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.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 13, 2009
Sometimes, knowing is indeed half the battle, at least if you’re talking about where you left your car keys or the answers to a math test. When it comes to tracing the origins of your behavior, however, pinning your temper on dad or your bad taste in men on bad boys isn’t going to lead you to a nicer, smarter you. Knowing why you’re a prick won’t make you better; not being a prick will, regardless of where the fault for your prickish genes lies.
–Dr. Lastname
It’s been a tough year (surprise), and so I’ve been a little more quick to anger than I usually am, and I tend to have a few more beers after work than I would normally have. Things with my wife were kind of rough because of all of this, so she told me to see a therapist, and for the sake of my marriage, I agreed, because losing my wife would be the worst thing that could happen. Six months or so ago, my therapist started asking me about my childhood, and it finally clicked that my dad also had a really bad temper, and was also a pretty lousy drunk, but I’d never really thought of him that way, and I’d never really made the connection to my own behavior. My therapist was really pleased at my breakthrough, but here I am, six months later, and I don’t feel any better, and my wife is ready to leave if I don’t stop yelling at her. My goal is to use what I’ve learned in therapy to solve my problems, but what is it I haven’t figured out, why do I keep acting this way, and why am I spending money on therapy if I’m getting nowhere?
Once psychotherapy helps you figure out where your mean streak comes from, you can write an interesting book about it and, usually, blame it on a brutal ancestor and tell Oprah all about it.
What all that hard-earned knowledge probably won’t help you much with is keeping you in check the next time you get irritable and/or drunk. Bad daddy or no, what will help you a lot more is to get sober and learn how to shut the fuck up.
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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 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.
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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 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.”
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 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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