Posted by fxckfeelings on March 29, 2018
If you find yourself unmotivated, disorganized, and left feeling hopeless and frustrated, you may, like our reader from earlier, think of yourself as “fucked.” Thankfully, there’s a clinical term for this inability to get shit done—”Executive Dysfunction”—and here are five ways to work around it so you can start to be more productive and fulfilled. You may not feel better about yourself or your abilities, but you will be less fucked overall.
1) Pick Important Priorities
Ignoring what other people want you to do or what would make them happy, pick five things that you consider important life goals according to your basic values. That means considering things involving your health, being a good friend, partner or parent, and finding fun, rewarding things to do. Include priorities that fulfill legitimate promises or allow you to feel that you’re doing good in the world, but remember, your first priority is to your own health and survival, not feeling good or impressing others.
2) Plot A Priority Course
Now that you’ve figured out five worthy goals, look for actions you can actually do to put those goals in reach. Don’t count activities simply because they make you feel better; often, activities that feel bad or boring at first are the most rewarding in the long run, like exercise, working hard, and making time with friends and family when you can listen, talk, and do anything but complain. Given your dysfunction, it may be hard to get motivated to take these actions, but remind yourself of your goals and your basic, underlying aim– to be a good person. Even if your brain doesn’t work quite right, you can still do your best to do the right thing.
3) Stick to a Schedule
Getting help from a trusted friend, partner, or therapist if necessary, build your activities into a daily and weekly schedule. Arrange your schedule so you have a good reason to get up and get going at the same time every day. Structuring the same things at the same time of day and/or the same day of the week creates habits and patterns, and the more you structure your day, the less your brain will have to build up energy and motivation in order to get things done. Basically, getting locked into a structure allows you to bypass the unmotivated, disorganized part of your brain and go straight into autopilot.
4) Determine Your To-Do List
It may be hard for your brain to tackle the unpleasant or complicated tasks that you have to complete right now, especially if they’re so overwhelming that you can’t even keep track of them. If you don’t do them, however, you know you’ll be in trouble, so push yourself to face your obligations and write them all down in one place. They include small things, like checking your mail/email and responding, and getting groceries. Make sure you have one big, complete list and that it’s located somewhere, either in your computer or on your wall, where you can’t help but read it several times a day. If it’s in a computer, set reminders for yourself to complete certain tasks or just to check the list on a daily basis. Yes, it’s a pain, but the repercussions that come from not fulfilling important responsibilities can hurt much, much worse.
5) Arrange for Assistance
Don’t let self-blame or fear of humiliation stop you from sharing your problem with those whom you think could help you. Without calling yourself lazy, crazy, or generally putting yourself down, seek out people close to you whom you trust. Explain to them that you just can’t do things that you really need to do and the problem has been paralyzing you. Share your thinking about priorities and schedules. Then welcome their suggestions, advice, and involvement, which could include becoming your workout buddy, giving you daily wake up calls, or just making regular plans to hang out. Either way, it’s important to be open with the people close to you about your problem; if you make it clear to them that you never call back or reach out because of executive dysfunction, not an unspoken issue, they’ll be more understanding, willing to reach out, and eager to help you, despite your messed up brain, to do and be your best.
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 15, 2018
When you’re dissatisfied with where you find yourself in life because you’re bad at getting yourself motivated and organized, it’s very easy to kick yourself so you can at least claim credit for being a good critic of your own failure. Unfortunately, self-blame just makes your performance, and thus your dissatisfaction, worse. So if you find yourself calling yourself a fuck-up, shut up and think about what you’re trying to accomplish, what gets in the way, and what control you really have over those obstacles. In almost every case, you’ll find new ways to move forward once you define and accept whatever it is that you can’t control instead of defining yourself as a loser.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m in my late 40s, married and fucked. I have tried to unfuck myself with the help of various therapists but I think the last one fucked me more because he was really trying to get to my inner child and get me to be more vulnerable during sessions. Also he made me lay on a couch, not facing him…which always made me feel uncomfortable. At any rate, I fired him. My main issues are that I ‘m a hopeless slacker. Even worse, my dream in life was to be an actor– I have theater training and want to be creative and fulfill my need to create art, etc….but I’m isolated in my home and don’t really do much besides talk to myself and waste time. I’m trying not to drink (I am an alcoholic), but I’m bored to death and my only social interaction with other humans is on Facebook. I don’t have a job because I hate working for people, because they’re assholes. I was once a pretty well domesticated animal but now I can barely go out in public without wanting to bite people, which is not very easy on my lovely wife. I think I should look for a new therapist, but I’m not exactly motivated. Can lobotomies be performed on demand? My goal is to be less fucked.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 1, 2018
If your unhappy marriage is on life support, it can still be hard to pull the plug, especially when, like our reader who recently wrote in, you and your spouse have spent most of your lives together. That’s when you have to ask yourself what you expect from a spouse, and from yourself, to make a marriage worthwhile. Here are five major ways partners can contribute to each other’s lives and the life they share. If you find that you’re doing much less than your partner, you had better reinvest in the marriage or prepare for its end; if it’s the other way around, it’s time to let your marriage end and the rest of your life begin.
1) Financial Function
Money isn’t everything, but it counts for a lot, particularly if you find yourself paying more than your share of essential family expenses, like food, shelter, or, God forbid, bail. Of course, you may substitute childcare and household management as your contribution instead of earnings. But whether you’re investigating a marriage, the Baltimore drug trade, or a presidential election, the key is always to follow the money; that will give you a good measure of whether you or your spouse has paid a full share.
2) Putting in Parenting Time
Never equate sporadic “helping out” with the kids to taking primary responsibility for their feeding, homework, rides to soccer practice, etc. Yes, you should give yourself credit for the time you put into playing with your children, but make sure to give more credit to whoever worries about what’s in the fridge, when the dentist appointments are, and how to drop everything when school is cancelled or your child is ill. If you or your spouse can’t be relied upon to contribute more than occasional participation in your kids’ lives, then you can cross their importance as a parent off your value-added checklist.
3) Relationship Reminders
By their nature, long term partnerships get worn down by fatigue and our tendency to put out everyday fires, resent our spouses for whatever help we wanted and didn’t get, and then, exhausted by both the fires and the resentment, fall asleep. So a big part of the partnership job description is to invest, periodically, in a good relationship by making time to be together and find activities you both enjoy. If one or both of you can’t make that investment, you’ll become so overwhelmed with resentment that you’ll forget what you ever liked about each other in the first place. So if your partner can’t or won’t agree to make that investment, then your marriage may no longer have the strength to survive.
4) Intermittent Intimacy
While sex often becomes less important over the course of a marriage (or just over the course of one’s life), it’s not unusual for one partner to have stronger needs and then to feel ignored and unattractive if his or her spouse starts to avoid intimacy or doesn’t try to make something happen. So, for the one who is not that interested in sex anymore and has a partner who still is, making an effort to give pleasure is an important contribution, even if it means lying back and thinking of England. Not being willing to make a small physical sacrifice or to ask your partner to make one on your behalf, is a sign that caring and commitment are lacking. If you can’t change your feelings or your partner’s willingness to take one for the team, then it may be time to call the game.
5) Consider Complaints
As we always say, the real reason for getting married is always having someone to blame. An important part of any job, not just that of a spouse, is to be responsive to complaints. And while that doesn’t mean you have to agree with them or take responsibility for causing them, you do have to pay attention to them, examine their validity, and decide what, if anything, you can do to take remedial action. If you care about your spouse, you think hard about their grievances and determine whether you can improve what you do. In any case, try to negotiate differences without avoiding them or allowing them to trigger anger or avoidance. If, on the other hand, one of you doesn’t care enough to respond to complaints or manage them diplomatically, then that person isn’t doing the work required to manage basic marriage problems, and now those problems, and the future of your marriage, are beyond your control.
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 15, 2018
Usually, when you’re talking about anything from cakes to windows and printers, smashing something apart is a lot easier than putting it together, but the opposite is true when it comes to marriage. It’s not only difficult and painful to divide your shared resources and responsibilities, be they finances or kids, but it’s also hard to face the humiliation, conflict, and loss that comes with giving up on a massive commitment. That’s why, as bad as your marriage may be, you may still look for any reason to avoid splitting your marriage—and life, and possibly sanity—apart. Regardless of habit, commitment, and belief, however, you must be ready to ask yourself, in an objective way, whether your partner is really as married to you as you are to them and whether there’s anything positive you can do about an imbalance, if it exists. Never doubt that there is a way to be objective about this issue and that, even if the answer to both questions is no, there’s a positive way forward through the very negative separation process.
-Dr. Lastname
My marriage has been pretty shitty over the past few years— sex has pretty much stopped and my wife’s been either hostile towards me or withdrawn. She went travelling on her own in January, so I decided to take dance lessons when she was gone (I’ve danced for a while, but decided to get better at it). When my wife returned, she demanded I quit the lessons immediately. I said no, as I had signed up for the month, so she then moved out of our bedroom, stopped eating or socializing with me. A couple of months later she separated her finances, than went away three more times for a total of three months. Early September she told me she wanted to sell our house, and if I didn’t sign to sell she would sic her lawyer on me, so I signed and the house sold right away. We then saw a couples’ counselor (she had been seeing her own therapist) who told us to live apart and date with no sex between us, so we bought separate places and move in another month. I’m willing to go along with it and try to make things work for financial reasons, but our recent past has been so filled with arguing, recriminations, etc. that I’m not sure it’s worth it. My goal is to figure out whether I should give up on this marriage (after over 40 years) or go along with the couples’ counselor’s advice and try to save it.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 9, 2018
If, like our reader from earlier, you have a shady/”complicated” past, it can be easy to imagine all the not-good ways your current, not-shady friends would react. Often, however, those imaged responses are the kinds of things that are far more likely to come from the anxious, critical, demonic recesses of one’s brain than the mouths of others. So, in order to both demonstrate how unlikely these responses are and how easy they are to rebut, here are five horrible, hypothetical reactions to your past and the best (or at least snappiest) ways to respond.
1) “I get it—you’re”
As someone who’s managed to clean her life up, get a real job, and function as well as whoever could be lobbing this insult your way, you should know better than to take this seriously. “If crazy means putting myself through school, saving some money, and establishing myself in a real career, then fine, lock my ass up. But even a crazy person—this one—can understand when someone’s being a judgmental asshole.”
2) “Now I don’t think you can be trusted.”
If someone can talk frankly about stuff in their past that’s hard to admit to or talk about, that’s an indication that they’re more likely to be honest, even under the toughest circumstances. “I got to where I am the hard way and I’ve established a good reputation with my employers and friends. If you can’t see my ownership of my past and what I’ve accomplished in spite of it as reasons to trust me instead of the opposite, then the only untrusted thing here is your judgment.”
3) “From now on I’ll only see you as a whore.”
If you’re talking to someone who throws the word “whore” around, then it’s not worth talking to them for much longer, let alone trying to earn their understanding. “You can’t make me feel ashamed for doing what I had to do, just as you can’t convince me to judge someone by anything but how hard they work, how they keep their promises, and how they deal with adversity. If you can only see me for what I did instead of who I am, then it’s best for both of us if we shouldn’t see more of each other than is absolutely necessary.”
4) “How can I rely on someone so clearly damaged?”
Baggage doesn’t necessarily mean damage, because if you were truly damaged you wouldn’t have found the strength and will to come as far as you have. “Whether you’re talking about a car or a person, you judge damage by how well something functions after it’s been put through the ringer, so by those standards, “damaged” doesn’t apply to me. If your perception of me is too damaged, then that’s on you, not me.”
5) “My opinion of you has irrevocably changed for the worse.”
Anyone who wants to cut you off for having gone through hard times is not someone worth holding on to. “If someone has a negative opinion of me, I always want to know why, because I try to live up to certain standards and criticism may reflect my failure to do so. Then I can assess how their reaction compares to my perception of what happened and apologize if necessary. From what I know of my past and my efforts to overcome it, however, I have nothing to apologize for, so let’s just come to terms with the fact that our opinions of each other have now both irrevocably changed for the worse and wish each other well on our opposing trajectories.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 28, 2017
Finding stability after an especially shaky period is a major and worthwhile achievement, but it may leave you feeling a new kind of uncertainty, stranded between troubled old friends who know you well and well-balanced new friends who would be totally thrown if they learned about your past. Gaining respectability, however, doesn’t require you to hide your past or get approved by other respectable types; instead, decide for yourself whether your efforts have helped you become a decent, independent person. If you respect what you’ve done with your life then you can insist on finding solid friends, whether you have a solid past or not.
-Dr. Lastname
Due to a combination of bad luck, poor decisions and generally reckless behavior, I went through a difficult patch in my late teens/early 20s. A brief highlights tour: abortion, severe depression, being broke, sex work, failing out of college…all in all, it was shitty. Ten years later and I’ve gotten a degree, a good therapist, some success in a far-less-shady line of work…I’ve even gotten engaged to a very nurturing and wonderful man. The problem is that these two realities—my past and my present—are so at odds with each other that it’s becoming increasingly hard for me to deal with. For example, having lost a lot of friends during the bad years, I have recently started trying to make new ones with colleagues I really like and would like to be closer to, but having to hide the details of my past/“double life” means they’ll always be at a distance. The same thing applies to my fiancé’s family, since knowing about my past will make them both wary of me and create difficulties for him. Even my long-time friends (who know my history) are reluctant to talk about the topic, and now that I’ve recently started experiencing flashbacks and panic attacks about that time, it does hurt that I can’t seem to confide in them about the practical problems that I am currently facing. I am functioning quite well about 75% of the time, but my moods can be unstable and at the times when I see this situation stretching out of me for the rest of my life I feel, frankly, almost as depressed as I did in the bad old days, despite being happy and extremely grateful about how well things have turned out. My goal is to A, find some way of making peace with my past and B, figure out some way of sharing my experiences with friends in a way that is appropriate but lessens my feelings of loneliness.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 30, 2017
As C.S. Lewis once observed, grief feels a lot like fear—it’s just as unsettling, consuming, and uncontrollable—but it does also cause some fear, namely that the grief will never end. You can’t make it end, of course, no more than you can change the way it hurts or prevent loss from happening in the first place, but you can remember that the loss would not exist without love, and that there is meaning in loving relationships that is never lost, no matter if the person you loved is no longer there. And that meaning can sustain you through hard times, no matter how long they last, no matter how scared you feel.
-Dr. Lastname
I lost my beautiful, 23-year-old son this year in a horrific accident. I keep replaying this accident over and over again in my mind. I have two other biological children and a stepchild, but I still feel the loss of this son to an excruciating degree. I am continuing to grieve very heavily to the point that I feel disconnected. My goal is to find a way to ease my horrific grief and emotional pain.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 26, 2017
One of the many ways that grief can prolong its stay in your brain is through flooding your mind with doubts and regrets, thus expanding the potential sources of pain and frustration. Then you’re not just preoccupied with mourning one loss but all the mistakes you made in relation to it, including your inability to quiet the thoughts and just move on. If, like our reader from earlier, you’re in a state of grief that you just can’t escape, here are five common negative thoughts from grief and the ways you can fight them, quiet them, and finally begin to let your mind and your heart move on.
1) “If only I’d [done that one thing that could have saved him]. “
After almost every huge disappointment in our lives, it’s human nature to imagine what could have been done to prevent disaster and spare pain. That’s why TV is filled with all manner of sportscasters, political pundits, and general opinion-havers, paid to fulfill viewers’ basic human need to understand whatever went wrong and figure out who’s to blame. When all else fails, we’ll blame ourselves rather then accept the overwhelming, uncontrollable power that bad luck has over our lives. So don’t be surprised if your thoughts dwell on everything you could have done, but don’t listen to them, either. Remind yourself of everything you did right, knowing that there’s only so much we can do to protect the ones we love, and that no amount of self-torture will change that.
2) “It’s just getting worse when it should be getting better. “
Just as we crave reasonable, logical explanations for something as inexplicable as loss, we want to expect a predictable, healing result from something as undefined and arduous as grief. Lots of people believe that you’ll heal from loss if you’re strong and prepared to face your feelings, but most shrinks see more evidence of that’s being false than true. Grief hits different people in different ways, depending more on the usual way their personalities experience and deal with strong emotions rather than on what or how much they choose to share. Having supportive friends, a therapist, or a support group is helpful, but it’s no guarantee that you’ll feel better any time in the near future. So don’t hold yourself to some imaginary, unfair timetable for recovery, especially when doing so will just make such recovery more difficult. Instead, respect the way you get through your days that are burdened with grief and your ability to keep this uncontrollable pain from derailing your entire life.
3) “I’m in so much pain that it’s hurting everyone around me.”
In some cases, like if grief is making you mean or too reliant on drugs or alcohol, then you may be right, and controlling your behavior and preventing yourself from hurting others is your number one priority. But if it’s just that your grief is making you so sullen, quiet, and/or unlike your usual self that you feel like you’re infecting them with your sadness or driving everyone away, then stop burdening yourself with unnecessary responsibility for their feelings. Their feelings are just as uncontrollable as your own and it’s everyone’s responsibility to protect oneself from other people’s pain. If they can’t stand you when you’re in pain, they’re not true friends. If they’re your kids, bearing a loved one’s pain is something they need to learn how to do. Stay focused on managing your own pain while encouraging others to do what’s necessary for theirs, and don’t worry about bringing them down.
4) “I can’t stop thinking of all the things we never said, fights we never resolved, things we never did,” etc.
About the worst thing we can imagine in a close relationship is to have death interrupt it before certain issues or disagreements can be resolved; then you’ve not only lost someone, but you’ve lost the chance to make things right. In this situation, regret enters the picture and compounds your grief with guilt. We know, however, that there are usually good reasons for conflicted, intense feelings in close family relationships. We also know that there is often no way to resolve those feelings with words, which is why we show our love by staying connected and letting bad things pass with time, so even if you both ran out of time, there’s no reason to believe the love wasn’t always there. Don’t expect life to have the kind of tidy resolutions that movies and TV shows do; instead of obsessing over loose ends and lost opportunities, remember what held you together, how you survived the bad times and how much better your life was for the love you shared.
5) “There’s no getting over this pain.”
Not only is grief unpredictable, but it may also be eternal; to some degree, the pain of loss, especially the loss of a child, can linger forever. On the other hand, so do your memories of the one you lost, the impact he had on your life, and the love you shared. Just loving someone opens you up to a world of potential pain, but it’s also a brave, admirable act to improve and give meaning to your life and perhaps even make the world a better place. The sadness may never disappear, but neither will the meaning of your relationship or the positive influence it had on you and your world.
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 26, 2017
Very rational, even tempered guys can be attractive in their own way, particularly after you’ve been put through the ringer by emotional, indecisive man-boys who make impulsive, irrational decisions (like picking fights/cheating or breaking up with you). A rational style, however, does not necessarily guarantee that they’re better at managing their emotions or acting more decently than their less moody brethren. That’s why you need to learn to evaluate a rational guy’s ability to be a good guy before you decide whether he’s truly good for you.
-Dr. Lastname
My kid’s dad used to say that he wanted to be Data from Star Trek as a kid because Data didn’t have feelings, so he changed his personality to one that wasn’t “ruled by emotions.” Instead of becoming wise and patient, however, he’s morphed into a complete narcissist. He might not show emotion, but he seems fueled by anger and selfish impulses; he doesn’t get angry, just calmly denies he’s done anything wrong, which is less like Star Trek and more like Gaslight. He’s become a totally unempathetic, perpetual victim. My goal is to figure out if there’s a way to un-Data him or if he’s just beyond hope.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 12, 2017
If you’re dealing with ADHD, as the son of our earlier reader is, sitting down and poring over what having ADHD means and your options for dealing with it—or really, sitting down and poring over anything for more than five minutes—can seem totally daunting if not downright impossible. Here are five steps you can take to figure out how and what to do with an ADHD diagnosis, and while they do include some research and consultation with experts, the main expert they direct you to consult about your symptoms and needs isn’t found through lots of painstaking research, but in the mirror.
1) Assess Whether Your Improved Attention Is Worth It
While there may be a loud chorus of voices—including your parents, teachers, doctors, friends, fellow drivers screaming at you to pay attention before calling you an asshole—telling you that your ability to focus needs work, you need to ignore the urge to do something to shut those voices up and do your own needs assessment instead. Based on your experience so far, ask whether you need to be more focused or attentive in order to survive, i.e., to make a living or accomplish a task that’s important to you. Of course, you should look for ways of learning and making a living that exploit your natural spontaneity and don’t require too much reading or sitting, and certainly not in large doses. In the end, however, if what you want in life requires a kind of attention that doesn’t come naturally to you, prepare to work harder than others to achieve the same results and to draw on motivation that must come from your own sense of priorities, not from the urging of those around you.
2) Take Stock of Tricks To Use As Tools
Don’t let your shame of current classroom performance or intimidation of learning in general prevent you from looking for and studying other ways of absorbing information. Researching such techniques may be daunting, but some teachers are gifted at helping you find your own style and the learning techniques that would be work for you. Neuropsychologists, who measure the methods your brain uses to acquire and process information, can also steer you in the right direction (and are often even partially covered by health insurance).Yes, learning and applying tricks to help you focus will take some effort and push your abilities to focus, but they’ll save you a lot of work and misery in the long run.
3) Consider Meds if You Must
If and only if you can’t find any successful learning tricks, focusing exercises, witchcraft, or any other non-medical methods to help with the kind and amount of learning you’ve decided is necessary, then it’s time to look at the risks of trying stimulant medication like methylphenidate and amphetamines. It turns out that the risk of trying a stimulant is very, very low (although there are a few people who find it enticingly addictive) and, because it can take less than an hour to see results, the entire trial period, like your own attention span, is unusually short. Yes, there may be additional risks if you take the medication regularly for years, but there’s no point in examining those risks until you know what the medication has to offer, and you won’t know unless you take the low-risk chance.
4) Evaluate End
In order to run an effective trial, take a stimulant 30 minutes or so before trying an intellectual task that you believe is necessary but difficult. You may need to repeat the experiment several times to evaluate the effect of three or four different doses or their impact on different kinds of learning, but you’ll know pretty quickly if there’s any potential benefit. You can measure your results, not by whether your test scores and/or the impression you make on teachers improves, but whether you feel a stimulant makes learning substantially easier. Then weigh that benefit against what you know about the trouble of obtaining the medication (e.g., cost, MD visits, the various that come with filling a prescription for a controlled substance) as well as whatever information you can gather about its possible longterm risks. Remember, you’re the ultimate judge of whether the benefits to your ability to learn outweigh the hassle and low risk of addiction, then taking these meds makes sense.
5) Shake the Stigma
Some people—Tom Cruise, for example—may always look down on you for taking ADHD meds, but doing your due diligence comes with the added bonus of not having to give a shit about what anyone else thinks. You’ve done the work, you’ve made smart assessments, and you’re confident that medication gives you an intellectual boost that you really need and can’t get in other ways. You’re the one who bears the burden and risk because you’re committed to learning something difficult. Yes, you’re different and, of course, your difference sometimes gives you advantages, but when it doesn’t, be proud of the way you manage it and confident, no matter what Xenu says, that you’re doing the right thing.
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