Posted by fxckfeelings on June 6, 2011
The reason that high school movies will never go out of style is that a large part of our compass of self-definition, the one that tells us whether we’re doing a good job and adjusting satisfactorily, is magnetically driven by the people we see, socialize, and suffer with every day. Thankfully, real life comes with graduation, and, if you’re lucky, the ability to escape the judgment of peers and make your own evaluations. If you really miss high school that much, skip the critical contemporaries and go straight to John Hughes.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m feeling a little lost. For most of my life, I’ve been an excellent student. I made As and Bs with minimal effort. Seriously, I’d just show up to class, take a few notes, and get an A. I didn’t really have to try. It just happened. The past two years, however, it seems like I’ve been sinking further and further into a hole that’s gotten so deep, I can’t even see where I fell in. I have difficulty motivating myself to get out of bed 90% of the time. When I used to be able to pen an excellent paper in a few hours’ time, I find myself now staring at a blank Word document with nothing but a header for weeks. My GPA has plummeted from fantastic (not stellar, but it would’ve done well enough) to abysmal. The only thing keeping me from dropping out of college entirely is the fact that I know I’d have nothing else at all to live for. My family already thinks I’m a failure, because I haven’t graduated yet. The past two years has put me painfully behind schedule. I’m thoroughly unhappy, and I honestly don’t know how the hell to stop it. I need help figuring out what the hell I need to do to get out of this hole.
Pretend you’ve just been told you have a fatal disease. Suddenly, your GPA and the opinions it inspires in your family and friends probably matter a lot less, no?
When you’re in workplaces, families and/or schools, they seem to be the whole universe and your place in them seems to define who you are. The best thing about being cast out, or even just moving on, is that you gain an opportunity to define your worth more independently, in terms of your values and efforts, instead of what people thought of your performance.
Right now, your grades and your family are telling you you’re a failure, but they don’t deserve to have the last word. You have obstacles you can’t control, and you have good qualities not currently recognized in your limited universe.
It’s time to reassess not just what’s wrong, but how it’s wrong, for whom, and how much is really in your power.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 2, 2011
Oh, people—can’t live with them smothering you, can’t live without them at least giving you the time of day. Unfortunately, nobody, including you, can give everybody the amount of attention they desire or deserve, so somebody’s bound to feel stung. If you treat your friendship like a precious resource, giving to those who can make the best use of it and withholding when the difference it makes is negative or none, then you’ll know you’re doing a good job, even if those pesky people don’t agree.
–Dr. Lastname
My best friend drives me crazy and doesn’t give me room to breathe. She calls every night and wants to talk for at least half an hour, even when there’s nothing to talk about, but we’re adults, not high school kids. I work full-time and get home late, so she doesn’t expect us to get together during the week, but if I don’t want to see her on Saturday or Sunday she wants to know what I’m doing and acts hurt if I could have been doing it with her. We’re both over 40 and don’t get asked out much, but I’d like to develop a wider group of friends. Instead, I feel like I’m always on the defensive. The more irritated I get, the more careful I have to be about what I say, which just makes me sound more defensive. I’m trapped. My goal is to be myself with her.
Even though your friend sounds like the emotional Ike Turner, I’m sure she isn’t all bad; she might be good at offering support, or fun to hang out with, or talented with a guitar.
On the other hand, your friend is clingy by nature, over 21 and, if she hasn’t responded to comments about her clinginess so far, incapable of getting it. Remember, no matter how much she sounds like a jealous spouse, you and your friend aren’t married. It’s OK to ask yourself how much time you want to spend together, not just what’s best for Ike.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 30, 2011
When people are in pain and can’t find a good treatment, they often feel like filing a protest—it’s the adult, less-trivial version of a child pitching a tantrum when their situation becomes too unfair. One way to rebel is to embrace a treatment that feels good but does harm, another is to avoid a treatment that feels bad but might help in the long run. As with a red-faced toddler, you can’t help such a person by supporting their expectations, you can only remind them that life is, in fact, unfair, and that they’d better deal with it as it is, or you’ll have to reassess your relationship/take a time out.
–Dr. Lastname
My wife is a good woman, and she loves our son, but she has a trauma history and when she gets anxious, she gets very negative and loses hope in us, herself, and our future. Antidepressants helped some, but less than we hoped. Two years ago, before our son was born, her psychiatrist showed her that negative thinking was half the problem and urged her to get DBT, a kind of cognitive behavioral therapy that would help her develop positive thinking habits. She didn’t follow through but seemed to be doing well until the other day, when I discovered she’s been drinking secretly since she delivered. She says alcohol is the only drug that helps relieve her anxiety, which has been overwhelming. My goal is to find something else that will help her.
Everyone is entitled to anxiety-relief, a fair life, and a healthy body. Along with that entitlement comes the guarantee that everybody (except for a few lucky jerks) has to pay the price.
At this point, her motto is, to paraphrase the New Hampshire license plate, “live free (from anxiety) or drink.” If it were up to you, she wouldn’t feel this way, but it’s not, and you’ve got to tell her that neither freedom nor booze is an option.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 23, 2011
Ambition is a blessing and a curse; a curse for most of those people who possess it, but a huge blessing for my business, which flourishes off the self-hate of said overly-ambitious people who believe they could have been contenders (if it wasn’t for themselves). Actually, the usual reason you can’t have your dream is that your equipment isn’t what it should be, and the best way to restore your faith in yourself is to accept the fact that your brain, while not a blessing, isn’t exactly a curse, either, and requires a set of expectations all its own.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m going back to school in the fall (for my master’s), and am really worried about the problem that plagued me in undergrad—academic OCD (which combines with general OCD, natch). Specifically, I over-cite EVERYTHING in my papers, because I have this terror of plagiarizing—to the point where my papers are hard to read, and the citing is ridiculous. I haven’t been out of undergrad very long, and I know I need to go back to school to achieve my career goals, but I’m DREADING the papers—any thoughts on how to prepare myself to deal with this very specific anxiety?
If you want an easy way to manage your over-citation compulsion (OCC), here it is; stop making too many citations! Stop it! Bad! Hope it works, and we don’t accept personal checks.
As always, the problem with looking for easy answers to your problem is that you’ll assume that all you need to do to get better is give yourself a kick in the pants or share your feelings with a therapist. It’s not true, and thinking like that will make you feel like a failure (and, if you’re lucky/buy answers like the one above, an idiot).
Long story short, your problem is here to stay (citation: this site, on a weekly basis) and, as long as you’ve got to write papers, managing it is going to be painful.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 19, 2011
Lot of people can’t control their own behavior 100% of the time and no one can control anyone else’s behavior, but there’s a big difference between biting your nails and sleeping all day, or between dodging someone’s road rage and watching them starve themselves to death. No matter how bad the behavior or how helpless it makes you feel, knowing that you’re not responsible for a solution can give you the courage to do some good and respect yourself and other control-impaired people, regardless of what happens or how bad it is.
–Dr. Lastname
So you say “fxck feelings” and act on what I can change. How do I sit through a feeling and get to the other side of it without resorting to destructive habits (eating/not getting out of bed/no proper sleep because if I go to bed I will think and feel and remember as I’m falling asleep of all those things that I don’t want to keep remembering and that make me sad) that compound those feelings instead of dull/diffuse them? My goal is to live (emphasis on the word “live”) through a feeling until it goes away or at least becomes akin to white noise, instead of distracting myself away from a feeling with destructive behavior/habits to avoid it until I’ve made it ten times worse.
In one of her short stories, author Lorrie Moore describes two explorers captured by an angry tribe of natives in the jungle. The explorers are offered the chose of “death or Roo Roo,” and the first man choses Roo Roo, which turns out to be lethal torture. The second man then opts for death, so he is killed…by Roo Roo.
What you’re dealing with is a death-or-Roo Roo situation.
You either let depressive sleep impulses drive you to destructive habits that feel better in the short run and hurt you more in the end, or you suck it up until it’s not so bad (or you get distracted by something worse) and even then it’s not great. Alas, it’s a jungle out there.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 16, 2011
Couples, like sports teams, tend to react to one another with reflexive reactions that bypass the higher centers of the brain in order to better facilitate working together as a unit. It takes no more than a look or an innocent question, however, to put you on the defensive before you know what you’re defending against or the harm you’re going to do by responding so fast. Then you’ve got an error against you and a very angry fan base (even if it’s a fan base of one). Instead of pushing for resolution, take a solo time out, rethink your strategy, and sooner or later, you’ll both be back in the huddle, figuring out your next move together.
–Dr. Lastname
I hate it when my husband and I squabble over something stupid, and then he falls silent and stops communicating, and it’s like he’s left the room. It drives me crazy. It’s true, I’m not thrilled about doing his bidding when I don’t have the time, or when his requests don’t make any sense, but if he let me know how important it is to him instead of sulking, I’m sure I would do it and then we wouldn’t have to go through this pain. My goal is to get him to communicate better.
If you’re the sort of person who can’t stand it when someone you love is angry and silent, your best mate might be a parrot.
You may try to find ways to help your beloved and avoid your pain, but don’t. Sometimes, reaching out to angry people will get them to lash out at you because they want a time-out, or it will let them know they can get to you by sulking, so they’ll use silence as a weapon.
Anger sends the same signal from any animal, from human to bear—go away, or stick around at your peril.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
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.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 11, 2011
If you watch basic cable, you’ve seen enough shows about bizarre health problems to know there’s someone out there for everyone, willing to put up with anything; from morbid obesity to tree hands to a lack of sex organs, there’s no physical trait so daunting that there isn’t someone out there (usually someone with low expectations) who can’t accept it. It’s always surprising, then, when people with lesser problems, like illness or bad habits, have trouble getting the same level of unconditional support. Of course, acceptance, as hard as it is, doesn’t mean being a doormat. That’s why the payoff of acceptance is becoming stronger, prouder, and more realistic, even if it never airs on basic cable.
–Dr. Lastname
I like my wife, except when she doesn’t take her bipolar medications, which she hates, and then she becomes nasty, irritable, and overbearing. She makes my life miserable, and I worry about her impact on the kids. My goal is to protect the kids and get her to take her medication.
The best way to keep someone from taking their medication is to persistently ask them whether or not they’ve taken their medication.
That’s not to say that leaving the issue alone will insure she takes her meds, either. The point is, if she doesn’t want to take then, she won’t. The second part of the goal is a no-go.
The best you can do is tactfully encourage your wife to look for her own reasons to take medications. Having done that, you can predict whether it’s ever going to happen, and direct your life accordingly.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
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.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
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.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
