, so he’s a lousy gift-giver and, I can’t help it, it really gets to me. After I knock myself out to get him a good birthday present, he either forgets mine, or gets flowers at the last moment, or thinks of getting me something and then doesn’t follow through. We have a wonderful marriage but every year around Christmas, his lazy, lousy gifting really gets on my nerves (particularly since I can’t help doing a good job with his gifts). It’s humiliating. My goal is to find a good way to address this problem so I won’t resent him this Christmas.
There’s not one, but two good reasons why it’s a bad idea to address the problem of unequal gift giving with your husband, and the first, it’s a safe bet, is that you’ve done it before and it turned out badly. I’m right, am I not? (It’s important for me to be right, given my Harvard background).
You reproach your husband for neglecting your Christmas needs, he gets defensive, tells you how he knocks himself out for you, maybe goes further and remembers the time you didn’t do your share, and then you have to tell him how he got the facts wrong.
Meanwhile, both of you are drifting further away from any spirit of Christmas giving, other than that old staple of gift-giving everywhere, the Christmas Earful.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 23, 2009
The one gift everybody can expect to get around the holiday season is a surplus of emotions (which, as I’ve said before, turns into a surplus of business for me—ho ho ho!). The ghost of Christmas (and Thanksgiving and New Years) past visits most of us, but for those with rough pasts, said ghost can be a real bitch. If you keep your emotional swamp in check and focus on the positive in the present, you can keep your festivities from being too haunted (and keep yourself out of my office).
-Dr. Lastname
You said before that everybody hates the holidays, and I think most people hate seeing their families. Well, I hate the holidays, but it’s because I don’t have a family; my parents still drink too much, one brother is in jail and the other I don’t trust around my kids, and so every time the holidays roll around I get depressed that I don’t have anyone because the people I should be happy to see are the ones who made me the crazy mess I am today (honestly—I’m bipolar, but on medication). I’m sick of basically being guaranteed to hate myself and life all winter just because of what my family did. My goal is to find a way to feel better no matter what time of year it is.
There’s a simple answer to why it’s a bad idea to expect to get over the sorrow of a bad, abusive family; because usually, it simply can’t be done.
Focusing on your pain and waiting for it to go away will spoil your holidays even more than they’re already spoiled. Talk about a turd in the cranberry sauce.
Maybe you think it’s a holiday right and tradition to vent/celebrate your sad feelings with a shrink. Well, this shrink says forget it. I’m not interested, and neither should you be.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 29, 2009
When people feel most powerless, they instinctively attempt to exert as much control as they can; even—especially—when they have less control than ever. In those situations, they go to the one thing over which they feel they’ll always have control, which is their own life, or the lives of those closest to them, but the more they discuss whether or not to continue life, the more they make that life difficult. Ultimately, it’s best not to ask “should I live,” but to admit—you guessed it—”I am fucked.”
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t seem to make a decision about the life/death issue. I want to want to live, or have the balls to call it quits. Shit or get off the pot. It takes too much damn energy vacillating.
“To be or not to be”—that’s still the question, right? Well, it’s also a question I never like to answer or hear.
Shakespeare or no, it’s a bad question to ask, because most people who ask it don’t really want an answer; they want an antidote to their hurt or someone to blame for not providing it.
It’s similar to the way Boston taxi drivers ask the passenger whether to take the Pike or Storrow to Logan airport — to have someone else to blame when, either way, they inevitably run into heavy traffic.
I know, the question expresses your deepest feelings. It also wears out friends, drives them away/proves that no one can help, and confirms your right to be very, very unhappy. The whole cycle sucks and it’s unhealthy. Keep asking it, and somebody will go ahead and hurt you more.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 26, 2009
Like the injured gazelle at the watering hole, human beings also have an instinct to conceal their weakened status; often, our worst fear isn’t being set upon by unknown predators, but by those close to us, who will be disappointed when our wounds impair our usual performance. Even a gazelle, however, would realize that, when wounded, putting pride and other people’s needs first is ridiculous.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m an early middle-aged woman, lucky enough to have the problems that come with getting saner and older. I grew up in one of those sad alcoholic homes from which I never gave up working to extricate myself. I screwed life up at first but have been recovered from alcoholism over twenty years, similarly recovered from eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia, binge eating), returned to the school I had ditched to finally graduate with honors, kept jobs (now retired) and, a real miracle, I have been married to a terrific guy in my sobriety and am (for real) happily married. I have solid loving friends. I’ve seen therapists for the depression, which intermittently interferes but even found a half-assed but useful medication. A good life…except for the real problems that come with age. That wonderful husband has a couple of chronic diseases, my best friend died of the cancer I survived, and everyone is dead in my small original family. I am experiencing that trapped childhood feeling of being in a world in which I am helpless and those I love are hopeless and going away. I realize I must just feel the hurt and keep on anyway, but I am tired, and my stamina is more fragile now. I disappoint those I love and make mistakes more. Goal in writing you: To get a better grip on myself and accept more deeply that I cannot change the pain of life. I would like to not keep blaming myself, a old bad habit that lingers. Sorry I’ve gone on so long but I guess I wanted to show that I have really tried to help others and myself even if I’m whining now.
You see your goal as rising above the pain of aging, but you can’t fool me (remember, I went to Harvard): your deeper goal is to help people, to the point that their aging has worn you down and caused you to forget that you have other goals. For example, not getting worn down unless it’s really necessary.
So it’s not aging that’s your problem, but what aging has done to your ability to help others while keeping your priorities straight. That’s what I think is causing you the most grief. After all, if you were old but weren’t as responsive to the needs of others, all you’d have to worry about is your bad back and Tivo’ing NCIS.
On top of ascertaining your real goal, I can also guess you’re not from Samaria, so you don’t have a Samaritan license (funny, you don’t look Samaritan). That’s the first thing that’s wrong with your initial goal—wanting too much to help others.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 19, 2009
The old saying is, “opinions are like assholes– everybody’s got one.” The sentiment here at fxckfeelings.com is more along the lines of, “assholes make up a lot of the population,” so you need to deal with other people’s unsolicited input without letting it grind you down. Many opinions are ignorable and interchangable, like many of the assholes in the universe. Other opinions, however, are worth considering, because not everyone is an asshole, and you might have something you need to learn.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve always gotten some attitude at work because I’m a woman (some people seem to act like that’s the only reason I’ve gotten as far as I have), but recently, due to the economy, I’ve been dealing with a lot more disrespect. Frankly, the opposite should be true, and I should be getting loads of appreciation for doing twice the work I used to after so many lay-offs. Instead, people think that it’s not fair that I get to keep my job, and while the sexist stuff was annoying, this recent turn of events has made things almost unbearable. I’m sick of not being appreciated for my talent and hard work and instead having to deal with everyone’s bullshit and bitterness instead. My goal is to get treated appropriately for a job well done, simple as that.
While appreciation certainly makes the job easier—it makes most things in life easier—it doesn’t cut it as a goal, if only because need for appreciation makes you easy prey to anyone who gives you lots of appreciation, twice as much work, and no more pay. I can’t abide your goal to be a sucker.
Appreciation also makes you reactive to other people’s feelings, instead of to your own reasons for being there, so don’t quit a job because everyone at work is critical, and don’t stay because they tell you you’re marvelous.
Remember what you’re working for: money, not love. Unless you’re a bad prostitute.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 15, 2009
Accepting that we are all fucked by life is a basic tenet of the f*ckfeelings.com philosophy; there’s a certain zen to it, as we encourage not just being one with the universe and its glory but also with its amber waves of pain. For people who suffer from depression, pain makes an obvious attempt to define your life goal as “I’ve got to stop this.” But killing pain, as desirable as it is, will always compound your troubles if you make it your goal. Your goal is your goal and pain is pain and never the twain should meet.
–Dr. Lastname
I have been struggling with depression for most of my adult life, and I do mean struggling. No matter how many times I find myself going through months at a time of feeling hopeless, angry, and miserable, I know it’s a treatable illness—a chemical imbalance— nd that there must be a way to control it. Over the past twenty years, I’ve been through a handful of shrinks and at least a dozen medications, because no matter how bad it gets, I’ve refused to give up looking for the treatment that will allow me to fulfill the promise of my otherwise lucky life. The problem is that, twenty years into this battle, and I’m still not winning. Treatment works for a while, and just when it seems like things are finally working out for me and I’m in the clear, everything falls apart again. My goal is to figure out how—with what treatment, medication, game plan—to get control of this disease and live a normal life, because I’m stronger than this, and I refuse to let depression get the last laugh.
Hold up—did I miss the morning’s headlines that declared depression a curable illness? Up until yesterday, it wasn’t, and when you think about it, the list of truly curable diseases is an adorably short one. Really, unless you’ve got athlete’s foot, you’re probably shit out of luck.
That said, it doesn’t mean you should shoot yourself unless you’re similarly upset by the incurability of hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, high cholesterol, and all the other illnesses that most of us get, sooner or later. Even athlete’s foot isn’t worth it.
The issue here is that if you think that beating an illness means getting rid of it, you’ve lost before you’ve begun to fight. And if that illness is depression, then losing means getting more depressed, which means becoming a bigger loser, ad infinitum.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 8, 2009
It’s easy, when someone can’t control their behavior, to assume that they are evil, stubborn, or somehow defective and that you’ve got to get through to them, one way or another (not so nice) way. Just because someone can’t behave, however, doesn’t mean s/he’s evil and/or totally resistant to your values; and just because you’re getting nowhere with them doesn’t mean they won’t get it together eventually. It’s easy to write someone off, and it’s easy to be written off, but if you’re hoping to work through a problem instead of just blame someone for it, the only thing incurably defective in these scenarios is the moralizing.
–Dr. Lastname
My older daughter just turned 10, and I’m fairly certain that she is pure evil. My wife and I are not bad people—no family history of mental illness, either—but our older daughter, who looks like a normal little girl, says such nasty things to her little sister that it would make your head spin. Our younger daughter, who’s 7, thinks her sister is a miserable terror, and I have to say, I agree with her; the stuff that comes out of our 10-year-old’s mouth is so cruel, I’m almost in awe of it. My wife and I have sat her down and asked her if she acknowledges how awful her words are, how much it hurts her little sister, and how serious we are about how much she needs to change her attitude. Since then, our older has been less mouthy with us, but just as terrible to her little sister, and we have no idea how to make it stop. My goal is to stop my older daughter from being so mean—that is, if she’s not just satanic and hopeless. I’d really like to get her to understand what she’s doing and why she needs to stop (if I can get that through her evil mind).
As those Spanish Inquisition cardinals learned while swishing around in their gorgeous red gowns, any effort to stamp out the devil gives him a giant energy boost and brings him (or her) to dramatic life.
This is because most of us—even the best of us, like David Letterman—have some devilish impulses that bust out when we’re tired, or rubbed the wrong way, and generally when our control is far from perfect.
So when someone tries to eradicate our wickedness, we may initially agree with their goals. Sooner or later, however, when our impulses don’t cooperate by disappearing, self-hate and shame get stronger and, yes, you guessed it, feed the nasty impulses, whatever they are. The cardinals get to meet the very devil they were trying to exorcise, and the devil’s poor host snarls back and throws up pea soup. A classic vicious circle.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 1, 2009
Guilt is an unvoidable part of life—as well as a central motivator of at least a couple of religions—and often the sources of guilt (see: family) never go away. What most people don’t realize is that there’s false guilt and real guilt, the former far more easy to ignore, the latter worth confronting in a meaningful way. Still, while you can’t get rid of guilt overall, there are ways of managing it so that, at the very least, it doesn’t become a holy pain in the ass.
–Dr. Lastname
My mother is a drama queen– she thrives on family conflict and gossip and needs to control every step of my life. She has her nose in everyone’s business, talks badly about most people, and also has a violent temper (at 79 years old, she still throws things and flips people [like me] the bird out of anger). Several events happened that finally made me so angry with her that I literally told her off and have cut ties with her for over a year, but during this year I have suffered from terrible guilt and shame for turning my back on my elderly mother. Believe me, I feel better and more relaxed without her constant turmoil, but there are nights that I wake up from a dream where I am shunned at her funeral as “the daughter who abandoned her mother”. I have tried, in the past, to talk sense into her and explain my feelings but she creeps back to her same troubling ways. My goal is to get over the guilt that I feel about cutting my mother out of my life.
Anger is never a good reason for doing anything, and particularly not for cutting off ties with your mother; after all, anger’s a feeling, and you know that’s a dirty word. It’s not that you don’t have good reasons for being angry, just not for letting anger make your decisions.
As you’ve now realized, once you let anger take over, it’s very hard to protect yourself against guilt, which is where your major problem lies now. The only good, healthy defense against guilt, other than drowning your neurotransmitters in alcohol, is to know you’ve done the right thing, regardless of how unhappy you’ve made someone feel or how badly they’re suffering while you’re the one standing watch.
In this instance, unfortunately, you haven’t done the right thing, so guilt has become your master.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 24, 2009
Often, the easiest way to infuriate someone is to try and do something nice for them; just ask, say, the citizens of any country occupied in the name of democracy. That perceived ingratitude then rankles the helper, and everyone ends up annoyed and frustrated. Be you the helper or the helped, what matters is doing whatever you believe is most necessary in the long run, even if that means watching someone hit bottom, forcing yourself to suck it up, or asking your troops to stand down.
–Dr. Lastname
My aunt is in her late 70s, and I’m on the only family she has anywhere nearby (my cousin, her daughter, lives in Europe). I try to look after her—check in every few weeks, make sure she has food, that the heat’s on, etc.—but it’s gotten harder now that she’s convinced my husband has stolen from her. In reality, my husband has never been to her apartment, plus he’d have no use for the pink sweater he’s accused of taking, but I can’t convince her otherwise. What drives me crazy is that, when she’s not calling me with absurd accusations, she screws up every plan I’ve labored to put in place to keep her safe. After I got her to the top of a housing list in a safer part of town, she took herself off and promptly got mugged. Then I arranged for a public health nurse to keep an eye on her health (she hasn’t seen a doctor in years) and my aunt refused to open the door for her so they closed the case. I’ve thought about getting guardianship powers so I can put her in assisted living, but my cousin, who phones her daily, says that would be cruel and make my aunt’s paranoia that much worse. If I can’t help her, I want to keep away from her because this is driving me crazy. I can’t stop her from screwing herself. It was her decision to reject my help. My goal is to help her or save myself.
As your beloved, dementing aunt demolishes your rescue attempts while accusing you of plotting against her, you can’t help feeling like, if she’s going to make it this hard to save her, you’d rather just kill her instead.
If you pay too much attention to the horrible way she makes you feel, however, you’re putting your mental pain ahead of your concern for her survival, which means you actually care more about saving yourself than her.
If your goal is to find a way to save her and/or end the pain of dealing with her, forget it. There’s no answer that will make you feel better that won’t also make things worse. If you make more arrangements, she’ll undo them, but if you walk away, you’ll feel responsible for the next disaster.
So accept that both you and she are fucked, and that the pain of dealing with her is unavoidable. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, your goal has nothing to do with your feelings. It’s to protect her, if possible, from a painful death, even if it means gathering a full arsenal of social services to do it.
You’ve already done a great job, whether your efforts worked or not. You’ve lined up public assistance and home visits and, though this time she blocked services, you now know where to turn and whom to call when the time comes.
And when the time comes—when it becomes clear that she can’t take care of herself—you can not only have services lined up to help her, but authorities lined up who can remove the yoke of responsibility you’ve placed on your own shoulders.
Prepare for that day by asking a lawyer to define what is required for a guardianship, i.e., how bad things have to be before the law lets someone else take over and force her into care. It probably includes any behavior that shows she can’t take care of herself, like neglecting a serious health problem, or leaving the stove on or going out and getting lost.
Then ask a social worker what services the state will provide. If you were able to provide those services, you might do it with more love than the state can provide and it would appease your guilt, but you wouldn’t last long and you don’t have coverage for when you’re sick, away, or dead. So your job isn’t to provide services but find the people who are responsible for providing them and persuade them that terrible things will happen if they don’t.
In the end, you may feel the silent disapproval of clinical professionals who resent having responsibility dumped on them, and it may add to your guilt. But, if you think of what’s best for your aunt in the long run, and not what makes you feel better, then screw their resentment—you’ll have reason to believe that you’ve done the right thing.
STATEMENT:
Write a statement to address those, including yourself, who expect you to rescue your aunt without regard to your limits or the self-destructiveness of her behavior. “I love my aunt and will do anything that will actually help her, within my capacity. I know that my efforts will sometimes feel inadequate, but what is really responsible for my helplessness and guilt is not failure, but the ravages of aging. If, in spite of my frustration and worry, I continue to keep an eye on her and do whatever good I can, particularly when it’s emotionally exhausting, I should remind myself that I’m doing a good job, because no one else will.”
I work in law enforcement, and a year or so ago, I had a piss test come back dirty. One of my superiors sprung the test on me because he suspected that I was using drugs. He was sure I was into heavy stuff, when really, I was just smoking pot occasionally as my way of dealing with an ugly divorce. Either way, it was dirty, so, in order to keep my job, I had to jump through a bunch of hoops, like going to meetings, monthly testing for a year, and having to sit behind a desk with most of my privileges and responsibilities stripped away. Worse, I now hate the place and don’t trust anyone, but I can’t quit this job until I’m seen as “rehabilitated” or no one else will hire me. So now, even though all I did was smoke a joint every weekend, I pretend to be a recovering junkie, and I’ve done everything they’ve asked of me for the past 16 months. At this point though, it feels like a game and I would do anything to get them off my back. I want to point out to them that I’ve done my time, stayed clean, and that I deserve to get my privileges back but I have a feeling that anything I say will just make them talk down to me about how I need supervision and they’re trying to help me. My goal is to get these people off my back and get things back to the way they were.
Once people have doubts about your ability to control your drug use, you don’t win back their confidence by complaining about unfairness (or complaining, period).
That’s because your complaints will do nothing but remind them that they wouldn’t have been having this unpleasant conversation if it weren’t for the weed in your wee-wee. You may be right and their treatment of you may not be fair; but shut up, or you’ll make things worse.
Your goal isn’t to win back anyone’s trust, because when people feel that you’re focused on their opinion, rather than on your own reasons for doing something, they tend to fear manipulation. Which means they’ll trust you even less.
Focus instead on your own reasons for sticking with this job, regardless of how the bosses make you feel. Assuming they will take their own sweet time before they trust you again, and that you will have to eat beaucoup de merde before that happens, decide whether the job is worth the trouble.
Set aside your anger and pride and think of the pay, security, flexibility of hours, benefits, length of commute, and what the job does or doesn’t do for your family life. Score the advantages and disadvantages. Then you’ll arrive at an answer that is not reactive to your anger, hurt, humiliation, or the provocation of others.
Bosses come and go; you want an answer that reflects your own long-term interests. And then you can decide whether to leave, transfer, or cowboy up, ignore the bullshit, outwait the review board, and get your old job back. If that’s what you decide, you’ll be a lot more careful before you jeopardize it again.
And here’s an added benefit. If your decision reflects your inner priorities other than your desire to get them to give you the green light, you’ll be much more persuasive. Because, of course, they’ll know that you have more important things on your mind, and only unimportant things in your pee.
STATEMENT:
Compose a statement that describes your thoughts about the value of your job. “This job feels like shit, but I’ve been around, and it offers me a lot more than I can get elsewhere. It may feel like a humiliating pain in the ass, but I’ve got good reason to stick it out and pay more attention to avoiding this kind of problem in the future. So if I have to wear the brown crown, I should remind myself that I’m accepting my pain for a good reason and have a right to be proud.”
