Posted by fxckfeelings on February 28, 2013
Between the scary finality of a legally binding union and the hysteria and excess that go into most modern weddings, marriage often creates a vortex of expectations, chaos and terrible bridesmaid’s shoes that suck in unwilling and innocent bystanders and cause others to run away from the process entirely, even if they should be at the altar themselves. If you find yourself getting sucked into marital mayhem, ask yourself whether your relationship, be it to the bride or groom or as the bride or groom yourself, meets your definition of friendship or partnership, not just in terms of intense feelings but also actions over time. Then you can decide for yourself what and how much you want to commit, regardless of anyone’s expectations, and use that knowledge to either gather the strength to resist the pull of marital-mania or jump in with both feet.
–Dr. Lastname
My friend is getting married on my birthday, but my husband has planned to take me away for that weekend, so it’s created a bit of a dilemma that goes deeper than just the wedding. This friend is an old friend from school who was never particularly nice to me—in fact, she asked me to be bridesmaid, but then changed her mind. My husband says I don’t owe anything but I feel guilty for not being there in her big day. My husband emailed her saying we would miss the wedding and she responded by saying we’ve known the date for ages and can we change the dates. I would rather go away but how can I make peace with myself over the decision?
Given how many labels we’ve created for people with whom we have romantic relationships—partner, spouse, boy/girlfriend, “it’s complicated”—it’s frustrating that, when it comes to platonic, non-professional relationships, the only word out there seems to be “friend.”
Because of this, you can use “friend” to describe someone you talk to everyday, and someone you are merely linked with on the internet, and someone who treats you as poorly as the “friend” you describe.
So, even if she’s never been particularly nice to you and invited-then-disinvited you to be her bridesmaid, she might still technically fall under the definition of friend, but her behavior, not her title, should have you asking yourself why you’ve imposed on yourself the obligations of close friendship. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 25, 2013
While sappier-types, producers of Lifetime movies, and Twi-hards would disagree, love and sex are, at their core, evolutionary tools that trick us into commitment; as the relationship progresses and the novelty fades, we’re left with something much less fun and sexy, but a lot more secure and important. If you refuse to accept that, however, continually searching for relationships based only on emotion or getting restless at the commitment stage, you’ll end up frustrated, lonely, and watching way more Lifetime movies than anyone should. If evolution gave us romance and love to bring people together, it’s the way relationships evolve beyond feeling that make them lasting and worthwhile.
–Dr. Lastname
I dated a guy for ten years, since junior year of high school. During the time we were dating I never felt like I needed a best friend– I had friends, but not a clique or group to call my own. I never could experiment with anything because he would get mad, so maybe I would have been more wild or fun if I wasn’t with him. He is very social, outgoing, and almost pompous, but never to his friends, just to people who were almost a little uncool. I think he’s a little uncool, because I believe he has a drinking problem, money problem, and low expectations in life, which as his girlfriend bothered me. Now we broke up because I cheated on him, but it’s been six months, and I want him back. He’s having fun hooking up with girls, and I get jealous when he goes somewhere without me. It hurts. I have friends who tell me to forget about him and move on, but I can’t. We hook up and it’s the best feeling when I’m next to him, but when I see him with another girl it feels like when we first broke up all over again. I know that he drinks too much and doesn’t have any ambition, and that it’s because of him that I never got to figure out who I really am or make any close friends, and because of that I don’t know how to cope with being by myself. Lately I’ve felt what I think are panic attacks. I don’t know how to deal without him, but I just want to get over him and be happy.
Like a drug, dating can be exciting and make painful feelings disappear, like loneliness and boredom. It can also make you into a huge Asshole.
Just as being an Asshole isn’t a pre-requisite for being an addict but addiction comes with automatic Asshole-status, dating for the emotional high can make you into an Asshole, even if you weren’t one to begin with.
If you’re hooked on dating the same Asshole over and over again, you’re in even more trouble, since Asshole-ism can be a venereal disease that can’t be stopped by hormones, latex, or the voice in your head telling you to leave this drunk loser for good. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 21, 2013
When someone doesn’t trust you, you’re left to wonder if they have a point, or if you shouldn’t trust them or their opinions in the first place. What helps you decide where to place your doubt and how to answer their accusation is avoiding the tendency to treat mistrust as a painful feeling that needs to be eased with talk and understanding. Instead, bypass feeing hurt and paranoid and apply moral standards to your own behavior, judging yourself and your actions reasonably. If you’ve been honest and reliable, then their opinion isn’t, and vice versa.
–Dr. Lastname
I know I made a huge mistake in the past and I have tried so hard in the last five years to make up for it, but my husband still has zero trust in me and I don’t know what to do differently. Back story– I got pregnant right after we got together in a time frame that meant the kid might not have been his. My ex wanted a paternity test and we had it done against my now-husband’s wishes. He still will not forgive me for proving the kid was his by letting the ex have the test done and paying for it (because my now-husband refused to do so and refused to let me pay for him to have one done, he insisted that if it were going to happen the ex needed to pay for his test). My goal is to get my husband to trust me.
Before condemning yourself for having sex with your ex-boyfriend, despite not knowing that he was about to become your ex-boyfriend and a then-stranger was waiting to become your husband, ask yourself whether you’re relying on your own sense of right and wrong, or just reacting to your now-husband’s/former-stranger’s feelings.
If you’re doing the latter, then you deserve a better judge. A present-stranger would probably do a better job, unless s/he’s found in the audience of the Maury or Jeremy Kyle shows. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 14, 2013
To paraphrase Keyser Soze in “The Usual Suspects,” the greatest trick mental illness pulls is convincing the sick person it doesn’t exist. Either through making you feel perpetually insecure or unbelievably happy and confident, mental illness’ true gift is preventing you from knowing you have an illness and thus blocking you or the people who love you from helping you. Acknowledging you’re unwell may be hard news to face, but it gives you two valuable gifts; the opportunity to manage your illness, and the ability to spare yourself responsibility for the feelings and thoughts your illness can cause. You may never exorcise your illness entirely, but you can learn to identify it before it limps away with your life.
–Dr. Lastname
I wonder if I could have OCD and if I should consider getting evaluated. I spend a lot of time going over social interactions and thinking about what I should have done differently. Often I get very silly fears about having hurt my friends’ feelings and need to apologize or get reassurance that things are OK, or asking my friends/husband for reassurance about things I may have done to upset/hurt someone else. I am constantly questioning my own perceptions and have a very, very difficult time making even minor decisions (like whether to save or throw out leftovers). My husband claims that I shower 3x longer than most people and thinks I avoid showers for that reason. I am very slow and meticulous at almost everything I do (gardening) and wish I was different. I don’t have any unusual fear of germs though I do work in a lab and sterile technique is a big part of my job. There have been times when a 1-2 hour task took me 3 hours because I was behaving so irrationally about sterilizing the instruments (and I knew this). Sometimes though I think maybe I want to have OCD because otherwise there could be something even worse wrong with me.
Your obsessive worries probably have a positive side, in that they make you very, very good at your work using sterile technique in a lab, but make you very, very miserable in the process.
While the fact that you hold down an exacting job and have friends and a husband to pester with worrisome questions means that your constant worries haven’t stopped you from doing what’s important, unfortunately, that support team hasn’t stopped your constant worries or the worrying about worrying. So, while being obsessive isn’t all bad and hasn’t impaired your life too much, it doesn’t make you feel too good, either. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 7, 2013
As anyone who’s loved someone crazy or addicted knows—or really, anyone who’s watched any non-duck or -storage related programming on A&E—some addicted and/or mentally ill people take too much responsibility for the impact of their behavior on family, and others put too much responsibility on their family for saving them from themselves. In actuality, your job is never to act on your feelings of responsibility until you’ve first observed, and then accepted, what you actually control. The result may suck, and leave you feel totally helpless, but you need never be a slave of guilt when you’ve done what you can with what you’ve got (which is hopefully more than basic cable).
–Dr. Lastname
My wife (we’re gay) has Tourette’s syndrome, anger issues, and a tendency to drink more than she should. I have Bipolar disorder, and an obliviousness to other people’s feelings that is sometimes intentional, sometimes not. My wife and I dated for seven years before we got married, so it’s not like we didn’t know each other’s diagnoses and drama, but most for most of that time I was well-medicated, held down a full time job with benefits, and felt like I wasn’t being my real self. Last summer my anti-depressants kicked me into a full manic break. “God” told me to start collecting camping/survival gear and move in with friends in my home state to work on a civil rights campaign and spend time with my family. We won the campaign, and I got some cherished time with two relatives in their dying days, but I completely f*cked us financially, and ruined my wife’s trust in me. She is adamant that marriage is forever, whether we’re happy or not, and we are going to make it work. I love her, but I’m pretty sure I’m an Asshole, there’s no reason to believe this won’t happen again, and if she doesn’t get rid of me I will ruin her life, whether I want to or not. She wants stability and kids. I don’t think I can provide those things for her. My goal is to reconcile my wife’s expectations with the real limitations imposed by my case of crazy.
As we’ve often said, the best way to know for sure that you’re not an Asshole™ is the fact that you even considered the possibility that you’re an Asshole™. Assholes™ may feel injured, but, since they know it was someone else’s fault, they never feel guilty. Sadly, as a non-Asshole™, you’re forced to feel both.
So just because you’re mortified by what your last manic period did to your family finances doesn’t make you an Asshole™ or a dangerous marital partner, even though that’s the way you feel. It just makes you a good person struggling with a bad illness. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 28, 2013
Everyone will tell you that there are valuable lessons to learn from bad experiences, but unfortunately, there are some valueless lessons as well if you misinterpret your misfortune. For example, some people read too much into their painful experiences and become afraid to take new risks, while others learn almost nothing and have to retake the lesson/get screwed again and again. The answer is not to sample your crises like Goldilocks—trying to find a response that is not too much, not too little, but just right—but instead, to ground yourself in values that help you determine what risks are worth taking, what feelings are worth keeping to yourself, and what’s truly worth learning for the future.
–Dr. Lastname
The end of last year I was able to stop taking my anti-depressants after about 4 years. I feel good, my drinking is in control (though I do sometimes feel the old instinct that, when I’m stressed, a drink will help, though after one sip I know it won’t). I’m free of my fear of going outside my apartment or with groups of people. I did see a therapist, which helped me so much, though we never found out what triggered my depression, so I have a deep worry that it might come back. I know there is no point worrying about something that might never happen (I fully believe that its just a waste of time), but I doubt my relationship will survive another ride on the depression roller-coaster as it was nearly destroyed the first time. Also, my partner is concerned as I hope to have kids at some point and my partner has read that postpartum depression is worse if you have suffered depression before. The thought of being ill again terrifies me and I want to avoid that black hole anyway I can. Should I try to work out why I got depressed before? Is postpartum depression something I should be concerned about what the time comes? If I can somehow prepare myself then I’m hoping that if/when depression comes knocking again I might be able to put up a better fight.
After experiencing and surviving the pain and repercussions of a bad bout of depression, it’s normal to fear recurrence, but that fear is often worse than the thing itself; that’s certainly true with depression, as well as heights, spiders, and gays.
In fact, a PTSD-like syndrome of anxiety is common among people who’ve survived such painful and intense symptoms, so it’s important that you pay as much attention to managing the fear of depression as to treating the depression itself.
It’s understandable that you want to figure out a way to prevent recurrence, but reassuring yourself that everything is going to be alright is as misguided as parents’ insisting their kids they can grow up to be whatever they want; whether you’re hoping to rid yourself of depression or reach the major leagues despite being a one-armed girl, the odds aren’t good, so don’t make the mistake of reassuring/promising yourself that it won’t happen again.
In reality, as with all problems, real consolation comes not from putting the trauma out of mind completely, but from knowing that, whatever happens, you survived the first time and acquired a lot of weapons you’ll use to fight depression if and when it comes again.
Of course, fear will tell you that you and your relationship barely made it, but the fact is, you did make it, which is a great accomplishment. Now you’ve found treatments that work and, most importantly, you know that depression is just a bunch of symptoms, it’s not who you are; it wasn’t personal and you weren’t lazy, just unlucky and sick. Don’t get so freaked, then, by the harm a postpartum depression might do to your kids and/or marriage that you forget that child-rearing and maintaining relationships is always risky, and that you have developed good tools for managing that risk.
Yes, you have a chance of having a post-partum depression, but instead of terrifying yourself with thoughts of that possibility, investigate what you can do to decrease the risk. For one thing, you’ll find you can take antidepressants, even while pregnant; their risk of harming a fetus is low and outweighed by their ability to protect you (and the fetus) from its crushing symptoms.
And don’t fall prey to the notion that because medication has risks, it’s automatically unsafe to take, or that you’re weak or dependent to do so. It means you have an obligation, as with any danger, to weigh benefit against risk by sizing up the chance that your symptoms will come back and deciding whether treatment is worth it. So ask your doctors (and do your own research) to inform yourself about the odds of relapse. If they’re high, find out what the risks and benefits are of taking antidepressants as a preventive vitamin.
Instead of letting depression persuade you that you’ll ruin your family by making your partner and children miserable, treat it like any other disabling illness that tests most families, sooner or later, and teaches them how to survive hard times. Get your arsenal ready for fighting the negative thinking that depression both causes and is caused by.
Don’t let your experience make you a depression-phobic; remember how well you handled that depression, take a cue from the gays, and counter that fear with pride. We’d gladly see that parade.
STATEMENT:
“I can’t think about depression without feeling overwhelmed by fear. I know, however, that fear distorts my thoughts and that my experience with depression has made me much more knowledgeable and better equipped to manage it. I will prepare myself and take any reasonable risk that will allow me to stay as healthy and functional as possible, regardless of whether it recurs.”
I don’t see how I can go back to working in my family’s car business because my brother is such a dickhead. I’m broke and I need the work, and my father doesn’t mind if I work there, but my brother and I have never gotten along, and the last time we worked together he was so insulting, day after day, that I finally picked up a tire iron and we would have killed one another if they didn’t pull us apart. I promised to bury the hatchet and keep my mouth shut—as I said, I need the money—but I was back at the shop for barely four hours when he started up again and I had no choice but to punch him in the face. My goal is to teach my brother to leave me alone, so I can work at the family business when there’s no other work around.
Most of us have an instinct to push back when we’re pushed, particularly if the pusher is aggressive and insulting (and a blood relation). No words are necessary and we don’t have to be in a bad mood—all it takes to get triggered is getting cut off in traffic or a dirty look from a spouse. Maybe this instinct helps us protect ourselves from predators by showing them we’re too much trouble to dominate, but more often than not it just makes assholes, inmates, and/or corpses out of everyone.
Unlike the woman above, whose depression has taught her fear and pessimism, you don’t seem to have learned anything from your many fights. Like her, however, your response is based on feeling, not reason, so it’s both about learning from experience, as well as restraining your emotions.
Your brain is obviously wired to fight back, so if someone pushes, you feel obliged to return the favor, even if you aren’t necessarily looking for a fight in the first place. Trouble is, once that instinct gets hold of you, it gives you no choice but to fight, and the results in the real world usually suck for everyone who isn’t a Hollywood hero. Tough guys get arrested, sued, betrayed, beat up by other tough guys, and, like the rest of us, old and too weak to throw much of a punch.
So instead of just following your instinct towards fury, ask yourself whether you want to satisfy that instinct or control it. Sure, satisfying it feels better in the short run but, you guessed it, always ends badly. Controlling it is hard, takes lots of practice, and it’s what the authorities want you to do, which may make it harder for you to decide whether it’s what you want to do for yourself. Until you control that fighting instinct, however, there’s nothing anyone can say that will protect you from endless fights with your brother and others.
Wanting to control it is no guarantee that you can, and neither is therapy. If you decide to control it, you will probably need to work at building your control day by day, one day at a time, like AA, getting religion, or a gym membership. You can call it anger management, but you’d be better off calling it humiliation tolerance and/or finding goals that are more important than insult and injury (like making a living or being a good guy) and reminding yourself about them, hour by hour. The only thing you have to fight is the urge to fight, and the tire iron won’t do you any good.
STATEMENT:
“I can’t stand to feel pushed around and I take pride in being the guy who never starts fights but who knows how to finish them. I know, however, that fighting always ends badly in an unfair world and I have goals that are more important than what anyone says or does to me, particularly if they’re assholes. I am proud of myself for pursuing those goals regardless of how assholes make me feel.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 17, 2013
It’s often been said that if you want to make god laugh, make a plan, but this is not the case for people dealing with mental illness, mostly because of all the pain you have to accept before you even get to the plan-making stage. If you ignore that pain, you’re a dumb ostrich who will make an avoidant plan, but if you focus too much on it, you develop a ruminative plan and become your problem. So brace yourself for unavoidable pain, prepare to do two things at once, and plan away. Then your choices will take you as close as possible to where you want to be, and your plan, or at least your ability to make one, will make any higher power proud.
–Dr. Lastname
I have a big problem getting myself to study. I do things late and then don’t get good grades, or I don’t get anything done, or I stop somewhere in the middle. I guess I have a problem with concentration and also with laziness. I’ve also done this thing since I was a little child where I turn on music, I sit on a couch or my bed and rock myself, hitting my back towards the backrest of the couch, sometimes it takes hours, sometimes it’s quite quick, like half an hour. I also have quite low self-esteem, not sure what is the reason…I am trying to overcome it somehow but it always gets to me again and I have to deal with it and then I have these days like I do not want to get up—I can’t think of a reason to, and I do not want to go anywhere and I am scared of everything. Sometimes I feel like people are watching me and criticizing me and I don’t want to go to the market because I don’t want to deal with anyone. Sometimes I eat a lot because I am in that crazy mood and I feel bad about it, not because I’ll gain weight (maybe a little bit) but especially because of my health… I criticize myself a lot. I write something or say something and in a while I hate it even if the first impression about it was really good. So… I might be a little bit screwed up I guess… I would be thankful for some opinion or advice what to do with all this.
You’ve certainly got a ton of problems, including trouble concentrating, studying, getting up in the morning, keeping your weight under control, dealing with paranoid thoughts, etc. (but hopefully not memory, because I’d have to think there are even more issues you forgot and left out).
The big question to ask yourself, however, is not what’s wrong with you and to count all the ways, but what you’ve done with your life in spite of these problems. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 14, 2013
When people judge success or failure by the ensuing level of happiness, good guys blame themselves for things they don’t control and bad guys blame everyone else for their own mistakes. Instead of putting your accomplishments on a feelings-based scale, think carefully about what you really can and should control, given your values. That way, no matter if you’re a good guy dealing with bad luck or a jerk who assumes he’s a victim, you can at least feel happy about doing what’s right.
–Dr. Lastname
I wish there was something I could do for my older son (now about 30), but he’s never been happy and I’ve gradually got used to the idea that maybe he never will be, although I’m not sure I’ll ever not feel bad about it. He’s got a job and takes care of himself but, unlike his younger brother, he doesn’t have a girlfriend or a job that he likes. My own belief, and I’ve lived by it myself, is that everyone should at least find work that they like, and then it’s not hard to be happy, but he doesn’t seem close to finding work he likes, and he doesn’t seem to be trying. So I doubt there’s anything I can do to help him, but I thought I’d ask you anyway, because, as his mother, I’ll never feel I’ve succeeded until he finds happiness.
There’s nothing that warms a mother’s heart more than to see her kid smile, but you should also know, by the many good, well-parented, miserable adults in this world, that a good upbringing can’t stop someone from being downbeat.
Your son’s tendency towards misery is not more your fault that it is his; it’s a tough world, genetics has no mercy, and bad things happen. Don’t make those bad things worse then by making him responsible for his inability to get happy and causing you both to feel like losers.
It’s common to believe that one can be happy if they find work that they like, but, like taking good care of yourself, eating right, having regular bowel movements, and most other common sense keys to happiness, that belief is largely bullshit. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 10, 2013
Deciding whom to blame for a problem you can’t get a handle on is easy if you follow your instincts, but instincts should also tell you that a decision made based on intuition instead of thought is probably wrong. In reality, you need to look carefully at whether a person is doing his or her best with what’s actually controllable before deciding whether what’s missing is better discipline or better luck. Ignore your instincts, assess the uncontrollable and you’ll come up with helpful and constructive ideas by looking for facts, not blame.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m in college, and my problem is that I have ADD and even when I’m on Ritalin, I get distracted very easily if something about a course is hard to understand. Then I wind up fucking around, doing other things, spending too much time with my boyfriend, and falling behind. After two or three weeks, it’s too hard to catch up and I don’t want anyone to know, so I stop going to class. A few weeks after that, there’s nothing to do but drop the course, which makes me feel like a loser. I had the same problem in high school, but I’ve never found a drug or dose that’s made the problem better. My goal is to find a better medication or a way to try harder so that I don’t get behind in the first place.
There’s no doubt ADD is your problem, but another problem lots of people with ADD develop over the years of experiencing learning as a painful, humiliating process is avoidance. It came from your ADD, but it’s its own problem, and not the kind they make pills for.
A lot of people with ADD get good at lying to themselves and others about what they’re failing to do and what the consequences are going to be. It started as a coping mechanism, but it’s developed into a pain in the ass. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 20, 2012
When you believe in the value of a close family, it’s natural to take on the role of diplomat when a conflict between some of your nearest and dearest threatens to make you all distant and estranged. Unfortunately, there are some disagreements that can’t be resolved, be they by diplomat or total destruction, but that’s not reason to despair; there’s much you can do to be helpful and cement relationships that do work if you allow negative feelings to exist without blame, and respect the value of spending limited amounts of time with family you have to be with. After all, a good diplomat knows that peace isn’t found through open togetherness, but through respectful time apart.
–Dr. Lastname
Please note: There will be no post on Monday due to Christmas Eve. Happy holidays to all (and if that doesn’t happen, you know how to reach us).
My sister and I have been raised by our single mother, and I have excellent relationships with both of them. Unfortunately, my sister and our mother’s relationship has always been difficult and it’s getting worse. My sister recently revealed that she had been sexually abused by one of my mother’s boyfriends, and inexplicably, I felt like I knew it all along. My mother was obviously distraught by the news, although I don’t know that my sister and her have had any deep discussions around that issue. My sister did briefly see a shrink but never went on a full therapy. In a nutshell, I think my sister has built a lot of resentment towards my mother and their disagreements/fights are becoming more and more bitter, to the extent that my mother is becoming less and less inclined to have a relationship with my sister. I’m tired of being in the middle of it all and have decided to let them deal with their issues themselves. I don’t like to see them unhappy but it seems to me that they refuse to take the necessary steps to heal their relationship. Am I right in deciding to stay out of it? Or is it my duty to keep trying to mend their relationship?
When two people you love are estranged, it feels like your only choice is to try to get them to reconcile or give up entirely—the “Parent Trap” trap. Fortunately, there’s a third option, although it’s not very Disney, and there’s no happy ending.
Your third choice happens once you accept the fact that their reconciliation is neither your responsibility nor under your control. You didn’t pull them apart, you can’t put them together, but you don’t need them to pull you apart, either. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
