Posted by fxckfeelings on May 5, 2011
People like to turn to an authority when they’re helpless, and if that helplessness only applied to 911-like situations, there would be no problem. For problems that don’t involve theft or fire but sadness and family, however, authority is useless; sure, doctors like me can give advice, but until medical schools start borrowing from Hogwarts’ curriculum, the best resources you have are your own. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll learn to draw on your own authority to come up with the best possible management plan and execute it with confidence. You are your own best first responder.
–Dr. Lastname
I need to find a doctor who will tell my daughter she needs to take her medication. She’s always had a problem with depression, and she did well in high school when she took antidepressants. Now, however, she’s 24 and very reactive to however she’s feeling, whether it’s not getting out of bed, or not working, or feeling dizzy and deciding it’s the medication and stopping it. My husband and I can’t get her to stick with anything, and she won’t listen to us in any case, so our goal is to get you, or some professional, to tell her what she needs to do.
Whenever parents want a doctor to tell their kid what to do, you can be pretty sure they’ve lost faith in themselves and overestimated the power of communication/a medical degree.
And no, it doesn’t matter how old the kid is or how many Harvard degrees the doctor has; the doctor doesn’t have more power than the parents, no matter how powerless the parents feel.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 2, 2011
As feelings go, love isn’t so problematic—you feel good, you act nicer to others, and if all goes well, it is truly “all you need.” Unfortunately, if you’re not careful, love can easily triggers negative thoughts and actions that lead to a whole heap of trouble and turn love from something fuzzy into “a battlefield.” If you can remember who you are and what you believe in, however, you can take risks on love without losing your sanity, and find something more compatible with reality than pop songs.
–Dr. Lastname
You’ve probably had a disgusting amount of questions like the ones I’m about to put towards you, and that’s another thing that annoys me—I’m a cliché. 17 months ago my boyfriend broke up with me, explaining that he was too young to be in a serious relationship. I know this is perfectly logical but I have never been able to get over it, even though I do understand his point of view. I am still very much in love with him. I know perfectly well that realistically no one really marries their first love, that realistically it wasn’t even a proper adult relationship but I feel as raw today as I did the day it happened. I’ve been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I have regular nightmares about him. Last Easter I attempted suicide yet it failed. I’ve been sent to counseling, but I didn’t like it. I dropped out of university as I was too distracted and there is nothing I can throw myself into to make me forget it. The idea of him with someone else would kill me. I keep thinking to myself, I’m only 21 and I shouldn’t take this so personally and seriously but I do and I have no idea why. I know I need to wise up but I can’t.
Some say love’s like a drug, but we think it’s more like a (sometimes) innocuous mental illness; it doesn’t make you “crazy”—at least not necessarily—but it does give you weird thoughts, sometimes long after the relationship is over.
While those thoughts are hard to stop and easy to believe in, at least they’re not true. Like anxiety and depression, love has a weird way of keeping itself alive by changing the way you think and act, until it changes your beliefs. That’s when you’re in trouble.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 28, 2011
Fear and rage are great motivators for bad decisions, especially when it comes to one’s choice of words. Fear can clamp your jaw shut when you need to address the masses, and rage can keep the invective flowing, even if the target is one person you don’t want to drive away. Don’t expect a good relationship, or a good therapist, to make the bad feelings and poor control of your (big) mouth disappear. Managing those feelings will never be happy, easy, or painless, but the strongest motivator should be the need to keep your job, your relationship, or just your sanity.
–Dr. Lastname
I had to speak in front of a crowd recently and thought I would have a heart attack. I have to go to court regularly as part of my job and each time it seems to get worse. I shake and stutter. Seems to be sort of an authority or judgment thing, since it only happens under certain circumstances. I can speak to a crowd of folks I know, and do it well. I don’t want to have to get another job at my age (>50), it was hard enough to get this one. Any suggestions? (No insurance!)
My first suggestion is to move to Massachusetts, Vermont, or Canada. If that insurance comment isn’t a joke, then not having insurance, especially when you’re over fifty, is cause enough for a coronary.
Seriously, it’s quite probable that a major cause of your shaking and stuttering is that you’re unconsciously aware/terrified of the many ways your body can, and is about to, break down and wear out. That’s way more scary than socialism and death panels combined.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 25, 2011
There’s plenty of evidence out there, from newspaper headlines to vicious drivers, that life is unfair. The clearest proof, at least as we see it at fxckfeelings.com, is that we never cease to get cases about unfairness and the need for justice it inspires. Accepting that life is unfair doesn’t mean giving up, just giving up on the futile goal of stamping out evil altogether. Learn to tolerate unfairness and manage the anger and pain it inspires. After all, given all the ways life can suck, we’re sure you have tons of other personal problems you can write in about.
–Dr. Lastname
I was a wild girl as a teenager and took drugs and cheated on my boyfriends, but one of them stuck by me and now I’ve got a good marriage and 2 nice kids. Life has been pretty good to me, but lately, I don’t know whether it’s getting older or having some acquaintances die, but I feel preoccupied with death and a feeling of not being a very good person. I mean, focusing on those things makes me feel ungrateful, because I’ve been so lucky, but then I feel guilty that I’ve had so much while people I came up with didn’t get the same things I did. I wish I wasn’t so worried about death and thinking about what a jerk I was and how I didn’t get what I deserved.
What we all deserve is a good childhood and a decent set of genes. What most of us actually get doesn’t come close.
Instead, most people end up with a random mishmash that easily includes an extra dose of wildness and parents who are too wild themselves to help us manage our own impulses (the apple, and the genes, don’t fall far from the tree). In a world that’s this unfair, nobody can claim to deserve anything.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 21, 2011
Love without trust is always a painful, combustible combination. If your partner does something to lose your trust, s/he’s got to get lost, no matter how much love remains, and you’ve got to learn your lesson and move on. If you can’t trust someone whose behavior is OK because your trusting feelings just won’t come, then maybe the pain is worse, because there’s nothing to learn and nothing to do. In either case, when the trust goes, acknowledge that you’re not going to get what you want and need to settle for the best possible disaster before everything blows up in your face.
–Dr. Lastname
My partner cheated on me while I was pregnant with our baby, and kept ME the secret. He told lies about me and told people that we were no longer together so that he could openly date the other woman. I’m struggling to stop thinking about it all, and the whole ordeal has triggered a particularly intense bout of depression and self-harm. I have hundreds of questions I feel I need answers to, but my partner is 100% unwilling to discuss the matter, seeing it as “dragging up the past”. My goal is to be able to get through the day without memories of the betrayal and the gossip that surrounded it intruding on my life.
When a guy hides his relationship with you when you’re pregnant, you don’t have hundreds of questions that need answers; you’ve got a few simple, sad, unpleasant answers that need to be accepted.
After all, you’re not doing a PhD in trying to understand him. That’s a waste of time and, like most inquiries into the sad “whys” of this universe, a sneaky way of avoiding acceptance.
You could see it as him not being that into you, but the reality is that he’s not into anyone, at all, except for himself. At this point, the only important question is one you have to ask yourself, and it’s figuring out what’s the right thing for you to do, regardless of what your should-be-ex might think.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 18, 2011
Attention span is much in demand these days, what with the expansion in time we spend in school, at work, and in front of computers, but like all mental traits, from anxiety to passivity, it contains its own strengths and weaknesses, whether yours is big or small. Whatever your attention level drives you to do, then, (or distracts you from doing), don’t take it too personal. It’s not a failing or disability, just a trait, and if you can accept and manage it, you can forget about what’s in demand.
–Dr. Lastname
Whatever I’m really feeling, I’m a boundless ball of cheery energy when it comes to my job search. Give me a likely prospect (I’m an engineer) and, within a day, I’ve researched the company and can send out a cover letter that’s more like a consultation, containing answers for questions they didn’t even know they had. I’m confident I’m doing a good job, but it’s really painful when I put lots of work into a possible job application, get an interview or two, and then nothing. My goal is to have these failures not get to me as much as they do.
As usual, the problem isn’t whether things get to you too much—you can’t change your sensitivity—it’s what you do about it. Lots of people get enraged sometimes, but most manage to stew instead of punch. And so with sensitivity.
If the frustration gets you to give up, lose faith in yourself, and stop searching, then it’s a problem. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 14, 2011
It’s hard to believe in yourself when the one you love rejects you, or even just rejects your motives when you’re trying to do right. If there’s no way to feel good unless you can correct him/her, yourself or the situation, forget about feeling good (duh) and decide for yourself whether doing something wrong and rejection have anything to do with one another (after all, sometimes, it’s really not you, it’s them). If they do, congratulations, you’re allowed to improve yourself. If not, prepare to reject a tidy resolution and stand up for yourself while carrying a broken heart.
–Dr. Lastname
I know it’s dumb to date a co-worker, but my ex works in a totally different department—we see each other around the office, but he isn’t my boss (although he was a boss). He’s also generally liked and respected by all, so nobody questioned my choice. We dated for 4 years, and just after we moved in together, he turned 45, freaked out, and said he couldn’t be with anyone. So now I’ve been dumped for no reason by a guy I have to still see all the time who everyone around me loves. It’s impossible for me to get over him, and I’m not leaving my job, so do I just have to wallow in it forever and never move on?
No one gets dumped “for no reason,” particularly when it’s by a 45-year-old guy who was 41 when he met you and had never been married. Do the math.
The only 41-year-old guys who are worth considering for anything other than a casual relationship are guys whose girlfriends died, fled the country, or turned evil, and, in spite of gross humiliation and rejection, the guy stuck around, trying to make it work.
Otherwise, it’s not just a case of “he’s not that into you,” whatever that means; it’s “he’ll never be that into anyone, ever,” other than himself. A lot of guys are like that, and they’re easy to spot since they’re the ones who are still unmarried at 45.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 11, 2011
If you watch basic cable, you’ve seen enough shows about bizarre health problems to know there’s someone out there for everyone, willing to put up with anything; from morbid obesity to tree hands to a lack of sex organs, there’s no physical trait so daunting that there isn’t someone out there (usually someone with low expectations) who can’t accept it. It’s always surprising, then, when people with lesser problems, like illness or bad habits, have trouble getting the same level of unconditional support. Of course, acceptance, as hard as it is, doesn’t mean being a doormat. That’s why the payoff of acceptance is becoming stronger, prouder, and more realistic, even if it never airs on basic cable.
–Dr. Lastname
I like my wife, except when she doesn’t take her bipolar medications, which she hates, and then she becomes nasty, irritable, and overbearing. She makes my life miserable, and I worry about her impact on the kids. My goal is to protect the kids and get her to take her medication.
The best way to keep someone from taking their medication is to persistently ask them whether or not they’ve taken their medication.
That’s not to say that leaving the issue alone will insure she takes her meds, either. The point is, if she doesn’t want to take then, she won’t. The second part of the goal is a no-go.
The best you can do is tactfully encourage your wife to look for her own reasons to take medications. Having done that, you can predict whether it’s ever going to happen, and direct your life accordingly.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 6, 2011
When love goes sour but doesn’t go away, of course you want to find an answer that will set things straight, even if that means indicting yourself for crimes against your relationship that didn’t take place. As eager as you may be to plead guilty, don’t ever accept an indictment for love-crimes until you’ve given yourself a fair trial. More often than not, you’ll find your only crime is robbing yourself of your ability to move on.
–Dr. Lastname
For years (e.g. 9 years or more) our marriage has been almost completely sexless. Within the past few years, affection has largely gone out of the window too. Our relating is often bitter, and this happens in front of our poor 8-year-old son, too. I don’t think I can feel attracted to my husband again, even though I think we could be friends if he hated me less and trusted me more. My goal is to have a relationship with my husband that does not f*ck up our son, or a “healthy” separation from him which causes the minimum of damage to him (our son).
When affection and sex seem to have worn out of a marriage, you might immediately wonder whether or not the marriage is over. That, however, would be jumping the gun—a premature evaluation, as it were.
Before you go deciding a sexless marriage means no marriage at all, consider whether you’ve done all you should to fight marital fatigue.
That’s the fatigue that sets in from feeling like you’re carrying more weight than your spouse, letting him know, finding out he feels the same way, kindly offering to take over his job, and arguing to a standstill until things blow up again. It’s unavoidable in most marriages, at least those that do heavy lifting; after all, the main reason for marrying is to have someone to blame.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 4, 2011
When you were a kid and let your friends coax you into doing something stupid, your mother probably asked you if you’d jump off a bridge if your friends told you to. You were supposed to answer no, and that now applies not just to your snot-nosed childhood friends, but to everyone, including your spouse. It’s hard to remember that you have a right to make your own judgment when your significant other is very sure of his or hers, but listen to your mother’s advice: you’re not obliged to follow anyone blindly, especially now that you’re an adult. Learn to slow down and look at your own moral compass. After all, Mom also probably told you to look before you leap.
–Dr. Lastname
I wish I could be more tolerant of my girlfriend’s opinions. She’s very nice to me, but she gets bent out of shape by political events, or her neighbor’s activities, and then goes off on rants like a Fox commentator, and I just don’t like it. I don’t necessarily disagree with her, I’m just a peaceful girl who doesn’t like conflict. When I tell her I’m uncomfortable, she says she needs to be free to express her opinion and that I shouldn’t try to stifle her. My goal is to tolerate her personality better.
Some people say girls should be good listeners, and there are times listening is a virtue. Other times, you can lose yourself and wake up as Edith Bunker. You’ve already got an Archette.
Just because someone who is loud and full of strong opinions is nice to you doesn’t mean you have to listen when she wants to sound off. Listening should be a choice, not an obligation. After all, if a date treats you to dinner, you don’t have to put out. You also don’t have to eternally listen up.
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