Posted by fxckfeelings on May 26, 2011
People like to call one another on bad behavior, and, thanks to the likes of Oprah, think that such acts of “openness” are a good idea. What they’re forgetting is that most badly behaved adults want to behave that way, have their own reasons for thinking it’s OK, and are ready to behave even worse if confronted, threatened, or attacked. If you want to continue and/or improve your relationship with a badly behaved person, don’t give him/her an earful s/he doesn’t want to hear. Offer a proposal for a better way of behaving, your plan for making it worthwhile, and your intentions in case it’s declined. You can’t whip anyone into shape, but you may persuade someone to develop better manners, for their own reasons, on their own terms, in a now Oprah-free universe.
–Dr. Lastname
My crazy ex-wife’s bitterness and sabotage blocked me from seeing our son, but when he got to college and out of her grasp, I hoped that 20 years of patience was paying off and I could finally begin to revive a long interrupted relationship. I’ve tried to show how much I love him and want to help him, and I’ve looked for opportunities to give him gifts and take him on vacations. The trouble is, I’m beginning to feel that all he wants me for is money and that, otherwise, he either doesn’t care or is angry and suspicious. He asks for things, says thanks, and then disappears until he needs something else. If I ask him why he hasn’t been answering my calls, he gets huffy. My goal is to let him know that I won’t put up with that crap and try to make the relationship work the way it should.
The main barrier to a good relationship between you and your son isn’t your ex and all the lost years, but the fact that, according to your son, it’s your problem to fix, not his.
After all, whether you like/deserve it or not, you have a needy and untrustworthy rep, and at this point, you don’t know if it’s because he’s brainwashed, oblivious, or a jerk.
Time will tell, and the best way to make the best of what’s there, be it a good kid with bad ideas or a bad kid with bad ideas, is to keep your expectations low, your feelings to yourself, and your needs in check.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 9, 2011
Parents get a lot of blame when something goes wrong in their kids’ lives, and a fair share of it is heaped on by those in my industry. The lion’s share, however, comes from parents themselves, and that feeling of responsibility, no matter who assigns it, is great at making things worse. The truth is that parents have little control over their kids’ weaknesses or the fact that life is sometimes hard and painful beyond their powers of protection. Accept this sad truth, and you’ll become a much more effective parent and much less blaming of your spouse and your kid, whether Freud’s disciples admit it or not.
–Dr. Lastname
I still can’t understand why my 15-year-old daughter would purposely overdose. I understand she’s always been an emotional kid and that she hasn’t been happy lately, but my husband and I love her. We’ve always told her we want to hear about any problem she wants to share with us, and she knows it would kill us to lose her. Still, she seems to have no remorse for what her suicide might have done to herself or the rest of the family. My goal is to understand how she could do it and teach her a sense of responsibility so it won’t happen again.
In many ways, a suicide attempt is like a natural disaster; you shouldn’t bother asking why it happened, or what if you had done things differently. Whether you blame global warming or God’s wrath, it won’t change the fact that it happened or that there is at least some chance that it will happen again.
The moment you think you understand the reason, you’ll think you know what she did wrong, or, at least, what she should have done better, and that will just make her feel more like a loser, and more like doing it again. Or you’ll think you know what you or your husband did wrong, which will make you feel like losers and blame one another, and make her feel like doing it again.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 10, 2011
Families are forever, just like diamonds and herpes, so it’s natural to want to change family relationships when they’re excruciating or failing apart. Everyone assumes that our best tools are communication and understanding; for some reason, we hold to this belief, even as repeated efforts to communicate and understand have made relationships worse. Whether a relationship is supposed to last for years or not, learn to accept it as it is. Then your plans will become more effective, but, like diamonds and herpes still, that relationship will remain hard, and there will be flare-ups.
–Dr. Lastname
My father asked me to write this letter for both of us. I was forced to move into my father’s one-room apartment and live with him after I lost my job and ran out of money (I’m 40). I’m grateful he took me in, and I’m trying to make enough money to get out on my own again. In the meantime, we’re stuck with one another, and we can’t stop fighting. I want him to understand the fact that I can’t help having a terrible temper, being very distractible, and not having the energy to clean things up because I’ve been diagnosed with depression and ADD. He wants me to understand that it’s hard to put up with my being a slob and never cleaning up and that he can’t help getting furious. We both want to put an end to the hostility.
Asking for understanding from your father is a really bad way to try to reduce hostilities, and a really good way to increase them. And no, it’s not opposite day.
Sure, he’s your dad, but let’s dispose of the notion that parent-child relationships are always supposed to be perfect, and can and must be fixed if they’re broken. Just because you share blood doesn’t mean you should share an apartment or that you can expect to get along, if you do.
As for “fixing” your relationship…well, if your father was fixed, you wouldn’t be here, and that would be the best solution to your conflict. Otherwise, you’re his son, but that doesn’t mean you should be able to get along.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 7, 2011
Some self-help experts tell us that we control our destiny! All that does is make you feel responsible for things working out in the end, which is why your automatic response when that doesn’t happen is to figure out where you went wrong while feeling like a shitty, guilty mess. The truth is most big problems can’t work out in the end, particularly when they involve illness and aging, and the only thing wrong is that we’re living in a very, very tough world. Instead of asking where you failed, be proud of what you achieved despite being destined to suffer at nature’s whim.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve been very helpful and patient with my husband since he suffered brain damage after being hit by a car, but I’ve just about had it. Everyone in our families focuses on finding a new treatment for him, and we’re all happy that he’s recovered some functions and can now talk and stand up. The trouble is, I’m exhausted, I’ve got no time to go out and make a living, and he’s gotten into the habit of telling me what I’m supposed to do without a please, thank you or may I. My goal is to set him straight and let him know I can’t keep it up at this pace and that he needs to improve his tone.
Setting someone straight when he wants too much from you usually leads to a guilt fest; you make him feel guilty, he guilts you right back, and it’s a regular guiltapalooza.
You wouldn’t be knocking yourself out in the first place if you didn’t feel responsible and, yes, guilty for not doing more. Of course, you may be knocking yourself out doing things that are really, really necessary, but that’s unlikely. Guilt rarely works that way.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 3, 2011
Pride comes before the fall, and the fall is sometimes into a prolonged depression, which, to mix metaphors, can lead to a lengthy winter of discontent. No matter how much you deserve to be confident in a job well done at work, there are uncontrollable things that can put the brakes on your momentum or just stop you from doing excelling work. One of the major sources of stalling is the aforementioned depression. That’s when you either find a more solid source of pride or start seeing yourself as a failure, and you know what we advocate. Real excellence is accepting your best work when it’s not excellent, and real pride comes with healthy expectations and is fall-free.
–Dr. Lastname
After 5 years of facing up to issues with PTSD after a sexual assault, depression, anxiety and feeling generally emotionally disconnected, I felt that I made progress. As a creative person, I was stuck in a job surrounded by other artists but not creating anything myself. I left my job last autumn and set myself up as a freelance artist and have been working hard at being pro-active. I have been ignoring the signs of depression since last November, maybe earlier. I am doing the bare minimum just to support myself but over the past month or so I have been sinking down further and further. I feel like a failure to be back at this place again. In the past I have taken anti-depressants but they cut all creative flow off and I just can’t do that again, it’s the only thing holding me together at the moment. I cried last night for the first time in 9 years at the sheer frustration of not moving forwards and not being the artist I want to be. I’ve kind of given up on the idea of having the things normal people do like family (have no contact with my own), so I do tend to define myself by my art. My goal is to be brave enough and good enough to create the work that I feel is inside me without sabotaging or running away.
One of the dangers of being an artist is that you may gain too much confidence in your control over creativity. Sometimes, you feel the muse. Most of the time, you feel the misery.
When you feel inspired, you define yourself by your art, despite the lack of control you have over it. Creative types are in the unique position where talent and productivity don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. When the former outweighs the latter, problems ensue.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 21, 2011
If you’re a hard-working woman who fails to achieve her ambitions, you probably want to eliminate whatever gets in your way, whether it’s sexism or an obstacle within your personality (all while being stereotyped as a shoulder-pad-wearing, stiletto-wielding, backstabbing she-beast). Don’t forget, however, that the most common obstacle isn’t evil co-workers or ill-fitting suits, but the irritating fact that life is hard and unfair, meaning it’s completely out of your perfectionistic control and power to eliminate. That’s why you can never let your definition of success depend on luck or outcomes, or judge yourself by how far you get. Instead, base your evaluation on what you do with whatever you’ve got, including bad luck, stereotypes, and fashion.
–Dr. Lastname
I am writing about my wife, who’s in her 50s. She is a very successful surgeon (one in a handful women head of dept. in her country), but she’s been very unhappy at work and I am writing you a), for advice on how I can help her and b), to ask if there is something I overlooked. She is unhappy since she has now twice been sidelined and been made to leave jobs where she worked very hard and believed she made a positive difference. In the first case, her department (one she build from scratch to become the largest in the region) was merged with another to meet international norms, but she was passed over to head the new, merged unit and was asked to accept half her salary (she refused and won a settlement in a lawsuit). In the second case she ran a department for a few years, then management decided to hire a new head as her senior and restrict her duties to exclude her specialties and personal preferences. She decided to stay, but even though she’s working hard, and numbers and patient reports say she is doing a good job, she not only does not receive recognition she craves, but sees her career and job threatened again. She cannot do her job halfheartedly, but she doesn’t have a sunny temperament and is hard on herself. Our children have moved away, and she and I work so hard we really only see each other on weekends, so there’s so much to put her happiness in peril. How can I help her? Why did she get demoted? Would fixing her work fix things or make them better?
Of course you’d like to spare your surgeon wife the unhappiness that goes with perfectionism and power politics. You love her, you want to see her happy, and you wish you could remove the pain the way she’d slice off a tumor.
Before I get to all the questions you’ve posed, however, you need to ask yourself one important thing—why or how you think sparing her such pain is possible.
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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 February 3, 2011
Just as it’s sometimes better to be feared than loved, it’s sometimes better to be afraid than completely at ease. Yes, anxiety may push up your blood pressure, pound your pulse and punish your insides to the point where it feels like pure punishment. On the other hand, anxiety will also help you run faster, be more aware, and work harder. All these survival skills go back to the cavemen, who couldn’t kick back and feel too good, lest they end up getting snatched up and tasting good to a predator. Even now that we’ve moved from caves to condos, everybody needs a healthy dose of stress to stay alive.
–Dr. Lastname
I never used to be particularly anxious, but that’s because I could count on my wife to run the family, manage the finances, and take care of the kids while I focused on work. Then a month ago, after she announced she was having an affair and wasn’t sure that she wanted to stay together, I started to have anxiety attacks and a feeling of dread. It changed my entire outlook on my life, past, present, and future. My anxiety got worse when I started to look at our finances and discovered we’ve got loads of debt she never told me about. Now she tells me that the affair is over and she wants to make the marriage work, but the anxiety isn’t going away—this whole incident has opened up a Pandora’s box of worry that goes way beyond her cheating. My goal is to get back to the way I felt before and not wake up to this terrible feeling every morning.
If you believe every pharmaceutical ad you see on TV, you might think that anxiety is as deadly as cancer and machine guns combined.
There’s a great disconnect, however, between random anxiety attacks and the very real possibility that you might lose everything and go totally, tits-up broke.
When you let someone else do life’s worrying for you and then discover they’re not really competent, you’ve probably got a lot of past worrying to catch up on.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 31, 2011
Like fine art, job performance is open to interpretation, and like artists, workers are sensitive about how others interpret their output. Most artists know that they can’t control how they’re perceived, but your average employee isn’t so lucky, and s/he can react to criticism by speaking his/her mind and bickering over whose perception is accurate. If you can keep anger and defensiveness safely tucked away, there are better ways to manage a negative performance review and protect your right to judge for yourself and act accordingly. Otherwise, you’ll be the artist formerly known as employed.
–Dr. Lastname
I don’t know why my husband accuses me of being lazy and ineffective, like I’m forcing him to do all the work to support our family. I’ve always seen myself as hard-working and conscientious—that’s the way they saw me at my old job, which I quit to have kids. Now, it’s true I often get interrupted because I’ve got to meet the kids’ needs, but that’s not my fault. Plus, it’s hard to do free-lance work unless you get yourself organized and have all the pieces in place first, and that’s been twice as hard for me since I’m also overcoming depression. My husband says I do lots more for the kids than is necessary, and that I spend so much time getting organized that I never get down to work. That’s not the way it feels to me though, and the harder he criticizes me, the harder it is for me to stay focused and keep working. My goal is to get out of this hole.
While erectile dysfunction is a well-known disorder that is treatable with medication you can buy by the bathtub-full, executive dysfunction doesn’t have that kind of recognition.
In fact, it might not be recognized beyond this website, but it appears that you’ve got it.
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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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