Posted by fxckfeelings on November 23, 2009
The one gift everybody can expect to get around the holiday season is a surplus of emotions (which, as I’ve said before, turns into a surplus of business for me—ho ho ho!). The ghost of Christmas (and Thanksgiving and New Years) past visits most of us, but for those with rough pasts, said ghost can be a real bitch. If you keep your emotional swamp in check and focus on the positive in the present, you can keep your festivities from being too haunted (and keep yourself out of my office).
-Dr. Lastname
You said before that everybody hates the holidays, and I think most people hate seeing their families. Well, I hate the holidays, but it’s because I don’t have a family; my parents still drink too much, one brother is in jail and the other I don’t trust around my kids, and so every time the holidays roll around I get depressed that I don’t have anyone because the people I should be happy to see are the ones who made me the crazy mess I am today (honestly—I’m bipolar, but on medication). I’m sick of basically being guaranteed to hate myself and life all winter just because of what my family did. My goal is to find a way to feel better no matter what time of year it is.
There’s a simple answer to why it’s a bad idea to expect to get over the sorrow of a bad, abusive family; because usually, it simply can’t be done.
Focusing on your pain and waiting for it to go away will spoil your holidays even more than they’re already spoiled. Talk about a turd in the cranberry sauce.
Maybe you think it’s a holiday right and tradition to vent/celebrate your sad feelings with a shrink. Well, this shrink says forget it. I’m not interested, and neither should you be.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 12, 2009
Boundary issues are always a fun topic for us at fxckfeelings.com; from those who want to get too close to those who push others too far away, people are always clashing over personal territory while assuming the other guy is violating the rules. But what if we’re wired to see our territories differently and talking about it just gets everyone more annoyed? That’s when your goal gets more interesting.
–Dr. Lastname
My next door neighbor is your typical Mrs. Kravitz…always in my business asking me personal questions. Lately, she’s taken to walking into my driveway while I am working to get more dirt. My proposed solution to remedy the uninvited driveway visits is to add on to the existing fence, cutting down the easy access. I don’t want to have a conversation about “why” I am putting up the fence, so I am just going to do it without letting her know. My only fear is that there will be some kind of future confrontation because this neighbor gets insulted at the drop of a hat. My goal is to protect my boundaries, one way or the other, without having an angry neighbor to deal with for the next 30 years.
Using a fence to block out your neighbor’s intrusive curiosity may work…unless it actually does the opposite.
After all, it may just serve to whet her appetite, and pretty soon, she’ll have you under 24 hour surveillance with Predator overflights and under-eaves webcams. You’ll look like Wile E. Coyote writing away to Acme (or the German Democratic Republic) for ever-more-advanced fencing.
In other words, your goal isn’t to stop her, but to try. If your goal is to stop someone from prying when you can’t, you’ll go nuts, and your helplessness will draw her like a magnet (and your misery will draw you to me like a magnet, trust me).
If you begin by admitting you might well be fucked, then you’ll probably try cheaper options first (unless you already have).
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 8, 2009
It’s easy, when someone can’t control their behavior, to assume that they are evil, stubborn, or somehow defective and that you’ve got to get through to them, one way or another (not so nice) way. Just because someone can’t behave, however, doesn’t mean s/he’s evil and/or totally resistant to your values; and just because you’re getting nowhere with them doesn’t mean they won’t get it together eventually. It’s easy to write someone off, and it’s easy to be written off, but if you’re hoping to work through a problem instead of just blame someone for it, the only thing incurably defective in these scenarios is the moralizing.
–Dr. Lastname
My older daughter just turned 10, and I’m fairly certain that she is pure evil. My wife and I are not bad people—no family history of mental illness, either—but our older daughter, who looks like a normal little girl, says such nasty things to her little sister that it would make your head spin. Our younger daughter, who’s 7, thinks her sister is a miserable terror, and I have to say, I agree with her; the stuff that comes out of our 10-year-old’s mouth is so cruel, I’m almost in awe of it. My wife and I have sat her down and asked her if she acknowledges how awful her words are, how much it hurts her little sister, and how serious we are about how much she needs to change her attitude. Since then, our older has been less mouthy with us, but just as terrible to her little sister, and we have no idea how to make it stop. My goal is to stop my older daughter from being so mean—that is, if she’s not just satanic and hopeless. I’d really like to get her to understand what she’s doing and why she needs to stop (if I can get that through her evil mind).
As those Spanish Inquisition cardinals learned while swishing around in their gorgeous red gowns, any effort to stamp out the devil gives him a giant energy boost and brings him (or her) to dramatic life.
This is because most of us—even the best of us, like David Letterman—have some devilish impulses that bust out when we’re tired, or rubbed the wrong way, and generally when our control is far from perfect.
So when someone tries to eradicate our wickedness, we may initially agree with their goals. Sooner or later, however, when our impulses don’t cooperate by disappearing, self-hate and shame get stronger and, yes, you guessed it, feed the nasty impulses, whatever they are. The cardinals get to meet the very devil they were trying to exorcise, and the devil’s poor host snarls back and throws up pea soup. A classic vicious circle.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 24, 2009
Often, the easiest way to infuriate someone is to try and do something nice for them; just ask, say, the citizens of any country occupied in the name of democracy. That perceived ingratitude then rankles the helper, and everyone ends up annoyed and frustrated. Be you the helper or the helped, what matters is doing whatever you believe is most necessary in the long run, even if that means watching someone hit bottom, forcing yourself to suck it up, or asking your troops to stand down.
–Dr. Lastname
My aunt is in her late 70s, and I’m on the only family she has anywhere nearby (my cousin, her daughter, lives in Europe). I try to look after her—check in every few weeks, make sure she has food, that the heat’s on, etc.—but it’s gotten harder now that she’s convinced my husband has stolen from her. In reality, my husband has never been to her apartment, plus he’d have no use for the pink sweater he’s accused of taking, but I can’t convince her otherwise. What drives me crazy is that, when she’s not calling me with absurd accusations, she screws up every plan I’ve labored to put in place to keep her safe. After I got her to the top of a housing list in a safer part of town, she took herself off and promptly got mugged. Then I arranged for a public health nurse to keep an eye on her health (she hasn’t seen a doctor in years) and my aunt refused to open the door for her so they closed the case. I’ve thought about getting guardianship powers so I can put her in assisted living, but my cousin, who phones her daily, says that would be cruel and make my aunt’s paranoia that much worse. If I can’t help her, I want to keep away from her because this is driving me crazy. I can’t stop her from screwing herself. It was her decision to reject my help. My goal is to help her or save myself.
As your beloved, dementing aunt demolishes your rescue attempts while accusing you of plotting against her, you can’t help feeling like, if she’s going to make it this hard to save her, you’d rather just kill her instead.
If you pay too much attention to the horrible way she makes you feel, however, you’re putting your mental pain ahead of your concern for her survival, which means you actually care more about saving yourself than her.
If your goal is to find a way to save her and/or end the pain of dealing with her, forget it. There’s no answer that will make you feel better that won’t also make things worse. If you make more arrangements, she’ll undo them, but if you walk away, you’ll feel responsible for the next disaster.
So accept that both you and she are fucked, and that the pain of dealing with her is unavoidable. Ultimately, and not surprisingly, your goal has nothing to do with your feelings. It’s to protect her, if possible, from a painful death, even if it means gathering a full arsenal of social services to do it.
You’ve already done a great job, whether your efforts worked or not. You’ve lined up public assistance and home visits and, though this time she blocked services, you now know where to turn and whom to call when the time comes.
And when the time comes—when it becomes clear that she can’t take care of herself—you can not only have services lined up to help her, but authorities lined up who can remove the yoke of responsibility you’ve placed on your own shoulders.
Prepare for that day by asking a lawyer to define what is required for a guardianship, i.e., how bad things have to be before the law lets someone else take over and force her into care. It probably includes any behavior that shows she can’t take care of herself, like neglecting a serious health problem, or leaving the stove on or going out and getting lost.
Then ask a social worker what services the state will provide. If you were able to provide those services, you might do it with more love than the state can provide and it would appease your guilt, but you wouldn’t last long and you don’t have coverage for when you’re sick, away, or dead. So your job isn’t to provide services but find the people who are responsible for providing them and persuade them that terrible things will happen if they don’t.
In the end, you may feel the silent disapproval of clinical professionals who resent having responsibility dumped on them, and it may add to your guilt. But, if you think of what’s best for your aunt in the long run, and not what makes you feel better, then screw their resentment—you’ll have reason to believe that you’ve done the right thing.
STATEMENT:
Write a statement to address those, including yourself, who expect you to rescue your aunt without regard to your limits or the self-destructiveness of her behavior. “I love my aunt and will do anything that will actually help her, within my capacity. I know that my efforts will sometimes feel inadequate, but what is really responsible for my helplessness and guilt is not failure, but the ravages of aging. If, in spite of my frustration and worry, I continue to keep an eye on her and do whatever good I can, particularly when it’s emotionally exhausting, I should remind myself that I’m doing a good job, because no one else will.”
I work in law enforcement, and a year or so ago, I had a piss test come back dirty. One of my superiors sprung the test on me because he suspected that I was using drugs. He was sure I was into heavy stuff, when really, I was just smoking pot occasionally as my way of dealing with an ugly divorce. Either way, it was dirty, so, in order to keep my job, I had to jump through a bunch of hoops, like going to meetings, monthly testing for a year, and having to sit behind a desk with most of my privileges and responsibilities stripped away. Worse, I now hate the place and don’t trust anyone, but I can’t quit this job until I’m seen as “rehabilitated” or no one else will hire me. So now, even though all I did was smoke a joint every weekend, I pretend to be a recovering junkie, and I’ve done everything they’ve asked of me for the past 16 months. At this point though, it feels like a game and I would do anything to get them off my back. I want to point out to them that I’ve done my time, stayed clean, and that I deserve to get my privileges back but I have a feeling that anything I say will just make them talk down to me about how I need supervision and they’re trying to help me. My goal is to get these people off my back and get things back to the way they were.
Once people have doubts about your ability to control your drug use, you don’t win back their confidence by complaining about unfairness (or complaining, period).
That’s because your complaints will do nothing but remind them that they wouldn’t have been having this unpleasant conversation if it weren’t for the weed in your wee-wee. You may be right and their treatment of you may not be fair; but shut up, or you’ll make things worse.
Your goal isn’t to win back anyone’s trust, because when people feel that you’re focused on their opinion, rather than on your own reasons for doing something, they tend to fear manipulation. Which means they’ll trust you even less.
Focus instead on your own reasons for sticking with this job, regardless of how the bosses make you feel. Assuming they will take their own sweet time before they trust you again, and that you will have to eat beaucoup de merde before that happens, decide whether the job is worth the trouble.
Set aside your anger and pride and think of the pay, security, flexibility of hours, benefits, length of commute, and what the job does or doesn’t do for your family life. Score the advantages and disadvantages. Then you’ll arrive at an answer that is not reactive to your anger, hurt, humiliation, or the provocation of others.
Bosses come and go; you want an answer that reflects your own long-term interests. And then you can decide whether to leave, transfer, or cowboy up, ignore the bullshit, outwait the review board, and get your old job back. If that’s what you decide, you’ll be a lot more careful before you jeopardize it again.
And here’s an added benefit. If your decision reflects your inner priorities other than your desire to get them to give you the green light, you’ll be much more persuasive. Because, of course, they’ll know that you have more important things on your mind, and only unimportant things in your pee.
STATEMENT:
Compose a statement that describes your thoughts about the value of your job. “This job feels like shit, but I’ve been around, and it offers me a lot more than I can get elsewhere. It may feel like a humiliating pain in the ass, but I’ve got good reason to stick it out and pay more attention to avoiding this kind of problem in the future. So if I have to wear the brown crown, I should remind myself that I’m accepting my pain for a good reason and have a right to be proud.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 21, 2009
In difficult situations with difficult people, we’re often tempted to turn to the law for help, hoping that the authority of police or the court can set things right and not asking ourselves what is really likely to happen next. In many cases, if you’re dealing with raw feeling, going to the cops or court brings in a whole new wave of complications and misery. So, as we always say, when cornered by a crazy person, act as you would if under attack from any wild animal; lie low, play dead, and just hope it loses interest and goes away.
–Dr. Lastname
I dated this guy years ago—only for a few months, nothing really serious because he seemed kind of weird even then—and he’s been harassing me ever since. Six months after I broke up with him, he wrote me a bunch of emails and left a ton of voicemails saying he wanted to know what he did wrong, that we should be together, and I did talk to him once just to tell him I was sorry but it was over and he should move on. He told me once that he was bipolar and I was sorry for him—he had seemed very normal then and I thought maybe his family didn’t like his eccentricities, which I thought were charming—but his messages seemed intense, illogical, and angry, and I started to worry. Then, six months after that, another bunch of emails and messages, this time more menacing, so I told him resolutely never to talk to me again. Just recently he started again, but this time the messages were actually scary—he threatened to kill me if we couldn’t be together. He said he felt broken inside and that he wanted me to feel the same way so that I’d understand him and then we could be friends again. Basically, I want to know if I need to get a restraining order against this guy—I’m really scared, and if anyone ever deserved police protection, it’s me. On the other hand, if he’s dangerous, maybe he needs to be put into a hospital and that’s something the police should be able to do. My goal is for the police to do something to protect me and, I hope, him.
In a fair and reasonable world, it would be easy for the police to lock up people who become temporarily dangerous because of mental illness, and doctors would be able to cure them. Unfortunately—naturally—that’s not the world we live in.
Unless someone is overtly dangerous in a way that is immediate and unequivocal—they’ve recently written threatening letters, or said something scary to a reliable witness, or can be expected to act aggressively when interviewed by the police or an emergency room clinician—they’re not going to get hospitalized. That’s the way our laws work for involuntary hospitalization.
These laws seem to do more to protect the accused than the alleged victims in that they protect the individual’s right not to get locked up for being different. In reality, they’re often worse for the mentally ill people they’re intended to protect, because they prevent them from getting treated for an illness that is killing their brain cells and ruining their lives.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 31, 2009
We’ve devoted a lot of column space to the issue of helping people help people—how to, when to, who to, etc—mostly involving cases of loved ones and addiction. Ironically, helping those who aren’t very close to us with less severe problems is often much more complicated. The key is finding a balance between helping your fellow man and not screwing yourself.
–Dr. Lastname
My son just started school, and I’ve become friends with his best friend’s mother. She’s a very nice, cool person, but I’ve gone shopping with her a bunch of times now—at the mall, at Costco—and I’m almost 100% sure that she’s a serial shoplifter. The first time it happened, I genuinely believed that she just forgot to pay for the sweater she’d put over the handle of her younger daughter’s stroller, fair enough. But then at a mall I saw her use the same stroller to steal again, arguing with a manager over a shirt with a missing button while she walked out with a $100 pair of shoes. It’s weird, because every time we walk out of the store, she’ll be like, oh, I forgot to pay for those shoes, I’m too embarrassed to go back now, which is getting really hard to believe now that she’s done it over and over again. Part of me worries that she might be a little nuts and it worries me to have her watch my son when he goes over to her house to play with his friend. But mostly I think she just has a problem, like smoking or something, but one that could get her into a lot of trouble very quickly, and if I could just talk to her about it as a friend, I might be able to help her. My goal is to do what I can to keep my new friend, and keep her out of trouble.
There’s one part that always gets left out of the Biblical story of the Good Samaritan– Risk Assessment.
There’s no arguing that it’s good to help people, but, since it feels good to help people, you know there’s a down side, and that down side is that it’s sometimes dangerous. After all, any good lawyer would tell you that if Jesus had lived longer, he would have gotten himself sued.
Your first job, as a responsible person and mother, is to assess the risk of being helpful by guessing, from her past behavior, whether your friend is likely to turn on you and rip out your guts. Remember, some people with destructive habits are sharks; they’re angry, very sensitive to having their weaknesses exposed or criticized, and will respond to your kindness by swearing a blood feud.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 24, 2009
Like our clinical definition of “asshole“, “boundary issues” are a reliable source of high-risk pleasure for all participants and a regular, recession-proof employment for yours truly. If you’ve ever had someone become your instant best friend, or dated someone who couldn’t not be friends with his/her exes, then boundaries are low and the risk of heartbreak is high. Learn what boundaries are, where they are, and guard them well.
–Dr. Lastname
Even though I’m married, and even though I don’t think I’m in any danger, I’m pretty sure I’m in the middle of a “Single White Female” situation with a woman I work with. When she joined my department, we became fast friends because I thought we had similar tastes, and she was pretty funny and unbelievably generous (a month after she got hired, it was my birthday, and she organized the whole party, made a bunch of food, etc.). We were really close for a while , and I was flattered when she bought herself a pair of my favorite shoes, decided all my favorite movies were her favorite movies, and became chummy with many of my friends in and outside of the office. But then she started to get mad at me for small, silly things, and her mirroring of me became less flattering and more creepy and suffocating. She’s so not the generous, kind person she used to be with me—she doesn’t treat me kindly most of the time, let alone like a friend—but I’m not leaving my job, so I can’t get away from her. Besides, she’s “taken” most of my friends, so I feel like I’m stuck with her for the rest of my life. My goal is to figure out A), if I’m just being paranoid and/or self-centered, and B), how to gracefully get some distance without her making my life a living hell.
Overly close relationships serve one important purpose; they remind you why it’s good to have personal boundaries.
Like any wall, a personal boundary may sometimes make you lonely by keeping other people out. But without a boundary, you’ll never have the freedom to breathe, make personal choices and assert your own priorities.
You may counter that it’s not healthy to keep people from getting close, but your goal is not to get close to someone. It’s to get close without compromising your own most important priorities and your awareness of them. In other words, it’s to get close while retaining your boundaries. At least that’s the goal for your next friendship, after you get some space from the Needsy twin.
Looking back, you can see red flags warning you that your new friendship was not boundary-friendly. It happened too fast, felt too good, and involved too much fan-worship, mirroring, and absorbing of your taste, style, and social life. And footwear.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 20, 2009
We teach children that lying is bad, period. As adults, we agree with that statement, but can find any number of reasons why our own lies should be considered an exception. Bad or not, lies will, more often then not, get you into trouble, so you have to weigh the pros and cons of each piece of bullshit before you unleash it. If you think your lie is justified because of unfairness, or if you just lie out of habit despite your better judgment—if you’re so full of bullshit you need a bib before you speak—then you should stop looking for excuses and learn to shut your mouth.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m a landscape designer, and I’ve just spent 6 months living in planning hell with a pretty difficult client. We had different visions from the start, but he insisted I was the man for the job, even though we differed on every decision, every step of the way. And really, I was willing to put up with it if it meant getting to do the grounds (you heard me) on this guy’s country estate, which was an extensive project that would’ve paid a ton and given me the chance to do something spectacular that could gain me a national reputation. Finally, we agreed to some blue prints, which he paid for…right before firing me. Now, I know that he paid for the plans and they’re technically his, but the thing is, I put half a year into putting this project together—and turned down a lot of other work because I thought I’d need the time to make it happen—and if he’s going to screw me over like this, I feel like he deserves to get screwed over right back. He’s called asking for the plans, and I keep making excuses as to why I can’t give them to him, but he keeps pushing, and now I’m stuck. Should I tell him the truth, that he’ll get those plans over my dead body, or should I relent and give him the plans along with a piece of my mind? I know you dismiss the notion of justice, but this is my livelihood, and my goal is to get what’s owed me.
Cases like this are the reason you have ethical rules, so you’ll do what you think is right, regardless of provocations by the egregious assholes who are drawn to be your clients. Lucky for you, you at least acknowledge this is a dilemma, instead of feeling entitled to a landscaper jihad, so there’s hope for you yet.
Look, if you’re in the landscape designing business, most of your clients are richer than you are. Just on a practical level for your quest, that means they can higher bigger lawyers and fund battles that can outlast any puny resources you can haul out of your pockets.
Being rich also brings out the inner asshole, so your profession will naturally attract more of them than a Crane’s white porcelain standard edition. So if you feel that war is your calling, drop this business and go carve out runways and golf courses for a tour at Fallujah.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 17, 2009
As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” and while that’s surely the case for the current Red Sox season, it’s also true about relationships. Due to anything from a shared possession to a shared child, couples often end up tied together when they’re not together anymore. For those couples, they have to tread even more lightly now that they’re apart, or, when it comes to conflict between exes, it will be deja vu all over again.
–Dr. Lastname
After my husband and I got divorced, I started going to a therapist, because I was really leveled by the whole experience. Plus I worried I was facing a custody battle over our son, who was only five, and wanted to make sure I kept it together for him. Ultimately, custody went more smoothly than I expected (my son lives with me over the school year and spends summers and some holidays with his dad), and my ex and I are on civil terms. To make a long story short though, in talking to this therapist about my ex and his odd family (with whom he spends lots of time in the summer), the therapist asked me if my ex-husband had ever talked about being molested—the family behavior I described as odd, on top of my ex-husband’s own quirks, seemed indicative of a pattern of abuse. I got up the courage to confront my ex about it, but he shut me down pretty fast. The problem is that he has our son with him and his family, and I’m worried absolutely sick, but there’s nothing I can do. I’d like to help my ex in a way, but my goal, really, is to do what’s best for my son.
Let’s imagine, just for the sake of argument, that your ex-‘s family is eccentric but not abusive. You push your ex-, he tells his family, they’re all offended and can’t talk about you without snarling with anger. Now they’re not just eccentric, they’re enraged.
Then, your son picks up on the vibrations and starts walking on eggshells with everyone, including you. That’s how dangerous it is to try too hard to protect your son from abuse; declare war on those who threaten him, and he could be your first casualty.
A better goal is to do whatever you can to protect him from abuse while also trying to protect him from the potential conflict an allegation will trigger. It’s certainly a fine line, and you must be able to tolerate fear and uncertainty to walk it. You don’t really have a choice, because the alternative is worse. And, anyway, it’s part of your parental job description.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on August 6, 2009
One of the basic tenets of the fxckfeelings.com philosophy is this: you can’t change people. As such, even trying to change someone’s mind by making their anger go away is never a good goal, whether it’s the anger of a naggy spouse or a misbehaving kid. Instead, change your line of reasoning: go back to basics and define the issues for yourself. Then, if you’re lucky, they’ll change their own minds.
-Dr. Lastname
My wife and I are both artists—her painting, me sculpture—but after our son was born, it became clear that one of us was going to have to get a real job in order to pay the bills. I was making more money from sculpting at the time, so she was the one to take the plunge. Her job is actually somewhat creative, and she doesn’t hate it completely, but now that I’m not having as many shows and selling as many pieces, she’s leaning on me constantly to work harder or find a better-paying job. I try to tell her that I’m doing the best I can, but she doesn’t accept that, and if I even suggest that she’s bitter that she had to give up her art and I didn’t, she absolutely loses it. The truth is, I think my career is worth holding on to, but I don’t know how to convince her unless I make a windfall in the next six months. My goal is to get my wife to get off my back.
Never try to get your wife off your back, because that a), implies you’re already trapped underneath her, and b), means you’ll be lying, squirming, and generally pulling all the stops to change her mind/get her to move, which will just strengthen her resolve.
In fact, if you look behind you, you’ll notice you’re giving your wife a piggy-back ride at this very moment. So your goal will wrench your back.
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