Posted by fxckfeelings on March 21, 2011
If trauma leaves you with bad feelings, then of course you want to get over it. The problem is that, unfortunately, you were traumatized, not, say, irked. And trauma, by nature and/or definition, haunts you to one degree or another for an extended period of time and doesn’t necessarily pass. If you expect it to go away, like a slight ribbing would, you might get lucky. More probably, however, you will blame yourself for not being able to “get better” and make that trauma worse. If you wind up with trauma, then expect trauma, and learn to manage it. Being told to ignore it doesn’t mean making the memory go away; it means acting as if it wasn’t there. And if we’ve irked you, well, at least it’ll pass.
–Dr. Lastname
I didn’t have any serious injuries after falling off some scaffolding, but I began to have nightmares and the thought of returning to work gave me anxiety attacks. So I took a medical leave, saw a therapist, and got some medication and now I’m much better, but I’m still far from 100% recovered and the thought of climbing a ladder still makes me feel like I’m going to have another attack. So I’m wondering whether to extend the leave until I feel better—I don’t know how long my disability insurance will cover this—or find something else to do, and it’s hard to make a decision when I don’t know whether I’m ever going to feel better. My goal is to feel well enough to make a decision.
Severe anxiety makes sissies of everyone. The primal part of your brain thinks it’s doing you a favor; it’s the part that says fire bad, sun hot, sex yay. Now it’s saying, ladders evil, followed by, run!
Meanwhile, anxiety attacks are so painful, the thing you’re most afraid of is having one again, the very thought of which makes you anxious, which feels like you’re about to have another. Your brain’s protecting you in a hellish spiral.
The scary thing you need to accept up front is that your anxiety, and your anxiety about anxiety, may never go away. If you think you’re supposed to make it go away, you’ll be more discouraged when you can’t; if you climb the ladder while telling yourself it will never happen again, you’re putting yourself into danger. That’s the kind of hope and optimism that will get you into trouble.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 17, 2011
Being diagnosed with mental illness won’t necessarily screw up your life, and screwing up your life doesn’t mean you have mental illness. In any case, people are most effective at managing screw-ups and mental illness when they’re ready to face the worst case scenario, assuming they can do so without letting it reflect on the quality of their management. Consider the worst, hope for the best, and don’t let your fears distort your perception of reality. In other words, don’t panic or feel that you’ve failed when somebody acts “crazy” or you’ll end up driving yourself nuts.
–Dr. Lastname
Are there varying degrees of bipolar? My son is 21 and just diagnosed in Sept 2010. He is a student, a swimmer with his university and a likeable, good-looking guy. He is medicated (lithium and Zyprexa) and is doing pretty well. He complains about concentration issues. I just feel sometimes like I need to be reassured that this is manageable and that there are positive stories of other people with bipolar. I hope and pray that he will lead a fulfilling life, marry and have a family. We are all just trying to adapt to this diagnosis.
Not only are there varying degrees of “bipolar,” there are probably various kinds as well, but we don’t know enough about what’s going on biologically to say. Like the Supreme Court once said of obscenity, you know it when you see it, but it takes many forms.
Basically, the word “bipolar” doesn’t have a lot of meaning other than as a description of someone who had an over-the-top episode of wild, excited, high-risk, inappropriately-undressed behavior that then, most probably, was calmed down by lithium.
Since we don’t have a biological definition of bipolar, we’re forced to use the word to describe the unluckiest cases, the ones who have the most severe symptoms that last the longest and come back the most often, simply because they’re the ones that are easiest to categorize.
There are probably lots of mild or brief cases that don’t get included in the definition, so the diagnosis seems to imply severe symptoms and a difficult future, when, actually, there are probably lots of mild cases. So yes, you’re right, he may not have it as bad as people think when they hear the word “bipolar” (which is to say, he will probably doing a lot better than Charlie Sheen).
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 7, 2011
When in the midst of one of life’s many shit storms, it’s easy to forget that feeling helpless and feeling that things are out of your control aren’t the same thing. It’s probably true that you don’t have much control over what troubles you, but that doesn’t mean you’re totally powerless and doomed to total annihilation. Helplessness, after all, is just a feeling, and a dangerous one if it makes you give up, lose faith, or act like a jerk. So if you can take a step back and look at what you actually can do, even if it’s very little, those shitty storm clouds will begin to clear.
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t stand myself since I lost my job—I know I hated my boss and I was looking forward to retiring in a year, but I liked the clients and was good at what I did—but getting fired was humiliating and unfair and now I don’t feel like doing anything or going out. I can’t make myself feel better and my medications aren’t working and my friends can’t cheer me up. My goal is to feel like my old self and do the kind of work I can now afford to do, since I don’t really need the money.
The job you lost is one you hated, you have enough money to live on, and you now have the freedom to do whatever you want…this is probably what you’ve already heard from your friends a million times.
What they don’t know is that thinking that way just makes you feel worse.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 27, 2011
You may love someone who loves you back, and you may want to live happily ever after, and you may have your appointment for “bridalplasty” all lined up, but there are many obstacles that can make partnership impossible. Sometimes it’s some unchangeable aspect of personality, sometimes it’s a life situation, either way, it’s a heart-shaped brick wall. Instead of trying to amp up the love that’s supposed to conquer all, figure out what else you need and accept that you need it. Sadly, when it comes to love, love is not enough, and not even liposuction can make it better.
-Dr. Lastname
I thought my problems were over when, a few months ago, I met an attractive, recently single guy who seemed very interested in me and talked openly about my being the sort of guy he’d like to marry (I’ve been burned too many times by younger guys who seem interested for awhile and then just get bored). Recently, however, I got spooked by the way he made several big choices without telling me or asking my opinion, like buying a house. I was shocked, and while he told me I could decorate the place anyway I wanted so I could feel at home, I was still emotional about him making such a big decision without even telling me. When I asked him to examine why he’d done it, he suddenly got mad and told me he didn’t need a lot of drama in a relationship and maybe we should take a break. I was shocked. I don’t want to break up; but my goal is to understand this relationship and make it work.
Just as dating should lead to marriage, the next step after fighting is supposed to be communicating and understanding one another’s position. In a fair world, this would be true. Alas, we haven’t even located that solar system yet.
If you can’t reach an understanding and instead seem to be triggering a breakup with someone who has, until now, been loving and generous, it’s natural to doubt yourself and wonder what you’ve done wrong. It’s also natural to not use deodorant—doesn’t mean you should.
Again, in a fair world, no true friend would threaten to break up with you unless you said something terrible, but that rule holds currency only in a galaxy far, far away.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 13, 2011
When faced with scary health issues, from strange lumps to bad thoughts, people often avoid treatments that hurt, particularly after long-standing symptoms have sapped their hope, fed self-hate, or fostered bad habits. They deny anything’s wrong, or they insist that resistance is futile, but either way, if you criticize them for not helping themselves, they will readily agree, hate themselves more, and burrow deeper into their holes and further away from treatment. Before they can find the way out, they need to reconnect with their real strength. Only by recognizing their actual achievements and their past and potential courage, can they face what ails them. The pain may continue, but not its power to intimidate and paralyze.
–Dr. Lastname
Please Note: In responding to suicidal goals, as in the case below, we do not presume to offer emotional support. If you’re at risk of hurting yourself, you should, of course, go to an emergency room, discuss your state of mind with a professional, and decide how much support you need in order to remain safe. In most of the cases we encounter, however, our correspondents are not simply suicidal; they are familiar with treatment and have come to believe that it won’t help. Often, we must agree that their feelings are unlikely to change in the near future. What we try to demonstrate, however, is that negative feelings create falsely negative and hopeless beliefs and that there are ways to recover your strength and perspective, even when the pain won’t let up.
I’m considering suicide. My life is a joke. I am in my late 30s and female and I have never had a relationship with a man. Several men have used me for sex and at least 2 of them begged me not to tell any of their friends they’d had sex with me. I’ve never been loved, been held, been listened to, been cherished. I’ve just been used like a toilet. On the outside I’m pretty. I can hold a conversation and I have a reasonable number of friends. But I hate myself and I don’t feel good enough. I was abandoned by both parents and I was raped for the first time when I was about 2-years-old. It’s like men I meet can smell the self-hate on me and they treat me accordingly. I do not have even one person in my life who cares about me or who I could trust. My friends are there to go for drinks or dinner with me if they can find nothing better to do but they are not there to be supportive ever, in any way. What is the point of me continuing to live?
It’s horrible to feel that you don’t belong to the human race, except for your ability to satisfy the needs and cravings of jerks.
Remember, however, that those feelings almost always beget more falsely negative beliefs, particularly about relationships. Whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, you feel infinitely rejectable, comfortable in the company of jerks, and anxious around people you respect, since you know they will reject you for your anxiety and fundamental worthlessness.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 10, 2011
It’s nice to be on the same page with your partner, but if you’re not, don’t assume you’ve got to get there; don’t even assume you’re reading the same book. Good partners sometimes have differences that are not going to be bridged by love, faith, or psychotherapy, but if you’re prepared to agree to disagree and can stand by your own values without requiring support, you can often continue to work together and at least share the same library.
–Dr. Lastname
My husband is a great guy and a pied piper with kids, including our own, but he’s really pissing me off because he can never say “no” when they cry, and so our parenting partnership has started to look like good cop/bad cop, and guess who gets to be the bad guy. If I try to get some quiet one-to-one time with them at bed time and he happens to be around, they cry, he comes running, and I’m chopped liver. Then I stew about the kids, but it’s not their fault, because I never get a chance to be the fun one so they don’t know me that way. I feel he never supports me and it’s driving me crazy.
As we always say, parenting, like relationships, like anything worth a damn, requires a lot of hard work. Unfortunately, your husband is leaving you with the bulk of the heavy lifting, and if you truly are a bad cop, he might need some tough love.
Of course you deserve your husband’s support when the kids need to be told “no,” or be disciplined, or abide by your perfectly good bed time plan. Maybe, if you let him know that you’re unhappy with his behavior, he’ll back off, man up, and learn how to wear the black hat in a good cause.
I assume, however, that you’re writing me because he can’t do that, and it leaves you feeling unloved and disrespected, so now you don’t so much want his support as you want to get through his thick skull.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 27, 2010
Maybe, on an animal level, disrespect is a challenge to our status in the herd that must be met with immediate, overwhelming attack, or we lose out. What an emotional reaction to disrespect usually results in, however, is more conflict and more power to the disrespecter. Take disrespect as a chance to see whether you measure up to your own standards and, if you do, your defense will become simple and require no huffing, puffing, or drama around the watering hole.
–Dr. Lastname
PLEASE NOTE: The next new post will be 1/3/11. Have a happy New Year’s Eve, but for our sake, an unhappy new year overall. (Not really.)
I get no respect and nothing but criticism at home, and only an idiot would stick around. My teen-age daughter complains loudly, to anyone who will listen, including holiday dinner guests, that I was never there for her, and my wife treats her as if she’s a sensitive soul who needs understanding and shouldn’t be contradicted. I think my daughter is verbally abusive, disrespectful, and embarrassing, and that my wife encourages her. As a practicing physician, I have no trouble finding respect at work; at home, I’m chopped liver. Tell me why I shouldn’t leave.
I’ll take your word that you’re a doctor, because your need for respect makes you sound more like a drug dealing thug from “The Wire.”
Disrespect might make you feel like you’re being perceived as weak, but that’s nothing compared to telling yourself, or anyone else, that criticism or disrespect is driving you out of your house.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 23, 2010
When you do something truly stupid, the punishment is twofold; first, you have the knowledge of your stupidity, and then, you have living with the results of said stupidity, or making someone you love live with your stupidity, which makes you feel guilty and makes them feel stupid for loving you in the first place. Unfortunately, stupid is an incurable part of being human—some of us have a more dominant stupid gene than others—and remorse makes it worse. If you want to get smart, begin by accepting your inner stupid and getting to know its habits. Then, maybe next time stupidity calls, you’ll have a better answer and skip the punishing results.
–Dr. Lastname
PLEASE NOTE: We will have a new post on Monday, 12/27, but we’re taking a week off after that for family’ing. If you have angst, holiday related or no, that you need to share, speak now or wait until 2011.
Every now and then my husband, who is a sweet soul and mostly very smart, does something so mind-bogglingly stupid that it puts the whole family in danger. The latest incident happened when he was hanging out at a bar after work and, deeply (into drinking and) moved by the hard luck story of the guy on the stool next to him, he offered, without asking me, to guarantee the guy’s car loan. The next thing we knew, the bank was after our savings because his ex-best-bar-buddy had stopped paying the loan and the car was nowhere to be found. I admit it, I did a lot of screaming and feel like I was a saint for not killing him, but the real goal here is, how do I prevent him from doing it again.
You’re asking a mental health clinician to help you understand and/or change your husband’s behavior. Instead, you should be talking to a lawyer.
You want to stop him from doing it again, but what you really need is to protect yourself from the sure-to-happen next time his impulsive, besotted generosity imperils the family treasury.
You probably expect me, as a mental health clinician, to support the humanistic, liberal, uplifting belief that therapy can help people can change. Sadly, you don’t need a professional of any kind to tell you what you already know: that therapy doesn’t have that kind of power WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 6, 2010
Everyone from Mariah Carey to Charlie Brown has told us that what Christmas means is a happy, if not the happiest, time, and that you’re supposed to spread that happy to your neighbors, parents, and children. Most of us learn at an early age that Christmas is a mixed bag, and that the unhappy spreads faster than the happy, mostly among family members. Instead of focusing on good cheer, decide how best to use the holiday to express the Christmas spirit which, for those of you with some dysfunction in your families, means finding the best compromise between sharing a holiday together, protecting yourself from bad behavior, and avoiding the songmanship of Mariah Carey.
–Dr. Lastname
My 16-year-old daughter is a good kid, but she’s always been hell on wheels about breaking the rules. I always worry about her, because her father was sick and school is hard for her (she’s very ADD) and it would take very little to get her to drop out. The more I do to make sure she gets up on time, however, like driving her to school when she’s late, the more she misses the boat by always getting one absence more than whatever the school allows, so now I’ve got regular meetings with the principal (she refuses to show up) and neverending special ed plans. She’s really a nice kid and behaves well when she’s staying with her friends, but with me she’s often mean and nasty and swears all the time, and I just laugh it off. Now Christmas is coming, and I’d like her to be able to visit Mexico with a friend’s family, if she can just keep out of additional trouble. My goal is to avoid provoking her into doing more dumb things, dropping out of school, and getting into major trouble.
It’s clear that you love and accept your bad-ass kid, and that’s probably the most important part of any relationship, because non-acceptance is deadly.
You accept her, she accepts that you love her. She just can’t accept being told what to do.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 25, 2010
No matter how much you love someone, you might not be able to read them that well; signals get crossed, personalities clash, pissyness abounds. You can try to improve “communication” through several years/thousand dollars on relationship therapies, but you can never change your personality or the personality of the person you happen to love who also happens to drive you crazy. If you can never perfectly read someone, you can learn to recognize the warning signs of unavoidable conflict and accept the pain as the necessary price of making things work. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s cheaper than therapy, and cheaper still than divorce.
–Dr. Lastname
My 18-year-old nephew moved in with me and my boyfriend this summer to be close to the internship program he’s doing this year. I love my nephew, and he’s very smart about computers, but he’s a really geeky kid and never very quick to notice how people are reacting; when monopolizes the TV or leaves a mess in the kitchen, my boyfriend tries to make it clear he’s annoyed, but it goes straight over my nephew’s head. My boyfriend’s about had it and wants my nephew out because he thinks the kid’s a selfish jerk (instead of just a nerdy dork). My boyfriend, needless to say, hasn’t lived with kids in many years and tends to take things personally. My goal is to get my boyfriend to back off and/or my nephew to tune in.
Cursed be the peacemaker, because the only agreement that peacemakers are certain to create between warring parties is that they both hate the peacemaker.
If you press your boyfriend to be nicer, he’ll wonder why you’re more sympathetic to a self-absorbed, snotty kid than to your long-term, adult partner.
Your nephew, if he notices the tension at all, will wonder why his aunt can’t protect him from being picked on (and why nobody can protect him, since this probably happens all the time). Good intentions are dangerous, in a situation like this, unless you’re careful about your goals.
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