Posted by fxckfeelings on October 5, 2009
While being selfless seems like an admirable quality in the abstract, most of us learn early that people with a thing for giving aren’t actually so easy to be around; it’s hard to have an even give-and-take with somebody who doesn’t fulfill the “take” part of the bargain. Selflessness maybe feel good in the short term, but the more you extend yourself while shutting out (or being shut out by) the other party, the more likely you are to end up with only yourself as company.
–Dr. Lastname
I love my girlfriend, and we’ve gone through a lot together; not just living in different cities (which I’ll get to), but also serious health problems. I was there for her for every second of her treatment for cancer, an ordeal that lasted for one scary year, before she went into remission. While we were living together at that point, it wasn’t long after she was in the clear that my father asked me if I could move back to my home city to help him at work—he wanted some help expanding the family business—so I told my girlfriend it would be six months, max, and then I’d move back in with her. But six months have passed, and my dad says the business won’t work without me (although, admittedly, it has in the past), and I don’t think it would be fair to keep stringing my girlfriend along. I love her, but I’m needed here, and I also don’t want to hurt her and be responsible for a relapse. My goal is to break up with my girlfriend and get her to understand it’s the best thing to do.
Some people are born givers; they enjoy giving and, if they don’t think about it, their giving impulses push them closer to whomever needs them most. You might think such selfless givers were saints, regular Ghandi-jis or Mary Poppinses.
In reality—and while most people are loath to admit it—most selfless givers are assholes to everyone but the one who makes them feel most obligated. (Just ask Ghandi’s wife.)
So, my giving friend, I’m going to tell you the same thing I’d advise your ex-girlfriend to say to you: that your goal shouldn’t be to feel better about excusing yourself from your obligation to your girlfriend, but to figure out your own priorities, regardless of your obligations to her, your father, or anyone else.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 28, 2009
From having your sister falsely accuse you of stealing her doll to being landed with a deadbeat dad, most people learn early that family is rarely fair. Still, be you the familial accuser or accusee, there’s usually a great risk to speaking your mind; family bonds, unlike bridges, can never be completely burned, so unless you want to be forever tied to someone you’ve tried to set on fire, it’s better to shut up about injustice and accept the relatives you’ve got.
–Dr. Lastname
My mother has always been quick to take offense—hear things the wrong way, feel easily hurt, want an apology—and I’ve always been the one to smooth things out and reassure her and, if necessary, tell her I’m sorry. Recently, she got really angry when she heard me talking to a family friend at a party and thought that I was being critical and complaining about her. I told her that was absurd, I didn’t mean things that way and that the family friend didn’t hear it that way. Besides, it’s not the sort of thing I’d say about anyone. But my mom acted like I didn’t realize how mean I’d been. So I spoke to the family friend, who agreed with me, and I asked her to talk to my mom and let her know she hadn’t heard any criticism either, but my mom says she’s just trying to smooth things over. I know this is just how my mom is, but that doesn’t mean that it ever stops making me crazy, and everything about this latest stunt is totally unreasonable. My goal is to get her to see she’s being a nut and get over it.
Freud famously put a lot of emphasis on mothers, and most people assume that “tell me about your mother?” is the first question a psychiatrist asks a patient. My response to that, however, is that I don’t really care about your mother. And even if your mother was my patient, I wouldn’t be able to make her “better.”
You think, if only you could get your mom to stop being a nut, your problems would be over. And hey, if only I could find a way of turning dog turds into solid gold, I’d never have to work again. Alas, turds are turds, and your dreams haven’t come true for many years. Assume they won’t come true now.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 21, 2009
In difficult situations with difficult people, we’re often tempted to turn to the law for help, hoping that the authority of police or the court can set things right and not asking ourselves what is really likely to happen next. In many cases, if you’re dealing with raw feeling, going to the cops or court brings in a whole new wave of complications and misery. So, as we always say, when cornered by a crazy person, act as you would if under attack from any wild animal; lie low, play dead, and just hope it loses interest and goes away.
–Dr. Lastname
I dated this guy years ago—only for a few months, nothing really serious because he seemed kind of weird even then—and he’s been harassing me ever since. Six months after I broke up with him, he wrote me a bunch of emails and left a ton of voicemails saying he wanted to know what he did wrong, that we should be together, and I did talk to him once just to tell him I was sorry but it was over and he should move on. He told me once that he was bipolar and I was sorry for him—he had seemed very normal then and I thought maybe his family didn’t like his eccentricities, which I thought were charming—but his messages seemed intense, illogical, and angry, and I started to worry. Then, six months after that, another bunch of emails and messages, this time more menacing, so I told him resolutely never to talk to me again. Just recently he started again, but this time the messages were actually scary—he threatened to kill me if we couldn’t be together. He said he felt broken inside and that he wanted me to feel the same way so that I’d understand him and then we could be friends again. Basically, I want to know if I need to get a restraining order against this guy—I’m really scared, and if anyone ever deserved police protection, it’s me. On the other hand, if he’s dangerous, maybe he needs to be put into a hospital and that’s something the police should be able to do. My goal is for the police to do something to protect me and, I hope, him.
In a fair and reasonable world, it would be easy for the police to lock up people who become temporarily dangerous because of mental illness, and doctors would be able to cure them. Unfortunately—naturally—that’s not the world we live in.
Unless someone is overtly dangerous in a way that is immediate and unequivocal—they’ve recently written threatening letters, or said something scary to a reliable witness, or can be expected to act aggressively when interviewed by the police or an emergency room clinician—they’re not going to get hospitalized. That’s the way our laws work for involuntary hospitalization.
These laws seem to do more to protect the accused than the alleged victims in that they protect the individual’s right not to get locked up for being different. In reality, they’re often worse for the mentally ill people they’re intended to protect, because they prevent them from getting treated for an illness that is killing their brain cells and ruining their lives.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 17, 2009
Trauma becomes a part of who you are—the more you fight it, the more you punish yourself—so don’t struggle against the scars, physical or mental, that’s life’s given you. Many people have the notion that therapy can cure psychological trauma, but, in reality, trying to “cure” trauma is like trying to win a war on terror: you can’t defeat an emotional response, you can just keep living in spite of it.
–Dr. Lastname
Up until 2003, I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Tribeca, so, as you can imagine, 9/11 was a big, scary deal for me. I went to therapy for a while—both for the PTSD and the grief over a couple of friends at Cantor/Fitzgerald who died—and while I think I’m doing much better than I was, I still get shaky when I see footage or pictures from that day. Problem is, 8 years have passed, I now live in Chicago, so there’s not a lot of sympathy for my sensitivity. In fact, last week, when the topic came up at work and I expressed my discomfort, one of my co-workers accused me of being totally over dramatic, and I then became the subject of some light ribbing. And I know they have a point sort of, but I also know that it was really fucking scary. So my goal is to figure out what I should do, be it get more therapy or more resistance to my co-workers’ bullshit, in order to move past my trauma.
Trying to block or control your trauma-reactive sensitivity is a bad idea; after awhile, you simply can’t control it, and trying to do so makes it worse. The number of treatments that aim to reduce your symptoms after traumatic events should warn you that success is partial, and control impossible.
And, of course, there are all those natural treatments for blocking pain—alcohol, weed, sugary baked goods, and other high-side-effect mental painkillers that work beautifully, however briefly—while also destroying your life.
In the short run, some treatments are helpful…but they’re not cures. Now you’ve had treatment, it’s 8 years later, you’ve moved away and tried to move on, so whatever sensitivity you’ve got at this point, you’re not going to get rid of.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 10, 2009
No matter what your illness, medication should never be your first option for treatment. Everything you put in your mouth, from aspirin to spinach, has risks attached, so you should always proceed with caution before you add chemicals to the mix. Then, once on medication, most people are eager to get off it as soon as possible, but that has its own set of risks, as well. If you make your health the first priority, then the choice of whether or not to medicate won’t become risk-free, but it will become clear.
–Dr. Lastname
Before I got treated for depression, my marriage was rocky, but not doomed. I would be irritable and lethargic, which was tough for my husband to deal with, but mostly he was concerned and caring, and he was glad when I decided to get help. Now I’m taking medication, which has helped a lot in stabilizing my moods and keeping the black clouds away. The downside is that my meds have also, surprise, made my sex drive disappear, and this is doing way more harm to my marriage than my depression ever did. My husband isn’t a creep—he’s put up with a lot, and has always been supportive—but I can tell that there’s a distance growing between us. It’s different now that I’m the same old me but not interested in him physically, as opposed to a crying mess who wasn’t interested in him but also couldn’t get dressed in the morning. Is there anyway to not be depressed and not be libido-less? My goal is for both me and my marriage to be healthy.
Equating a happy marriage with a lusty sex life (as does every magazine in the supermarket checkout line) is dangerous, because it directly links the state of your union to something you don’t actually control.
If you could control it, you wouldn’t be writing to me in the first place. More than that, the fact that there are so many sex therapists should tell you how limited your control is (as is theirs).
That’s what the word therapy means in ancient Urdu: doing something that may or may not help for a problem you don’t control but think you should. And if therapy fails, then you’ve got a bad marriage because you’re libido-deficient.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 7, 2009
We all want someone to be sorry or grateful when our feelings are on the line, but, feelings and people being what they are, it’s sometimes worth ignoring our emotional needs to hear a few simple words. Apologies and gratitude carry a lot of emotional currency, but just like regularly currency, they need to be genuine to be worth anything.
–Dr. Lastname
I don’t fight with my adult son, but it’s because I bite my tongue. When he’s working as a doctor he’s very professional and well respected, but he’s basically always been very moody, and when I hang out with him for more than a few hours, I often run into a big dose of real nastiness. He’ll look sour and complain that I want him to do something he really doesn’t want to, or that I should have gotten him something, or that he doesn’t want to go out to dinner and I should go out alone. He’s rude and grumpy in a way that he would never be with a friend. When he was an adolescent, I wrote it off, but he hasn’t changed at all. Afterwards, he never admits that he did anything wrong. No wonder he doesn’t have a girlfriend. My goal is to get him to see that he acts like a shit and get him to apologize.
It would certainly ease your pain if your son were to apologize, but a solicited apology is about as helpful as unsolicited advice; it’d merely be a response to your feelings rather than a genuine realization that his behavior is out of control and bad for him.
So far, that’s eluded him. Making him say he’s sorry for it is not the same as making him be sorry for it.
And you should always remember the dark, demonic side of nice people who get nasty sometimes; even when they’re sorry, the next time they feel bad, they want to hurt someone. It’s particularly tempting to hurt someone who says “ouch, you’ve really hurt my feelings,” because that’s like remarking to a hungry bear that you feel really delicious that day.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 3, 2009
Families share more than last names and lactose intolerance—they also share feelings and physical space. So whether you’re divvying up your attention among parents, or rooms among siblings, or a wheel of brie among brothers, do so with care and caution.
–Dr. Lastname
Growing up, my mother and I were very close (dad left, I was her only son). Sure, she would sometimes get very intense about relationships—she gets focused on being close with whoever she really cares about—but I thought, no matter who else was in the picture, we had a strong bond. Now that I’ve started living independently in a nearby city, I expected her to be happy when I come home and to understand that I need to see my friends as well as spend time with her. Hell, I look forward to spending time with her. But the last time I visited home, which was practically the first time since I graduated and moved away, she got badly bent out of shape and I can’t figure out what I did wrong. I didn’t lie around and do nothing or get things dirty and not clean up. I spent some time with her, was considerate. So I was shocked when she told me she was very offended and I shouldn’t visit again unless I was really interested in sharing time with her. My goal is to figure out what went wrong and straighten things out. I love her, but I can’t let her control my life whenever I’m home.
It would be nice if you were an idiot who needed nothing more than a good etiquette coach to straighten out your behavior and mend your strong bond with mama, because then you’d be welcome in your (former) old Kentucky home.
And it would be nice if your mother was having a sudden acute attack of depression complicated by outright and totally uncharacteristic bitchiness which could be expected to disappear once she got treatment and/or lucky. The good news, however, is that you’re probably not an idiot and she’s probably not depressed.
And, if that’s true, then the sad news is that she’s probably got a problem with her character that neither one of you is going to change, and her home will never be yours. So it’s true, you can never go home again, especially when it was never your home in the first place.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 31, 2009
We’ve devoted a lot of column space to the issue of helping people help people—how to, when to, who to, etc—mostly involving cases of loved ones and addiction. Ironically, helping those who aren’t very close to us with less severe problems is often much more complicated. The key is finding a balance between helping your fellow man and not screwing yourself.
–Dr. Lastname
My son just started school, and I’ve become friends with his best friend’s mother. She’s a very nice, cool person, but I’ve gone shopping with her a bunch of times now—at the mall, at Costco—and I’m almost 100% sure that she’s a serial shoplifter. The first time it happened, I genuinely believed that she just forgot to pay for the sweater she’d put over the handle of her younger daughter’s stroller, fair enough. But then at a mall I saw her use the same stroller to steal again, arguing with a manager over a shirt with a missing button while she walked out with a $100 pair of shoes. It’s weird, because every time we walk out of the store, she’ll be like, oh, I forgot to pay for those shoes, I’m too embarrassed to go back now, which is getting really hard to believe now that she’s done it over and over again. Part of me worries that she might be a little nuts and it worries me to have her watch my son when he goes over to her house to play with his friend. But mostly I think she just has a problem, like smoking or something, but one that could get her into a lot of trouble very quickly, and if I could just talk to her about it as a friend, I might be able to help her. My goal is to do what I can to keep my new friend, and keep her out of trouble.
There’s one part that always gets left out of the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan– Risk Assessment.
There’s no arguing that it’s good to help people, but, since it feels good to help people, you know there’s a down side, and that down side is that it’s sometimes dangerous. After all, any good lawyer would tell you that if Jesus had lived longer, he would have gotten himself sued.
Your first job, as a responsible person and mother, is to assess the risk of being helpful by guessing, from her past behavior, whether your friend is likely to turn on you and rip out your guts. Remember, some people with destructive habits are sharks; they’re angry, very sensitive to having their weaknesses exposed or criticized, and will respond to your kindness by swearing a blood feud.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 27, 2009
There are some people who, no matter how talented and smart they are in some areas of life, are totally oblivious to their own flaws and, despite their intelligence, are world class fuck-ups (some of them even went to Harvard). In reality, being a fuck-up is a lot like being a psychopath; if you’ve seriously considered whether or not you’re a fuck-up, you probably aren’t one.
–Dr. Lastname
When I met my husband, he was a confident, bright, accomplished guy; he was top of his class, recruited to his firm at a high salary with a great contract, hard working, and all signs pointed to someone who would never have a problem making a living. Over ten years into our marriage, however, I’m seeing a different picture and I just don’t get it. This gifted, bright man is also stubborn as a mule and a lousy listener. I could see he was getting into trouble with his boss at work and I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t listen. Then, when he lost his job, he had big ideas about what he was going to do next, but he wound up finding nothing, and when I urged him to see a job counselor and keep busy doing other things at home, he wouldn’t listen. What I see is a guy who checks the job listings for half an hour every day, fills in a few applications on-line, and then gets obsessed with a computer project like synchronizing a new day planner. We’ve got a kid, we’re out of money, he hasn’t worked in over a year, I’m the only bread-winner, and I can’t get over how angry I am. How can I get him to see that he needs to change his tactics, particularly when I can hardly speak to him without ripping off his balls? Would couples therapy help me get through to him?
I wish I could tell you that your husband’s foot-dragging is caused by anger or fear about you or his parents, or having to be a grown-up, or past sexual trauma, etc., because then a good talk with you and/or a therapist could help him get over his negative feelings and move on with his life. But the odds are that it’s not pent-up feelings; it’s the way he is, and, if that’s the case, therapy of any kind isn’t going to change him, let alone get him employed.
I know, it’s hard to imagine how a sincere, gifted, accomplished guy can become so ineffective…at least at first. But it’s not hard to understand if you watch how people think and learn as they get older.
You’ve probably known a couple people who were brilliant in school but didn’t do well in their careers because they lacked a certain common sense, ability to get along with others, or organizational skills. Many people, of course, have weaknesses like these and learn how to manage them.
Some people, however, are not so fortunate. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 17, 2009
As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” and while that’s surely the case for the current Red Sox season, it’s also true about relationships. Due to anything from a shared possession to a shared child, couples often end up tied together when they’re not together anymore. For those couples, they have to tread even more lightly now that they’re apart, or, when it comes to conflict between exes, it will be deja vu all over again.
–Dr. Lastname
After my husband and I got divorced, I started going to a therapist, because I was really leveled by the whole experience. Plus I worried I was facing a custody battle over our son, who was only five, and wanted to make sure I kept it together for him. Ultimately, custody went more smoothly than I expected (my son lives with me over the school year and spends summers and some holidays with his dad), and my ex and I are on civil terms. To make a long story short though, in talking to this therapist about my ex and his odd family (with whom he spends lots of time in the summer), the therapist asked me if my ex-husband had ever talked about being molested—the family behavior I described as odd, on top of my ex-husband’s own quirks, seemed indicative of a pattern of abuse. I got up the courage to confront my ex about it, but he shut me down pretty fast. The problem is that he has our son with him and his family, and I’m worried absolutely sick, but there’s nothing I can do. I’d like to help my ex in a way, but my goal, really, is to do what’s best for my son.
Let’s imagine, just for the sake of argument, that your ex-‘s family is eccentric but not abusive. You push your ex-, he tells his family, they’re all offended and can’t talk about you without snarling with anger. Now they’re not just eccentric, they’re enraged.
Then, your son picks up on the vibrations and starts walking on eggshells with everyone, including you. That’s how dangerous it is to try too hard to protect your son from abuse; declare war on those who threaten him, and he could be your first casualty.
A better goal is to do whatever you can to protect him from abuse while also trying to protect him from the potential conflict an allegation will trigger. It’s certainly a fine line, and you must be able to tolerate fear and uncertainty to walk it. You don’t really have a choice, because the alternative is worse. And, anyway, it’s part of your parental job description.
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