Posted by fxckfeelings on March 20, 2017
It’s easy to tell that someone’s a bad friend when, as with our reader from earlier this week, they make you feel lonely and bad about yourself. If you’re ever unsure about whether a friend is worth keeping or is actually a friend to begin with, here are five red flags of bad friendship to look for.
1) They Only Call In Case Of Personal Calamity
Unless your friend is in crisis and needs to talk, it’s up to you to reach out to them to try to make plans, often in vain. They do you the favor of giving you their best, cheeriest small talk as a prelude to their anguished confidences and wonder what else you could possibly want. If you’re friends with someone who thinks the conversation’s over when they’ve finished talking, then your friendship should probably be over as well.
2) They Share Feelings And Not Much Else
Between the two of you, you wind up doing more than your share of cooking, listening, and paying in the friendship. That may make you feel like a good, giving person almost all the time, but there’s a fine line between being a saint and a martyr, and either way, you don’t need a flock, you need a friend who will give as much to you as you give to them. Because if you need something for yourself from this person, you’ll just find yourself angry, not just at them but at yourself for feeling needy, frustrated, and more human than holy.
3) Your Pain Is Not Their Problem
If you’re low, unhappy and irritable, they don’t want to know, because, while their pain is a big problem, yours is merely an unwelcome distraction. If you assert your right to be heard, they wonder why you’re childish and ungrateful for the attention they’ve been giving you and the time you’ve spent together (even though you spent most of that time doing their bidding). If you can give this friend your time but not a piece of your mind, you’re getting screwed.
4) Your Complaints are Your Problem
As we’ve often said, love only means never having to say you’re sorry when one party dies of cancer before they get the chance. Bad friends, however, often operate under that assumption despite not having a fatal disease. So, while you believe in giving serious attention to a friend’s criticism and apologizing if you’ve caused pain, these guys have the confidence to know that they couldn’t possibly deserve your criticism and they’re helping you by letting you know that, if you have a complaint, you’re just humiliating yourself. Friendship, like love, means always being willing to say you’re sorry, and if they can’t offer that, you should be willing to walk away.
5) They Get Close As Quickly As They Move On
Lots of bad friendships get off the fast start; their openness is so appealing and flattering, and their problems so interesting, that it’s easy to get sucked in before you even have a chance to see this person isn’t so much a potential friend as a potential headache. So you didn’t notice that they don’t have old friends, just current play-buddies and people they once knew and were disappointed by. Unfortunately for them, once you can finally recognize that they’re not worthy of your friendship, you’ll soon be one of them.
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 6, 2017
It’s hard to knock the idea that being helpful to your friends is good for everyone, but when you’re always there to help and they only come to you in a crisis, that’s a good recipe for being used and becoming resentful. Even if being helpful will make you feel good about yourself in the short run and win you gratitude, it’s only worth it if you’re also mindful of your own needs and the character of the so-called friend requiring your assistance. Otherwise, your giving instincts can expose you to harm, exhaustion, and a whole bunch of other not-good stuff.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m a women in my 20s with a good tech job, but I feel like I’m always ignored by everybody, almost like I don’t exist. I do have many friends, but even they aren’t real with me— I feel that they don’t really care about me and are only good to me when they need something or need a shoulder to cry on. Then, when they feel better or have happy news to share, they find someone else to take it to, which doesn’t make any sense to me. I feel like everybody throws their problems onto me so they can go off and be happy, but I’m left here all alone to deal with the sadness on my own. My goal is to feel acknowledged and loved, not ignored and used. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 24, 2017
Many of us, not just our reader from earlier this week, struggle with insomnia. Of course, said struggle doesn’t just mean dealing with sleeplessness but with the false and terrifying myths about the many ways insomnia can ruin your life. If you can’t sleep and can’t stop being freaked out by the potential effects it’s having on you, please do yourself a favor and read these five biggest lies about insomnia and the sad/sleepy truths you should believe instead.
1) “Insomnia is preventable and treatable with good sleep habits.”
No illness is ever guaranteed to be preventable and treatable, especially those that are more behavioral than physical, and statements like these aren’t just false but damaging as they often create unreasonable expectations for control. Yes, good sleep habits will push you in the right direction, but life will sometimes disrupt your sleep habits in ways you can’t avoid and even the best of habits can’t always control the neurological demon inside your brain that decides it wants to play and read and have great ideas just as your body wants to collapse. So yes, always be open to treatment, but don’t despair or blame yourself when they aren’t as effective as you’d like.
2) “Insomnia is always a sign that you’ve got bigger issues that require treatment.”
Insomnia may sometimes reflect your worries or neuroses, but that doesn’t mean that logging several hours on a therapist’s couch to work out those issues is guaranteed to unclog your non-existent sleep valve and make rest possible again. If you do find yourself being kept up with anxious thoughts, then do what you can to put your worries into perspective while also accepting your insomnia as just another part of your current bad luck so it doesn’t become yet another thing to get worried about.
3) “Sleeping pills are bad for you.”
All pills are potentially both good and bad for you, from Advil to vitamins, and focusing on the bad part is a good way to let fear demoralize and immobilize you into avoiding potential treatment altogether. Instead of spooking yourself away from medication, educate yourself as to the particular risks of each type of sleeping pill, both in terms of trying it once and, if it’s helpful, taking it more often. Then weigh those risks against its benefits. Of course, always use non-medical methods first, but when insomnia doesn’t respond to non-medical methods, you have a right to research and consider plan B.
4) “If left untreated, insomnia will permanently damage your health.”
Living damages your health, period, but insomnia’s potential impact on your wellbeing is a lot less clear. It does good when it puts you on alert for danger and trouble, as when you need to stay up to watch over a sick child or are required to stay on call for important news. On the other hand, it can also weaken you, at least temporarily, when you’re so tired that it’s harder for your body to fight off an infection. Either way, if you let a fear of insomnia exaggerate its dangers then that fear will cause you far more harm than insomnia ever could.
5) “Insomnia won’t just damage your health, but your ability to do anything from your job to parenting to operating heavy machinery.”
You may not be able to perform at your highest level when you’re tired, but ask any parent what they’re able to do when they haven’t slept well and they’ll tell you that they seem able to do everything well enough since they haven’t gotten fired or wrecked their car despite not having a decent night’s sleep since having kids. Instead of letting insomnia terrify and paralyze you, use that fear to become a knowledgeable and confident manager of insomnia. Once you learn the facts about how insomnia affects you and how you can deal with it, you won’t have to let scary myths keep you up at night.
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 6, 2017
Good sleep, along with YouTube videos of porcupines eating and fresh mozzarella cheese, is one of life’s simplest pleasures. Unlike those other things, however, it’s not just a joy but also something of a necessity. A life without hungry porcupines or good cheese of any kind of unfortunate, but one without sleep can feel excruciating, so it’s not surprising that those who just can’t shut themselves down at a reasonable hour are so eager to figure out what’s wrong with them and so quick to blame themselves for their sleeplessness. While we now have clinical sleep specialists and a bunch of helpful theories, suggestions, and treatments, we don’t, of course, have any solid answers or cures. The answer then isn’t seeking complete control over your insomnia, but learning to manage it and find pleasure in life despite it.
-Dr. Lastname
In short, I cannot sleep. I mean, theoretically I can (because, well, biology), but practically I can’t, and I know it’s all in my head— the fact that I feel that “I have insomnia” makes it so much harder, because, obviously I don’t have any clinical disease that it’s a symptom of, just some mental block that makes sleep impossible. I really, really want to sleep and get back control over this one thing without depending on anything (drugs, diets, etc.) or anyone to fix the problem for me. My goal is to get to the bottom of whatever’s causing this insomnia and get rid of it.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 13, 2016
“Work,” like “nazi,” or “feces,” is one of those words that has an inherently negative connotation (except for a very select group of Germans). That’s why, if you’re unhappy with your current job, it’s important to remember that work is supposed to be unpleasant and that the chaos and instability of a major career change might be even worse. Here are five things to consider before changing career tracks so you don’t end up a train wreck.
1) Brace Yourself and Make a Budget
Force yourself to do a full audit of your expenditures so you can figure out how much you need and how badly you need it. It’s easy to spend as much as you’ve got when you’ve got it, but some expenses are necessities (electricity) and others aren’t so much ([insert sports team here] cable package), and you need to know before dropping your current career what they add up to over time so you can estimate how long your savings will cover you.
2) Assess the Amount of Work-Time You Can Take
Working extra hours at a job you love, whether you need them or not, can do you serious harm if it consumes all the socializing and parenting time required to keep you sane and your family happy. Avoid switching to a job that will be too time-consuming, particularly work that absorbs you, until you know how much time you can really afford and how much time you absolutely need for other priorities. Your job is to manage your priorities, not be managed by whichever one grabs you the most.
3) Scout the Market for Your Offered Skills
Even when you’re highly trained and good at what you do, the market for your specific services may vary greatly according to where you live and whether those previously trained and equally gifted have also chosen to live in the vicinity. Don’t jump to a more interesting field until you know what the market will pay for your services and if you do or can live where that market is strongest.
4) Investigate Your Partner’s Earning potential
If you’re in a committed relationship, never assume that a career that’s perfect for you will work well for your spouse; Of course you want one another to be happy, but if your new career destroys your family dynamic, or the schedule that either one of you thinks is necessary for the kids, or even the other guy’s career, then your whole house will be an unhappy one. Partnership isn’t about unconditional love, but about mutual planning, so that you know the limits that you have to work with.
5) Ponder Plan B
If you don’t know how you can face another day of the job you hate but discover you can’t easily leave, don’t despair; failing to make a change now won’t doom you to eternal unhappiness. Even if you can’t find an alternative now, a good option may present itself later, and in the meantime you can consider ways of making your current job a little less painful, like working from home, finding an engrossing off-the-clock distraction, or just giving yourself little gift incentives for every week you get through without murdering your manager. Don’t promise yourself escape or career happiness, but do promise to make the best of what’s available and to respect yourself for doing so.
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 22, 2016
Young people in search of their vocational calling are often told to “find a job you’ll love.” What they aren’t told, however, is that most people love eating, having a roof over their heads, and getting to keep all of their teeth, and it’s easier and better to find a job you hate that helps you achieve those beloved goals than to search endlessly for work you’re passionate about while homeless and hungry for soft foods. Job satisfaction is never guaranteed nor fully under our control, so if working a shitty job is often unavoidable, working hard, whether your job calls to you or not, should be a source of pride, not shame.
-Dr. Lastname
I started my own business almost ten years ago, and it’s since grown really well with a staff of about 17 or 18. The problem is, I don’t enjoy the business I’m in very much at this point, so I am grappling with whether I should stop and do something else, or just carry on putting up with it. It’s hard to give up on something I’ve invested a lot of time and effort in, the business is doing well, I don’t want to put all my employees out of work, and I’m scared that I’d be throwing something valuable away and live to regret it in the future. My goal is to figure out whether (and how) I should stick to a job that I can no longer stand. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 10, 2016
If, like our reader from earlier, you feel uncertain about remaining estranged from Asshole™ parents, it’s important to keep guilt from pushing you to attempt an otherwise unwise reconciliation. So, before trying to reach out, take these five steps to figure out whether it’s worth the attempt to make peace with your wretched parents.
1) Determine The Danger to Your Kids
Don’t assume that you can always protect kids from your parents’ potentially hurtful words or actions, or stem their cruelty with your own kind, reasonable behavior. If they are sufficiently bitter or crazy they may attack on sight, leaving your kids shaken by their destructive and out of control behavior. Be realistic in evaluating your parents’ detonation times and never let your wish for reconciliation cause you to underestimate danger, especially when your kids are at risk.
2) Determine the Danger Overall
Imagine other potential kinds of of hurt and harm that reaching out to your parents may trigger; with some malicious, explosive people, any kind of contact is dangerous. Even if your efforts are kind and well meant, nothing will reduce their sense of grievance or eagerness to even the score. Rely on your prior experience, not wishful thinking, to predict whether a well-intentioned call or visit will expose you to spiteful behavior including shaming, verbal assaults, and legal struggles over gifts and inheritances.
3) Process the Potential Benefits
Ask yourself whether your willingness to engage in polite conversation and reconnect will have any potential longterm benefits for you and yours, beyond possibly feeling less guilty and isolated. Be realistic about whether your efforts will facilitate real gains, like larger family get-togethers and friendships between cousins. Include whatever pleasure such contact may give others and the satisfaction you may feel for being kind when you have good reason to feel hurt or mistreated.
4) Test Your Ability to Keep Yourself and Your Family Safe
Drawing on your experience from prior family conflicts, guilt trips, or shame shake-downs, prepare for the worst with exit strategies that will end unacceptable conversations and protect you and yours from hurtful fallout before you can get sucked in. Rehearse polite statements that express regret for quick exits while not attacking, defending, or prolonging the discomfort, and make sure to choose locations that are easy to leave. Don’t reach out until you are confident you can protect yourself from unacceptable behavior.
5) Tally Up Total Outreach Pros and Cons
If, after examining all the potential risks and gains, it becomes clear that reaching out to your parents isn’t likely to benefit anyone or build a stronger family, don’t do it, and certainly don’t hold yourself responsible. Your only obligation is to your family, and all you can do is try to give peace a chance if peace is even a possibility. As long as your decision is based on realistic risk assessment and good values, it will never be wrong, no matter how bad the guilt gets.
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 27, 2016
We may all hope to be the kind of lucky people bound to our parents by a shared sense of humor, values, and love, but for some of us the only parent/child bond we share is in our genes. For those extra-unlucky group whose parents carry the genes for rage, alcoholism, and selfishness—the building blocks of Asshole™ DNA—reconciliation is all but impossible, and all attempts will leave you needlessly miserable. That’s why you should never satisfy your yearning for a better relationship with your parent until you administer an unofficial Asshole™ DNA test; learn how to size them up realistically and decide whether you can attempt to strengthen your bond or should leave it at the genetic level.
-Dr. Lastname
After decades of trying to have a positive relationship with my parents, I finally stopped all contact two years ago after they transferred their toxicity to my children. Therapy has helped me realize that they are narcissists and that it is simply impossible to have a loving relationship with them. That knowledge deepens as my relationship with my own children grows as they grow, and I cherish them. Although we are all much happier without contact, and even though I know that actually things will never change, a part of me still wishes that things could be different. My father’s own brother refuses to see him for similar reasons and he and other relatives are very supportive of me. Recently, my partner lost both of her parents and she was able to be with each of them in their final hours. Now she is worried that I may regret not trying one last time to improve relations. I appreciate her concern but fear that there really is no point and that, if I did make contact, I’d just be laying myself open to another attack. But, what if I do regret not trying..and so it goes round and round in my head. My goal is to determine whether I’ll feel worse about not talking to my parents or, by trying to talk to them again, possibly allowing their toxic presence back into my life.
Given how hard it is for most people to part with their favorite/disgusting jeans from college or prized collection of VHS tapes, it’s not surprising that cutting yourself off entirely from your parents, no matter how necessary, is bound to leave you with lingering senses of sadness and doubt.
You’re right, of course, to give top priority to the protection of your kids, particularly if your parents are likely to become violent or openly express rage or make accusations in their presence. Even so, there’s no way to feel entirely at peace about cutting off all communication, knowing that time and death will someday make the silence permanent. And admitting to yourself how that silence may also provide some relief will just flood you with the kind of guilt that most Catholics, Jews, and people with neck tattoos feel exclusively entitled to.
Before giving into this first wave of guilt and assuming that resuming contact would be a worthwhile step towards improving your relationship and elevating your soul, take stock of past attempts and their results. Don’t expect to be able to mend fences with insight so powerful that it dissolves their mistrust and hostility; your only standard for a good intervention should be to be pleasant, polite, and reasonably conciliatory, regardless of results. If you achieved this standard through a few good attempts with no real return on your efforts—or worse, your efforts were greeted with a blast of hostility and drama—it’s unlikely that trying again will produce a better result.
Once you’ve decided that seeking improvement is probably unrealistic and possibly harmful, ask yourself whether it’s worthwhile or even possible to have a limited non-relationship rather than nothing at all. A limited non-relationship means restricting contact to short, superficial, polite conversations, free of emotional satisfaction, intimacy, and, as such, opportunity for conflict. You may never get that desired (and fictional) catharsis, but you will be able to participate in large family gatherings without threat of conflict and express benign good wishes, however shallow, regardless of past wrongs or recent provocation.
If you’re hoping to reconnect in order to achieve some level of emotional satisfaction, then you’re bound for disappointment; the best result, aside from the confidence that comes from doing your best to do what’s right, is the possibility that it may nurture other good family relationships for you and the kids while showing the kids how to avoid conflict when it’s pointless and destructive.
Don’t hold yourself responsible for or feel guilty about letting go of anything that’s unfixable, be it your beloved first car or your relationship with toxic parents. Don’t assume, however, that total excommunication is your only other option; you can always salvage broken things for parts.
So, if you wish, you can usually maintain civility with uncivil relatives if you first decide that the strategic rewards are worth the unpleasant effort of management they invariably require. But if you decide that it’s unlikely that your efforts will be rewarded with anything but regret, don’t let guilt blind you to all the benefits of letting go.
STATEMENT:
“Now that I’m a parent, I wish I could improve my relationship with my parents and give them and my children an opportunity to bond and get to know one another. Given that my parents are unimproveable Assholes™, however, I do what’s necessary to protect the kids while keeping things civil and peaceful.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 21, 2016
Dear Fellow Americans,
It has recently come to our attention that “FUCK YOUR FEELINGS” has become an unofficial slogan printed on T-shirts for Donald Trump’s current presidential campaign (see below).
Given that we are authors of a New York Times best selling book whose title shares two outta three words with said slogan, we feel that it’s worth publicly stating that we not only have nothing to do with said shirt (or any political ideology, period), but that this slogan has nothing to do with what our book is about.
- Our book asks readers to “F*CK FEELINGS” when it comes to problem solving and decision-making. We aim to teach readers how to approach life’s major problems by trusting experience and common sense, not just blindly following their emotions.
- “FUCK YOUR FEELINGS” seems to refer specifically to the negative feelings that not-Trump voters may harbor towards their fellow, Trump-supporting citizens. The wearer’s feelings, however—namely the negative ones that may be behind their support for their candidate, like pride, paranoia, rage, etc.—are, apparently, not to be fucked with.
- What we would say to those who wear this shirt, and to voters in general, is, of course, that when it comes to making the extremely important decision of whom to vote for to hold the highest office in the land, F*CK ALL FEELINGS EVERYWHERE FOREVER AND EVER AMEN.
For politicians, appealing to emotions is the easiest way to get a vote; it’s much more effective and efficient to scare support out of voters or draw them in with nostalgia than it is to educate them about policy and strategy. That’s why it’s our responsibility as voters to ignore the endless barrage of emotional manipulation and educate ourselves about what a candidate plans to do, how they plan to do it, and whether those plans are realistic, given how our government’s traditionally worked (or hasn’t).
If that sounds like work, it is, but a vote is an investment; you wouldn’t sink a lot of money into a new car without looking into all the latest models and you wouldn’t make a down payment on a house without checking up on everything from the plumbing to the school district, so you shouldn’t throw your support behind someone who’s going to lead your country without giving their resume and their leadership plan as much consideration as you’d give a possible mortgage.
So please, when it comes to voting for our next president, listen to us, not a garment: F*ck (ALL) Feelings and make your decision based on facts, not emotions. And please buy our book F*ck Feelings: One Shrink’s Practical Advice for Managing All Life’s Impossible Problems
.
Yours in Democracy,
Dr. Michael Bennett and Sarah Bennett
Authors of F*ck Feelings: F*ck Feelings: One Shrink’s Practical Advice for Managing All Life’s Impossible Problems and the upcoming Fuck Love: One Shrink’s Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship (coming out in early 2017, should we avoid the Apocalypse)
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 13, 2016
People who aren’t drinking are technically sober, but, like our reader’s ex-husband described in a post earlier this week, many have not developed or just lost the ability to put aside selfish needs for the sake of long-term goals, values, and making relationships work. They’re often good at pleasing you in the short run, which makes you feel things are going well, but you must look closely at how they handle frustration and painful emotions before you know whether they’ve overcome the negative impact of alcohol on character. Here are five ways to evaluate the dry drunk before you get too close and find out the hard way that his sobriety is only booze-deep.
1) See How He Handles Hurt
Because drunks are blind slaves to their needs and impulses, a dry drunk still feels entitled to get back at you when he’s hurt or, at least, to find immediate relief the way he once did from booze. What you hope is that, instead of pouting or sulking, he’ll assume that hurt feelings are sometimes unavoidable, suck up his pain, let the bad feelings pass, and continue to act like a decent human being. If he instead acts petulant and feels entitled to have a good time with his buddies or new girlfriend because you’ve let him down, then he still has a drunk’s habits, just without the bar tab.
2) Mind the Money
Thanks to the same impulse control issues, a dry drunk can also have problems saving money; he means to be financially responsible but winds up spending more than he intended on various virgin ways to feel good and stop feeling bad. Ask yourself whether he really can stick to a budget and save money or whether he can’t stop himself from getting you a flashy present when he worries that you’re mad at him or losing interest. If he can’t, then he’s likely to act twice as bad when he’s the one losing interest in you.
3) Assess Kill-building
Since learning new skills or taking on a new challenge is often a frustrating process, it’s one dry drunks often lack the self-discipline and pain threshold to deal with. Note whether he can make himself take on difficult projects, stick to unpleasant routines involving errands or exercise, and do other boring activities for the sake of a good cause. If he has values of his own, he’ll stay busy even when you’re not there. If his motivation is to make you happy, he’ll look busy when you’re around, but not do much more. That speaks poorly for his ability to learn (or relearn) the skills needed to stay sober, like patience and acceptance.
4) Look for Lies
Of the average drunk’s propensity for dishonesty, Stephen King once said that, “Ask an active alcoholic what time it is, and 9 times out of 10 he’ll lie to you.” Similarly, a dry drunk will also lie with ease, usually to avoid conflict, regardless of whether the lie is easily discovered and the consequences are much worse than if he told the truth. Don’t avoid checking on the facts because you want to show him you trust him and build up his confidence; look for honesty as a sign of real sobriety.
5) Track the True Source of Blame
In the absence of morals or values, the main belief held by any addict, aside from the importance of getting high, is the absolute importance of quid pro quo. As such, a dry drunk also feels you should make him feel good if he made a good effort to make you feel good, and any unwillingness to hold up your end of the bargain is the ultimate betrayal. So, whether he’s bored, angry, or hurt (see above), he’ll find reasons to blame you for his bad feelings. Don’t think that expressing such blame will improve your relationship; instead, recognize it as a sign that a good relationship may be impossible, at least until he realizes that he’s got a lot more work to do on his sobriety beyond staying sober.
.
