Posted by fxckfeelings on December 14, 2009
As Christmas gets even closer, we have to help our readers with even more holiday-inspired, toxic self-reflection. The holidays have the unfortunate tendency to push people to examine and confront their hurt feelings, when really, the best gift they could give themselves is to ignore their feelings and just enjoy their friends, family, and seasonal baked goods.
–Dr. Lastname
I consider myself to be a pretty thoughtful gift-giver—I pay attention to what other people need, things they don’t even know they need, their birthdays, their anniversaries, and I usually get it right. My husband, on the other hand, isn’t sentimental at all about birthdays or anniversaries and doesn’t remember them, so he’s a lousy gift-giver and, I can’t help it, it really gets to me. After I knock myself out to get him a good birthday present, he either forgets mine, or gets flowers at the last moment, or thinks of getting me something and then doesn’t follow through. We have a wonderful marriage but every year around Christmas, his lazy, lousy gifting really gets on my nerves (particularly since I can’t help doing a good job with his gifts). It’s humiliating. My goal is to find a good way to address this problem so I won’t resent him this Christmas.
There’s not one, but two good reasons why it’s a bad idea to address the problem of unequal gift giving with your husband, and the first, it’s a safe bet, is that you’ve done it before and it turned out badly. I’m right, am I not? (It’s important for me to be right, given my Harvard background).
You reproach your husband for neglecting your Christmas needs, he gets defensive, tells you how he knocks himself out for you, maybe goes further and remembers the time you didn’t do your share, and then you have to tell him how he got the facts wrong.
Meanwhile, both of you are drifting further away from any spirit of Christmas giving, other than that old staple of gift-giving everywhere, the Christmas Earful.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 10, 2009
Most of us make a big deal out of apologies, but the sad truth is that “sorry” doesn’t serve as a guarantee of lessons learned or absolution, just a band-aid on our hurt feelings until one party messes up again. For all our emphasis on forgiveness, it’s hardly a virtue, Christian or otherwise, if it requires you to assume that people have more choices than they really do.
–Dr. Lastname
My daughter is turning into a petty criminal. She’s getting kicked out of school again, she won’t stop messing around with drinking and drugs, she has unprotected sex, and her boyfriend is probably the guy who broke into our house and stole our TV, though she refuses to believe it. My husband and I have tried so many times to get her to see what she’s doing wrong and steer her in a better direction—we’re our own private “scared straight” program at this point—but every time we confront her about where she’s headed, she says she feels terrible, that she’s sorry, that she never wants it to happen again…and then she gets wasted and everything repeats itself. If only we could get her to understand the harm she’s doing, maybe we could get through to her and turn her around. Meanwhile, it’s killing us. We try to forgive her, but it’s hard. My goal is to forgive her and get her to see what she’s doing to herself and everyone who loves her.
There’s no point in getting your daughter to see what she’s doing wrong if she can’t really stop herself from doing it, and she really, really can’t. You can’t scare straightness into a boomerang.
Regret and remorse will make her feel bad, and you might think that will stop her from fucking up next time. Well, au contraire, my dear unHarvard-educated sap. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. You should know that since you’re the one missing a TV.
According to Christmas movies and sentimental parts of the Bible, repentance leads to redemption, but I say, goddammit, that’s just wishful bullshit.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 30, 2009
Seeing someone through a long illness makes saying goodbye a little easier, but that’s like saying that lifting weights makes it easier to lift a truck; losing someone you love is an impossible, painful task, no matter what the circumstances. You don’t protect them from death by protecting them from death, but by bearing the sorrow of their memories.
–Dr. Lastname
My father, a Holocaust survivor, is dying of cancer. I’m his only child, and while my mother is doing the best she can, I feel overwhelmed with responsibility and grief. I don’t know how to stop feeling so helpless, not just because I love him and can’t save him, but because he overcame so much to make life possible for me, and now all I can do is watch him die. My goal is to figure out what I can do for him since he’s done so much for me.
Don’t fall for the common misconception that you fulfill your duty to your parents by taking care of them and keeping them safe when they’re old. As a genuine geezer, Dr. Lastname can tell you with authority: you can’t, and it’s not your duty anyway.
No, I’m not telling you to push your dad out on an ice flow or forget about him, not for a moment. I am telling you to think about two things: what your goal will be for your kids when you get old and need their help, and how little you can do for anyone when they’re suffering from old age.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 23, 2009
The one gift everybody can expect to get around the holiday season is a surplus of emotions (which, as I’ve said before, turns into a surplus of business for me—ho ho ho!). The ghost of Christmas (and Thanksgiving and New Years) past visits most of us, but for those with rough pasts, said ghost can be a real bitch. If you keep your emotional swamp in check and focus on the positive in the present, you can keep your festivities from being too haunted (and keep yourself out of my office).
-Dr. Lastname
You said before that everybody hates the holidays, and I think most people hate seeing their families. Well, I hate the holidays, but it’s because I don’t have a family; my parents still drink too much, one brother is in jail and the other I don’t trust around my kids, and so every time the holidays roll around I get depressed that I don’t have anyone because the people I should be happy to see are the ones who made me the crazy mess I am today (honestly—I’m bipolar, but on medication). I’m sick of basically being guaranteed to hate myself and life all winter just because of what my family did. My goal is to find a way to feel better no matter what time of year it is.
There’s a simple answer to why it’s a bad idea to expect to get over the sorrow of a bad, abusive family; because usually, it simply can’t be done.
Focusing on your pain and waiting for it to go away will spoil your holidays even more than they’re already spoiled. Talk about a turd in the cranberry sauce.
Maybe you think it’s a holiday right and tradition to vent/celebrate your sad feelings with a shrink. Well, this shrink says forget it. I’m not interested, and neither should you be.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 19, 2009
Unless you’re holding a weapon, getting someone to do something they don’t want to with a simple request is virtually impossible. Even harder, however, is getting someone to do something they don’t want to do by passively nudging them; now both the request and the delivery of the request are so repellent that you’ve guaranteed a bad outcome. Taking a stand isn’t easy, and jebus knows it’s often a bad idea, but when it has to be done, you need to cowboy up and be direct, weapon or no.
–Dr. Lastname
Lately, I’ve been trying to get my life together, and part of that is quitting drinking; my fiancé and I are actually getting sober together. The problem in all this is my mother; she lives nearby and comes over often (believing she is providing “moral support” for turning my life around), and, for whatever reason, no matter what the occasion, she brings a bottle of wine as a gift and makes a really big deal about the vintage and how refined it is and all this nonsense. I guess she doesn’t really understand that drinking is a big source of my problems, and both my fiancé and I have dropped hints to that effect, but it’s not getting through, and so, surprise, it’s messing with our sobriety. My goal is to get through to my mother that, while I appreciate her kindness, she’s actually being kind of cruel.
When you decide it’s necessary to get a grip on any powerful hard-to-control behavior, your goal is not to get people to take the hint that they should avoid tempting you. (Hint, hint—you’re being a wuss).
If you’re hinting, it’s because you’re afraid to tell people, straight out, that you’re trying to get sober, and that means that you’re more worried about what they think than about your reasons for not drinking. Your sobriety doesn’t stand a chance; you’re not strong enough.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 12, 2009
Boundary issues are always a fun topic for us at fxckfeelings.com; from those who want to get too close to those who push others too far away, people are always clashing over personal territory while assuming the other guy is violating the rules. But what if we’re wired to see our territories differently and talking about it just gets everyone more annoyed? That’s when your goal gets more interesting.
–Dr. Lastname
My next door neighbor is your typical Mrs. Kravitz…always in my business asking me personal questions. Lately, she’s taken to walking into my driveway while I am working to get more dirt. My proposed solution to remedy the uninvited driveway visits is to add on to the existing fence, cutting down the easy access. I don’t want to have a conversation about “why” I am putting up the fence, so I am just going to do it without letting her know. My only fear is that there will be some kind of future confrontation because this neighbor gets insulted at the drop of a hat. My goal is to protect my boundaries, one way or the other, without having an angry neighbor to deal with for the next 30 years.
Using a fence to block out your neighbor’s intrusive curiosity may work…unless it actually does the opposite.
After all, it may just serve to whet her appetite, and pretty soon, she’ll have you under 24 hour surveillance with Predator overflights and under-eaves webcams. You’ll look like Wile E. Coyote writing away to Acme (or the German Democratic Republic) for ever-more-advanced fencing.
In other words, your goal isn’t to stop her, but to try. If your goal is to stop someone from prying when you can’t, you’ll go nuts, and your helplessness will draw her like a magnet (and your misery will draw you to me like a magnet, trust me).
If you begin by admitting you might well be fucked, then you’ll probably try cheaper options first (unless you already have).
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 9, 2009
The holidays are a boom time for business, not just for malls and Salvation Army Santas, but for those of us in the mental health game; from family fights at Thanksgiving through being lonely on New Year’s Eve, holiday malaise keeps most shrinks pretty busy until the thaw begins after a chilly Valentine’s Day.
The reason for all this misery is due simple; all occasions involve great expectations for happiness and their close cousin, guilt, which is especially pronounced during this period, because, as much as nobody wants to avoid their own family or a stranger in need, it’s especially hard to do so “during the holiday season.” Of course, it’s bullshit, and a pain for most people, but for me, cases like these mark the beginning of the shrink’s harvest festival. Let me reap what you sow!
–Dr. Lastname
I don’t know why my sister turned out so trashy—we were raised under the same roof, and it wasn’t in a trailer—but she’s a real mess, with a drunk mess of a husband and three messy step-kids, and because of her traveling “Springer Show” of a family, I dread any and all family gatherings. She and her circus show up at Thanksgiving at my parents’ house every year, and by the end of the night at least one adult and two children are crying, and every year I swear I’m never going to put myself and my husband through another holiday disaster, but every year Mom talks me back into it and so it goes, over and over again. As the big day approaches, I want to know if there’s anything I can do to make this year any less excruciating. My goal is to find a way to be around my sister/my entire family without wanting to impale myself.
In addition to your Springer Show knowledge, you are certainly (and smartly) demonstrating the wisdom of not expecting family get-togethers to be fun, warm, and happy.
Sure, it would be nice to find yourself at a very special Thanksgiving (and in the TV-holiday-episode way, not the short bus way), and maybe that’s the kind of holiday gathering you used to take for granted chez vous.
Unfortunately those days are over, and the goal for you and your mother is to get used to the big, sad change and make the best of it. In one sense, it’s your sister’s fault, but since she married an asshole because she’s stupid, and not because she wanted to fuck your and her Thanksgiving over, it’s really no one’s fault.
It’s just life, and you often don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 29, 2009
When people feel most powerless, they instinctively attempt to exert as much control as they can; even—especially—when they have less control than ever. In those situations, they go to the one thing over which they feel they’ll always have control, which is their own life, or the lives of those closest to them, but the more they discuss whether or not to continue life, the more they make that life difficult. Ultimately, it’s best not to ask “should I live,” but to admit—you guessed it—”I am fucked.”
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t seem to make a decision about the life/death issue. I want to want to live, or have the balls to call it quits. Shit or get off the pot. It takes too much damn energy vacillating.
“To be or not to be”—that’s still the question, right? Well, it’s also a question I never like to answer or hear.
Shakespeare or no, it’s a bad question to ask, because most people who ask it don’t really want an answer; they want an antidote to their hurt or someone to blame for not providing it.
It’s similar to the way Boston taxi drivers ask the passenger whether to take the Pike or Storrow to Logan airport — to have someone else to blame when, either way, they inevitably run into heavy traffic.
I know, the question expresses your deepest feelings. It also wears out friends, drives them away/proves that no one can help, and confirms your right to be very, very unhappy. The whole cycle sucks and it’s unhealthy. Keep asking it, and somebody will go ahead and hurt you more.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 26, 2009
Like the injured gazelle at the watering hole, human beings also have an instinct to conceal their weakened status; often, our worst fear isn’t being set upon by unknown predators, but by those close to us, who will be disappointed when our wounds impair our usual performance. Even a gazelle, however, would realize that, when wounded, putting pride and other people’s needs first is ridiculous.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m an early middle-aged woman, lucky enough to have the problems that come with getting saner and older. I grew up in one of those sad alcoholic homes from which I never gave up working to extricate myself. I screwed life up at first but have been recovered from alcoholism over twenty years, similarly recovered from eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia, binge eating), returned to the school I had ditched to finally graduate with honors, kept jobs (now retired) and, a real miracle, I have been married to a terrific guy in my sobriety and am (for real) happily married. I have solid loving friends. I’ve seen therapists for the depression, which intermittently interferes but even found a half-assed but useful medication. A good life…except for the real problems that come with age. That wonderful husband has a couple of chronic diseases, my best friend died of the cancer I survived, and everyone is dead in my small original family. I am experiencing that trapped childhood feeling of being in a world in which I am helpless and those I love are hopeless and going away. I realize I must just feel the hurt and keep on anyway, but I am tired, and my stamina is more fragile now. I disappoint those I love and make mistakes more. Goal in writing you: To get a better grip on myself and accept more deeply that I cannot change the pain of life. I would like to not keep blaming myself, a old bad habit that lingers. Sorry I’ve gone on so long but I guess I wanted to show that I have really tried to help others and myself even if I’m whining now.
You see your goal as rising above the pain of aging, but you can’t fool me (remember, I went to Harvard): your deeper goal is to help people, to the point that their aging has worn you down and caused you to forget that you have other goals. For example, not getting worn down unless it’s really necessary.
So it’s not aging that’s your problem, but what aging has done to your ability to help others while keeping your priorities straight. That’s what I think is causing you the most grief. After all, if you were old but weren’t as responsive to the needs of others, all you’d have to worry about is your bad back and Tivo’ing NCIS.
On top of ascertaining your real goal, I can also guess you’re not from Samaria, so you don’t have a Samaritan license (funny, you don’t look Samaritan). That’s the first thing that’s wrong with your initial goal—wanting too much to help others.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 22, 2009
When different members of one family worship more than one god, life can become an unholy mess. If all parties can appreciate each other, however, and share the same values—even if they attribute their higher motivations to be good to different sources—then religion doesn’t have a goddamned thing to do with the love that a family shares.
–Dr. Lastname
My wife is Jewish, and I’m not (I’m a severely lapsed Catholic). Our oldest kid is about to enter school, and my wife has put it on the table that she wants him to go to a Jewish private school, which is surprising to me, not just because I’m not Jewish, but because my wife isn’t that religious at all—we go to celebrate a couple of holidays a year at her parents’ house but we never go to temple or anything. Now she wants our son to learn Hebrew, and I don’t get it, not just because she’s never cared before, but because if she’s worried about getting him a good education, Catholic schools are cheaper and he doesn’t need to learn a new alphabet. I don’t know how to get into this discussion without opening a huge holy can of worms, which is so strange considering how small a role religion has played in our married life up to now. My goal is to figure this out without stepping on any landmines or having my son end up studying and entering a religion I myself don’t practice (nor does my wife!).
If you stick with your own kind, be they your same religion, race, or member of the same area Trekker group, you can take lots of things for granted. It’s easier, there’s less pain, and you share common holidays, religious education, and strange-smelling foods.
Then again, maybe you knew what you were doing when you married outside the clan; it’s going to be a lot more interesting. Of course, if you dislike negotiation and conflict, you should have stayed away from Jews [disclaimer: Dr. Lastname is a proud member of the tribe].
If you can accept the fact that there are some painful, unavoidable differences between you and your wife, however, then you can start working on defining your areas of commonality and difference and find respectful ways to compromise without incurring any wrath, be it God’s or your wife’s.
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