Posted by fxckfeelings on July 9, 2009
A lot is made of the importance of having high self-esteem, but as I’ve said before, I think the opposite is true; the world suffers much more from people who have excessive self-esteem than from those who have too little, and those people make life hell for the rest of us. For those of us who occasionally question ourselves, the answer isn’t an infusion of more self-esteem, but learning to manage that self-doubt.
–Dr. Lastname
Please talk me down, because a friend of mine has managed to make me feel really shitty for the fact that he was basically a dick. I had to leave town for a few months—long story, work-related—and so I had to ask this guy, let’s call him Jim, to watch my car for me. He’s one of my only friends around here, and even though I know he’s not exactly a totally solid dude, all I needed him to do was watch my car, literally keep an eye on it and make sure it didn’t get stolen or towed, and in return I told him he could stay in my house if he needed to. I said he could drive the car around town if he needed to, and that he couldn’t bring more than one guest into my house, so it wasn’t totally open season, and he said cool, and when I came back, everything was fine. At first. But then I found used condoms in the trash at my house (gross!) and found out from one of Jim’s co-workers that he’d driven my car to another state. I just went to call him on it and he completely blew up at me, as if I was the one being a jerk, telling me I was being unfair and literally pushing me out the door. Now I’m starting to feel guilty, which is making me feel crazy, so please reassure me he’s the dick and not me. PS, I have a real skill in trusting total assholes, but you probably already guessed that.
Wanting reassurance you’re not a dick is a pretty dumb goal (and, if you were seeking my services in real life, not covered by insurance), because you’re telling this dickhead and every other quasi-pimp who wants to take advantage of you that you need someone to reassure you that you’re not a dick. Thus cementing your status as dickbait, so the circle will remain unbroken.
So if that’s really your top priority, you’re telling him he’s the boss, and his version of right and wrong is what counts. Oh, I know, what you tell yourself is that your goal is to find nice friends who can be counted on to tell you you’re not so bad, and that a good circle of such friends will make your life OK. And that might be true in another universe, just not the known world we live in.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 6, 2009
In honor of our nation’s birth, we’re doing our patriotic duty this long weekend and helping out one of our elected leaders (at least until he’s forced to resign); this man may no longer be a hopeful for the White House, but he’s already the commander-in-chief of feelings. We also reach out to his wife, who probably is less in need of a shrink than a good divorce lawyer.
Happy 4th!
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve always had a God-given gift for communicating with people and have tried to use my gifts to lead people in a moral direction. In recent years, after achieving success as a lawyer, and marrying a truly remarkable woman, I felt a calling to run for office and, with her help as campaign manager, I was elected to office. I wasn’t afraid to take unpopular positions if I felt I was doing the right thing, because I trust my passion; that’s what connects me with people. About a year ago, I felt an unbelievable sense of connection with a beautiful, foreign woman. I’ve never felt so close to anyone, and it seemed unfair to either one of us not to share our love. But instead of having a beautiful experience to share and then put behind us, I became obsessed. It distanced me from my wife, who sensed that something was wrong, and it distracted me from work. I had to lie, and I hate lying. Finally, and with great relief, I confessed the truth. But I still can’t stop thinking and talking about her and now my marriage and political life are a mess. In the past, passion has brought me all my success and I need passion in my life. Now, I want to recapture that passion in a way that revives my marriage, interest in my job, and relationship with the public.
To successful politicians, who often have your style and personality, intense feelings often seem like the core of their being, and what makes them special. Such feelings give the gift of easy communication, charisma, material success, votes, and a certain je ne sais what the ladies love (and, sometimes, the dudes—here’s to you, Larry Craig, for having more charisma in your feet than most of us have in our entire bodies).
Sooner or later, however, your skills work their mojo, you achieve your goals, and life settles down to boring conversations with family and the same old guys at work (even if many are relatively famous), and at that point, if passion has become your elixir of life, you may feel like you’ve lost your oxygen and slid into meaningless mediocrity. The spark, as you might call it, is gone.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 1, 2009
Human nature tells us that the best way to solve a problem is to get to the root of the issue, but some problems, like mental illness, have no simple cause and no solution to speak of. In today’s cases, two people need to rethink their approach to mental illness; when you stop looking for someone to blame or a silver bullet cure, you can get to the real business of learning to cope with the reality of the present.
–Dr. Lastname
I think one of my sister’s kids might be mentally ill—he’s 9 and very intense and unhappy—but my sister doesn’t see it, and I don’t know how/if to get her to pick up on it. It should be fairly obvious to her since we saw the same symptoms in our mother, who wasn’t diagnosed as bipolar until we were kids and she had a chance to put on quite a show. I guess my sister doesn’t really understand that our mother wasn’t just a mean drama-queen but actually sick, maybe because she was younger when Mom went to the hospital and doesn’t really remember, or maybe because she’s in denial, or maybe both of those things combined with the fact she and her husband are space cadets that are such hands-off parents they don’t even notice that one of their own children is clearly suicidal. My goal is to get my sister out of the clouds and get my nephew some help, because if something happens to that kid, I don’t blame genetics, I blame her.
As any teacher well tell you, the danger of bestowing your idea of help on another parent’s child is that you have very little control over how parents react, because no parent wants to hear that something is wrong with their child. And their default response lies somewhere between defensive anger and general freaking out.
The freaking out also comes from the fact that it’s hard to keep the urgency and alarm out of your voice, no matter how diplomatic you think you are, and feelings trigger feelings. Suddenly you’re in a perfect storm of hysteria, but hey, no good deed goes unpunished.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 28, 2009
A lot of readers, either with amusement or anger, like to challenge the “fuck feelings” mentality; surely, they respond, not everyone’s just a big baby, and there must be some legitimacy to some feelings, given the right circumstances. Those readers might try to use these two cases—the feelings within, and/or the situations that have spawned them—to find the exception to the rule. But if you really think we assign some feelings more value than others, then you misunderstand the rule entirely.
–Dr. Lastname
I know this site has fun with people who whine because the truth hurts, but I want to know whether you can apply that philosophy in situations like mine. My son died in a car accident a year ago—he was just a little guy, bad weather…total freak accident. One day he was fine, the next day, he was gone. My wife was driving, and while I know it wasn’t her fault, I’ve pulled away from her, and she doesn’t really talk to me, either. It’s possible that I’m drinking too much, because I am drinking to numb the pain. Would you honestly tell someone in my position, “fuck feelings”? What would you tell me? I know this is short, but my goal isn’t complicated. I just want to get over the pain of my grief.
From your first question, it seems you think this site confuses whining with real pain, which isn’t our intended message. Pain is what it is—all questions posed on this site involve real pain—and grief over the loss of a child happens to be the worst. At least, we can’t imagine anything worse.
But pain becomes dangerous when you expect to control it, because you then hope for things that simply aren’t going to happen and avoid dealing with what you’ve got, which is a life that can dump terrible suffering on you, for no reason, at a moment’s notice.
Here, your pain is telling you that you need to drink, there’s no point in not numbing the pain of your loss, there’s nothing left in your marriage because your wife isn’t talking to you, you were unable to protect your son, you’ll have nothing to give other kids, and things are just going to get worse. You pain is real, but what its telling you is fucking bullshit.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 24, 2009
Trying to loudly convince someone that they’re wrong about you is like trying not to think about elephants; the harder you work at it, the more you fail. The women in these two cases are obsessed with someone else’s disapproval, they couldn’t think of elephants if they tried.
–Dr. Lastname
I knew my father wouldn’t understand, but I thought it would be harmless to visit my ex-boyfriend, who is also my son’s father, who was also an abusive jerk. I was young when I dated this guy and was pretty naive (naive enough to get pregnant), and my father really had to step in and protect me, which I swear I’m grateful for to this day. I haven’t dated any jerks since then (well, jerks that bad : )), and I’ve got a great kid, and I’m not the person I was when my ex and I were together. I avoided him, and kept our son away from him, for over ten years, but when he reached out to me a few months ago, saying he wanted to make things right, I guess I slipped, and I went to see him. Nothing happened, honestly, but my father won’t stop being angry with me and telling me I don’t value myself enough, as if I were still a 15-year-old letting a guy slap me around. It kills me that he feels this way, tears me up inside, and I can’t stop crying about it. I wish you could persuade him to stop believing this about me. My goal is to get him to believe me that I’m over this guy and that it won’t happen again.
Ultimately, you’re the only person who can truly judge your worth. Unless you’re a child, lobotomized, or eager to join a death cult, it’s your job to make that determination, not your father’s or anyone else’s.
That’s why you can’t try to restore your self-esteem by changing someone’s opinion of you because, in doing so, you’re giving someone else that power, and it’s not theirs to have. There’s nothing wrong with wanting his good opinion, but it’s total self-betrayal to make his good opinion more important than the judgment that you and only you are capable of making.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 22, 2009
Academics are often perfectionists, which means their own faults are always subject to scrutiny, no matter how futile the pursuit. These two professors are scholars of their own inadequacies, but they don’t know how necessary it is to accept and make use of their faults instead of trying to revise themselves to death.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m an English professor, and I split my year between 2 schools in 2 different cities. I’ve been a heavy drinker since my 20s, but last fall, with the encouragement of friends and family, I finally decided to get sober. My family was wonderful, I found a very supportive AA group and, and with their help, I stopped drinking and kept it together for several months. But I’ve always been a very needy and insecure person, and I couldn’t believe I’d get the same kind of help from my friends and an AA group in the second city. The idea of leaving my safety net behind filled me with dread, and, a couple of weeks before my annual move, I fell off the wagon. The truth is, I have a good support system in the second city too, and my family is behind me, but I let them down. Now, I’ve moved to the second city, I’m connected with a good support group here, and I haven’t had a drink in 3 days, but I feel like such a loser because I can never believe in myself. My goal is to be less needy and insecure, but I don’t think I’ll ever get there.
Being less needy and insecure aren’t good goals because, like most things having to do with your emotions, you don’t control them. As you’ve seen, wishing to make them different can be so frustrating, it can drive you to drink. Now you’re still needy, and you need a drink. Not good.
Don’t believe all you hear about the evils of feeling needy and insecure. Some people say that those feelings cause all sorts of problems, and that it’s the job of therapy to make them better. That’s crap.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 17, 2009
Elvis once sang, “I’m caught in a trap and I can’t back out ’cause I love you too much, baby.” For our first case, that sentiment rings true. Our second sides more with the Public Enemy school; that “Elvis was a hero to some but he never meant a goddamn thing to me,” so trap be-damned, I’m outta here. Here are two men reacting very differently to feeling stuck. Thank you, thank you very much, goodnight.
–Dr. Lastname
I lost my job last month, so my wife and I have had to move in with her parents until we get back on our feet. In a lot of ways, it could be worse—her parents have a huge old house, my kids love spending time with their grandparents and vice versa, my wife is a lot less stressed out—but, aside from the lack of privacy and pride, the biggest issue for me is my mother-in-law (a cliché, I know, but hey). This woman always has to be right, she has to have an opinion about everything, she has to know what everyone’s doing all the time…I feel like an angry teenager because I can’t go out to pick up a pizza without getting grilled for information with an additional load of condescending commentary (“Oh, I would NEVER order from that pizza place,” “You’re such a good daddy to get a treat for the little ones!”, etc, SHUT UP). My wife is used to it—she grew up with it!—but I’m not, and I can’t find a job, and I am losing my ability to resist telling her to FUCK OFF. Plus my wife doesn’t want to hear me complain about it, so she wants me to “talk to someone,” but without any insurance, I’m talking to you. And so, my goal is to find a way to get through this situation without going to jail for murder.
OK, let’s start with the positives; your goal in dealing with your obnoxious mother-in-law is a good one because you’re not trying to change her, get anyone else to change her, or find an escape where one doesn’t exist. You are admitting you’re fucked, and that’s the first step to a not-cure.
You’re also not implying that you’re a failure because you lost your job or can’t find a new one that would allow you to bid her adieu. You’re not saying “I shouldn’t have allowed this to happen” or “I shouldn’t let her get to me.” You haven’t let your seething irritation stop you from looking for work and being a father, so you don’t have to fight a false belief in your failure or the bad behaviors that follow that belief. Again, you’re on the right path, even if that path is paved with turds.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 14, 2009
Nobody enjoys the break-up process, but there are ways, as either the dumped or the dumpee, to make that process even worse. Between a woman who thinks she’s permaturely ending things to a man who can’t let go, these two cases show how breaking-up is not just hard to do, but easy to fuck up royally.
–Dr. Lastname
I just broke up with my boyfriend, and even though I thought I was doing the right thing in the long run, I think I’m now making a habit of ending relationships before they get too serious. This time I ended things because, after a year together, I had to face the fact that I wasn’t as excited about him as I should be, and certainly not as excited about him as he was about me (and never was—this wasn’t an issue of the spark being gone, but never really being there in the first place). I left the guy before him because he and his mother were very close—maybe too close, in that his mother seemed to boss him around—and that mother lived hundreds of miles away, which meant he’d want to move hundred miles away eventually, and I really didn’t (let alone raise a family there so close to his crazy mother). I’m not that old, but I’m definitely in the marriage window, and while I think I’m just being realistic when I make these decisions, I worry that I’m just panicking in the face of actually settling down. I hate how much I’ve hurt my exes by what I’ve done, my goal is, I don’t want to do it again.
It’s understandable to feel bad when you’ve made someone else feel bad, but feelings aren’t that important when you’re looking at the bottom line. Before you start criticizing yourself for the painful outcome of these two relationships, considering the obstacles that make it difficult to find a good partner.
Ultimately, your goal isn’t to avoid painful breakups; it’s to deal with prospective partners honestly while you try to find a good match, knowing that it’s entirely possible to begin a relationship with someone you like and respect and then discover problems that would doom a long-term future.
That’s what you can’t control here: the unsolvability of two of those problems and the need to break the relationship sooner rather than later, regardless of the pain you might cause.
We both know couples who broke up because one of them is over-responsive to another priority in their lives, like a mother or job or college basketball. So when you’re considering settling down with someone, you need to ask yourself how this guy is likely to respond if the demands of our family conflict with his other loyalties.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 10, 2009
We’re all familiar with the overgrown-child/slacker archetype, the 30-something offspring who lives in the basement and still has mom do his/her laundry. In film and TV, that character is played for laughs, but in real life, adults that rely heavily on their moms—either because they can or because they have to—are sometimes very unfunny. In these two cases, those close to needy adult-children aren’t amused.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m in my 30s and have always been the responsible and goal oriented brother, but my baby brother, who’s just out of college, has always been the opposite. He basically sponges off our mother, and his ungrateful attitude towards her is making me more and more angry. I don’t want to feel this way, because I know what he does for her is not my concern, but it has gotten to the point where I don’t want to be around my brother because I don’t want to witness any of his behavior. I literally feel ill when I see the way he just takes from our mother and really uses her, but my mother doesn’t see it that way, so she resents me for feeling like this. My father is actually on my side, but my dad travels a lot for work and is not always around to put his foot down. Overall, my brother and I are just totally different people/personalities, and there are so many different conflicts in our way of thinking, but now the differences between us are spilling over into the rest of the family dynamic. Is it wrong to distance myself from him? I don’t want to dislike him as much as I do, but being around him isn’t going to help.
I’m not sure what your goal is here, but I think we both agree what it isn’t– trying to change your brother. Without the benefit of supernatural powers, you can’t get your brother to stop being a sponge or your mother to stop protecting him, regardless of how much you’d like them to change.
Trying to do so, as you’ve experienced with your mother, could drag all of you into a rut. As a goal-oriented guy, you may have a particular talent for straightening things out, a talent which helps you work hard and make a living, but if you apply that talent to changing your family, you’re in trouble.
You might feel a moment of relief after telling them what you really think; it’s what I have previous described as something of a “feelings fart,” as the relief is temporary with a lingering effect that poisons the air and clears the room.
In other words, your toxic emission with cause your brother will tell you that you’re mean and jealous and your mother will accuse you of tearing him down when he needs building up. No wonder your father travels a lot for work.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 8, 2009
These two cases are based on feedback we got from our sibling-related post a week ago. Thanks to the anonymous readers who took the time to write in, and we hope these respond to your concerns.
–Dr. Lastname
Last week, someone wrote in asking how to react to his younger brother’s claim that their father had molested him, and you told the older brother, essentially, to tell his younger brother to move on. I find myself in a similar position to that younger brother—my step-father molested me for years—but A, there is no doubt as to my claims, I assure you, and B, I have yet to tell my family (my step-father just died). If and when I do tell my family, if they react the way you instructed that guy to react, I’d be pretty furious, and frankly, I can’t believe you’d give anyone that advice. It’s taken me years to come to terms with what happened, and I couldn’t tell anyone what happened, let alone my family, until several years after the abuse stopped/I got away. I don’t think I’m wrong in expecting my family to support me, and besides, isn’t advising the older brother to tell his abused sibling just to “move on” just a way of excusing the father’s behavior for the sake of the family reputation while letting his younger brother suffer yet more humiliation? I’m not writing in for advice—my goal is to get you to admit your advice was deeply flawed.
One very tough part of disclosing long-ago sexual abuse is that you have so little control over how members of your family, or anyone, will react. In some families, you will be embraced by people who believe in you, validate your experience, and are grateful that you spoke out. Your courage in doing so will be well rewarded.
But in many families, there are people who can’t believe the abuse happened or who aren’t strong enough to face what they know (even though they’ve otherwise proven themselves to be very loving and supportive while you were growing up.). Your courage will not be rewarded, or even appreciated in the slightest.
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