Posted by fxckfeelings on February 20, 2012
When love hurts, everyone’s a psychologist looking for a fixable issue. Trouble is, most love problems have deep roots that can’t be fixed without a single (or couples) lobotomy. Whether the problem starts with your feelings or the other guy’s (and, often, it’s clearly one or the other, not both), the big question is whether whoever owns them can manage them, not whether you can make them go away. In either case, if you’re prepared to accept whatever you find, you can stop love from destroying you, even if you can’t stop it from hurting your heart and your head.
–Dr. Lastname
I love my boyfriend—we’ve been together for 2 years and I’d like us to be able to live together when our kids (from previous marriages) are grown—but every few months he gets a strange look in his eye, his body language changes, and he acts like he’d rather be somewhere else. When I confront him, he’s apologetic, but admits he’d rather be alone, and then he goes back to his place and doesn’t call. I feel devastated, but I give him space, and eventually he’s back to himself and we settle into our talk-every-day routine. After the first time or two, I thought we’d worked things out and it wouldn’t happen again, but now I’m losing faith. I want him to get help. I can’t see how our relationship can go forward if this keeps happening and that’s my goal.
It’s weird, but there are some people who would really like to have committed relationships who are also allergic to them. Sadly, there is no relationship version of the poodle.
While such people have shaky moods, their values are solid. The problem isn’t that they’re distracted by beautiful new people or romantic excitement; they simply can’t stand too much domesticity for too long without getting short of breath and dying to be alone. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 16, 2012
More often than not, being nice isn’t. It can get you focused on doing good for other not-quite-so-nice people who will never be able to return the favor, or on cleaning up impossible messes, instead of focusing on the larger, more important goals that go beyond good gestures towards common sense. Be nice if you must, but remember that you have other goals, one of which is knowing when you have to be cruel to be kind.
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t stop thinking about my wife’s lack of support. I’ve supported her in everything she wanted to do, whether it was getting a professional degree or going away for a week to study photography, but now I’m the one who wants to go back to school part-time to get a special ed certificate, and she’s hemming and hawing about how we don’t have the money. I’ve done the budget, and we can get by while I’m in school, and the degree will pay off, but she’s very cool to the idea. I want her to see how unreasonable she’s being and how unfair this is after all I’ve done for her.
There’s nothing wrong with being a giving, loving partner, as long as you don’t expect the world to treat you fairly. And the world includes your wife.
Few people are nice and giving all the time. Even worse, no matter how nice you are to those around you, there are lots of people who don’t give a shit about your generosity, are teflon when it comes to good will, and are never going to be nice, period. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 9, 2012
The only thing worse than having negative feelings about someone or something for no good reason is having those feelings with every justification in the world. Either way, it’s usually better to keep those feelings to yourself, because no matter where the feelings come from, unleashing them sends them to the same place; to confuse, upset, and frustrate everyone around you. The truth about bottled-up feelings is that, with time, they don’t explode, they dissipate. Eventually, negative feelings go away, even if they don’t go quietly.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m in a very loving and healthy relationship with a divorced father of a 5-year-old. I feel we are deeply in love and we plan to marry, however, when he has his son I feel like nothing more than an outsider. Although he is very fond of me, I can’t help but be overcome with jealousy at the attention my boyfriend gives him and I distance myself in order to hide my feelings. I end up feeling isolated and alone which ends with tears if he asks me what’s wrong. I’ve tried to separate my feelings from reality, because his son deserves his attention and time. I see him light up when his kid’s around, but it’s hard for me to understand their relationship since my own father is a deadbeat and I’ve been dealing with abandonment issues my entire life. I don’t want him to feel guilty because he’s such a great dad and misses his kid and I don’t want his son to feel that I’m indifferent to him and ignore him, but I can’t help but feel like the jealous older sister. My goal is to remove myself from these emotions and learn to appreciate our unique family blend.
Don’t feel guilty for your thoughts or feelings, particularly when your actions don’t reflect those feelings. You can feel wrong as long as you do right.
And you must be doing a good job with managing your bad feelings, because, regardless of how jealous or bummed you feel when you behold your fiancé’s warm father-son relationship, you’ve done a great job of keeping them to yourself. You’ve succeeded in protecting your most important relationships from the negativity.
One definition of professionalism is behaving in a benevolent, job-oriented way without letting negative feelings show or interfere. You’re obviously a pro, particularly since you’re doing it while managing a shitload of pain. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 26, 2012
When it comes to marital autopsies, people look for bad decisions and bad behavior the way detectives look for foul play. Unfortunately for anyone hoping for a simple CSI: Divorce, the chief culprits for most marital rifts are personality factors that no one controls, like having an irritable temperament or a terrible interpersonal chemistry when things get tough. We can judge ourselves on how we manage these unfortunate traits, but not on whether or not we have them. So, after rendering your own judgment and making amends if necessary, waste no more time on apology or blame. After all, it’s not a crime scene, just a marriage.
–Dr. Lastname
My ex-wife became the victim from hell after our divorce, which she and the kids blamed on my messing around with another woman. The truth is, I’d been eager to get divorced for the past 10 years, particularly because my ex was so good at messing up and then acting like a victim. I didn’t have that or any affair until I had almost put the divorce in motion and the youngest was about ready for college, and my not-mistress has subsequently become my wife. I felt guilty, however, and the kids see me as guilty, so they punish me with silence, or worse, extend an invitation to have a talk so they can hit me with a blast of endless recrimination before returning to silence again. Needless to say, explaining doesn’t help—their anger is endless—so when they call me up, I wonder what to say. My goal is to help them with their pain and restore a normal relationship.
Most good people feel guilty about leaving a marriage, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. Guilt the emotion, as opposed to guilt the legal state, is never necessarily caused by bad behavior.
You feel guilty because those you love are hurt and disappointed, and happen to blame you. Given the fact that one of the most important reasons that people marry—perhaps the most important—is to have someone to blame, guilt is an unavoidable part of both marriage and divorce that should never, ever be considered proof of criminality.
As natural as your guilt is, it’s dangerous to let it guide you when you’re managing seriously angry kids (or adults, especially when they’re acting like kids). It’s like showing fear to a tiger, or blood to a vampire, or low-hanging comedic fruit to Ricky Gervais. They’ll just keep coming. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 23, 2012
For those of us in the helping professions who overestimate our ability to help, (off-hour phone) calls for help can become a big problem. Whether you’re soft and sympathetic or blunt and tough, there’s no problem you can’t make worse by taking too much responsibility for messes that are beyond your (or anyone’s) control. If, on the other hand, you know the limits of your powers, you can respond to calls pleasantly, do your job, and still help someone without hurting your own sanity.
–Dr. Lastname
While most mental health clinicians would feel guilty admitting this, I’ve been in the biz for long enough that I don’t give a shit and I need to vent. Most of the crisis calls I get from my psychotherapy practice are senseless and irritating; they’re from patients who feel bad because they forgot to take their medications, or drank too much or when they shouldn’t, or allowed their demons to wreak vengeance on their enemies, the nearer the better, self best of all. A few call me because they’re feeling suicidal (but won’t go to the hospital) and just want me to make them feel better, which is hard when it’s late and I’m tired, and often impossible just because I don’t have that kind of power. I try to be civil, but their calls leave me feeling helpless and wondering whether I’m doing any good. Discussing their responsibility for their behavior is useless, because it usually makes them mad or apologetic. My goal is to figure out what to do with crisis calls that are really a useless pain in the ass.
Many crisis calls you receive as a shrink do a good job of showing off a patient’s worst behavior. It’s like having partial custody of a colicky child.
It’s not that their distress isn’t real and severe—it is, almost always—it’s that it causes self-defeating behavior, like drinking or mouthing off or retreating from the world, which creates a jam that is extra hard to get out of.
Bad feelings cause bad behavior, bad listening skills and bad regrets about going into the therapy business instead of owning a Toyota dealership. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 16, 2012
No one ever totally controls art or business, which doesn’t stop artists and professionals from being control freaks who rate themselves by their results. The difference between them is that a businessperson with poor results usually still gets paid, while an artist who produces bad art, or good art in a bad market, doesn’t. No matter what one’s field, all anyone can do is keep working, because the only way you can guarantee shitty results is by giving up work entirely.
–Dr. Lastname
Like a lot of artists, I don’t think I’m good at anything else. I’ve been “the arty one” since I can remember, I went to art school on a scholarship, and I’ve gotten illustration work pretty steadily since then. Ever since my last job, however, I’ve started to wonder if I’ve lost it somehow. I got a steady gig in a graphic design department, and at first, I totally got along with my co-workers and we seemed to share a sensibility. Then, for some reason—maybe it’s my age (I was the youngest one), the new department head, an off-the-mark project I completed, I don’t know—the group consensus turned on me and I was treated like an untalented hack for the first time in my life. I’ve never dealt with this before, and I still don’t get it, because the higher-ups were still pleased with my work even if my peers decided it sucked, and I was always nice to everyone. The only thing that did happen was that I started to doubt my ideas more, because every time I’d come up with something I’d immediately think of all the reasons my co-workers would hate it. After a few months of this, I couldn’t take it anymore, so when a college friend told me there was an opening at his work, I jumped on it. The problem is that I still can’t get that negativity and doubt out of my head—maybe I am a hack, after all—and I’m terrified of starting this new job and either not coming up with anything good or not coming up with anything period until eventually I can’t get a job at all. I’m not good at anything else, but what if I’m not good at design anymore, either? My goal is to get my mojo back (or at least get these assholes out of my brain).
One of the curses of being talented, in arts or sports, is that talent becomes the heart of your self-esteem. Talent and ego have a flawed-yet-symbiotic relationship.
It’s particularly true if, like many talented people, you’re actually not so hot at doing other things. It’s as if your talent takes up extra brain-space, crowding out room for the basics and leaving you both gifted and klutzy, brilliant and ADD, hyper-capable and totally incompetent.
Other people might tell you that you’re good at other things, but those other people are wrong; they don’t have or understand an artistic mind. They had to decide on a career, whereas you probably felt like you didn’t have a choice. They also probably have health insurance. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 12, 2012
People say that the most important factor in relationships is timing or chemistry, but you can’t have a relationship to begin with without luck, and you can’t be a loser in love if you don’t take your bad luck personally. A good match is hard to find and a not-good-enough match is hard to leave, but as long as you do a good job searching and, when necessary, leaving, you’ll never be a loser, regardless of whether you get “lucky.”
-Dr. Lastname
I am in the fourth year of a partnership with a great guy—smart, athletic, caring, fair, trustworthy, all of it—but I am bored out of my mind. Although he loves outdoor activities like biking and skiing by day, his only hobby in the evenings is watching TV. I am a musician, artist, craftsperson, not an outdoor whiz, and I feel like I am completely uninspired in this situation. I have talked with him about at least not watching TV every night, and we try for a while, but it always ends up back where we started, with him watching TV, and me in another room reading or doing something somewhat productive, or just giving in and watching with him (I hate TV, wish we didn’t have one). I want to do things together but he is not interested in any of the things that I am interested in. Maybe this is just the most a person can hope for in life and I’m spoiled for wanting more than loyalty and love from someone, but I feel guilty all the time for hiding these thoughts from him. Maybe he would be better off without me, too, you know? Maybe I should let him go so he can find a girl who is really IN LOVE with him.
How much you love someone depends, in part, on the effect of partnership on the necessities of your life, as well as your interests. In your case, however, you don’t seem to see partnership as necessary for the necessities, so the difference between what you two want may be be more than television.
If you’ve been struggling to make ends meet and/or raise kids and someone enters your life who’s decent and willing to share the load, you’re probably going to wind up loving him, even if you don’t love everything you do together.
On the other hand, if you’re a fairly self-sufficient person who doesn’t need a partner in order to have a decent standard of living and raise kids, then there’s no reason to live with anyone who doesn’t ring your bells or leave the couch. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 9, 2012
Horrible thoughts and feelings are supposed to make you feel as if there’s something horribly wrong, and there is, but it’s not necessarily with you. Even when your brain is giving you strange signals and your mood is in the pits, you’re the same old person with the same old values. Judge yourself by what you do with symptoms of mental illness, not by the way they make you feel or think, and you will never have reason to doubt yourself or despair.
–Dr. Lastname
I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anorexia nervosa purging type a few years ago. Both of these issues had pretty much consumed my life during the years leading up to that diagnosis and have continued to be impairing ever since. I started cutting myself two years ago (it has become more frequent this past year), and I’ve had several panic attacks in the past several months. Fortunately, my overwhelming desire to commit suicide has subsided, although I still think of suicide and my death in general fairly often. In addition to my own issues, I have watched my mom slip into a state of psychosis during the past two years, triggered by the death of her father. She has become so depressed, delusional, and violent that my parents separated and sometimes I don’t even feel safe staying in the house with her—a few weeks ago my dad and I had to stop her from going through with a suicide attempt. The police were called, and I had to hold her arms down while she was clearly in a psychotic rage. At one point, she tried to stab my hand to make me let go. She was taken to a mental health facility where she stayed for a week, and now she’s furious at us for making her go there and hasn’t been much better since then. I feel like I never get anywhere with therapists because they just prescribe medicines that make me feel numb to any emotions or focus on my eating disorder so much that I never get to work through these other issues. I feel like my life is unraveling and it’s gotten so bad that, honestly, I don’t feel like I even want to fix it. My goal in telling you this is to figure out a way to help my mom and how to get through school while I’m dealing with this.
It may seem strange to hear this, for someone who suffers as much as you do from depression, anorexia, and the burdens of taking care of a very sick mother, but I think you’re doing an amazing job.
Yes, you’re chin-deep in shit, but you haven’t drowned, and that’s a remarkable accomplishment.
Your depression hasn’t made you hate people or blame them, and your anorexia hasn’t caused you to pretend you’re not sick, so you must have a solid hold on reality. There you are, with all your pain, finding the love to help your mother and the energy to go on with your studies. You’ve got good values and a big soul. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 5, 2012
Whether you take pride in controlling your health with the latest developments in modern medicine, ancient holistic treatments, or the dictums of Xenu, you’re making the same basic mistake in thinking that you control your health. Depression is especially insidious, because there’s no amount of will power or even therapy that can make for a perfect solution. So gather techniques wherever you may using whatever works to deal with what ails you, just remember that the goal isn’t finding a cure, but the best methods to help you cope.
–Dr. Lastname
I have suffered from anxiety and depression much of my life. My most recent (and most devastating) bout was a couple of years ago, when I worked with a therapist and managed to heave myself out of it without the use of antidepressants (which I had been on in the past and want to learn to live without.) Now I find myself slipping back in. My biggest issue seems to be that I put too much stock in what others think of me or might think of me (I’m really good at fabricating things people might be saying about me.) I also had a baby last year, which has prevented me from pursuing my career fully, so when I hear of the successes of others (or see them on Facebook) I get very anxious and feel that the universe is unjust. I want to be a good mom, and I want to be good at my job, but I feel I am failing at both and resenting others who are great at either. I was made fun of a lot when I was a kid and I think I still carry some of this baggage around, like whatever decision I make is the wrong one because I’m basically a loser. How can I focus on myself and my own life without worrying about what everyone else is up to or what they may think about me?
While you already have a good idea of what to do about your negative thinking, you still need to protect yourself from two bad ideas that you express here. Unfortunately, those two ideas are also your “goals.”
First, disavow yourself of the notions that you should be able to stop depression without using medication and that you should find a way to be less, for lack of a better word, insecure. In doing so, you won’t be giving up—you’ll be giving yourself some relief. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 29, 2011
Being thoughtful is good, but being thoughtful to the point of painful obsession is having OCD, with fearful thoughts that stick in your brain and won’t go away unless you do something sort-of-magical and sort-of-stupid that gives you a moment of relief (before your fears start again). The good news is that it happens to good people who learn how to manage and live with it, which can happen much more easily if you can abandon the worst obsession of all—finding a way to cure the OCD altogether.
–Dr. Lastname
Please Note: Monday is also a fxckfeelings.com holiday. Happy New Year (and again, if/when it’s unhappy, you know the drill).
I’m a current student and I’ve sort of self-diagnosed myself as having an unusual kind of OCD. It started out four years ago when I was studying for an upcoming major exam. I had always been one of the few top students, but at one point in time in the midst of hours of straight studying, I couldn’t absorb any more info, and in a fit of frustration, a ball of emotions welled up and I actually said harshly in my mind to myself, “you shall FAIL!”, even though I’ve always tried to avoid such negative thinking. What came next was an unshakable, unexplainable, and annoying-yet-scary series of feelings, thoughts and emotions for the next few days and weeks. After that episode, I developed an irrational apprehension about me having “ruined” myself and my academic ability. To get myself back to my normal, anxiety-free mind when studying or doing anything related to studies, I imagined “transferring” the whole chunk of this mental mess on other stuff, whether it is the faces of people who did badly in academics in my field, to those I don’t like, etc. Still, my mind would automatically be inclined to have these random obsessions appear in my mind while studying, and it’s really prevented me from fully unleashing my full academic ability in subsequent grades. I really felt restrained and trapped by this, and my goal is to eliminate this strong-rooted (it’s been 4 years) mental condition that happens whenever I study and then makes it almost impossible.
Some OCD thoughts are crippling but come out of nowhere, like fear of contamination or making a mistake. While they often lead to compulsive rituals, like repeated hand-washing and fact-checking, you manage to keep studying. So, while you’re suffering, you’re still lucky.
The fact that your obsessive fears are tied to school may make them easier to deal with, because, unlike germs, school (usually) doesn’t go on forever.
School is built on mental constructs that attract obsessions like lint to a dryer vent; it’s got grades, grade-points, and exams that hinge on a word or the instructor’s interpretation of same. It invites obsession and obsessive argument, which can be torture, but at least it has an end date. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
