Posted by fxckfeelings on April 18, 2019
When, like our recent reader, you know you’re trapped in a pattern of becoming the most attached to people who are the least interested or even worthy of your attention, it’s useful to strategize and make a plan for when the next would-be (but shouldn’t-be) object of obsession crosses your path. Here are five task-oriented techniques for overcoming obsession before it starts.
1) Accept Your Obsessiveness without Obsessing About It
You might think that you could avoid future fixations if you could just figure out why they happen, but plumbing the depths of your psyche to figure out which childhood trauma or lost toy caused you to be this way is, in fact, just another empty obsession that will lead you nowhere. As you’re already learned the hard way, there’s no better way to feed an obsession than to obsess about it, even if what you’re obsessing about is why you have it and how you can make it go away. In reality, no one knows why some people are prone to obsessive attachments and no one has a formula for ungluing you once you’re stuck, other than time and a constant effort to manage your unfortunate habit.
2) Delve Into Distraction
When you start to feel obsessive thoughts creeping in, try to keep your brain busy with more important activities instead. A new object of fixation can be hard to resist—especially at first, when they seem so exciting and promising—but your attachments to other people, work, family, and your long term interests will always be much stronger and more meaningful, in the end, than any obsession. So immerse yourself in whatever usually matters to you, fighting as hard as you can until your shiny source of fixation fades away.
3) Don’t Think You Can Turn A Fixation Into A Friendship
As much as you’d be willing to settle for any relationship with an object of obsession, even a platonic one, it’s too much to think you can immediately force yourself into a benign friendship with someone you were once fanatical about. These attempts at casual connection usually just make the obsession worse, since you’ll now be analyzing and obsessing over every conversation hoping to find evidence of something more. Then you won’t be able to control your sensitivity to being treated as a casual friend and you will hate yourself if your vulnerability shows, which will then cause you to obsess over your pain and foolishness until you’re in full fixation meltdown. Accept the fact that your obsession limits your options and there’s to be no contact until you’ve recovered.
4) Process Patterns
Obsessive tendencies are a lot like weather; you can’t control them, but with enough experience you can learn to predict when they’re coming and prepare for the storm accordingly. Look back at the kind of person you get obsessed with and identify what drew you to them. Unfortunately, the things you like about obsessive objects probably double as red flags, which means those are the qualities you should look out for and avoid in the future. Then list the character qualities that might guarantee you a more positive and reliable response so you can seek them out instead. Recall how quickly you latched onto people in the past and examine whether you could have improved your safety by slowing things down, determining new mandatory procedures for pumping the breaks in the future. You may not be able to make your brain stop obsessing, but you can teach yourself ways to stop those obsessions from taking over.
5) Consider Treatment
If the symptoms of your obsessive tendencies are extraordinarily painful or interfere with work or important friendships and you can’t find a way to break out of the cycle on your own, don’t be afraid to find a therapist who can help you manage the issue. Consider first non-medical treatments, which include everything from exercise to cognitive behavioral therapy (techniques to manage unwanted thoughts) to hypnosis. If those prove ineffective, you should consider medical treatments, namely medication that is low risk yet frequently effective, like a high dose of an SSRI. Either way, don’t assume that you’re doomed to an endless cycle of empty obsession and heartbreak. With some work and even a little help, you can learn ways to manage obsessive tendencies so your obsessions no longer manage you.
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 4, 2019
Having crushes turn into obsessional attachments may seem like a bizarre weakness or psychiatric symptom that only happens to people who lack pride, insight, or self-respect (or like the premise to an excellent musical sitcom). In reality, such obsessive behavior can happen to anyone, but once it gets going, no amount of pride, insight, and treatment can make it go away. Nevertheless, if you are unlucky enough to have the kind of crushes that can crush your spirit and self-esteem, there’s no reason to let them ruin your life or to make you despair about your ability to ever find a healthy attachment. It just means you have to learn how to manage your attraction and obsessive impulses, no matter how powerful your emotions or ability to carry a tune.
-Dr. Lastname
So I’ve tried over the last few years to be close friends with someone that I was once involved with briefly. Our friendship’s had its up and downs, but I was managing, although “managing” isn’t quite what I was after. At a certain point he developed cancer; it now looks like he’s in the clear, but I was there for him every step of the way, and during the whole ordeal we expressed our love for each other constantly, hugged, kissed, and spent time together. Problem is, we were supposed to be platonic, but I never quite got past wanting him, and I’ve had a therapist talk to me about having attachment issues in general. So this guy and I are still friends, but hell has opened up least week because I asked for a firm commitment to get together over the weekend, after which I became obsessed, acted out, was anxious… something of a tidy mess. I know what I need to do and it hurts bad, but I also think I’ve made more progress with him faster now than ever before, so I dimly hope he and I salvage something. I’ve been searching for books, advice of relationships to figure out how I might heal faster, let go completely if need be, and learn how not to repeat the same mistakes again. My goal is to find some task-oriented technique for overcoming my obsession, or for dealing with my attachment issues overall, because as much as I want to keep my connection to him, I worry that I’m being an idiot by refusing to give up on what I want him and I to have.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 26, 2019
If, like our reader from earlier, the only thing more reliable than your parents fighting is how much pain it causes you, you can feel like it’s up to you alone to relieve everyone’s suffering. As many problems as their conflict may cause you, however, solving the problems that cause that conflict isn’t actually within your control. So instead of continuing to feel hurt and frustrated by endless parental arguments, here are five ways to figure out when your attempts at family peacekeeping are making the war worse, and what you can do instead.
1) Carefully Assess Their Compatibility
Pay attention to whether or not your parents function as a couple, ignoring their complaints. This doesn’t mean you should look for times and ways they get along, but to really investigate how and if they work together; if possible, determine whether they do or don’t share or interfere with one another’s spending on essentials like housing, food, travel, and taxes. Note also whether they travel or socialize together, act independently, or interfere with one another’s ability to do so. Conflict is always a part of relationships, but so is cooperation; without that, you’ve got real trouble.
2) Gather Whether Advice Gets Through
You may have spent years trying to get through to your parents, but odds are you’ve never really paid attention to whether any of your pleas or guidance has actually gotten through. So take stock of whether either of your parents really seems to listen to your advice or ever really seems to take it. Either way, ask yourself how they manage to cope when you’re not available and whether either is really helpless or at risk of harm when you’re not around. Of course, if you believe either is in danger of being harmed, you should get professional advice and consider reporting abuse. In all likelihood, however, each has found good ways to manage conflict when they’re without you but, when they have your ear/a captive audience, they take the opportunity to stress their unhappiness.
3) Recognize Responsibility
Notice how much accountability each parent takes for dealing with what he or she doesn’t like vs. just complaining about it. Notice whether their complaints just put responsibility on you as the listener and/or on their partner for abusing them, rather than either accepting some responsibility for what bothers them or for the fact that no one’s really to blame. After all, it’s quite likely that whatever’s causing the conflict between your parents—like a bad habit or irksome personality trait—isn’t going to change. So if neither parent can either own their faults or resign themselves to them, then they’re never going to stop bickering, either.
4) Generate A Realistic Goal
Don’t assume that your objective is to help them get along better or ease their pain, because, as the previous steps should reveal, that’s completely outside of your control. It’s natural, of course, to want to find a way to make your parents listen to you, heed your advice, or accept each other’s faults, but since doing so would require magic or mind control, it’s time to reassess your endgame. Instead, try to protect yourself from their conflict while encouraging each of them to develop his and her own way of managing their feelings that doesn’t require raised voices, especially with you as the audience.
5) Assemble an Exit Strategy
Once you’ve realized your goal isn’t to keep the peace but encourage them to keep quiet, prepare a statement asserting this truth and rejecting personal responsibility, saying, in effect, that you wish you could help them, but their unhappiness together is beyond everyone’s control, so you think it’s better not to talk about it and instead think about ways to make life better. Then prepare to be tested and to follow through on your exit plan, without any appearance of hesitation or guilt, if they misbehave. Just because they’re constantly in conflict doesn’t mean you should be about the smart decisions you’ve made.
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 7, 2019
Kids hate to see their parents fight, and while you’d think that the feeling would lessen as they grow into adults, the opposite is often true; the older they get, the more they feel like having an adult’s power should give them the ability to set things right and ease their family’s pain. Of course, no human, no matter what their age, emotional investment, or relationship to others, has much power to change or ameliorate the chemistry of a longstanding partnership, so making the best of a bad parental relationship doesn’t require a determination to do good or make sacrifices. All you really need is the ability to judge the actual benefit of bearing witness to a brawl versus exercising the adult’s most wonderful superpower— the ability to leave the room and focus on your own, independent, more peaceful life.
-Dr. Lastname
My parents kept fighting nonstop throughout my childhood and teenage years and it was a painful, helpless experience for me. Even now that I’m in my late 20s and out of the house, they still fight constantly when I’m around and it still makes me cry uncontrollably and feel depressed. All through these years I’ve tried my best to solve and fix things, or just ask them not to fight so regularly in front of me, but nothing’s ever worked. My mother’s negativity, tendency to throw blame around and create chaos… I hate it all. My goal is to find ways to deal with this problem, because it’s been sucking away at my happiness and sanity for far too long.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 21, 2019
Intervention may be long off the air, but its approach to pushing addicts and alcoholics into recovery is still part of the national consciousness; it’s now taken as common wisdom that the way to get someone you care about into rehab is through raw, emotional confrontation. In reality, when there aren’t cameras, specialists, and access to highly specialized recovery programs around, it’s much better to keep emotion, confrontation, and personal responsibility out of it. So, for those of us in the real world dealing with an addicted loved one in real time, here are five steps you can take to compose a statement or otherwise address a loved one’s alcoholic or addictive behavior.
1) Put Things Positively
Regardless of how entitled you are to feel angry, hurt, or screwed, expressing those feelings will only make achieving your purpose more difficult; your goal isn’t to start an argument, vent your unhappiness, or listen to excuses, but to discourage alcoholic behavior and protect yourself from its effects. That’s why your statement should express what you believe is the best approach to a problem that isn’t necessarily solvable or controllable. So begin by talking about the alcoholic’s positive qualities and achievements, i.e., the reasons that you care about and love him in the first place. Then refer to alcoholism as an illness and set of behaviors, not a fault in his character, that’s a problem that has aroused your concern and for which you have a plan.
2) Fixate on Facts
When addressing the problematic aspects of his alcoholism, focus on behavior that you believe is doing the most harm to his life or that goes most against his values, not what irritates you the most. That means behavior that damages his health, puts his and the safety of his loved ones at risk, and generally is at odds with the kind of good, caring person you’ve known him to be. Of course, you know that conveying the magnitude of a problem is not likely to make an alcoholic change. What you’re after is a bald statement of fact that gives him reason to fear and oppose what his addiction is doing to him for his sake, not yours.
3) Beware The Blame Game
The amount addicts and alcoholics hate taking responsibility for their actions is matched only by their love for their substance of choice, so don’t let the conversation become about who’s really to blame or should take responsibility. You can never be sure how much you, the alcoholic, a therapist, a program, or anyone else can make a difference when it comes to alcoholism. Regardless of how an addiction starts, it develops a power of its own. Plus, if you put too much emphasis on how his addiction impacts your life, he’ll make you the reason for getting sober instead of doing it for himself (and then blame you if sobriety doesn’t stick). So be clear that you’re determined to help in any way you think might work if he sees that sobriety is best for him, and that you respect him if and when he does the best with the addiction he’s got.
4) Put Forth Your Plan
Now that you’ve cited concrete issues with his behavior, spell out the protective changes you’re going to take in order to address his issues and help him recover. These may include limiting the time you spend together, leaving events early if he gets drunk, or even notifying his doctor that he’s an alcoholic. If he feels unsupported or criticized, don’t feel guilty. You’re not trying to punish him, just to do what’s necessary and/or constructive for the both of you. If he promises to get help, be supportive of that choice, but don’t change your plan based on empty guarantees. By avoiding unrealistic optimism, you make clear that he has a tough road ahead and that external factors such as your love, the family’s support, and the presence or quality of treatment cannot guarantee success.
5) Conclude the Conversation
Once you’ve stated the facts and your plans going forward, it’s time to end discussion. Resist if he tries to engage you further with excuses, or further thoughts about sobriety or how both of you feel. Don’t try to plow through the conversation and “win” with the force of your personality, because that would be a temporary victory and make you responsible for generating his motivation. Instead, wrap things up once you’ve created a set of conditions and actions that rest on facts, hoping that your continued belief in those facts and you’re following through on those actions will, in the long run, build his motivation. If they don’t, they will at least improve your self-protection and give you peace of mind knowing that you did all you could in a fairly impossible situation.
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 7, 2019
When you discover that a loved one is in a life-threatening situation, it’s natural and often helpful to focus all your strength on removing obstacles to a cure. That works well if you can fix the situation by donating bone marrow or even lifting a car off your injured child, but addiction is a much harder obstacle to remove than a Chevy or even cancer. That’s because addiction not only has no clear cause, but also no cure, and the effort to find either can exhaust your resources and harm the ones you love the most. Instead of striving for the super-power to save someone at all costs, learn how to give it your best shot, respect your own efforts without becoming responsible for a fix, and then find ways to live with the obstacle, not remove it, for as long as necessary.
-Dr. Lastname
Several months ago, my dad got diagnosed as pre-diabetic and was told to stop drinking. We gave him time—he’s been a drinker for most of 50 years—but here we are now, many months later, the only thing that’s changed is that I can barely be around him because his drinking makes me so furious. It wasn’t until he got diagnosed that my mother and I realized how dangerous his drinking is to his health. We knew it was dangerous in other ways, because when he’s drunk he turns into a zombie/jerk: he gets aggressive, he doesn’t understand anything that is said to him, he can’t speak or walk, and my mom is stuck having to apologize for him and take the brunt of his behavior. Other members of our family have been noticing and talking to my mom about an intervention, but she’s worried about his feelings, which I understand—he has had a very hard time at his job—but to me that is no fucking excuse for killing yourself little by little every fucking day. I don’t want to lose respect for my mom too, because she’s my best friend, but I’m also getting frustrated with her for how much she enables and protects him. For months I have been keeping my anger to myself and talking with my mom, but she says we can’t talk to him with anger. But why fucking not? I’m so pissed at this point I feel like I can’t be around them anymore. If nothing changes soon my relationship with my parents is going to crumble. My goal is to get somebody or something to change before I lose my family entirely.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 24, 2019
No matter how many good reasons you may have for getting over a relationship and moving
on—he was never worth it, it was never going to work, you were catfished by a Russian bot,
etc.—heartbreak has a way of holding on to you, and holding you down, for far too long. Instead
of helplessly and hopelessly suffering through it, here are five steps you can take to get over
someone, even, or especially, if he was never worth getting under in the first place.
1) Busy Your Brain
Instead of wasting your time focusing on someone you can’t have (who probably isn’t worth having in the first place), distract yourself with more worthy pursuits like work, dinners with friends, hot yoga sessions, or any positive activity that prevents you from getting into trouble while also distracting you from your pain. These activities will also help to remind you that you have a life of your own, friends who care, and promises to keep. Your ex-addicted brain will look for ways to think about him and devise ways to change his mind, but the more you live your own life, the harder it will be for your thoughts to wander in his direction.
2) Mark Your Progress by Your Actions, Not Your Emotions
Your inability to completely forget him or feel as good as you did when he was around may tell you that your attempts to move on are futile. But remember, the feelings of happiness he once gave you were what convinced you he was worth being with in the first place, despite many more tangible red flags to the contrary. That’s why a better barometer for your progress isn’t how you feel but how much you’re doing despite those feelings of emptiness and withdrawal. Because the work you do and the attention you give to others despite being under the influence of heartache are a remarkable achievement and a sign that you’re on the road to recovery, no matter how rejected you still feel.
3) Relate But Don’t Ruminate
It’s good to share your sorrows with a sympathetic ear, like friends or a shrink, but only up to a point; an overly-sympathetic ear will encourage more rumination that healing, encouraging you to mope rather than move on. So yes, it’s good to know that friends care, your feelings are understandable, and other good people have made the same mistake and learned the same tough lesson. But it’s not good to wallow, whine, or waste time feeling sorry for yourself that could be better spent moving forward. So try to limit your complaints and choose only confidants who remember your strength and believe in your future, not those who magnify your helplessness and victimhood.
4) Learn and Live
Now that you’ve milked your heartache for every possible valuable lesson, don’t hesitate to put your new knowledge to work in the search for a new, more worthwhile partner. Yes, you may still be vulnerable, but you’re also smarter with the freshest possible memory of what the wrong partner looks like. Besides, the goal is to get right back to searching, not to get right back into a relationship; take your time during the process to review each candidate and develop a new, improved list of character criteria for a potential mate. Getting back into the search quickly isn’t about finding someone right away, but figuring out how to best utilize and develop your new knowledge, thus decreasing your chances of finding yourself as heartbroken in the
future.
5) Build Independence
While heartache is always a learning opportunity, it isn’t just there to teach us who to avoid or how to find the right person. As your heart heals, it should become stronger, not just smarter, and a strong heart is one that doesn’t necessarily need another person to feel whole. That means you shouldn’t license yourself to look for a partner until you’ve built up your independence by finding activities and friends that you can enjoy on your own. Recent experience should teach you many things, but one of the fundamental lessons should be that there are much worse things than being alone.
Posted by fxckfeelings on
As we’ve hopefully made painfully clear by now, the most powerful emotions tend to fuel our
poorest decisions; deep despair can lead to anything from substance abuse to misspelled tattoos
while blinding love can bind you to someone whom you, in saner times, wouldn’t so much as
follow on Twitter. There’s no point then in being ashamed of the company love can drive you to
keep. The only shame comes from not using the heartbreak to learn how to better protect
yourself, retain your values, and exercise your judgment next time. Then your bad experience
can become an anchor that will keep you from getting swept away by any waves of intense
emotion that may hit you in the future.
-Dr. Lastname
Simply put, I’ve been dating and subsequently fell for an older man (in his 50s) who, without telling me, had plans the whole time to marry a 22-year-old Central American stripper. He finally admitted this to me by explaining that he’s in love with her but still wants to be my very good friend. Of course, I am still in love with him and he is very aware of that. My dumb ass is waiting for his feelings to change, which I realize is, well, dumb, but I don’t know what else to do. How do I get over this? My goal is to figure out whether I can be his friend, or whether that’s a reasonable/doable option to begin with.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 10, 2019
Persistent voices in our heads—the ones that push us to do everything from avoiding our work to immediately finding an open drive-thru—are virtually impossible to shut up. What you can do, however, is shut them out or talk them down. So, if, like our reader from earlier, you have a nagging voice in your mind that constantly puts you down, here are five ways to argue with it, work around it, and generally not keep it from controlling your life.
1) Source Your Self-Hate And Be Specific
While the negative voice in your head may be persistent and relentlessly cruel, it is also usually somewhat vague, at least when it comes to what you’ve specifically said or done to be so worthy of its endless barrage of loathing. So when it starts laying into you for your so-called awfulness, try to think specifically about whether you’ve done any bad deed or or have any habit so awful to truly deserve its torment. Limit yourself to what you would hold anyone responsible for, like drinking or lying or not keeping promises, and not for things you wouldn’t, like not being gorgeous or born rich.
2) Get Your Own Guidelines
To truly arm yourself against the voice, figure out for your own objective set of standards for what it means to be a good person. Use standards that most people would agree with and that you would use on a friend, like being reasonably respectful of other people’s needs, doing your share, and taking care of yourself. Remember, this is not about your wishes to be handsome, rich, or sociable; these are positive qualities that most people want, but they don’t really speak to one’s character and they definitely aren’t things anyone can easily control.
3) Figure Yourself Out Fairly
Using those standards, and getting input from objective friends or a therapist if necessary, determine what your shortcomings are. Remember, these are shortcomings that involve character, not just the minor things you don’t like about yourself. So avoiud fixating on your looks, mannerisms, or anxious speech and focus instead on any possible bad habits that cause harm, like being so busy hating yourself, or paying so much attention to whether people dislike you, that you don’t return calls or pay attention to the important people in your life.
4) Make A Plan (And Script) For Improvement
Once you know where your true faults lie, you can make a plan to improve yourself or at least manage your bad habits to keep them from taking over. Work with friends or a therapist to assure yourself that you’re living up to reasonable standards, particularly in the area of reaching out and making friends, regardless of what your internal voices are telling you. That way you can go about your life and even meet people with a much lower risk of self-sabotage.
5) Use Your Self-Assessment To Shut Down Your Brain
Stick to your script, keep trying to learn from your mistakes, and never let yourself take your negative voice at its word. Remind yourself that your negative voice may be persistent but that doesn’t make it honest; you’re tough self-assessment has shown you that with ample evidence. So instead of letting the negativity run you over and keep you down, push yourself to roll your eyes at it and answer back. You may never get it to shut up entirely—unfortunately, being self-conscious and negative may just be a part of who you are—but you can put it in check and shut it out of the process of meeting people, achieving things, and generally living life on your terms.
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 15, 2018
Just as there are people who feel so confident in their greatness that they just believe in it without concrete support or evidence, there are those so certain that they’re dumb, hateful and repulsive that they can’t not find evidence of their supposed horribleness everywhere. When that happens, it seems appropriate to focus on their lack of self-esteem as a legitimate target for psychotherapy, but this focus may just intensify such a person’s self-involvement and sense of being defective without necessarily making things better. So if knowing that you’re a compulsive self-hater isn’t doing anything to make the hate stop, ask yourself to define what it means to be a good enough person, regardless of the constant thoughts telling you you’re anything but. Part of you may always be certain that you’re the worst, but if you can stick to your own standards of being good, then you’ll at least be able to refute that certainty by continuing to do your best.
-Dr. Lastname
I feel like EVERYONE hates me; I’ve got some piss-poor self esteem and try to keep conversations with strangers to a minimum since I feel like I’m a dick who’s wasting their time with whatever garbage comes out of my mouth. I’ve been diagnosed with social anxiety disorder but no amount of sugar coating with polite diagnosis can help me out of this. I’ve read books on Buddhism, social esteem, etc., but it all just feels like flimsy spiritual trash that doesn’t sink in. My goal is to either A, stop giving a shit about what people think about me and enjoy life as a curmudgeonly 20-something, B, figure out some way to not be a dick without necessitating spiritualism and masquerading kindness.
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