Posted by fxckfeelings on August 10, 2009
Some people find themselves suddenly, inexplicably cursed by a life of hardship and pain, while others cruise through a blessed existence of acclaim and luck. Truth is, of course, that the person in pain isn’t doomed to constant misery, and lucks brings its own peculiar, unavoidable hardship; thankfully, everyone of us, in one way or another, is fucked. It’s where we go from there that makes the difference.
–Dr. Lastname
Just a few years ago, in my early 20s, I was a fun, outgoing law student at a top tier school, on the cusp of beginning a promising career in a competitive field that I loved. But then, out of no where, my health fell apart. Without getting into it, I was diagnosed with a rare, chronic disease that causes me so much pain and fatigue that even the simplest tasks have become arduous. I had to drop out of school, move back home, and learn to deal, not just with the physical pain of everyday life, but with feelings of failure and being a complete loser. All my old friends are moving upwards and onwards, like I was once set to do, and all I can do is take it slow and try to cope with this new, brutal reality. Plus, because my disease is rare and not physically obvious (I look healthy), several friends and even family members have decided that I’m not sick, but that I just buckled under the competitive pressure of my law career or that I’m just lazy, and am using a fake disease as an excuse. They say things like, “my joints hurt, but I go to work everyday,” and I just want to curl up and die. Between my own disappointment and their cruel judgment, I’ve withdrawn from social interaction almost completely for a year now. My goal is to not completely isolate myself from the world and maybe even start to enjoy some social interaction again despite feeling self-conscious and experiencing such dismissive attitudes from others.
It’s good that you want to get out of your self-imposed solitary confinement—living like that’s unhealthy, even for people who are physically healthy to begin with—but attaching the enjoyment of social interaction onto your goal is not so hot, especially when you’re suffering from a disease that seems to make enjoying anything nearly impossible and gives prospective friends a case of the repulsive willies.
Problem is, despite your best efforts, enjoyment is out of your control, and if you make a big effort to extend yourself socially and run into crap, you’ll feel like a stupid failure and personally rejected, when, really, it’s your standards that are the problem. Yours and everyone else’s.
A better goal is to work at not taking your pain and isolation personally while working out rational standards for what it means to cope with them.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 6, 2009
One of the basic tenets of the fxckfeelings.com philosophy is this: you can’t change people. As such, even trying to change someone’s mind by making their anger go away is never a good goal, whether it’s the anger of a naggy spouse or a misbehaving kid. Instead, change your line of reasoning: go back to basics and define the issues for yourself. Then, if you’re lucky, they’ll change their own minds.
-Dr. Lastname
My wife and I are both artists—her painting, me sculpture—but after our son was born, it became clear that one of us was going to have to get a real job in order to pay the bills. I was making more money from sculpting at the time, so she was the one to take the plunge. Her job is actually somewhat creative, and she doesn’t hate it completely, but now that I’m not having as many shows and selling as many pieces, she’s leaning on me constantly to work harder or find a better-paying job. I try to tell her that I’m doing the best I can, but she doesn’t accept that, and if I even suggest that she’s bitter that she had to give up her art and I didn’t, she absolutely loses it. The truth is, I think my career is worth holding on to, but I don’t know how to convince her unless I make a windfall in the next six months. My goal is to get my wife to get off my back.
Never try to get your wife off your back, because that a), implies you’re already trapped underneath her, and b), means you’ll be lying, squirming, and generally pulling all the stops to change her mind/get her to move, which will just strengthen her resolve.
In fact, if you look behind you, you’ll notice you’re giving your wife a piggy-back ride at this very moment. So your goal will wrench your back.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 27, 2009
When you work at a family business, you often feel obliged to go above and beyond what would normally be expected of you. But if “above and beyond” means your job has forced you into a moral quandary and a double life as a cop or therapist, then it’s time to forget family and get rational. And if you still can’t figure out a solution, it’s time to get a new job.
–Dr. Lastname
My family has had a business going back three generations; now my dad’s in charge, my sister and I work there, plus a bunch of cousins, aunts, and uncles. I was looking through one of my client’s files when I saw some numbers that looked off. Going through the records, it became clear that this was a persistent inaccuracy, so I went to my sister, who actually does the accounting. She was really upset I’d come to her—she admitted she’d cooked the books a bit, and hoped I wouldn’t notice—but begged me not to say anything to anyone or be mad, because our father had told her to do it, and said he had a good reason. I don’t want to ask my father what that reason is—even though I can’t imagine what reason he has in mind—but I do want him to stop, because he’s putting the entire business in danger. At the same time, he’s my father, and if I do challenge him, it would really upset him and everyone else in the family. They respect him and would consider it disloyal to question his judgment or put the family in trouble. But wouldn’t going under or getting sued also upset the family? I’ve always believed in doing the right thing, but is it right to confront him and get everyone mad at me and possibly lose my job, or to say nothing and be part of something dishonest? It’s killing me not to have an answer, and that’s my goal.
If you assume that there’s always a good way to do right—that there’s a black and white right and wrong—you’ll often make things worse for you and your loved ones. Simple-minded idealists probably do more harm in this world than all the thieves combined.
The problem with these idealists is that they elevate the peaceful feeling of a good conscience above considering what happens next or whom it harms. If this actually were a simpler world where the only temptations came from destructive or selfish impulses, and all of us really had the same ability to choose between good and evil…well then, that sounds like a very simple, logical place to be. But it also sounds like one nation under Skynet.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 23, 2009
In business negotiations, the best way to get what you want is to offer the other person something they want, respectfully. In families, on the other hand, people negotiate by being emotional, desperate, and needy, which is why the women in these two cases need to learn the business, and fast.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve been a teacher in the public school system for a long time, but in recent years, with this “teaching the test” nonsense, I’ve felt less and less appreciated for what I do. Now that an administrative shake-up has replaced anyone knowledgeable about education with empty bureaucrats who treat me like some uncertified graduate student, I’m desperate to retire and save myself from what’s become a daily indignity. My husband knows how much I want to stop teaching—he’s heard about my deteriorating job for a while now—but he’s facing a lot of restructuring at his own job, so he’s not very supportive of my decision because he’s worried about where that will leave us financially. I know that’s a reasonable response given he might see his salary get reduced (or disappear), but no matter how rationally I assess the situation, I still resent him for not supporting me, and then I feel guilty for expecting his support when he has worries of his own. My goal then, as I see it, is to get him to understand that I’ve really, really had it with this job and that I need to get out and that he should be giving me emotional support right now, because I’m about to lose my mind.
Look at the disaster you’re setting up by going after your husband’s understanding, but, at the same time, scaring the shit out of him about your economic security. There’s the concept of the carrot and the stick—this is the stick and the mace.
Let’s assume he’s much kinder and smarter than the usual hubby, and doesn’t lay a guilt trip on you about who’s been working harder/who most deserves a rest right now/why the hell do you think you can start to ease off when he has to double his pace just to break even, blah blah blah.
Even then, it would take an inhuman saint to be so calm about your troubles (and their impact on your mortgage payments) not to respond with, “well, dear, we need to think this through,” rather than “I’ll do whatever it takes to make you feel safe.” Not the way you’re framing the argument.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 6, 2009
In honor of our nation’s birth, we’re doing our patriotic duty this long weekend and helping out one of our elected leaders (at least until he’s forced to resign); this man may no longer be a hopeful for the White House, but he’s already the commander-in-chief of feelings. We also reach out to his wife, who probably is less in need of a shrink than a good divorce lawyer.
Happy 4th!
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve always had a God-given gift for communicating with people and have tried to use my gifts to lead people in a moral direction. In recent years, after achieving success as a lawyer, and marrying a truly remarkable woman, I felt a calling to run for office and, with her help as campaign manager, I was elected to office. I wasn’t afraid to take unpopular positions if I felt I was doing the right thing, because I trust my passion; that’s what connects me with people. About a year ago, I felt an unbelievable sense of connection with a beautiful, foreign woman. I’ve never felt so close to anyone, and it seemed unfair to either one of us not to share our love. But instead of having a beautiful experience to share and then put behind us, I became obsessed. It distanced me from my wife, who sensed that something was wrong, and it distracted me from work. I had to lie, and I hate lying. Finally, and with great relief, I confessed the truth. But I still can’t stop thinking and talking about her and now my marriage and political life are a mess. In the past, passion has brought me all my success and I need passion in my life. Now, I want to recapture that passion in a way that revives my marriage, interest in my job, and relationship with the public.
To successful politicians, who often have your style and personality, intense feelings often seem like the core of their being, and what makes them special. Such feelings give the gift of easy communication, charisma, material success, votes, and a certain je ne sais what the ladies love (and, sometimes, the dudes—here’s to you, Larry Craig, for having more charisma in your feet than most of us have in our entire bodies).
Sooner or later, however, your skills work their mojo, you achieve your goals, and life settles down to boring conversations with family and the same old guys at work (even if many are relatively famous), and at that point, if passion has become your elixir of life, you may feel like you’ve lost your oxygen and slid into meaningless mediocrity. The spark, as you might call it, is gone.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 1, 2009
Human nature tells us that the best way to solve a problem is to get to the root of the issue, but some problems, like mental illness, have no simple cause and no solution to speak of. In today’s cases, two people need to rethink their approach to mental illness; when you stop looking for someone to blame or a silver bullet cure, you can get to the real business of learning to cope with the reality of the present.
–Dr. Lastname
I think one of my sister’s kids might be mentally ill—he’s 9 and very intense and unhappy—but my sister doesn’t see it, and I don’t know how/if to get her to pick up on it. It should be fairly obvious to her since we saw the same symptoms in our mother, who wasn’t diagnosed as bipolar until we were kids and she had a chance to put on quite a show. I guess my sister doesn’t really understand that our mother wasn’t just a mean drama-queen but actually sick, maybe because she was younger when Mom went to the hospital and doesn’t really remember, or maybe because she’s in denial, or maybe both of those things combined with the fact she and her husband are space cadets that are such hands-off parents they don’t even notice that one of their own children is clearly suicidal. My goal is to get my sister out of the clouds and get my nephew some help, because if something happens to that kid, I don’t blame genetics, I blame her.
As any teacher well tell you, the danger of bestowing your idea of help on another parent’s child is that you have very little control over how parents react, because no parent wants to hear that something is wrong with their child. And their default response lies somewhere between defensive anger and general freaking out.
The freaking out also comes from the fact that it’s hard to keep the urgency and alarm out of your voice, no matter how diplomatic you think you are, and feelings trigger feelings. Suddenly you’re in a perfect storm of hysteria, but hey, no good deed goes unpunished.
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