Posted by fxckfeelings on September 6, 2012
Delving into past relationships always has an Indiana Jones element to it; no matter how pure your archaeological intentions, there’s always risk, conflict, and the potential for melting your face off. You don’t know whose feelings are going to get stirred up by your adventures—yours or your partner’s—and whether you’ll be able to manage them. Without exploring, however, you often can’t tell how the relationship you’ve got will stand up to the risk of danger. So learn to do historical detective work by staying focused on what you need to know, rather than on the intense feelings you may encounter. You’re not looking for thrills, romance, or monkey brains—just the facts.
–Dr. Lastname
I am in my 50s, separated, and in a relationship. Out of curiosity, and because it’s easy to do so nowadays, I googled the names of some ex boyfriends from way back when. I found that one is living in a city less than an hour away and running his own company—we had a brief but intense romance in our late teens and he wanted to marry me but I still had feelings for another. When my job took me abroad we kissed goodbye sadly and kept in touch for a while but things petered out and we both moved on. I would like to send him a friendly email just to reminisce and find out how his life went without seeming like a crazy stalker or opening a can of worms. Is it ever wise to go delving into the past now it is so easy and anonymous to do so? My goal is to enjoy one of the benefits of cyberspace without creeping anyone out or being disloyal.
There is a real risk here of being creepy—not to your ex by sending him a friendly email, but to your current partner, to whom you could literally be a creep if your curiosity about an old relationship jeopardizes your current one.
Your first obligation is not to revive a relationship if you believe it’s destructive, i.e., if your connection didn’t just peter out, but ended so badly due to his behavior that said connection was severed with a chainsaw and then burned to cinders.
From what you write, however, you have confidence in your ability to express yourself appropriately and you regard your old relationship as basically positive. What’s harder to know is whether reconnecting to this old boyfriend will trigger uncontrollable feelings in you, him, and/or your current boyfriend that will either damage what you’ve got or cause you to break promises you’d wanted to keep. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 30, 2012
If you listen to (other) experts, psychiatric treatment should always begin with objective evidence, which then determines a diagnosis, which directs us to proven, effective treatments. This expert, on the other hand, thinks that “evidence-based psychiatry” would be very nice if we happened to know lots more than we do, but it is one of life’s great ironies that the organ we know the least about is the home of knowledge itself, the brain. Until we can fully wrap our heads around our minds and how they work, scientific thinking in psychiatry is often wishful thinking. It can actually get in the way of making good, practical decisions and accepting the necessity of living with the unknown, be it a mystery illness or the grey mush in our skulls.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve been very confused lately because of what’s going on inside me. My father did some bad things to me while I was growing up—things that I just began remembering a year or so ago (sorry, I can’t label it). Since then, other memories surfaced as well, but not many at all. Most of my memories of my childhood are snapshots that are just little moments in time, separated by years in between that I just don’t remember. Anyway, the thing that distresses me is that sometimes, but not all the time, I’ll feel like I have another part of me who is talking in my head. This came to my awareness mostly after the memories started coming up, although I feel like maybe it happened occasionally before. For instance, recently someone asked me a question, and a child’s voice answered in my head. I have other instances of similar things like that happening. One time it seemed like there were two parts conversing with each other and I was just observing the conversation, per se. That being said, I am educated enough about what happened to me and the consequences of it to know that I think I’m describing DID, but from what I’ve read, I don’t think I have it. I don’t switch to other personalities, and I don’t really lose time or anything like that…but I do know I’m not qualified to make that kind of assessment (and I know you can’t just by reading this letter). But my question does relate to that: is it possible to have the kinds of experiences I’ve described and not have DID? Since I’m pretty sure I don’t have it, I feel like I’m just some crazy, messed up person for no reason. It terrifies me to share this with anyone, but I don’t know what to do anymore, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep going.
Diagnosis in psychiatry is never precise and, when given too much attention, can do more harm than good. Until the day a mental illness diagnosis can be determined by peeing on a stick, all we can currently do is lump symptoms together and try to observe what happens to people who fall within an arbitrary category.
In the short run, knowing you’re not alone might be comforting, but it would tell you very little about what to expect from future symptoms or treatments. Worse, it would get you thinking of yourself as a diagnosis instead of as a person who’s trying to live life in spite of some disturbing, hard-to-understand symptoms.
As such a person, ask yourself what you most want to accomplish in this life, despite whatever’s going on in your head. For most people with traumatic childhoods, it’s always meaningful to be decent to others, whether they’re your kids, relatives, or friends. You know how easily people slip into abusiveness when they’re angry and how much it hurts, so you never take a good, supportive relationship for granted.
Most symptoms that impair the way you function won’t prevent you from being the person you want to be or doing what you really want to do, they’ll just slow you down and force you to work harder to think up alternative methods. A good coach helps you to accept your impairment without getting discouraged or demoralized.
So instead of looking for the ultimate shrink diagnostician, find a therapist who can act as a good coach, who isn’t too upset by symptoms, and is eager to see what you’re capable of, even when you’re distracted by traumatic memories, internal conversations or the sensations of observing yourself.
Consult a psychiatrist at least once or twice to get an overview of possible treatments, including medication. Of course, non-medical treatments almost always pose a lower risk, but many medications are relatively safe and require no more than a few weeks to try out. If your symptoms are sufficiently painful and/or disabling, and non-medical treatment is insufficient, then you owe it to yourself to check out every possibility.
Whatever symptoms you have, you want to do your best to manage them without letting them define your life. Keep up your diagnostic questions until you’re confident you’ve heard what the experts have to say, regardless of how unsatisfying that might be, and then forget about what caused your problems or how they might be categorized.
Your next step is to manage your burden and respect yourself for carrying it, even if the nature of that burden remains a mystery.
STATEMENT:
“My psychological symptoms spook me and leave me feeling distracted and distanced from myself, but they can’t take the meaning out of a good day’s work or a solid friendship. I may never figure out why I feel the way I do, or stop myself from feeling that way, but I can certainly lead my life according to my values regardless of the tricks my head likes to play on me.”
No one was more surprised than I when I suddenly got depressed about a year ago, because it’s not something that ever happened to me before. I lost energy, felt like crying, and got anxiety attacks. There was lots of pressure at work, but my job was safe, and I’ve never been prone to buckling under pressure. Now I could barely get to work and I didn’t give a damn about the projects that I was responsible for. My wife finally forced me to see a psychiatrist, I started to feel better on an antidepressant, and then my internist really surprised me by telling me my testosterone was low and I should try a trial of replacement therapy, which I did. Within 2 weeks I was back to normal and a few weeks later I stopped the antidepressant. So now I wonder whether I was really depressed or not or whether I should have tried antidepressant in the first place. My goal is to figure out my diagnosis so I’ll know what to expect.
Even on that rare occasion when a specific psychiatric diagnosis really matters, it doesn’t matter as much as you think. Yes, it was critical to your recovery that you and your doctors checked out testosterone deficiency as a possible cause of depression; the sudden, unexpected onset of your symptoms raised the odds of your having an unusual and potentially curable cause, which deserved an extensive workup of your hormone levels, vitamin levels, evidence of inflammation, etc., so congrats for making a good decision.
You also discovered that depressive symptoms may have many causes, making depression less of a diagnosis than a cluster of symptoms. So, much like aspirin, antidepressants can improve symptoms, no matter what the cause, if they work at all. (Unfortunately, no matter what the cause, antidepressant trials often fail [35% for each trial] and require lots of time [three to four weeks] before there are noticeable results.)
In addition to lucking out with both the diagnosis and the response to antidepressants, you learned a valuable lesson, which is that anyone can get depression. It wasn’t caused by bad psychological or medical hygiene, just bad luck. Getting depression often doesn’t have a deeper meaning other than that we live in a tough, unfair world where people often get sick for no reason, and sometimes that sickness makes your brain miserable.
Your own observations are the best guide to your prognosis. If you responded rapidly to getting testosterone replacement therapy, then you may be relatively unlikely to get depressive symptoms again (as long as you continue taking the testosterone, which you may need indefinitely). At some point, if you want to experiment with reducing the testosterone treatment, ask your physician about the odds and choose a good time for experimenting, when not too much else is going on in your life.
From what you know, there’s no reason to think that your prognosis—your expected luck—is worse than anyone else’s. You made good choices, which is an essential survival skill when you happen to live in a bad luck world.
STATEMENT:
“I’d love to take my mental health for granted the way I used to, and maybe I will, after enough time of not feeling depressed has passed, but there’s no escaping knowing how easy it is to get sick. I’m proud of having made good decisions and happy to have gotten lucky enough to almost balance the bad luck I had to get sick in the first place.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 27, 2012
Weddings and funerals are supposed to produce scripted emotional results, but life simply pushes too much muddy water under the bridge for human ceremonies to work out the way they’re supposed to, i.e., with great joy or catharsis, as opposed to resulting in a couple getting married or the survivors of a loved one being consoled. So when you’ve got a major change-of-life ceremony coming up that can’t perform the way it should, don’t feel like it, or you, has failed. As long as you see the greater purpose of the ceremony, there’s a way to not just get it over with, but make it accomplish something worthwhile.
–Dr. Lastname
When my husband left 3 years ago it came as a shock although we had been unhappy for a long time and both had affairs before (his secret, mine open). He insisted to me and our adult children that there was no one else, and was uncertain about divorce. He carried on spending a lot of time with the family, then told us he had recently started seeing a female former co-worker, but that it was not important. He then spent six months leading us all to believe that he wanted to save the marriage and taking me out on dinner dates, but he also took a holiday with the other woman, and said lots of things that failed to add up. Two years ago everything changed when the other woman confronted him at the family home and made a horrible scene and swore at me and our son. She was furious about all his lying to her and told us they had been involved for years, then they brawled in front of me and he ran away. Things are now amicable between us even though he is still involved with this person, but we are still not divorced and our kids have chosen not to meet her. Our daughter is to be married soon and I do not wish to receive this other woman at the wedding on account of her awful behavior to me and my son (I have not seen her since that day and she never apologized). Do I miss out on having my new partner attend or do I swallow my pride and invite her? It’s my daughter’s day and I want it to go well but feel humiliated at the prospect of having to be pleasant to this person. My goal is to behave with dignity and retain the moral high ground without sacrificing my principles.
Before asking yourself whether you would feel humiliated if your husband’s volatile girlfriend were invited to your daughter’s wedding, ask yourself what the goal of your daughter’s wedding is supposed to be (aside from a legal ceremony with cake).
Despite the numerous television shows, films, and monthly magazines that tell you otherwise, the primary goal of weddings isn’t to make the bride, or any one person, happy, because that goal becomes dangerous in a hurry, whether you’re talking about a wedding or life in general.
There’s too much about weddings that you can’t control, including the weather, having enough cake, and risking forced meetings between sworn enemies (see above) who have access to free alcohol and folding, potentially airborne chairs. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 23, 2012
We never advocate trying to change or control someone else, but imposing standards on how someone behaves with you isn’t necessarily trying to control that person, just the behavior that occurs in your immediate vicinity. If that person is someone you love, you hope they can change their behavior for the sake of a better life and closer relationship/even tighter vicinity. As long as you accept your powerlessness over that change, however, you can enforce your standards without rancor, bitterness, or guilt, while hopefully giving them an opportunity to decide to control their behavior on their own.
–Dr. Lastname
A few months ago, after I caught my boyfriend in a series of lies and secretive communications/meetings with several old girlfriends, he agreed to cut off communication with all but two of them whom he considers close friends. I know that this guy absolutely despises authority, so I will not “demand” that he cut off communication to women that he had slept with just before meeting me, women that he had very inappropriate texts and emails with until I caught him, but he told me, with those two women, he will now keep his communication with them “clean.” I say, if he couldn’t stop himself before, he is likely a compulsive (something?) and he’d do himself a huge favor by simply cutting ties. He has sworn to me that he has been physically faithful, but I think that what he did constitutes emotional affairs, and that safeguards should be put in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again. By the way, when he was seeing these girls before me, he WAS physically cheating on every single one of them. So there definitely is a compulsive behavior he needs to get under control…
Intellectually, you’re right to assume that your boyfriend’s past behavior shows that he’s a liar and cheat and that, regardless of his sincerity now, the only way to guarantee he’ll change these behaviors is breaking his texting fingers.
What’s missing in your account is that you haven’t asked yourself what he could possibly do that would make you think he has this problem under control, and what he can do and what he can say are two very different things.
Don’t accept weak, bullshit answers like “I’ll go into therapy” or “I’ll cut back to two friends,” because they don’t acknowledged the likelihood that he’ll do it again, which is the part of his problem that most concerns you. Instead, they allow you to hope that things will get better and forget about the open-door policy of his pants. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 20, 2012
Maybe you can’t help feeling guilty when someone tells you that you’ve destroyed their self-esteem, particularly when you’re critical of something they’ve done, no matter how much you know they’re overreacting. If, however, you remember how little control you have over anyone’s self-esteem, including your own, and have expressed your criticism positively, you can arm yourself against guilt and stand by whatever you’ve said. It’s not your fault if they’re hypersensitive (or hyperbolic).
–Dr. Lastname
I’m going to kill my kid if she doesn’t kill herself first. She’s a drug user and chronic fuckup, on probation for a DUI, and she just can’t stay out of trouble. Last week she stole my checkbook and went on a spending spree at Best Buy. A month ago she got restless, took my keys, and went out for a midnight drive without a license. I don’t think it’s just because she’s depressed. I think I’ve failed her, probably because I’m an alcoholic and wasn’t sober during her first ten years. It’s so hard for me to feel compassion for her, though, because I’ve managed to get sober and put the work in to stay that way. When I confront her about how stupid she’s being, she says “I want to die, you’re right, I’m an awful person,” and puts a handful of pills in her mouth. That’s when I really want to kill her, while I’m driving her to the hospital. She’ll only go to AA meetings if I drag her along, and she doesn’t get anything from them, so maybe she just has to hit bottom first, although I can’t imagine how low she’d have to go. My goal is to stay away from her before I do something I regret.
It’s horrible to have a kid whose fuck-ups are fearsome, persistent, in your face, dangerous, and expensive. You give her an inch, she takes a mile of rope and hangs both of you.
Even more horrible, however, is letting your anger loose on such a kid, then watching her declare you’ve made her hate herself so much that she does something risky and dies. Losing a kid is terrible, but losing a kid after so many words you can’t take back is worse.
While you’re the first to call her a fuckup, you’re the last to actually believe it. It’s true that some fuckups can see the light, try to get better and learn how to hit the breaks on their urge to partake in fuckuppery, but that’s their call, not yours. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 16, 2012
Since marriage is supposed to exist between two people, it’s understandable that one partner’s adding an inner demon to the mix can make things a little crowded. Demons are hell to live with (pun intended) and, unless you’re Buffy, a neurosurgeon, or, evidently, Abraham Lincoln, they’re also impossible to kill. While psychotherapy has little power to exorcise them, it can do much to increase the coping skills of those brave people who are determined to survive, be decent, and keep their marriages together, regardless of the obstacles created by these intimate enemies.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve recently gotten married to a wonderful man after a very brief courtship (we’d lived across the country, and he’ll be moving in with me in the fall). Now I’m terrified I’m going to ruin this relationship by behaving the same way I’ve behaved in every other significant romantic relationship I’ve ever had—by never being satisfied by what he does, by framing things in terms of who’s right and who’s wrong (of course I’m right!), and by letting my anger take complete control in the moment and being unable to communicate civilly. Intellectually and practically, I thoroughly appreciate him; he tells me he loves me, he misses me, and I’m beautiful, and he consistently tells me he has complete faith in my ability to work through my problems and for us to share something deep and meaningful. I’m in therapy and I’ve gone to therapy during previous relationships, and I spend time journaling to reflect on my behavior, and am sure to apologize to him when I’ve calmed down and thought about things and can see how my emotions took over and distorted my perspective. We often take time away from each other when we’re/I’m upset so we can calm down, which I think is good, but it’s not enough. When I’m calm, I know (intellectually) that my own happiness is my responsibility and his is his, and that our relationship is an extension of our own personal lives, not our lifeblood. When I’m upset, however, he can’t do anything right, he won’t see things from my perspective, and I don’t even really like him or think he’s smart – all of which I know when I’m calm is not only nonsense, but damaging, and cruel. We fight, because of me, every day. How can I remember my love for him and his love for me when I’m in this space? How can I work to keep from entering this space to begin with? My goal is to avoid what so many of your letter writers have: years of difficult and painful relationships with a person they love. I’m just at the beginning of mine and I’m trying so hard, and failing every day. I don’t know why I won’t let him love me and why I push him away. What can I do to let go, and change these vicious habits?
For a long time now, judging from what you’ve written, you’ve had a problem with anger and emotional reactivity. Long enough that it’s time to stop considering your anger a problem, and start seeing it for what it is—part of who you are.
In other words, despite several courses of psychotherapy and a strong determination to keep yourself under control, you just can’t stop yourself from nastying out and turning from Dr. Justyou into Ms. Hyde. That would indicate that it’s time for a new approach.
So, to keep false hope from interfering with your planning, it’s time to accept that you’ve got a bad case of demonic possession and your impulses aren’t likely to change, despite your finding a kind husband whom you love very much. This is the first of the 12 steps, as well as your first step towards demonic management. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 13, 2012
We’re not the first to say that love is a drug, strong enough to either addict you to the wrong person or to keep you chasing one new person after another. Your friends will attempt countless interventions, but the only way to get clean is to figure out what’s good for you and seek the strength to pursue it. Otherwise, you’ll be a bitter ex who has trouble letting go of past dreams, or a compulsive cheater who leaves a trail of bitter exes who call you liar, always longing for your next fix.
–Dr. Lastname
After three years with my boyfriend, everything went in a downward spiral in the past week. He was talking to a girl who hated me and was bent on breaking us up for a while. When I talked to her about it to get answers, she replied that my boyfriend no longer loved me and liked her. That made me suspicious, so I started snooping around—I found messages to girls where he would give a compliment and then ask for their number, a secret twitter where he only followed female friends, a secret Facebook where he had only female friends (a couple of which have tried to get with him) and messaged them asking for phone numbers. I also found on that Facebook that he had went with a female friend to the movies the same day he told me he was broke. He admitted that he had female friend numbers in his phone under male names, but he said they were all just friends and he didn’t know why he hid everything, just that he was scared of how I would react. I know that I should just let him go—at least I think I should—but I don’t know how I’ll cope. I feel like there was something wrong with me for him to hide everything from me. I don’t understand why he created this other life for his female friends. I know most people would read this and say he was trying to get with someone, and maybe that’s true, but I don’t think so. I know he is extremely insecure about his image, I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I know I’m over thinking but I feel like I can’t have closure until I know what was going on in his mind, but he says he doesn’t know.
You say you need to understand what’s wrong about your compulsively lying boyfriend before you decide whether or not to dump him…which, unfortunately, is just one more lie.
Of course, the two of you would like to understand why he’s a liar (you probably more than him), but you also know by now that there are no answers to questions like this that ever make a difference. Whether he got his lying habits from being abused, misunderstood, or beset by impulses, he’s got what he’s got.
The truth is that your quest for understanding, in a situation like this, avoids and postpones hard choices that you don’t want to make. In order to avoid the pain of losing him, you’re stifling that part of your personality that is supposed to protect you from being screwed and help you find a good, honest partner. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 9, 2012
The heart may be a lonely hunter, but it’s also picky and easily irritated, particularly when hungry. If you enter the hunt without knowing what you really need, you risk being too impatient, too easily rejected, or both. In any case, try to remember all the important things you and a partner need from a relationship, aside from emotional fulfillment, so you can preserve the not-always-loving relationships that are still worth saving, and let go of the ones that won’t work. You might not get everything you desire, but you won’t return from the hunt empty-hearted.
–Dr. Lastname
I have a friend who is in town visiting from far away (she recently moved). She is not a great communicator, and at the last minute decided not to stay with my family but to instead stay with a friend I don’t get along with, citing some pretty lame reasons. I am often hurt by the communication style of this visiting friend. I also have a trip planned to stay with her in a month, and I can’t decide if I should A, suck it up, not take her decision too seriously, and continue my plan to stay with her, B, have more self-respect and tell her she’s hurt me (a conversation we’ve had before; it hasn’t done a lot of good), or C, redirect my trip and avoid her since I don’t want to invest more energy in this person. It would take a lot of energy to redirect my trip, but it’s been over a year of me being really sad, her engaging in formalities like birthday cards but not actually spending time with me or returning emails or phone calls. I feel I am over reacting but I also feel that if this is the reaction I have to her, isn’t everyone better off if I just separate? Most of all I want to engage in action that I will still be able to endorse 20 years from now. What to do?
Looking back twenty years from now, you probably won’t care about how often your friend ignored your texts or chose to pal around with your enemies. What will matter more is whether she was the best friend she could be, and whether that was worth it.
In all friendships, there’s a balance between your painful feelings and the times you find your friendship meaningful and rewarding. It’s up to you to decide whether you value the good side enough to ignore the shortcomings. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 6, 2012
Like all symptoms of mental illness, anxiety and suicidal feelings seem controllable since they’re related to thoughts and how we look at things, especially since they have the potential to be so destructive. In reality, their primary causes are powerful, mysterious and, whether rooted in past events or biology, are not curable or easily reversible by the best treatments, most loving families, and strongest willpower. What good treatment and a loving family can do, however, is give meaning to the courage it takes to ignore pain and dangerous impulses, giving one comfort, if not control.
–Dr. Lastname
How do you get rid of the pain from your child’s suicide? My son died four years ago, and our entire family is still devastated. We are all now living with depression, anger, and our own thoughts of suicide at times. We are all in therapy but it’s moving so slowly, it doesn’t feel like life is moving forward. After a tragedy like this, how do you get your purpose back?
While I can’t imagine anything much worse than having your child suicide, the key to surviving it is to understand how similar it is to having your child die of any other cause. No parents should have to bury their child, no matter how that child’s life ended.
Intuitively, suicide feels like a preventable cause of death, so it seems justified to review the many would-haves and could-haves leading up to it.
Mental health professionals sometimes make things worse by focusing on such possible “causes” as unacknowledged trauma, unshared feelings, or unrecognized calls for help, all of which mean blame. Blame then feeds the depression and anger you talk about, poisoning normal grief with feelings of guilt, regret, and failure. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 2, 2012
Sure, there’s something to the childhood logic that first comes love, then comes marriage, but only between two people who aren’t allergic to commitment, which has much more to do with character than love. Instead of trying to forcibly wrest commitment from the one you love, even if that someone seems totally loveable, focus your own ability to commit, and insist on receiving the same without negotiation. If they can’t meet that commitment, then what you’ve got isn’t true love, and it’s time to find someone else to sit in the tree with.
–Dr. Lastname
I know it’s a cliché, but here goes. For a little over a year, off and on, I’ve been dating this smart, good looking, talented guy, and when we’re alone, he’s sweet and perfect. Thing is, he doesn’t want anyone to know we’re together/”be official,” so when we’re together in public, he either ignores me or acts like a jerk (which he says he’s doing so his friends won’t suspect anything). He also stands me up and doesn’t call me back, which is why we’ve broken up a few times, but then he begs for my forgiveness, reminds me why I like him, and we start seeing one another regularly again until a few weeks later, when he fades away until I can’t take it anymore, and then it all repeats, over and over. He swears he’s just confused about making our relationship public and official, but I can’t put up with this much longer. What can I do to convince him to get over his fears, admit we’re together, and be the great guy I know full-time?
Love gets people to think with their hearts instead of their minds, and since your heart’s currently taking you on an emotional rollercoaster, your mind’s a little too dizzy to think straight, or at least see the big picture.
After all, treating you badly in public is a dubious tactic, no matter what the motivation, and ignoring you, with or without a suspicious audience, is also almost impossible to justify. The way you’ve described his overall behavior does not make your boyfriend seem “sweet,” and certainly not “perfect,” but very close to “jerk.”
So stop being in the moment and take a second to look for facts that could put this guy’s behavior into perspective. Otherwise, you won’t be able to do anything but pick the petals off flowers asking yourself whether he loves you or loves you not, and what you’re supposed to do to make it work. Unfortunately, all that leaves you with is a bunch of bald daisies and no self-esteem. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
