Posted by fxckfeelings on August 26, 2013
Dealing with a loved one who is fucking up his life or with his family who are the captive victims of his behavior is a lot like being held hostage and being your own hostage negotiator; it’s hard not to become both helpless and emotionally pushy. If you are careful to remember what you don’t control, however, you can give good, strong advice without feeling guilty about not doing enough or causing conflict by voicing blame. You may first need to get coaching from experts, particularly those who’ve been through the process themselves, before you can negotiate well, but, once you’ve picked up the skill, you’ll be as helpful as possible. You can certainly free yourself, and you might do much to help your captor, as well.
–Dr. Lastname
My 30-year-old daughter got married late last year to the father of her baby and they bought a house, have jobs and seemed to be doing well. I was concerned about the brevity of his previous marriage, his jealousy, his attitude to money and a niggling voice in my head, but I tried to be positive and support her choice. I put her unhappiness down to post natal depression until she admitted that he has huge debts, is a liar and a bully, and she suspects be is having an affair. He has spent all her money so she can’t afford a lawyer. Now his mother is getting involved—she covers up for him and called his last wife “evil,” but we have discovered that her experience was similar and that he has a long trail of debt, infidelity and general chaos. I am willing to give my daughter and grandchild a home but am going through my own divorce so it’s tough. My soon-to-be ex is worried but subject to the demands of his new partner so most of it falls on me, and we’ve already lent them money. How do I give support without taking over when my daughter seems overwhelmed and doesn’t take my advice?
Unfortunately, your daughter suffers from a very specific colorblindness—the kind that impairs the ability to see red flags—and now she feels very stuck in a situation that only she could not see coming.
Even as you swoop in to guide her through the aftermath, that doesn’t have to mean that you’re taking control of her life, though her dependence on your resources means you’ll have a strong influence. You can be a good teacher and firm manager and also respect her independence and choices; she’s not totally blind, so your guidance need not be absolute. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 12, 2013
Almost everyone—man, woman, and certainly fundamentalist Mormon—regards marriage as a happy ending and valuable goal in itself. It’s no wonder then that we’re reluctant to ask ourselves whether marriage is actually a good fit for everyone’s character, or whether some marriages are doomed despite lots of love and motivation on both sides. So beware of the sentimentalism of love when it applies to the unsentimental institution of wedlock. Instead, tally up the facts that come from actual behavior to determine whether marriage suits what one person needs and another person has to offer. If you’re looking to add a sister-wife, we can’t help you.
–Dr. Lastname
Now that I’m 35, I wish I could finally find a way to explain to my family that I really don’t want to get married, but they won’t hear it and think I just don’t want to grow up. It’s true that, for many years, I was out of control with drinking, drugs, and big lows, and I can understand that they don’t believe I know what’s good for me. But I’ve been sober now for five years, I take my work seriously, medication has stabilized my moods, and I’ve dated some nice girls I really care about who I enjoyed spending time with. At a certain point, however, I always start to wish they’d go home so I could do what I wanted to do, like reading or watching Netflix. I’ve remained friends with most of my exes, but I’d rather spend time alone in my own place, controlling my own time, and, while I love kids, I don’t want to raise any. So my goal is to figure out a way to get my relatives to accept my decision and stop nagging me.
It’s particularly hard to believe in the value of your own major choices if you’ve had trouble with substance abuse or mood swings, and even harder to get anyone else to believe in your major choices, especially when you make the choice to stay single and childless. Evidently, your history of addiction and mental illness is a good reason to second-guess your choices, but not your ability to raise a human.
Now that the worst of that addiction is in the past, you know that one of the great benefits of getting sober and taking time about your decisions is that you can actually come to believe in their rightness. In your case, you’ve got good evidence that there’s nothing wrong with your preferences; your emotions haven’t been controlling you, nor is a lack of good prospective partners influencing your personal choices. To paraphrase a wise, fictional Friday night football coach, you have a clear head and a full heart, so you can choose and not lose. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 17, 2013
Most people have that one whiny friend or family member who constantly traps them in the same, stupid, draining conversation, but there are different kinds of bait that keep us coming back. Some complainants keep you trapped with compliments, others take an opposing tact with criticism, but either way, the result is a guilty, captive audience. In any case, don’t let yourself get trapped by feeling responsible for providing support and advice, especially when you know it isn’t doing any good. Drop their troubles from your list of acceptable topics and prepare to spend your time doing other things until they’re ready to accept your terms for having a good conversation, like talking to anyone else.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m a reasonably attractive guy with a good job and maybe I work too hard, but I always find time for my friends and family. I haven’t had luck finding a good woman, so I’ve been particularly available to my brother, who always needs extra help. I love him dearly, but he’s a fuck-up who drinks too much and always finds a way to get himself into trouble. He’s got a couple great sons, but he married a crazy monster, and now that they’re divorcing he’s given her great ammunition to keep the kids from seeing him, or me, by not showing up for visitation or keeping up with child support. My brother tells me I’m the only person he can trust and talk to since our parents died and he doesn’t know what he’d do without me, but I dread our conversations because he does nothing but complain about how awful things are, never takes responsibilities for changing them, and never listens to advice. Meanwhile, I feel my life is empty, I’ll never see my nephews again, and I’ll never have a family of my own. I can’t seem to get out of a horrible rut.
While you might feel like your life is empty, it’s actually quite full; like it or not, you have a special someone in your life, he just happens to be your brother. And he’s not leaving a hell of a lot of room in your life for anyone else.
Of course, it seems important to help your orphaned brother and accept a responsibility that expands the more trouble he gets himself into. What you haven’t done, however, is stop to ask yourself what supporting him is doing to the rest of your social life and whether it’s really doing him any good at all. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 6, 2013
When it comes to drinking, or really any addiction, it’s hard to stop without a “good reason,” especially if you think there’s a better reason not to quit. Then there’s the expectation that, if you really need to stop, the good reason fairy will visit you in the middle of the night to let you know (usually while you’re sleeping in a stranger’s bed, in a dark alley, or a puddle of puke). In reality, it’s up to the drinker to decide if s/he has to stop, and rational thinking about drinking doesn’t require a degree in addictionology. All you need is discipline to gather facts, courage to look at them, and determination to use good reasoning to do what you think is best for yourself.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve lived alone since my daughter left for college (my wife died years before) and I wonder if I’m drinking too much. I’m good enough at my job, but the head of our office doesn’t respect me and I wonder if I’ll have to move on. I’ve always had a tendency to get depressed and I see a therapist, but my antidepressant medication doesn’t seem to be working. I don’t sleep well. I’m not sure drinking is doing any harm and it certainly eases the pain, but I do get completely drunk every night, and it’s become the highlight of my day. I’ve got no friends currently, but I’ve never been a sociable guy so it doesn’t interfere with my social life, and since I’m alone, I get no complaints from friends or family. No harm done. I’m healthy and my hangover isn’t bad, so I wonder whether my drinking is worth worrying about, or whether I should just focus on getting help for my depression.
To paraphrase the old koan, if a person falls into excessive drinking without anyone around to become concerned, does it make that person a drunk? Nobody can ask the tree if it thinks it made a sound, but since you’re a person, you’re not just able, but the only one qualified, to answer the question.
You might be persuaded that you’re drinking too much if a therapist suggested you were using it to escape painful feelings, or if a spouse complained, but then later on you might decide that there’s nothing wrong with escaping when life sucks and your spouse has no right to complain because her nagging drives you to it. Outside opinion is as easy to ignore as the sound of one hand clapping. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 23, 2013
As we often say, approaching dating as a “search for love” is like trying to keep people safe by starting a “war on terror;” since you can’t date love and you can’t kill hate, your quest is likely to be frustrating. Sometimes people doing a mate-search have a good idea about what to look for but don’t have the good work habits they need for the job. Others with fine work habits get staggered when the carefully chosen prince or princess they kiss turns out to be a frog. Remember, unless you’re very lucky, any search requires both a disciplined method and an acceptance of the fact that good matches are hard to find. The less romantic you are in your methods, the more romantic you can let yourself feel later on, but at the outset, figure out exactly who, not what, you’re looking for, in order to have good—or any—results.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve struggled with depression several times in the past (that I’ve gotten out of through exercise, counseling and little cognitive therapy workbooks), so sad feelings are hardly new to me. But the sudden way they come about lately has me really freaked out. I actually like my job. If I let my work pay for more schooling, and I stick with it, I could make a really good life for myself. These mood swings seem to mostly exaggerate sad feelings I already have about not getting any and might be related to PMS, although I’ve never had period-related mood swings like this before in my life. Despite being an attractive, young girl that likes to go out and be social, I’ve never had a long-term boyfriend. I’m so frustrated that I can’t find a guy that I’m both attracted to and think is a good person, and that likes me back. (Habits like spending money on expensive clothes instead of student loans, and drinking lots on the weekends don’t help.) I eventually want babies (I think I would be a great mom), a partner, a garden, and to be a good person so my goal is to somehow control these mood swings, and maybe take online dating a little more seriously. I just want your opinion first.
From what you’ve said, my opinion isn’t far from your own; your values and goals are good, but your habits and mood swings aren’t. You’ve found a job you care about and want to get better at, but between dips of depression, drinking, and being distracted by the wrong guys, you’re stuck.
It’s not unusual for depression to push people into bad habits, like drinking and other feel-better-now-sorry-later activities, just in case the disease alone isn’t doing enough to make you feel like a pathetic loser who can’t get work done or have normal social relationships.
As you’re well aware, it takes time, lots of practice, and even worksheets to keep your perspective and hold your ground against an invasion of negative depressive thoughts. If you want my opinion on that specifically, I think it sucks, but there’s no way around it, and drinking only makes them worse. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 20, 2013
It’s appropriate that singer Mary J. Blige had a hit singing, “I just wanna be happy” since her best songs were about being miserable. Everybody thinks they want happiness, but like wealth, fame, and everything else on Blige’s own episode of Behind the Music, happiness is too erratic and temporary to set your hopes on, and concerning oneself too much with it is a good way to get a headache and feel like a loser. Instead, think hard about the values that give you direction, whether you’re happy or not. If they’re good values, they’ll always take you in the right direction and will give you strength, regardless of whether you have another hit.
–Dr. Lastname
I fell in love with the wonderful work I was doing in South Africa, but in the two years since I returned to the States, I still struggle with connecting and finding friendships or a relationship with meaning. In South Africa, I worked with an organization that rehabilitated inner-city gang kids to get them back in the public school system. The experience was life changing. I fell in love with the children I worked with, the mentality of the locals, the culture, and the relationships I built with like-minded volunteers. Unfortunately, since I’ve been back, my connections with my friends were no longer the same because they could not relate to the life and experiences I lived abroad. I’m in my mid-20s, and my life is good in many ways, but most of my friends are getting married, having children, or going to graduate school now, and I am at a stand still…stuck in time with memories I wish I was still living. I want to be able to relate and understand the people in my life. I want to feel fulfilled and in love with my surrounding and the life I’m living again.
The trouble with wonderful, life-transforming jobs is that they don’t actually transform your life, just your expectations. The stars align for a brief period of self-discovery and fulfillment, but then the earth keeps rotating, and the stars shift away again.
Even though good times like that inherently can’t last, they still leave you feeling that, if you were able to find it once, you should be able to find it again. Unfortunately, good luck, like bad luck and the earth on its axis, moves on, whether you like it or not, sometimes leaving you not just with a sense of loss, but also of having missed the boat. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 16, 2013
Criticism, like network sitcoms, gas station food, and internet trolls, requires careful consideration before you decide whether it’s worth taking to heart/anymore of your time. Unfortunately, many people in relationships immediately take and react to their partner’s criticism, even when it’s wrong, either because they’re so used to being in the wrong and feeling guilty, or because they have such a strong need for unconditional (or just fairly conditional) approval that they can’t stand not getting it. In any case, before you react to your spouse’s disapproval, consult your own standards of behavior and respect yourself if you know you’re living up to them, outsourcing the need for praise to friends or hairdressers if approval is really that important. As long as you respect your own good judgment, you’ll have no problem managing judgments you don’t agree with, and won’t have to waste your time feeling annoyed, sick or guilty over bad TV, bad sushi, or bad criticism again.
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t stand my husband’s criticism but the fact is, I’ve deserved it, because I’ve been a lush for twenty years and not much use after 9 PM. I’ve always worked hard and the kids think I was a pretty good parent before 9. Still, I feel I’ve been a failure as a wife, even though I think one reason I drank so much is because my husband’s overbearing criticism really got on my nerves, and booze was the easiest way to cope. Anyway, now that the kids are grown and I’ve had more than a couple medical problems, I got myself sober, but the marriage is really no better. My husband tells me in couples therapy that our family would be a lot more secure financially if I hadn’t been a drinker (which is really bullshit) and that I still haven’t really acknowledged what a big burden I put on him (I’ve said I’m sorry, but it’s never enough). Meanwhile, he blames me for ruining his life and burning the steak. I’m so angry I’m not sure I want to stay with him, but it’s hard to have any conversation that doesn’t turn on his right to be angry at me, which I think, given my history, he has. My goal is to figure out whether I want to stay with him for the next part of my life.
One of the unfortunate things that happen when you’re ashamed of bad behavior in a close relationship is that you lose the ability to stand up for yourself, even when your behavior is actually OK. You might always be an alcoholic, but you’re not always going to be at fault for everything in your husband’s life that goes wrong.
Escaping into drinking, affairs, or any major kind of avoidance may give you temporary relief from an unhappy relationship, but it also secures your right to feel even more totally responsible for that unhappiness than you did in the first place. You’re essentially breaking out of one prison and into another, even shittier one. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 13, 2013
While it’s said that you only hurt the ones you love, it would be more honest to say that you only hurt the ones who love you. What’s worse, that hurt usually comes from pushing them away when they’re trying too hard to help. Trying to redeem or heal someone, or yourself, through caring and communication usually does less rescuing and more repulsing. After all, if one or both people can’t consistently manage their own responsibilities, honest talk and helpfulness does little but make excuses and turn love into prolonged anguish. Develop a reasonable set of standards about what a person should do to take care of him/herself, before you offer or ask for help. Otherwise, you’ll earn all too well how true the “help until it hurts” saying is.
–Dr. Lastname
My friend and I have feelings for each other, which are no secret to either of us—we had kissed and had even gotten close to having sex but when it came down to being completely honest about our feelings we couldn’t do it. I knew this was unhealthy but I was scared because not only are we both guys but we both had a lot of issues when it came to love. He would say things like, “I don’t know what I want,” and “Don’t fall in love with me.” It was confusing because before that he would be asking me to “make love to him” and had even said, “I love you” twice. I know that part of it was fear of being with another guy. Then, two months ago, I got into a car accident because I was drunk. He was there but, luckily, no one was hurt. Now he says he’s forgiven me, but he has also picked up a girlfriend, which was a shock to me and it hurt. In the beginning we had great chemistry but then we lost that when we stopped being honest with each other. I believe it happened when feelings started getting intense. I want for us to stop hurting each other and start being honest. I’m not sure how to do this and it is breaking my heart. I wouldn’t mind being his friend if he would just stop playing games or whatever this is with me. Is he just confused or being cruel? I can’t make up my mind.
Hollywood wisdom is that women don’t like Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but given how far-fetched your average romantic comedy is, that’s simply untrue. A movie about two people with great chemistry overcoming impossible circumstances by having a heart-to-heart and ending up happily ever after is built on a reality so false, it makes The Hobbit look plausible.
While that good, honest talk solves all romantic problems in TV/movie fantasyland, frustration like what you’re experiencing in real life is more often due to the other things that you’ve mentioned troubling you and your friend: confusion, fear, and uncertainty about who each of you wants to be with and who you want to be. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 22, 2013
People who knowingly distort the truth seem to deserve more blame than those who truly believe what their mind makes up, but when you’re close to a liar, the issue isn’t who deserves more blame, but who is more dangerous to your welfare. Somebody who lies on purpose often does so out of a guilty conscience, while those who believe in their lies are more apt to see you as. the deceitful one who’s deserving of blame and punishment. So when lying is an issue, don’t waste time on how it makes you feel or whether the truth needs to be told. Instead, look at what happened when the liar was exposed in the past and do what’s necessary to protect yourself, even if it means leaving a liar behind, and as such, the truth unspoken.
–Dr. Lastname
My husband has a porn problem– problem because he hides it, lies about it, and blames it on others (as in, “Oh, my friend sent me some virus and that’s what opened the browser window to the helpful find-a-local-hooker site”). He also has a deadline and personal responsibility problem– lots of promises to accomplish tasks at home, precious little success. I still find benefits from being married to him. He works hard and his income is very useful. He has been sober for twenty years now, and if he is screwing around on me he is doing it discretely. He is vital to the childcare and child transportation scheme. He can be pleasant to be with and supportive, and our sex life is good. And I am 50, fat and tired and figure I would face a life of lonely celibacy without him. I can generally cope with the down side of things, but I persist in feeling angry and disappointed when he once again lets me down, and every once in awhile I find myself believing that someday he’ll change. I’m worried that I may have my thumb on the scale when I weigh the pros and cons of sticking with him. I also worry that our kids might be better off without the toxic atmosphere when I am once again disappointed. I need help finding ways to cope with the inevitability of being let down, and the serenity prayer just ain’t doing it.
It’s hard not to experience being lied to as a personal betrayal of trust, whether the liar is close to you, like a husband, or a stranger, like a politician with an unfortunately phallic last name. The reason liars can take any form, however, is that as personal as the act feels, it’s often nothing but a bad habit.
After all, nose-pickers aren’t trying to gross you out, nervous whistlers aren’t trying to annoy the shit out of you, and alcoholics aren’t getting shitfaced just to make your life more difficult. You feel like you’re in the crosshairs, but you’re just collateral damage. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 28, 2013
Addiction is easier to understand if you picture it as a mental squatter, the way advertising for nasal decongestants depicts mucus as a working class family that happens to be gooey, green, and getting by in your sinuses. Even when people are strongly motivated to stop compulsive or addictive behavior, their addiction is often one step ahead of them, distorting their thinking to undermine their efforts and stay put. In some cases, they are so obsessed with the self-perceived ugliness of their bad habit that they can’t consider more important reasons for stopping, while in other cases, they are so obsessed with finding their addiction’s ultimate cause that they wind up blaming people who care the most and could offer the most help in their recovery/to send the addiction packing. If you’re ready to quit, avoid stoking up feelings of self-disgust or blame; instead, prepare to tolerate pain without blame while looking for positive reasons to manage lingering inner demons and keep them from setting up house.
–Dr. Lastname
I think I meet the clinical definition of having an eating disorder (at least, according to the all-knowing and all-powerful Wikipedia). For the past four years I have been binge eating and semi-purging through excessive laxative use. Before that, for about two years, I was probably somewhat anorexic, although I say this in retrospect as I don’t think I either realized or would have admitted it at the time. (5’2” and less than 90 lbs. is pretty thin, though). My goal is to stop binge eating, and I don’t know how. My eating and obsession with food have basically taken over my life, and though I fight it and things have gotten better than they were a year or two ago, I’m constantly afraid of when I will binge next. I don’t trust myself at all. It affects my professional life, and I need to stop letting that happen. I miss the self-control and feelings of power and self-worth that my thinness used to give me. I realize that going back to that is not exactly a healthy goal, though. I’d frankly be pretty pleased if I could just stop binging and get on with my life.
It’s hard to underestimate how all-consuming an eating disorder can be; as you obsess about the ways to keep food out of your body, it becomes the main occupant of your mind. Every moment spent avoiding the act of eating requires twice as many moments of mental torment on the subject.
Then there are endless concerns about your appearance, feelings of worthlessness, compulsive behaviors, and the intense ties between them. Eating disorders foster a kind of self-obsession, a dependence on your own thoughts and secret behaviors that devalues other goals and relationships.
It’s not surprising then that managing an eating disorder requires, not more self-control, but an acceptance that you’ve lost control and a willingness to admit other people, like family and therapists, into your private, obsessive relationship with food. It’s not unlike the so-called First Step of managing an addiction—admitting your helplessness and recognizing the importance of values other than your needs and shame. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
