Posted by fxckfeelings on March 1, 2010
A lot has been made recently about how it seems like every child is being diagnosed with autism; celebrities like Jenny McCarthy, whose son is autistic, have led the charge to blame and outlaw vaccines in order to protect kids. In reality, as science progresses and our understanding of the autism spectrum deepens, the disease hasn’t expanded, just the diagnosis, i.e., there aren’t more autistic kids, just more kids being called autistic. While today’s cases aren’t autism-related, they both illustrate the myth of the power of diagnosis. Focusing too much on what your disease is does nothing to improve your health. Incidentally, Jenny McCarthy has revisited her take on vaccines—it turns out her son’s diagnosis was wrong.
–Dr. Lastname
In the last ten years, I’ve heard voices in my head and most doctors describe my symptoms as psychosis, but nobody can tell me exactly what’s wrong, or find a medication that makes them go away, or really do anything but listen to me give them my laundry list of “how I’m crazy” and try to take the problem apart. In the meantime, I’m struggling to hold onto my job, my wife is struggling to put up with me, and my kids (now grown) just worry and get more distant. My disease stays the same, my life gets worse, my diagnosis goes nowhere. My goal is to figure out what is causing the symptoms, get a real diagnosis, and make real progress.
I wish the word diagnosis meant “we know what’s wrong and what to do,” but it often doesn’t, except in certain special cases. (Like, right now I feel safe diagnosing your reaction as disappointment.)
Very often, all a diagnosis means is that we recognize a group of symptoms that often travel together in the same social circle, and often get a little bit better when they’re treated with a particular group of medications. Tada.
That’s almost always true when the doctor making the diagnosis is a psychiatrist, because we know less about mental illnesses than almost every other kind of illness (and less about the brain then we do about any other part of the body).
We really should use some other word than “diagnosis,” but we don’t, because we love to think we know more than we do, which goes to prove that doctors are just as vulnerable to idiot false hopes as everyone else.
Some people put a premium on hope of any kind, but false hope is dangerous, because we pay for it with unrealistic expectations that lead to feelings of failure. You expect that, once you get the right diagnosis, you’ll get the right treatment, but I diagnose that assumption as bullshit.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 25, 2010
One of the worst parts of looking for work, either when your self-employed or unemployed, is putting yourself out there and hustling for work; ex-drug dealers have written scores of hip-hop records about the subject, and the product they were pushing sells itself. It’s hard to network with employers or push clients to pay up, but you don’t have to feel good about it in order to do it. Just ask Jay-Z.
-Dr. Lastname
My partner and I are interior decorators (the ultimate gay cliché, I know), and while we love what we do, we also love getting paid. That’s why it’s rough when friends and family ask us to come take a look at a room or their whole house and give them advice, because what they’re really asking for us for is free services, and as much as we love those we love…well, we also love getting paid and being able to eat. The two of us have talked about how it makes us feel like our loved ones don’t appreciate what we do, or think so little of it that they figure they should get it for nada, but at the same time neither one of us has the heart to turn anyone down and we’re afraid that if we charge them for what we do, they’ll feel hurt and insulted. My shrink says I don’t value my work highly enough because I have a problem with self-esteem. My goal—our goal—is to figure out a way to get enough self-esteem to persuade our friends, and ourselves, that they should pay us for our work.
If it were necessary to improve your self-esteem before being able to ask friends to pay for your services, you’d be in trouble; most self-doubting, sensitive, I’m-afraid-to-impose-on-friends wusses don’t change their personalities, even with deep, deep therapy and a dollop of Dr. Phil.
Unfortunately, as you know, your reluctance to mention fees to friends can spiral into paralysis and frustration. If you respond to your friend’s request for professional help by sliding into an informal, glad-to-help, enjoying-your-company mode, your friend will shoot the breeze for the sheer pleasure of friendship.
Before you know it, you’ve lost a huge number of billable hours and can only blame yourself, because your friend didn’t know that you have no time for this shit (or that your quality time in the friend world was “shit” to you professionally).
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 11, 2010
Parents instinctually want to protect their children from distress, but that doesn’t mean that help will do any good; some kids run to their parents in a panic at every loud noise, some kids are too thick to even know they’re in trouble. Either way, it’s the parents who have to be more practical than sentimental before they jump in. If only more people did that before they decided to have kids in the first place, I’d have a lot less business.
–Dr. Lastname
My daughter drove me and my husband crazy the other day. She’s a great kid who does very well in school, but at the beginning of every term she calls us up in great distress to tell us she can’t figure out what courses to take because the ones she really wants to take aren’t available and it’s impossible to make a decision about the others. So she did it again, and, as always, when we asked about the courses and made recommendations, she told us we were doing nothing but making her more confused and then broke off the conversation. I talked to my wife and she agrees we were careful to listen and we weren’t overbearing. P.S., the next day my daughter made up her mind and found a perfectly good group of courses to take, as usual. How can we help her get less distraught and see that we’re just trying to help?
Nobody wants their child to be in pain or agony, but it’s important to ask yourself whether it’s important if your daughter is…distraught.
Yes, her panic hurts her and it hurts you, but life is pain, pain is often unavoidable, and it’s not getting in her way, so why make it more important than it has to be?
It’s hard not to come running when a kid is crying, but this is a situation that’s familiar, always turns out well, and can’t be helped with a band-aid and a kiss on the boo-boo.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 4, 2010
If someone’s related to you, there’s no guarantee they’re going to be honest with you, or even honest about you to anyone else. You can try to get them to own up to their problems with anger, eloquence, and/or the help of the court system, but the smarter choice is to stop pushing them towards the truth and hold onto the facts yourself. As long as you’re calm and factual, people can draw whatever conclusions they want and your relatives can stick to their version, but your part in the family affair is settled.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m fine now (I’m 14), but I’m trying to figure out how to deal with a crazy father who physically abused me until a couple of years ago—that’s when my mother finally figured out what was happening and had me come live with her. The trouble is, I guess you could say my father doesn’t see reality the way other people do and he never remembers hitting me. In his mind, when he’d hit me, it was because I was trying to destroy him, so what he tells the judge is that he loves me and that my mother is a raging alcoholic who has brainwashed me to hate him (my mother stopped drinking after the divorce, years ago) and he really believes what he says. My goal is to get him to stay away from me and convince others that his version of reality isn’t real.
Kids aren’t the only ones who have trouble accepting the fact that we often can’t protect ourselves from scary crazy boogeymen, particularly when the craziness isn’t obvious, and the boogeymen are family.
We’ve said it here before: certain crazy people are not obviously crazy and are particularly good at persuading other people to see them as injured victims because they truly, truly believe they are, no matter what really happened. It’s a kind of sickness for which no one has the cure, and nobody feels sicker than the victims in the wake of these sickos, who don’t necessarily feel sick at all.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 1, 2010
Nobody likes to see their partner suffer (well, some people do, but that’s their own perversion), especially when that suffering isn’t just out of your control, but their control, as well. We all want the people we care the most about to be happy, but, as we’ve said many times, ensuring happiness of any kind is impossible, no matter where you live, how likeable you are, or where you went to college. In the almost-words of another (recently departed) Harvard alum, “love means never having to say I’m sorry (that you feel like shit, leave it to me to fix it).”
–Dr. Lastname
About 10 years into our marriage, my husband and I got inspired by a trip down the Snake River in Idaho and decided we should move there as soon as we could afford it. Something about the wilderness eased our hearts and made us feel safer and more grounded than we ever did in the city. Well, now it’s 15 years later, and we made the move to a beautiful house with a breath-taking view and no visible neighbors, and I found a way to telecommute to a job, but my husband still has to fly back and forth every couple weeks and spend at least half his time in our old city. The problem is that I can tell my husband’s not doing so well; he complains about feeling lonely when he’s on his own, and he’s restless when he’s with us, and then he blames me and claims the marriage lacks “spark,” and I can see the wheels going in his head, wondering whether he’s ever going to be happy. My goal is to get my husband to enjoy our new life as much as the rest of the family does.
The danger of any moment of happiness or inspiration is feeling responsible for making it happen again.
You got inspired by going to Idaho, so you think it’s yours to recapture whenever you want, forgetting about all the usual shit that you don’t control. So you plan for years and finally make the big move, and your husband’s “inspired” to wonder what happened to the big pay-off.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 25, 2010
If you hate someone or something for reasons beyond your control, then those feelings are, in essence, beyond your control, so resistence is essentially futile. Hating something is one thing, but then feeling guilty for hating, then angry for feeling guilty, depressed for feeling angry…so it goes down the feelings spiral, down the emotional toilet.
–Dr. Lastname
When I broke up with my girlfriend, I felt like I didn’t have a choice; she was smothering me, she made me feel guilty and like a bad person all the time, and I just couldn’t take care of her anymore. We’d been together for a relatively long time and I had reached the end of my rope (she’d even started hitting me and breaking things in our apartment). The problem is now that I feel even worse because, in the months since I ended it and she moved out, she’s started getting high a lot and has threatened to kill herself more than once. If she goes through with it, I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. My goal is to feel less awful about breaking up with her (which I did to feel less awful).
As a not-sociopath, you can’t feel less than awful about your ex-girlfriend’s drugging, depression, and self-destruction.
It’s the feeling responsible, as well as awful, that will not only do nothing to help her recovery, but will also turn your sorrow into well-entrenched, call-the-doctor depression. So…Dr. Lastname here, how can I help you?
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 18, 2010
People get demoralized when they feel they’re not getting what they deserve, be it pain relief or respect. It’s natural to go on strike and either A, start raging against the machine of injustice, or B, go the other way and surrender to a life on the couch in sweatpants and a snuggie. Of course, the resulting fall-out will feel like a side-effect of the original injustice, not a direct result of your tantrum, but you’ll be too high on rage/comforted by your snuggie to understand. Understand this now, before you protest; better to suffer the original injustice in peace than the further demoralization of unemployment, stiff drinks and a blanket with sleeves.
–Dr. Lastname
I have a dedicated husband, three teenagers, a nice house, a well-behaved dog—it’s not a bad life—but I’ve had a nagging sadness my entire life, and I still do, despite all the good things I’ve got. I deal with it, admittedly, by drinking a bit. I wouldn’t say I’m a drunk, and my drinking doesn’t interfere with my parenting or my marriage anymore than my mood does, but I know that what I’m doing is self-medicating. My husband wants me to see a shrink because he thinks I should take real medication for depression, but if my drinking doesn’t mess up my life, and if, despite all I have, I can’t be happy, anyway, then I don’t understand what makes one medication better than the other. My goal isn’t to be happy, just to withstand my misery, my way, right or wrong.
I understand that chronic depression, which is what we call “nagging sadness” in the biz, isn’t fun. It can make you grumpy, negative, unmotivated, scattered, and lousy at whatever you’re trying to accomplish.
All that’s excluding the pain, so no wonder it can demoralize you into seeing a negative future for yourself. It’s enough to make you want to turn “what the fuck” into words to live by.
If there was some way to relieve your pain that was risk-free and didn’t affect your other life priorities, that would be wonderful (for you—the aforementioned biz would probably dry up).
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 14, 2010
Changing your habits is a lot like changing your physique; it takes a lot of hard work and effort, and after a while, most of us revert to our old selves, which means our habits/fat pants reenter our lives. Still, wanting to change or help someone change is not an entirely dismissable goal, it just requires a lot of will power, patience, and the right degree of responsibility for what you can and cannot control. In either situation, try to eat less fast food.
–Dr. Lastname
I love my girlfriend, but I noticed that she drank like a fish at parties and carried lots of credit card debt, so when we began to think seriously about getting married, I told her I needed her to cut way back on her drinking, stick to a budget, and pay down her debt. She was hurt, but since then she’s been doing what I asked, and we’ve been getting along well. What I’ve noticed since then, though, is that she’s lost some of her spark and generally seems less happy. I wanted to help her, not hurt her, but at the same time, I don’t know how we can finally get married if she still wants to act like an irresponsible kid. My goal is to help my girlfriend (or really both of us) without making her miserable.
It’s natural to feel responsible when your words do, indeed, wipe the smile off her face—instead of a diamond, you gave her an earful—but it’s a dangerous way to think because your words are also her best warning against greater pain to come.
So you’re right, there’s no way your marriage will work if she can’t control her drinking and spending, so your real goal isn’t to avoid hurting her feelings. Instead, it’s to protect both of you from creating a family just to watch it fall apart.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 4, 2010
In fxckfeelings.com terms, most resolutions are just grand, annual wishes, not goals. Goals, as we define them, are realistic, while wishes are failure-prone yearnings that are usually best ignored. The holidays are over, and so are the excuses n’bullshit, so for our own New Year’s babies/cases, happy New Year, and it’s time to ditch these resolutions, stat.
–Dr. Lastname
My girlfriend got mad at me on New Year’s Eve and now she tells me it’s blown over, but I can’t believe her. I’ve always had these massive how-stupid-could-you-be thoughts that I can’t get out of my mind after I say something that might be stupid, even if it isn’t really stupid, but I keep on thinking about what I said and have to tell a friend about it and then, when they re-assure me, I can’t believe them and have to ask them again until it drives them crazy, and I start to worry about how stupid I sound to them, and so on. So my big New Year’s resolution was to stop myself from being so insecure, but now it’s happening again and, even though my girlfriend is a pretty uncritical person, I can’t stop wanting to ask her for re-assurance. My goal is to be able to tell myself that I didn’t say anything stupid and have more confidence in myself and finally become the person I want to be.
Many people don’t grow out of their “I-hate-myself-for-being-so-stupid” reaction, no matter how much they accomplish, or get reassured, or seek professional help. They never find out why they’re so stupid, but they never stop asking.
The reason for their so-called immaturity is a kind of painful mental tic that hurts like hell when it happens, and can’t really be prevented or eliminated (other than by lobotomy, which is a skill I’m trying to acquire, as soon as I can find a willing test patient/Jon Gosselin returns my calls).
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 17, 2009
We keep saying that Christmas is hard on everyone, but that’s because religion is hard on everyone, no matter who or what you believe in, and religion is around all year long. Just because religion is hard, however, doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s good, actually, because it expresses essential differences and gets people upset, confused, and heading towards my office.
–Dr. Lastname
I recently had to relocate my family for work, so we were forced to move from a fairly large east coast city to a small town nowhere near water (unless you count the great lakes). My wife and I are Jewish, and we’re raising our kids in the religion, but that was much easier where we used to live than where we are now, where our 12-year-old son, who was always a bit of an outsider, is now facing a lot of teasing at school for all the ways he’s different, which includes his religion. It’s been especially bad for him lately, given that the town is very Christian, with prayers before high school football games and lots of school-centered Christmas activities, and he’s even further on the outside of what the other kids are doing. As you may or may not know, Channukah isn’t Christmas—it’s a minor holiday—and we don’t try to pretend otherwise by giving smaller gifts and not playing it up so much. My son is younger than his age, though, and he likes to tell everyone he’s not interested in Christmas and then they pick on him and he accuses them of anti-Semitism and it’s a mess. My goal is that he should be proud of being a Jew while getting along better with people at school.
It’s painful to watch your kid get picked on and called a dork, particularly when he is a dork and does dorky things that you know are going to make his troubles worse.
If you tell him to shut up and keep his opinions to himself, you may be destroying the paltry remains of his self-esteem. If you try to get his tormentors to stop, you may stir up additional trouble.
You could argue that it’s your job, and society’s, to give him a positive school experience that supports differences in religion and personal style. I would argue that’s bullshit. It’s not in your power and idealistic expectations will often make things worse.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
