Posted by fxckfeelings on November 29, 2012
Whether traumatic or dynamic, having an early and/or intense sexual experience can make you worry that your ability to have solid adult relationships will be damaged. While sexual trauma can make intimacy scary, and sexual overstimulation can distract you from it, there are ways to move past your past. If you have a clear vision of partnership and the discipline to implement it, sexual feelings need never control your life. You may never stop them from causing pain and distraction, but they can never stop you from finding and being a good partner moving forward.
–Dr. Lastname
I recently had a severe panic attack that lead me to believing I was molested as a young child. From what I know, I lost my virginity to a man in his 20s when I was 13 years old, or in 7th grade. After visiting with some old friends, I brought up an event which had happened when we were 13 years old that involved men in their late 20s or older, alcohol, and oral sex. She was horrified I brought it up, but to me, it was something that was part of my life, but after heading home that night, I began to think that maybe it wasn’t so normal for young girls to be having sex and that’s when my panic attack sunk in. For some background, I was “raised” by a 15-year-old mother who I believe loved me, but was at times, emotionally abusive and manipulative, and often times neglectful as she also had three other children after me. My father was also very young and inconsistent, I often went months without hearing from him and longer not seeing him. Anyways, eventually I lost my virginity to a man in his 20s which lead to years of promiscuity with much older men. My brother is now in his 20s and I try to gain perspective by mentally placing him next to what I perceive as a 13-14 year old, but I really can’t process the age difference. I don’t necessarily feel like a victim because I felt like such a willing participant, but lately, I’ve had this deep terrifying feeling that this sexual history goes back much further than I can remember. Although I can’t figure out what happened to me as a child, I do have these “flashbacks” that sometimes make no sense and I can’t seem to place them on a timeline, but my mind will immediately discard them and a sense of panic will set in. My goal is to come to terms with my history so I can start processing and begin to heal.
Being forced by a chance perspective to reexamine your basic assumptions about your childhood—whom you could trust, how safe you really were—can create a domino effect of doubt.
You’re now compelled to call your entire sexual history into question and wonder whether anxiety and flashbacks are side effects of the shock, or legitimate signals of unremembered sexual trauma. Between what you do remember and your lack of parental protection as a child, it could mean that you were sexually abused.
It’s never certain, however, that recalling such an experience in therapy can produce healing, and there’s a danger that delving into childhood trauma may make you feel more helpless and trap you in loops of negative thinking that keep the dominoes of doubt in perpetual free-fall. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 26, 2012
If you suffer from anxiety and depression, you know they’re like your own mental Statler and Waldorf, the two Muppet balcony hecklers, except less cute and more evil, spewing criticism that impairs your ability to feel confident and make decisions. Even when they don’t prevent you from achieving significant accomplishments, anxiety and/or depression make you believe you didn’t do as well as you should have. So, if you suffer from anxiety, learn how to tune out its constant negative chatter, or, even better, be proud of your ability to go on with the show.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m 37 years old, nearly 38. I’m undecided on whether or not to have a child. My mother died 12 years ago and I’ve been in and out of depression ever since. I definitely have a lot to be grateful for, but a lot of times I feel like I just can’t go on—the sadness and loss are still unbearable. The other thing is that I have been dealing with very bad insomnia since my mom’s death, which also makes life very difficult. I haven’t had a lot of long-term relationships but I’m in one now and it’s been 2 years. The relationship is good and he is a good man, but I’ve never had that feeling of “knowing” if he’s the right person/life long partner. There’s always something missing for me and I suppose it’s from the loss of my mom, and the reason I usually end up breaking up with boyfriends. I don’t want to keep that pattern going as I’ll end up alone. Because of my age I feel like time is of the essence and I need to make a decision—on my relationship and having a baby. I have always thought that I would have a child and I am a loving/giving person and love kids, but it’s so hard to take care of myself sometimes, I wonder if it’s right for me to me to have one. My partner wants kids (he would be a wonderful father) and I told him I’m not ready yet, but will I ever be? My goal is to come to a decision and be at peace with it.
You’ve had more than your share of pain in life, so it’s understandable that the things that should make you feel happiness, like a good relationship, are buried by exhaustion and a lingering sense of pain and loss.
Your pain hasn’t distracted you, however, from the fact that certain things make life meaningful, even when the joy they inspire doesn’t register. Apparently, two of those things for you are raising kids and having a relationship, which matter to you despite knowing that you’ll sometimes be unable to function or feel anything other than misery.
If that’s what’s meaningful to you, don’t ask yourself whether motherhood or marriage will make you happy, whether your feelings will ever be normal, or whether you’ll always be able to function as a parent. Unfortunately, it’s not your lot in life to have normal expectations about feelings or function. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t achieve normal goals if you’re prepared to make realistic adjustments. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 8, 2012
Although stopping long-term intensive psychotherapy can leave you in a state of mourning and fear, particularly if it occurs during tough times or against your wishes, it’s unrealistic to expect that returning to therapy will make everything right again. Instead, give yourself time to adjust to change and reassess your ability to stay functional and positive. Then, if you think it’s necessary, find a therapist who’s a good, supportive coach and use him or her for a different kind of therapy that keeps your head straight without stirring up your deeper feelings. If you’re certain that you have to be “in therapy” to get helpful support and are helpless without it, then the therapy you’re in is helping you a lot less than you think.
–Dr. Lastname
In my early 20s I spent 4 years in therapy (which I think in and of itself says a whole lot about the not good place I was in my head). Therapy ended, not because I was ready, but because I moved. I am now 46, and in the years since I continued to work through a lot of things on my own, with my therapist’s voice in my head, if no longer in actual therapy sessions. In January my grandmother took a turn for the worse, with both health and cognition, and we had to place her in full nursing care. She has always been one of the most influential and positive forces in my life, so I had a hard time dealing with this. It sent me spiraling down into my 4th lifetime episode of depression. I’ve started back on Prozac, which I now realize I need to stay on for the rest of my life to try to prevent future recurrences, and I’ve spent the last 10 months in therapy with my former therapist via phone sessions as we now live 1,000 miles apart. I have finished working through a lot of stuff in that time, meaning I’ve changed my attitudes and perceptions and behaviors, which has changed my life, inner and outer. I wish I’d figured it out 25 years ago, during that first round of therapy, but better late than never. It’s been a hard year. My grandmother died 7 weeks ago. The grief hit me more than I ever imagined. I thought I’d prepared in those months when she was slowly dying, but I was wrong. What is the saying—Where there is no struggle, there is no strength? Good growth has come of the pain—I have returned to college, and I am training for my first full marathon in January. I am at a truly good place in my head and was ready to end therapy, so two weeks ago, with my therapist’s blessing, I had my last session. I knew, though, that ending therapy because I am truly ready is a celebration, but that it would also be a loss. It is currently hitting me harder than I imagined. How do I get through this and find a place of healthy acceptance of this transition?
While it’s unfortunate that stopping intensive psychotherapy after many years is hitting you hard, it’s not surprising. As you well know, loss is painful, be it the death of a loved one or the end of a source of support.
That said, your pain doesn’t mean your psychotherapy has been less complete than you thought or that you stopped it too soon, just that you can be a solid, resilient person and also be very sensitive to loss, both because of temperament and circumstances. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 1, 2012
When a severe disappointment breaks you down, the pain is nothing compared to the damage done to the way you see yourself and your world. If despair sweeps away your most important values and relationships, it may leave loved ones with no way to help or save you from yourself, making repairs impossible. If, on the other hand, you retain some perspective and a sense of humor, you can fight the negative thoughts that flood your brain, regain respect for your own resources, accept the help that others offer, and rebuild yourself into someone better than before.
–Dr. Lastname
I have really fond memories of my mother until I was eleven, at which point she became a drunk. Before then, she was really happy and loving and had lots of friends, but my father later explained to me that she lost a job she was very attached to, felt it was unfair, and became very bitter. My father loved her and did everything to help her, but she didn’t seem to care, even though the worse she did, the more she hated herself. He finally gave up, left, and took us kids with him because she couldn’t care for us. Recently (about 15 years later) I heard she tried to kill herself with alcohol and almost succeeded. I’ve been angry at her, because we were once close and I tried to help her, but now I’m afraid she’ll die and I still can’t understand how someone as nice and loving as she used to be could drink herself to death with so many people around her who love her. My goal is to find some peace between us before or after her death.
Alcoholism, like severe mental illness, sometimes lets people develop nice, warm personalities and rich lives before it declares itself. Out of nowhere, it changes the way their brains process information and feeling, and turns them into self-absorbed ghosts of who they used to be.
The mother you remember may well deserve your respect, but she vanished after disappointment triggered her addiction, making her incapable of loving others or saving herself. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 17, 2012
Some very smart people are brilliant at expressing the way they feel and acting on those feelings tenaciously while remaining inept at putting those feelings into a broader perspective. For them, feelings are facts, allowing them to act first, ask questions never. If you happen to be such a person and these words aren’t meaningless, be aware that there are ways to learn a different, more value-driven way of thinking. If you happen to have been written off by such a person, know that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the impulses of an otherwise-smart person for whom feelings, not facts, are an infallible truth.
–Dr. Lastname
Growing up, I always had a feeling that the things that promised happiness to other people didn’t work out for me, I hated being alive, and I didn’t mind who knew it, even though my family always told me I was being too emotional and that I refused to admit or remember the moments of my childhood that were fun or happy (no idea what they’re talking about). Anyway, I grew up, found steady work and got married, but the marriage ended a couple years ago. I’ve tried medications for depression, and the 3 or 4 I’ve tried haven’t done anything but cause side effects. So my point is that I’ve had it. I really don’t see the point in staying alive when I feel miserable most of the time and nothing has worked out. I’m not feeling suicidal at the moment because I’ve been busy at work and that makes me feel useful, but I doubt that I’ll want to hold it together when the next layoff comes around and I have nothing to do. My shrink wants me to stay positive and fight my negative thinking but I think it’s more than negative thinking; it’s a negative reality and I’ve had enough of it. My goal is to challenge anyone, including you, to show me that life is worth living.
While depressed feelings can be very powerful in persuading you that there’s no point in living, feelings aren’t facts. Just because you’ve always felt like life isn’t worth living doesn’t mean that it’s true now or in the future.
When people say to “stay positive,” what they really mean is that you should look at the bigger picture, beyond whatever negativity you happen to be feeling, and identify long-term goals that are meaningful in terms of values (like doing good, supporting the people or causes you care about, or sharing love), not in terms of feelings or outcomes.
As long as your life reflects your values, like trying to be decent to others and doing a good day’s work, you can tell yourself that your efforts are worthwhile, regardless of how badly things are going at the moment…unless, of course, your brain is unable to see facts and feelings as two different things. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 30, 2012
If you listen to (other) experts, psychiatric treatment should always begin with objective evidence, which then determines a diagnosis, which directs us to proven, effective treatments. This expert, on the other hand, thinks that “evidence-based psychiatry” would be very nice if we happened to know lots more than we do, but it is one of life’s great ironies that the organ we know the least about is the home of knowledge itself, the brain. Until we can fully wrap our heads around our minds and how they work, scientific thinking in psychiatry is often wishful thinking. It can actually get in the way of making good, practical decisions and accepting the necessity of living with the unknown, be it a mystery illness or the grey mush in our skulls.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve been very confused lately because of what’s going on inside me. My father did some bad things to me while I was growing up—things that I just began remembering a year or so ago (sorry, I can’t label it). Since then, other memories surfaced as well, but not many at all. Most of my memories of my childhood are snapshots that are just little moments in time, separated by years in between that I just don’t remember. Anyway, the thing that distresses me is that sometimes, but not all the time, I’ll feel like I have another part of me who is talking in my head. This came to my awareness mostly after the memories started coming up, although I feel like maybe it happened occasionally before. For instance, recently someone asked me a question, and a child’s voice answered in my head. I have other instances of similar things like that happening. One time it seemed like there were two parts conversing with each other and I was just observing the conversation, per se. That being said, I am educated enough about what happened to me and the consequences of it to know that I think I’m describing DID, but from what I’ve read, I don’t think I have it. I don’t switch to other personalities, and I don’t really lose time or anything like that…but I do know I’m not qualified to make that kind of assessment (and I know you can’t just by reading this letter). But my question does relate to that: is it possible to have the kinds of experiences I’ve described and not have DID? Since I’m pretty sure I don’t have it, I feel like I’m just some crazy, messed up person for no reason. It terrifies me to share this with anyone, but I don’t know what to do anymore, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep going.
Diagnosis in psychiatry is never precise and, when given too much attention, can do more harm than good. Until the day a mental illness diagnosis can be determined by peeing on a stick, all we can currently do is lump symptoms together and try to observe what happens to people who fall within an arbitrary category.
In the short run, knowing you’re not alone might be comforting, but it would tell you very little about what to expect from future symptoms or treatments. Worse, it would get you thinking of yourself as a diagnosis instead of as a person who’s trying to live life in spite of some disturbing, hard-to-understand symptoms.
As such a person, ask yourself what you most want to accomplish in this life, despite whatever’s going on in your head. For most people with traumatic childhoods, it’s always meaningful to be decent to others, whether they’re your kids, relatives, or friends. You know how easily people slip into abusiveness when they’re angry and how much it hurts, so you never take a good, supportive relationship for granted.
Most symptoms that impair the way you function won’t prevent you from being the person you want to be or doing what you really want to do, they’ll just slow you down and force you to work harder to think up alternative methods. A good coach helps you to accept your impairment without getting discouraged or demoralized.
So instead of looking for the ultimate shrink diagnostician, find a therapist who can act as a good coach, who isn’t too upset by symptoms, and is eager to see what you’re capable of, even when you’re distracted by traumatic memories, internal conversations or the sensations of observing yourself.
Consult a psychiatrist at least once or twice to get an overview of possible treatments, including medication. Of course, non-medical treatments almost always pose a lower risk, but many medications are relatively safe and require no more than a few weeks to try out. If your symptoms are sufficiently painful and/or disabling, and non-medical treatment is insufficient, then you owe it to yourself to check out every possibility.
Whatever symptoms you have, you want to do your best to manage them without letting them define your life. Keep up your diagnostic questions until you’re confident you’ve heard what the experts have to say, regardless of how unsatisfying that might be, and then forget about what caused your problems or how they might be categorized.
Your next step is to manage your burden and respect yourself for carrying it, even if the nature of that burden remains a mystery.
STATEMENT:
“My psychological symptoms spook me and leave me feeling distracted and distanced from myself, but they can’t take the meaning out of a good day’s work or a solid friendship. I may never figure out why I feel the way I do, or stop myself from feeling that way, but I can certainly lead my life according to my values regardless of the tricks my head likes to play on me.”
No one was more surprised than I when I suddenly got depressed about a year ago, because it’s not something that ever happened to me before. I lost energy, felt like crying, and got anxiety attacks. There was lots of pressure at work, but my job was safe, and I’ve never been prone to buckling under pressure. Now I could barely get to work and I didn’t give a damn about the projects that I was responsible for. My wife finally forced me to see a psychiatrist, I started to feel better on an antidepressant, and then my internist really surprised me by telling me my testosterone was low and I should try a trial of replacement therapy, which I did. Within 2 weeks I was back to normal and a few weeks later I stopped the antidepressant. So now I wonder whether I was really depressed or not or whether I should have tried antidepressant in the first place. My goal is to figure out my diagnosis so I’ll know what to expect.
Even on that rare occasion when a specific psychiatric diagnosis really matters, it doesn’t matter as much as you think. Yes, it was critical to your recovery that you and your doctors checked out testosterone deficiency as a possible cause of depression; the sudden, unexpected onset of your symptoms raised the odds of your having an unusual and potentially curable cause, which deserved an extensive workup of your hormone levels, vitamin levels, evidence of inflammation, etc., so congrats for making a good decision.
You also discovered that depressive symptoms may have many causes, making depression less of a diagnosis than a cluster of symptoms. So, much like aspirin, antidepressants can improve symptoms, no matter what the cause, if they work at all. (Unfortunately, no matter what the cause, antidepressant trials often fail [35% for each trial] and require lots of time [three to four weeks] before there are noticeable results.)
In addition to lucking out with both the diagnosis and the response to antidepressants, you learned a valuable lesson, which is that anyone can get depression. It wasn’t caused by bad psychological or medical hygiene, just bad luck. Getting depression often doesn’t have a deeper meaning other than that we live in a tough, unfair world where people often get sick for no reason, and sometimes that sickness makes your brain miserable.
Your own observations are the best guide to your prognosis. If you responded rapidly to getting testosterone replacement therapy, then you may be relatively unlikely to get depressive symptoms again (as long as you continue taking the testosterone, which you may need indefinitely). At some point, if you want to experiment with reducing the testosterone treatment, ask your physician about the odds and choose a good time for experimenting, when not too much else is going on in your life.
From what you know, there’s no reason to think that your prognosis—your expected luck—is worse than anyone else’s. You made good choices, which is an essential survival skill when you happen to live in a bad luck world.
STATEMENT:
“I’d love to take my mental health for granted the way I used to, and maybe I will, after enough time of not feeling depressed has passed, but there’s no escaping knowing how easy it is to get sick. I’m proud of having made good decisions and happy to have gotten lucky enough to almost balance the bad luck I had to get sick in the first place.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 9, 2012
The heart may be a lonely hunter, but it’s also picky and easily irritated, particularly when hungry. If you enter the hunt without knowing what you really need, you risk being too impatient, too easily rejected, or both. In any case, try to remember all the important things you and a partner need from a relationship, aside from emotional fulfillment, so you can preserve the not-always-loving relationships that are still worth saving, and let go of the ones that won’t work. You might not get everything you desire, but you won’t return from the hunt empty-hearted.
–Dr. Lastname
I have a friend who is in town visiting from far away (she recently moved). She is not a great communicator, and at the last minute decided not to stay with my family but to instead stay with a friend I don’t get along with, citing some pretty lame reasons. I am often hurt by the communication style of this visiting friend. I also have a trip planned to stay with her in a month, and I can’t decide if I should A, suck it up, not take her decision too seriously, and continue my plan to stay with her, B, have more self-respect and tell her she’s hurt me (a conversation we’ve had before; it hasn’t done a lot of good), or C, redirect my trip and avoid her since I don’t want to invest more energy in this person. It would take a lot of energy to redirect my trip, but it’s been over a year of me being really sad, her engaging in formalities like birthday cards but not actually spending time with me or returning emails or phone calls. I feel I am over reacting but I also feel that if this is the reaction I have to her, isn’t everyone better off if I just separate? Most of all I want to engage in action that I will still be able to endorse 20 years from now. What to do?
Looking back twenty years from now, you probably won’t care about how often your friend ignored your texts or chose to pal around with your enemies. What will matter more is whether she was the best friend she could be, and whether that was worth it.
In all friendships, there’s a balance between your painful feelings and the times you find your friendship meaningful and rewarding. It’s up to you to decide whether you value the good side enough to ignore the shortcomings. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 6, 2012
Like all symptoms of mental illness, anxiety and suicidal feelings seem controllable since they’re related to thoughts and how we look at things, especially since they have the potential to be so destructive. In reality, their primary causes are powerful, mysterious and, whether rooted in past events or biology, are not curable or easily reversible by the best treatments, most loving families, and strongest willpower. What good treatment and a loving family can do, however, is give meaning to the courage it takes to ignore pain and dangerous impulses, giving one comfort, if not control.
–Dr. Lastname
How do you get rid of the pain from your child’s suicide? My son died four years ago, and our entire family is still devastated. We are all now living with depression, anger, and our own thoughts of suicide at times. We are all in therapy but it’s moving so slowly, it doesn’t feel like life is moving forward. After a tragedy like this, how do you get your purpose back?
While I can’t imagine anything much worse than having your child suicide, the key to surviving it is to understand how similar it is to having your child die of any other cause. No parents should have to bury their child, no matter how that child’s life ended.
Intuitively, suicide feels like a preventable cause of death, so it seems justified to review the many would-haves and could-haves leading up to it.
Mental health professionals sometimes make things worse by focusing on such possible “causes” as unacknowledged trauma, unshared feelings, or unrecognized calls for help, all of which mean blame. Blame then feeds the depression and anger you talk about, poisoning normal grief with feelings of guilt, regret, and failure. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 30, 2012
From Dorothy’s mantra to the mortgage crisis, having a home is a considered a crucial part of our lives. That’s why having to share your home with a jerk is a special kind of torture; between their criticism and your own unhappiness, it’s hard not to feel like you’ll never be happy or successful until you get free of them. In actuality, however, life sometimes forces good people to live with bad, and the trick is to figure out for yourself whether it’s really necessary to leave, not in order to avoid pain, but because you’re doing what you think is best for you, your family, and your finances. Sure, maybe there’s no place like home, but if your home includes a monster, you need to think it through before finding a place like home, but better.
–Dr. Lastname
I try very hard to treat my wife’s father like family (her mother died years ago), but her dad is a hard guy to spend much time with. He drinks too much, refuses to own up to it, and (surprise!) isn’t a reliable baby-sitter (although he thinks he’s the greatest), so we can’t leave him alone with the kids. Worst of all, he’s very sensitive, so any hint of criticism is likely to put him into an “I’ll never talk to you again” mode that, I’m sure, would be hard for my wife to bear. I’ve learned how to put up with him over the course of our marriage—I basically walk on egg shells, agree with everything he says and count down the minutes until we can leave—but he recently decided he wants to come live with us, and I’m totally stuck. If we say no to him, it will hurt my wife terribly, but if we don’t say no, we’ll end up divorced, or he’ll end up dead and I’ll get the chair (ha ha). My goal is to figure a way out of this dilemma.
Nobody wants to have a broken relationship with their parents, which is why your father-in-law can threaten your wife with a shunning. Since this guy isn’t actually your parent, you see his threats to cut you off as a promising possibility.
After all, if he stops talking to you, you don’t have to put up with his demands, supervise time with his grandkids, or accept him as your future housemate. Unfortunately, you know that, even though your wife agrees with you, expressing your negative feelings about him to her will likely stir up a bunch of guilt and make her feel worse. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 12, 2012
When a bad habit gets between you and something you really want, it’s hard not to expect that good motivation, loads of therapy and deep insight into why you’re fucking up will give you the control you need. Unfortunately, bad habits don’t have easy solutions; they often have a life of their own and, short of administering a good ol’ lobotomy, the power of therapists often falls short. That’s when you need to accept that, for many of us, the best solution for bad habits isn’t a great therapist, but good management.
–Dr. Lastname
I don’t know why I’m always getting in my own way, but I’ve been a fuck-up since I was a kid in foster care (my parents were drug addicts who couldn’t take care of me). I’ve managed to hold the job that I really love, but I almost lost it after 5 happy, productive years because, for a 6 month period, I couldn’t get myself to show up on time. I’d get up on time, but then find some reason to arrive late, and I couldn’t stop myself until I was within an inch of being fired. I got it together to find a therapist, but I can’t get myself to take medication he prescribes, even though I think it could really help me. I also can’t get rid of my drug-addict girlfriend though I and all my friends think she’s a deadbeat user who does nothing for me. My therapist says I have a problem with self-esteem. My goal is to get control of my life.
It would be nice if the only thing standing between you and keeping your job safe, your home ex-girlfriend-free, and your sanity was depression, fatigue, or low self-esteem, but your problem is probably worse than that. It’s not a matter of what you have; it’s more who you are.
So if you think that a supportive therapist or a pick-me-up drug will do the job, you’re wasting your time and heading for more self-disappointment. You did a great job of diagnosing yourself from the get-go—you’re a fuck-up—and, while you’re not hopeless, you’re not going to get the help you need that easily. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
