Posted by fxckfeelings on August 1, 2011
The Bible is too black-and-white to be helpful about the necessity of brother-keeping; so sayeth the Lord, we’ll never feel like good people if we don’t care about our families. The trouble is, some relatives are dangerous or draining to be around, and we’ve got other obligations. So forget about absolute moral imperatives and develop your own rules for being a good person when responding to the needs of people you love (but have good reason not to like or trust). And so it was written.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m wondering whether I should try to do something to help my ex who I feel is spiraling into unhealthy (mentally and physically) old age (i.e., be my brother’s keeper rather than “let live”). He’s been acting weird, keeping strange pets and stranger company, and he moved to a rough part of town though he has the money to live wherever he wants. It’s like he’s having a late-life crisis. I know he’s got a bunch of medical problems and I wonder whether he’s taking care of himself. My goal is to figure out how far I should push him to get help.
Whether or not you should be your brother’s, or your ex’s, keeper is a meaningless question if you expect the answer to be yes or no. Nothing involving exes is simple (even their pets).
If you’re actually wondering how far you should go, that’s a terrific question for which there’s a good way to develop an answer of your own. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 28, 2011
If we’re to believe the common wisdom that self-esteem is as important to the human body as insulin, white blood cells, and limbs, then it’s important to remember that too much is a bad thing. True, too little is the one that hurts in the short run, but too much can lead to bad decisions that can be just as harmful as diabetes. What’s important is to manage the self-esteem you’ve got so it doesn’t make you a wimp or a jerk. Maintain a healthy balance, because you need too much self-confidence like you need that extra arm.
–Dr. Lastname
I constantly feel inadequate, though I am socially quite confident and easy-going. I have always been a worrier, and someone that seeks approval from others—mainly because of the relationship I have with my parents, where praise is hard to come by. Ever since graduating (a year ago),my confidence seems to have hit rock bottom. I became very disheartened by the whole application process, and felt like I became reduced to a series of bullet points. As a result, the many rejection emails I received were crushing. I have since found a job I generally enjoy, but cannot shake a feeling of anxiety. I constantly worry that I’m being a bad employee, friend, daughter. I worry about money, about the fact I don’t meet guys that I can make a relationship work with…When a guy I was dating recently treated me undeniably badly, I still found myself questioning my own behavior, worrying it was my fault. I want to make plans for the future, but keep finding reasons why my ambitions will be impossible to achieve. How can I stop giving myself such a hard time, and take my future by the horns?
Yes, there are people who are optimistic, happy, and full of confidence, and their optimism often generates its own good results and gets everyone, including advice-givers, worshiping the “groove” they’re in and telling you how to get it.
What they don’t tell you is that the groove is overvalued; sooner or later, life sucks, and when it does, it won’t shake you nearly as much as someone who has never experienced self-doubt and thinks they’ve got the world by the tail. So one thing you can be optimistic about is that you’re prepared for disaster.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 21, 2011
Talking to a partner about their cancer often leads people to become nervous and tentative. They may feel guilty for being the healthy party, or afraid to say the wrong thing and trigger painful feelings, and it’s that sort of distance that can lead to cancer of the relationship. If your partner has cancer, don’t freeze up; respect your usual shared goals, values, and reasons for making decisions, and treat him or her as your respected friend and not a cancer victim. Take the disease in stride, or the disease will take much, much more.
–Dr. Lastname
My boyfriend went through hell from chemotherapy, but I don’t know what to do with his depression and irritability. We’d been dating about a year and planning to get married when he found out he had a nasty kind of cancer and, since then, he’s been brave about chemo and going on with his life, which has meant working when he’s feeling OK, and our moving in together and being partners. Usually, we get along well, but lately he’s been depressed and telling me he knows he’s a burden, he can’t get much done, and he just wants to be alone. I want him to get help for his depression and stop the negative thinking but I don’t want to attack him or make him feel I don’t respect the fact that he has cancer.
One of the things you always hear from people in pain is that you, the lucky one, “just don’t understand.” It’s the rallying cry of the suffering, whether they’re coping with cancer, or just being between the ages of 10 and 18.
What sick people often fail to realize, at least at first, is that people who aren’t in their position understand things that they can’t; after all, you might have the good luck not know what it’s like to have cancer, but you know what your boyfriend’s like when he’s not depressed, and you know this isn’t it. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 6, 2011
The reason that high school movies will never go out of style is that a large part of our compass of self-definition, the one that tells us whether we’re doing a good job and adjusting satisfactorily, is magnetically driven by the people we see, socialize, and suffer with every day. Thankfully, real life comes with graduation, and, if you’re lucky, the ability to escape the judgment of peers and make your own evaluations. If you really miss high school that much, skip the critical contemporaries and go straight to John Hughes.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m feeling a little lost. For most of my life, I’ve been an excellent student. I made As and Bs with minimal effort. Seriously, I’d just show up to class, take a few notes, and get an A. I didn’t really have to try. It just happened. The past two years, however, it seems like I’ve been sinking further and further into a hole that’s gotten so deep, I can’t even see where I fell in. I have difficulty motivating myself to get out of bed 90% of the time. When I used to be able to pen an excellent paper in a few hours’ time, I find myself now staring at a blank Word document with nothing but a header for weeks. My GPA has plummeted from fantastic (not stellar, but it would’ve done well enough) to abysmal. The only thing keeping me from dropping out of college entirely is the fact that I know I’d have nothing else at all to live for. My family already thinks I’m a failure, because I haven’t graduated yet. The past two years has put me painfully behind schedule. I’m thoroughly unhappy, and I honestly don’t know how the hell to stop it. I need help figuring out what the hell I need to do to get out of this hole.
Pretend you’ve just been told you have a fatal disease. Suddenly, your GPA and the opinions it inspires in your family and friends probably matter a lot less, no?
When you’re in workplaces, families and/or schools, they seem to be the whole universe and your place in them seems to define who you are. The best thing about being cast out, or even just moving on, is that you gain an opportunity to define your worth more independently, in terms of your values and efforts, instead of what people thought of your performance.
Right now, your grades and your family are telling you you’re a failure, but they don’t deserve to have the last word. You have obstacles you can’t control, and you have good qualities not currently recognized in your limited universe.
It’s time to reassess not just what’s wrong, but how it’s wrong, for whom, and how much is really in your power.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 23, 2011
Ambition is a blessing and a curse; a curse for most of those people who possess it, but a huge blessing for my business, which flourishes off the self-hate of said overly-ambitious people who believe they could have been contenders (if it wasn’t for themselves). Actually, the usual reason you can’t have your dream is that your equipment isn’t what it should be, and the best way to restore your faith in yourself is to accept the fact that your brain, while not a blessing, isn’t exactly a curse, either, and requires a set of expectations all its own.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m going back to school in the fall (for my master’s), and am really worried about the problem that plagued me in undergrad—academic OCD (which combines with general OCD, natch). Specifically, I over-cite EVERYTHING in my papers, because I have this terror of plagiarizing—to the point where my papers are hard to read, and the citing is ridiculous. I haven’t been out of undergrad very long, and I know I need to go back to school to achieve my career goals, but I’m DREADING the papers—any thoughts on how to prepare myself to deal with this very specific anxiety?
If you want an easy way to manage your over-citation compulsion (OCC), here it is; stop making too many citations! Stop it! Bad! Hope it works, and we don’t accept personal checks.
As always, the problem with looking for easy answers to your problem is that you’ll assume that all you need to do to get better is give yourself a kick in the pants or share your feelings with a therapist. It’s not true, and thinking like that will make you feel like a failure (and, if you’re lucky/buy answers like the one above, an idiot).
Long story short, your problem is here to stay (citation: this site, on a weekly basis) and, as long as you’ve got to write papers, managing it is going to be painful.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 9, 2011
Parents get a lot of blame when something goes wrong in their kids’ lives, and a fair share of it is heaped on by those in my industry. The lion’s share, however, comes from parents themselves, and that feeling of responsibility, no matter who assigns it, is great at making things worse. The truth is that parents have little control over their kids’ weaknesses or the fact that life is sometimes hard and painful beyond their powers of protection. Accept this sad truth, and you’ll become a much more effective parent and much less blaming of your spouse and your kid, whether Freud’s disciples admit it or not.
–Dr. Lastname
I still can’t understand why my 15-year-old daughter would purposely overdose. I understand she’s always been an emotional kid and that she hasn’t been happy lately, but my husband and I love her. We’ve always told her we want to hear about any problem she wants to share with us, and she knows it would kill us to lose her. Still, she seems to have no remorse for what her suicide might have done to herself or the rest of the family. My goal is to understand how she could do it and teach her a sense of responsibility so it won’t happen again.
In many ways, a suicide attempt is like a natural disaster; you shouldn’t bother asking why it happened, or what if you had done things differently. Whether you blame global warming or God’s wrath, it won’t change the fact that it happened or that there is at least some chance that it will happen again.
The moment you think you understand the reason, you’ll think you know what she did wrong, or, at least, what she should have done better, and that will just make her feel more like a loser, and more like doing it again. Or you’ll think you know what you or your husband did wrong, which will make you feel like losers and blame one another, and make her feel like doing it again.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 5, 2011
People like to turn to an authority when they’re helpless, and if that helplessness only applied to 911-like situations, there would be no problem. For problems that don’t involve theft or fire but sadness and family, however, authority is useless; sure, doctors like me can give advice, but until medical schools start borrowing from Hogwarts’ curriculum, the best resources you have are your own. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll learn to draw on your own authority to come up with the best possible management plan and execute it with confidence. You are your own best first responder.
–Dr. Lastname
I need to find a doctor who will tell my daughter she needs to take her medication. She’s always had a problem with depression, and she did well in high school when she took antidepressants. Now, however, she’s 24 and very reactive to however she’s feeling, whether it’s not getting out of bed, or not working, or feeling dizzy and deciding it’s the medication and stopping it. My husband and I can’t get her to stick with anything, and she won’t listen to us in any case, so our goal is to get you, or some professional, to tell her what she needs to do.
Whenever parents want a doctor to tell their kid what to do, you can be pretty sure they’ve lost faith in themselves and overestimated the power of communication/a medical degree.
And no, it doesn’t matter how old the kid is or how many Harvard degrees the doctor has; the doctor doesn’t have more power than the parents, no matter how powerless the parents feel.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 28, 2011
Fear and rage are great motivators for bad decisions, especially when it comes to one’s choice of words. Fear can clamp your jaw shut when you need to address the masses, and rage can keep the invective flowing, even if the target is one person you don’t want to drive away. Don’t expect a good relationship, or a good therapist, to make the bad feelings and poor control of your (big) mouth disappear. Managing those feelings will never be happy, easy, or painless, but the strongest motivator should be the need to keep your job, your relationship, or just your sanity.
–Dr. Lastname
I had to speak in front of a crowd recently and thought I would have a heart attack. I have to go to court regularly as part of my job and each time it seems to get worse. I shake and stutter. Seems to be sort of an authority or judgment thing, since it only happens under certain circumstances. I can speak to a crowd of folks I know, and do it well. I don’t want to have to get another job at my age (>50), it was hard enough to get this one. Any suggestions? (No insurance!)
My first suggestion is to move to Massachusetts, Vermont, or Canada. If that insurance comment isn’t a joke, then not having insurance, especially when you’re over fifty, is cause enough for a coronary.
Seriously, it’s quite probable that a major cause of your shaking and stuttering is that you’re unconsciously aware/terrified of the many ways your body can, and is about to, break down and wear out. That’s way more scary than socialism and death panels combined.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 25, 2011
There’s plenty of evidence out there, from newspaper headlines to vicious drivers, that life is unfair. The clearest proof, at least as we see it at fxckfeelings.com, is that we never cease to get cases about unfairness and the need for justice it inspires. Accepting that life is unfair doesn’t mean giving up, just giving up on the futile goal of stamping out evil altogether. Learn to tolerate unfairness and manage the anger and pain it inspires. After all, given all the ways life can suck, we’re sure you have tons of other personal problems you can write in about.
–Dr. Lastname
I was a wild girl as a teenager and took drugs and cheated on my boyfriends, but one of them stuck by me and now I’ve got a good marriage and 2 nice kids. Life has been pretty good to me, but lately, I don’t know whether it’s getting older or having some acquaintances die, but I feel preoccupied with death and a feeling of not being a very good person. I mean, focusing on those things makes me feel ungrateful, because I’ve been so lucky, but then I feel guilty that I’ve had so much while people I came up with didn’t get the same things I did. I wish I wasn’t so worried about death and thinking about what a jerk I was and how I didn’t get what I deserved.
What we all deserve is a good childhood and a decent set of genes. What most of us actually get doesn’t come close.
Instead, most people end up with a random mishmash that easily includes an extra dose of wildness and parents who are too wild themselves to help us manage our own impulses (the apple, and the genes, don’t fall far from the tree). In a world that’s this unfair, nobody can claim to deserve anything.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 31, 2011
On a good day, the average person makes about 10 mistakes. Slight screw-ups are annoying, but not exactly indicative of one’s character. Major screw-ups, on the other hand, deserve some consideration; they’re the kind where you don’t mess up by doing something incorrectly, but by correctly doing something that’s wrong. When it comes to evaluating todays mistakes, it’s important to distinguish between not double checking your work and not double checking your values.
–Dr. Lastname
An email I intended to send to one person, I mistakenly sent to another. As a result, I have managed to obliterate, in one push of a button, what feels like my entire world. Yea, I know this sounds overly dramatic, but honestly, even after attempting to make things right with the people involved, things will never be right. I can’t figure out how to get over, under or through the degree of self hatred I now have for being such a complete f*ckup. I’m human, mistakes happen blah blah blah, but that’s no comfort to me since the people involved aren’t interested in any sort of apology. How do I ever forgive myself??
There’s a big difference between self-forgiveness as a feeling, and self-forgiveness as a moral judgment. After all, there’s a big difference between doing wrong and doing dumb.
Having committed a stupid but not malicious act that’s fractured relationships forever, you don’t have any reason to ask forgiveness of yourself, because you’ve committed no crime. Shazzam, you’re absolved. Dr. Lastname absolves thee! Tada!
If you don’t feel better, I’m not surprised, because your self-accusation isn’t moral, it’s chagrin over bad luck and rejection by someone you care about. Sadly, that’s proclamation proof.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
