Posted by fxckfeelings on March 23, 2015
Unless you’re a professional football player, litigator, or interventionist (or an amateur Asshole), you probably don’t enjoy confrontation. That’s usually a good thing, since there’s a reason that confrontation and incarceration sound so similar. It’s not good, however, if you’re just putting off a showdown while you try to understand your provocateur’s reasoning, or because you’re too forgiving of confrontation-worthy behavior. Like the football player, self-protection is one of your most important jobs, so learning how and when to take a stand requires the same amount of attention and follow-through as it takes for society to make laws and police to enforce them. If you do your job properly, you’ll know how to get through to someone without having to go pro and/or get into their face.
–Dr. Lastname
It took a while for my pizza shop to become successful because I’m an outsider in this very small community, but I’m a friendly person and my pizza is good, so I’m finally starting to get lots of regular customers. My problem is that one of those customers likes to come in for dinner two to three nights a week with his two very hyperactive little kids— they run around the restaurant, yell at one another, and bother all the other customers while dad ignores them, eats his pizza very slowly, and reads the newspaper. He makes me furious because I don’t understand how he can allow his kids to be so rude and obnoxious, and I’m worried about his driving other diners away. I’ve given him dirty looks and cleared his table forcefully, which he ignores. If I say anything, it just sounds angry, random, and, according to my brother who works with me, possibly offensive. My goal is to get this person to either stay away or leave the kids at home.
Whether you’re dealing with customers, relatives, or people who take up an entire overhead bin/park across three spaces/don’t wipe down the gym equipment when they’re done with it, it’s hard not to become over-reactive when people seem to disregard your expectations about personal space.
Unfortunately, the more reasonable you feel your expectations are, the more unreasonable you get when they’re ignored. If you were entirely rational, you’d assume their actions were their problem—evidence of stupidity or insensitivity rather than a personal insult—and do what was necessary to protect yourself. Unfortunately, you are not a robot, and, as such, you know from rage.
To you, rude people should know better and are disrespecting the rules of civilization. If they don’t respond to dirty looks or loud honks—indications that you are on to their willful disrespect—they are defying those rules and deserve punishment. While you, like so many, are tempted to provide that punishment, the result of such feelings, even when you’re dealing with your own kids, is almost always ugly and leads to trouble.
So stop expecting your customers to be civilized, or just knowingly uncivilized, and don’t feel obliged to improve their behavior. Instead, define the limits of bad behavior that you believe are acceptable in the space that’s your responsibility to control, then plan out a safe, polite and effective intervention. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 19, 2015
The issue of control—what you’re responsible for controlling (not much), whether it’s possible (not often), and what happens when you try (not good)—is a frequent topic around here. Our frequent negativity is due to the fact that people often try to control something they can’t, be it in themselves or others, while they should instead be trying harder to control their response to their helplessness. Fact is, the inability to control something doesn’t mean that you’ve failed, but that that something can’t be controlled, period, so redefine your responsibilities instead of pursuing the control you wish you had but never (ever) will.
–Dr. Lastname
Since my father died unexpectedly last month, I’ve found myself bursting into tears without warning, and I know it’s upsetting my children. We were all close to him, but he and I had a special bond, and his death has left a huge hole in my life. I’ve never felt anything like this before—he’s the first person close to me that I’ve lost, and lost suddenly—and I’ve never lost control like this in front of the kids. My wife says grief is natural, but I’m worried that I’m really acting crazy and scaring them, and I just can’t stop. My goal is to get a grip before I hurt my kids.
While the pain of grief, like depression, is uncontrollable, what you do with it isn’t; some people ease the pain with booze, hibernation, and/or memorial tattoos. It doesn’t make a lot of sense then that you’re beating yourself up for some tears.
You’re not making bad judgments due to your grief, but, instead of expecting to get rid of it or hide it, ask yourself what your goals should be to manage it. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 16, 2015
For most people, or at least those that aren’t evil, cyborgs, and/or hardcore Libertarians, it’s instinctive to want to help someone close to us when they’re down on themselves and their lives. Unfortunately, it’s also instinctive to want to hurt those same people if they won’t hear your advice or are faking helplessness in the first place. Avoid wasting time, effort, and needless anger by not feeling obliged to repeat help that isn’t really helpful. You may be more helpful by reminding them of their choices, assuming they have the strength to cope with them, and reminding yourself that being a not-cyborg doesn’t mean you can help everyone.
–Dr. Lastname
My baby brother is having a tough time with his wife, and he’s willing to tell me how her drinking is screwing up their family, but it’s amazing how quickly he can go from talking shit about her to defending her if I even tried to agree with him. Not that I would ever try or tell him to leave, because he always tends to do the opposite of what I suggest, anyway (just in general, but especially when it comes to her). Plus he really loves her and thinks he can change her, so he keeps on telling me what he told her and how it ended in a big fight, and then I think to myself how not surprising her reaction is and how she’s never going to change, but I just have to bite my tongue. I’m getting really sick of hearing about how crazy she makes him, and even more sick of not being able to say anything. My goal is to get him to see that she’s ruining his life before his endless bitching ruins mine.
You may feel you’re being called on to provide emotional support for your brother, given all the emotion he lays upon you. Unfortunately, given his reaction to your attempts at support, you think he doesn’t want your honest thoughts as much as he just wants a captive audience.
Were he to let you help him with his problems, you could tell him you feel his pain, second his assertions, and, given your level of empathy, tell him what you would do. It would be a win-win reaction, because you could help him to both feel better and change the subject.
Unfortunately, your brother doesn’t seem to want your help or to stop bitching, and, like you said, you don’t want to hear it anymore. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 12, 2015
Life is unavoidably dangerous, whether you’re working, dating, or going to a dog show. Instead of getting patriotic and building up your personal arsenal, learn to protect yourself with your mental ability to identify and manage risk. You may decide you can keep yourself safe by being more exacting or by being less obsessive; either way, respect the value of your own standards after weighing your responsibilities and resources. Danger is always there, but considering the risks, not trying to kill them, is your best defense.
–Dr. Lastname
I’d like to find a committed partner, especially now that marriage is legal for me and mine, but I’ve just finished a period of intense dating that has left me with a strong desire to be alone. The guys I was dating weren’t bad, crazy, or nasty, they just weren’t that interesting, so even though I knew it wasn’t going to work, I always felt bad about hurting their feelings and cutting things off too quickly, and it all wore me out. My suspicion is that I really should be trying harder and meeting more guys instead of going on too many dates with guys I’m not that into, but I can’t find the energy. I’m not sure whether my goal is to do more dating or just resign myself to being a single guy.
Trying to fix an already busy search for a partner by asking yourself to spend more time dating seems like an odd fix; it’s like trying to make a tough struggle to lose weight easier by sampling more food so you can understand why you can’t eat it. It’s a good strategy for making you want to give up altogether.
The problem isn’t that you’re not putting yourself out there enough, but that you’re not putting your many dates under enough scrutiny; your goals have become reactive to other people’s feelings and not your own priorities. In an effort to protect your dates’ hearts, you’re punishing yourself. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 9, 2015
Telling the unadulterated truth can be an intoxicating experience; revealing a dangerous secret can give extreme sport-levels of exhilaration, and the thrill of hearing a secret exposed is why most people watch any locale of The Real Housewives. Unfortunately, also like extreme sports, the adrenaline rush of secret-sharing is often followed by a painful, embarrassing crash. Sometimes you can be more helpful by keeping private information to yourself, and sometimes you can acknowledge a secret while being respectful. In any case, think carefully about consequences before you decide how much exposure is necessary and prepare to explain this necessity with respect. Then you’ll be a good judge of when to shut up and how to share and keep your friendships/bones/dinner party invitations intact.
–Dr. Lastname
I don’t know when my depression started, but the symptoms became pronounced when I was in high school. I started seeing a doctor and taking medication when I was in college, and twenty years later, that’s still what I do for treatment. I told my wife about my depression while we were dating, and my close family know about it, but I’m not very open about it besides…I’m a private person overall, and I don’t want to deal with being judged by others. Now that my son is in high school, exhibiting the same symptoms that made my adolescence so difficult, I’m worried that keeping quiet about my own illness wasn’t the right thing to do, and I’m not sure what advice to give my son, either. I think I should tell him about my own experiences, because I want him to know that he’s not alone or weird, and that he shouldn’t be ashamed of being sick, but I don’t want him to be totally open about his illness, given how the other kids might treat him. Then again, I worry that keeping quiet about our illness just perpetuates the stigma…one of my brothers is gay, so it reminds me of what he went through when he came out, if that makes sense. Then again, my brother didn’t want to be a poster child, and neither do I, but maybe, for my son’s sake, I should be? My goal is to figure out how to talk to my son about his depression, and how and if to talk to others about my depression, also.
Some people feel liberated by sharing all their secrets, but most people, especially those of us who came of age before Facebook, enjoy our privacy. If you’re an especially private person—you don’t feel compelled to tell the world what you ate for lunch, let alone what your prescriptions are—then sharing information about illness is an especially uncomfortable prospect.
Even when an illness is stigmatized, however, there are unique criteria for making your decision, with specific benefits to both disclosure and privacy. It’s your job to figure out which is more important given the unique facts of your situation and your son’s.
If you were a celebrity, then being totally open about your disease would give you the chance to reach out to and help others, but as a regular guy, the only person who will consider you a role model is your son. You can find the level of openness that works for you without having to be a poster child (which, for the depressive community, means being down-and-out and proud). WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 5, 2015
It’s remarkable how often people are blind to the true nature of their relationships; even more remarkable than the resulting number of bad conflicts, really bad romantic comedies, and truly horrific divorces. The only thing more frustrating than being blind is having to act as a seeing-emotion guide to one or both of the parties involved, either because you want them to ignore their differences or wise up to them. In any case, telling them how you feel about how they feel will probably make things worse. All you can do is remind them of their duty to do what’s right for themselves and hope that experience helps them see their way out of a horrible, unremarkable outcome.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve got two guys working in my warehouse who both do their jobs, but they can’t get along with one another, and their squabbling puts everyone on edge. The younger guy is very motivated and hardworking, but he feels the older guy is stupid and slows him down, and he gives him crap about it. The older guy isn’t lazy, but he is a little stupid and slow, plus he’s sensitive and he feels the younger guy doesn’t respect him, which is true. I’m their boss, so they both complain to me, but I don’t want to lose either of them because it’s a pain to train someone new. Plus I like them both, I just can’t stand how much they hate each other, and I can’t get them to sit down and work it out because it’d make things worse. My goal is to get them to get over this bullshit and get back to work.
As their boss, you have a right to insist that people working for you treat one another with respect and leave it to you to judge whether or not they’re competent. More realistically, however, bosses really just have the right to mediate between childish employees and absorb animosity. All this for better benefits and your own parking space.
Of course, being that you’re more like a father than an enforcer to your employees, you have as much power to make them get along as you do to get your kids to stop bickering in the minivan. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 19, 2015
Traditionally speaking, young people have always been impulsive by nature, but only recently have they given their philosophies acronyms, e.g., YOLO, FOMO, etc. (If you’re over fifty, these mean “You only live once” and “Fear of missing out.”) While it is true that you don’t live twice and that missing out on things is sad, focusing on these thoughts is often not helpful, particularly if you’re trying to make a mature decision. Sometimes you need to make up your mind and stick to it, FOMO be damned, and other times you should rethink a decision that feels right and consider standing down, because YOLO has a point. Either way, don’t feel guilty if a decision doesn’t come to mind or if later events cause you to reverse yourself. What counts in the long run is not whether you appear decisive; if your decisions promote good consequences that reflect your values, then you need not fear possible regret.
–Dr. Lastname
For the last eight months or so leading up to my 40th birthday, I have been bugged by the awareness that although I am not sure if I want a kid or not, the clock is ticking, and it worries me that the decision will be taken through lack of decision-making. Yes, I should discuss it with my husband but somehow I can’t get the words to come out. Perhaps I am stalling because of what he might say (I have imagined it either way and both are scary). I think we both have the makings of good parents, but we’ve never really been like other “proper grown-ups.” We have talked about it a few years ago and he was like “it’s up to you”… I think neither of us wants to be the one to pressure the other. Now I am just confused and mildly panicked. My goal is to find the courage to have a big grown up conversation and move forward, whatever decision we arrive at.
There are a lot of fun, contradictory human instincts, i.e., the way people feel compelled to get others to smell or taste something bad, or the way they merge at the last second to avoid traffic, thereby creating yet more traffic and filling less evil drivers with rage (ahem).
Less insidiously, there’s the way people avoid dealing with the most important decisions and leave them up to fate, the least reliable arbitrator of all.
You’re so spooked that you can’t even come up with an opinion on the subject; deciding how you feel about having children shouldn’t begin with a conversation with your husband, unless you want him to make up your mind for you, particularly since he’s told you he’s OK with whatever you decide. With the pressure of having a major decision on behalf of two people, it’s no wonder you’re stuck. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 16, 2015
Some medical issues can be resolved quickly, but most of the serious ones aren’t that easy; for every temporary infection and sprain, there’s the eternity of diabetes and, of course, mental illness. Just because your crazy isn’t going away, however, doesn’t mean you can’t try to figure out how to lead a sane life anyway. And if you can get your crazy under control, you have to stay vigilant in order to keep it that way. So don’t try for control that is perfect or permanent; that’s as farfetched as a cure. Prepare to take one drug and one symptom at a time until you know what you have to deal with and what works best for the long run. Even if you can never cure the pain, you don’t have to let it be an overwhelming pain in the ass.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m not depressed any more, but going to the hospital and taking medication didn’t change the fact that my wife looks at me in a different way than she used to, and she spends more time at the gym, where there’s a handsome trainer who knows her name. She says I’m crazy and paranoid because this guy’s gay and just being friendly and, after twenty years of raising the kids, she’s too tired to mess around anyway, but I know what I see. And there have been signs in the way she seems happier and sweatier when she gets home from working out and her sweat smells more manly than feminine. My goal is to get someone to see that it’s more than coincidence, and that I have good reason to feel she can’t be trusted, and I’m not just nuts.
The paradox of feeling paranoid is that validating your fearful suspicions is what you both crave and dread the most. If you’re right, then you’re not crazy, but neither are your worst fears; your sanity may be intact, but your world would be destroyed.
Having those fears invalidated isn’t so hot, either, because it means that you can trust the world around you, but your own brain is suspect. So if proving and disproving your suspicions will always end badly, learn how to give less weight to those nagging thoughts in the first place. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 12, 2015
We often say that being anxious has its benefits; after all, if you didn’t have nervous genes, your ancestors wouldn’t have been on edge enough to notice that angry mammoth by the watering hole and you wouldn’t be here today. Anxiety doesn’t work, however, if you’re so stressed that you can’t get the nerve to even leave your cave, or if you refuse to see a problem because it’s stressful and insist the charging mammoth is just a big happy dog. In any case, don’t let the unpleasant nature of stress push you to obsess over it or ignore it; learn to evaluate danger, whether you feel stressed or relaxed, and you’ll become better at both protecting yourself and appreciating the security you’ve created. Hopefully, your ancestors will appreciate your efforts.
–Dr. Lastname
I feel that nothing in my life is going in a good direction. I’ve learned an immense amount from my former båsusiness partner—she cashed out last spring–but I don’t think I’m that good at sales without her strategy behind me, so I’m short of money, as usual. The business itself is valuable, so I’m not out on the street yet, but I’m not eager to sell because every single one of these jokers making offers can’t be trusted not to ruin everything I worked so hard to create. Basically, I don’t see anything working out, and I don’t see what I can do about it except lose everything and die penniless. My goal is to figure out how to get out of this trap.
If pessimists see the glass as half-empty and optimists see it as half-full, anxious/depressive people see it as evidence that they’re failures who ruin everything they touch. And that’s true even if the glass is full to the brim, because they can see evidence of their worthlessness in anything if they squint hard enough.
My guess is that you’re good at many things, but self-assessment isn’t one of them. You may not feel anxious or depressed, but you’re describing the same sort of distorted perspective. After all, most people who start and own their own successful business feel trapped. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 9, 2015
Passion, love, and misery are like the rich foods of emotion; trying to banish them from your life altogether is as impossible (and saddening) as attempting to consume them non-stop. Passion especially, like a buttery steak, always gives apparent meaning to life, but too much can push you into taking dumb risks and too little can cause you to undervalue who you are. Ultimately, there are other values that matter more, like thoughtfulness, patience, and fiber, which is why moderation is key. If you can avoid pursuing heavy foods or feelings to excess, and remember the real basics, then they can enrich your life without weighing it down.
–Dr. Lastname
What is love? Some might say its a kaleidoscope of happiness, fun, visions coming together of two different personalities to settle for a better future. Love gives you a canvas to paint your future with colors of happiness and joy. For me it was a life changing experience because it happened with someone who was completely different from me. I first thought it could change us for the better¬—two people coming together to create a better future with a scope of mending oneself for the happiness of other, and it didn’t seem a hard task considering the happiness it involved—but I was shattered to learn that it was just a sham. My point of view didn’t matter, the pain didn’t matter, the agony didn’t matter, all that mattered was her nature, her attitude, her look out towards things. It took me four long years to come to this reality but it was too late…all it took was a whisker of a second to wake from that slumber of false hope. When it did it was all too late but for the better of both the individuals because four years of struggle were prevented from turning into a lifelong of pain. My goal is to remain outside the bubble of so-called stigma called LOVE.
To paraphrase the famous Homer Simpson quote about alcohol, love is the cure to and the source of all of life’s problems. It’s given us excellent pop songs, drunk wedding toasts, and, for most people, moments of true happiness. It’s also given us terrible pop songs, sober divorces, and, of course, lessons in true misery.
As such, it’s not unnatural to want to recreate lost love if you feel, as so many do, that it gave meaning and importance to everything you did and do. One way of holding onto it is just expounding on it with all the meaning and emotion the written word can allow, as you’ve done above.
The danger, as you point out, is that love can draw you to someone who has different values, wants different things, and is maybe just not a nice person. It blinds you to dangers and the risk of breakup while offering such a strong illusion of deep meaning. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
