Posted by fxckfeelings on December 22, 2011
Grief often stirs up regrets and needs, which can then weigh down your sadness with feelings of failure and make you sink further into general misery. You can’t stop having those feelings, but don’t give them equal time or heft. Grieving is about valuing what’s lost and carrying it forward, not holding onto everything until you sink. Do your grieving, and don’t let other feelings deter you or lower the value of your past or current relationships. Instead, choose to let the happy memories and important lessons push you forward in life.
–Dr. Lastname
Please Note: Our next post will be a week from today. Happy holidays, everyone! As always, we look forward to hearing from you if/when they aren’t.
I’m having a hard time since the death of my father. I was expecting the grief to be rough, but I thought I’d reached the acceptance stage and was starting to feel better. Then I noticed that my two sisters were able to talk and share memories much more easily with one another than they could with me, and suddenly I felt more alone than ever before. My wife is supportive, but I don’t want her to feel I don’t love her by telling her I feel alone. My goal is to get over this grief.
You probably were starting to recover from losing your father, but that’s when you experienced another loss—a broken connection with the people who should be the most understanding.
When you grieve the loss of parents with your siblings, a major source of comfort is knowing that, whatever your differences, you’re the only ones who remember the world of your family home and share the experience of growing up there. With that missing, you’ve got a double source of grief. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 19, 2011
When grown kids need permanent parental support, it’s hard for those parents to feel like they’ve succeeded. Every parent worries that they’re not doing enough for their kids, but for those who have adult kids with problems, that worry is amplified by anxiety and guilt. They can take over management, however, by assessing their responsibilities rationally and keeping their worries in check. It’s not healthy to care for and protect your children too much, but the only parents that fail are the ones that don’t care enough.
–Dr. Lastname
Helping my daughter pay the rent on a bigger apartment seems to have lifted her out of her depression and she’s much more active at her job, but she’s still not making enough money and I’m running out of cash. If I tell her that she has to take a roommate, I’m afraid she’ll just crawl under the covers again and we’ll be back where we started. It shouldn’t be that hard for her to make enough money, but it is. I’m mad and I’m stuck. My goal is to get her to make more money and/or understand that I can’t keep supporting her like this.
While you may think you’re giving your daughter money out of love, you’re actually doing it out of fear. That’s trouble, because when you give money out of fear, you’re usually being mugged.
Fear makes you forget long-term risks, like what you’ll do after you run out of money and the consequences for you, her, and other people who depend on you. Your love is infinite, but your finances aren’t. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 12, 2011
Ideals often screw up priorities, because it’s much more attractive to go after something beautiful that you really, really want rather than take on whatever is do-able and necessary. It’s not a matter of killing your dreams, just being smart about them; the only antidote to faulty ideals is to exercise your common sense regularly, thinking about what’s likely to work, given your resources, rather than what you’d want the most in a fair, ideal world. You don’t need us to tell you that the world is not ideal, so beware reaching for the stars and falling on your face when the top shelf will do.
–Dr. Lastname
So I’m a 20-something girl who has been faced with a couple big problems in a short period of time, the first being that I am in my last semester of nursing school and I failed. This has been a very long hard stressful experience, and being faced with failure is devastating. I have to wait till September to try to get back into the program and that’s my last chance, so I’m having a hard time accepting that my very laid-out plan for my life is now in jeopardy. Also I am being faced with health issues, with myself and with my family, and finally, I have been in a mind-fuck of a relationship for three years with a person that shows me five different faces. I know all the ways he’s done me wrong but I cannot walk away because I have yet to conquer him, even tough I’m trying to accept the fact I cannot change him and need to stop being a doormat. In summary, I have obvious control issues, over-analyze everything, have anger that is uncontrollable if I don’t get what I want, and really need help to fix it.
Priorities are like dominos, and if you put the wrong one first, you lose your goals one by one. So, while this may look like a chaotic clusterfuck of issues, you probably already know that it’s actually a chain reaction caused by putting school behind this five-faced jerk.
After all, the main source of your strength is your desire to get stronger, pick up skills, and make a living, while the main source of weakness is, as usual for most people, your need for something/someone you can’t have.
Fortunately, you’re smart enough to recognize your effort to change your boyfriend is a compulsion that you just can’t stop, and you have the willpower and determination in your character to take on and pursue difficult goals.
Unfortunately, you’ve focused this strength on changing your boyfriend, thus throwing said smarts and willpower down the shitter. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 8, 2011
When people you love act like jerks, you can’t help feeling responsible for doing the impossible and setting things straight (if it was possible, you wouldn’t be writing me). So whether you’re driven by worry or guilt-trips, stop making yourself responsible for easing their pain. Use your own ideas about right, wrong, and actual impossibilities to protect yourself and others as much as you can, and go about your business with a clear conscience while they go about being impossible and clearing the room.
–Dr. Lastname
My brother is really an upbeat, cheerful, friendly guy, but he turns into a viper whenever someone tells him what to do, even when it’s sure to get him into lots of trouble, and afterwards he’s convinced he’s been calm and diplomatic. When he and his wife got divorced, he was so argumentative with the judge that he lost custody of his kid. When his boss asked him to do something stupid, my brother fired off emails to Human Resources declaring he was being unfairly attacked. The funny thing is, he doesn’t mind when I tell him he’s being stupid, and the next time something happens he’s sure he’s done better; but he hasn’t. He’s not nearly as difficult as he seems to be, so my goal is to keep him out of trouble.
God bless the antagonists, for they know not what bile they speak.
Whenever someone is particularly quick to resist being pushed, we assume there’s an emotional reason for his actions, and that understanding why will help him to control himself, or help us shut him up and make him more tolerable.
Truth is, we often can’t explain or control oppositional behavior, which suggests there’s a basic force of nature driving some people to be reflexively, unthinkingly oppositional. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 5, 2011
People often think of their workplace as a family, but what’s more true and less acknowledged is that a family is a workplace, albeit one in which you have a deeper investment and more casual Fridays. In any family, money is love and love is money, and you can’t disagree about money without its getting personal, so don’t let it. Maybe you can’t stop the hurt when you feel short-changed by someone you love, but you can keep it from spreading by keeping your feelings to yourself and remembering your most important priorities before you negotiate. You’ve got too much to lose to endanger your job security.
–Dr. Lastname
I trust that my sister will be a fair executrix for my father’s will, but I often feel out of the communication loop because she’s closer to my other sister, and I’m often the last to know about her decisions. When I’ve shared my feelings about this in the past, she’s just gotten testy. Recently, I wondered why his will had not put in a special bequest for my daughter, because he’d once expressed that intention, so I asked my sister whether she could get hold of an earlier will and see whether the bequest had been there before and then taken out. She blew up at me about how I didn’t trust her, and couldn’t see why it was such a big deal. My goal is to get her to see that my request was legitimate and to keep me informed.
Nothing has more potential to damage a family dynamic—not a long car trip, adultery, a coming out here or there—like a dispute over a will.
If somebody feels screwed, cheated, or in any way shortchanged, blood ties will get bloody.
Luckily, you trust your sister, so that eliminates the most common source of conflict. Unfortunately, you’re now creating conflict in an extremely fragile situation where it doesn’t need to exist. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 1, 2011
When what you yearn for in a partner and what’s good for you are not the same, it’s tempting to trust your feelings and try to bring reality into line in the face of any obstacle, especially reality. Eventually, however, you will tire yourself out and/or end up seeing a shrink who will tell you you were doing nothing wrong except for not facing facts and giving up. On the other hand, if you trust your ability to judge what’s good for you, and impose your judgment on your feelings, you’ll do better and come closer to your dreams. So when your Pollyanna instincts tell you about the transformative nature of love, remember the cost involved (beyond the shrink’s fee).
–Dr. Lastname
I thought I’d always be able to trust my wife, even though I’ve never been able to trust anyone else before. I’m just like that, always nervous and suspicious, even when people are reasonably nice. My wife is an unusually nice and nurturing person, but when I found out she was doing some compulsive shopping and she lied about it, I flipped out and I can’t recover. The more she tries to reassure me, the more I don’t trust her. She’s just about had it with me and I want to recover our old intimacy before our marriage breaks up.
It’s really remarkable that you assume that your wife isn’t necessarily bad, just because she’s triggered your suspicions. It’s also remarkable that she’s the first person you’ve trusted, but why focus on the negative.
Most people who suffer from severe suspicion are pretty sure that it’s the other person’s bad actions that have caused a loss of trust, but you aren’t falling for that trap.
You’re open to the idea that your wife isn’t that bad, even though her actions have shattered your peace of mind. But you’re also a little too accepting that one white lie and the sadness that lie has caused you can lead to your divorce.
It’s a bummer, but this sounds less like therapy-inducing “trust issues” and more like a severe case of “the honeymoon is over.” In other words, if you expect to get back that old trusting feeling, given the demon of suspicion that has always haunted you, you’re probably wrong.
Plus, trying to get it back will just make both of you feel more angry and responsible for the pain you’re in. False hope is more dangerous for your marriage than your wife’s covert shopping habits.
Rely instead on your good common sense and do a fact-based investigation of your wife’s trustworthiness as a partner; don’t listen to your feelings before you collect, and review, the facts. Begin by defining the crimes that you consider deal-breakers, like compulsive shopping that empties your accounts or major drug use or lying about other close relationships. Imagine advising a friend about the kinds of bad spousal behavior that can turn marriage into a dangerous, depression-inducing burden without hope of redemption.
Then weigh your wife’s behavior against these standards. If her shopping doesn’t represent a major drain and her lying doesn’t apply to most difficult topics, then it may not represent a major threat. From what you say, that’s a possibility, but it’s for you to decide.
If it’s true that she’s not so bad, however, then you’ve got a tough job ahead of you that will actually increase your pain, not make it better, but thems the breaks. If you decide your marriage is worth hanging on to, then you’ve got to stop breaking it up while seeking a relief you’re never going to feel.
Once you stifle your paranoia and decide this is your problem to manage, you open new doors for yourself. You can talk to a therapist about ways of thinking positively despite your mistrust, and you may also find that your mistrust gets better if you don’t stimulate it by expressing it. If nothing else works, you may find that medication can help.
It may initially make you feel helpless and hopeless to allow suspicion to reenter a relationship you thought would be a safe haven. In the long run, however, tolerating a certain amount of suspicion may save your marriage and allow a deeper sense of trust to develop. Sure, you’ll always worry about her shopping sprees, but you may also take comfort in the fact that she tolerates your faults and that your partnership is good for both of you. Trust your own standards, rather than your feelings, and divorce may not be so inevitable after all.
STATEMENT:
“I’m profoundly disappointed to discover that my marriage is no longer a refuge from the suspicions that have always tortured me, but I won’t let them control what I do with it. If I decide that my marriage is solid enough, I will find ways to keep my suspicion from making my decisions for me, even if I can’t get rid of them. If I let them control me in the past, I’d have never gotten married. Now I need to take the fight to the next level.”
I’ve broken up with my boyfriend many times over the 5 years we’ve dated, but after I made it clear to him, for the umpteenth time, that he had to start including me in his inner family circle, he turned around and told me not to drop by on Thanksgiving because he needed to spend time with his kids, which made me explosive. It’s not just that he excludes me from his inner family circle; he’s always backing out of plans, which is why we still live separately and I never know whether we’ll spend time together next weekend. Now that I’ve cooled off, I find it hard to really end things with him when we’ve been together so long and know one another so well. I feel like we should be able to work things out, but maybe we keep breaking up for a reason.
You’re obviously attached to your boyfriend and haven’t been able to give him up, even when you knew the relationship wasn’t working for you. Maybe you love him too much or you’re too needy, which are also two reasons that you should flee from this unhealthy relationship in the first place.
In any case, you’ve told him what you want, again and again, and there’s been no progress. The problem isn’t that you’ve failed to get through to him; it’s that reality has failed to get through to you.
The sad fact is that there’s usually no way to change the distance between you and the person you love. It’s like the distance between molecules; you can push it back and forth, but there’s something basic about it, on average, that you can’t change, even with a megaton of talk, therapy, or whatever.
If you can bring yourself to accept the idea that he, and the relationship, are not going to change, and decide that this relationship will never give you enough of what you want, then you have to find the strength to move on.
Remember that you’re right to look for someone who includes you in his intimate family gatherings and with whom you can make reliable weekend plans. Until you find that person and check out his credentials, however, you must become strong enough to keep your heart to yourself. Hang out with friends and family, develop social hobbies, and build up your independence muscles so you aren’t forced to lean on people who aren’t sturdy. Build your strength while remaining wary of your instincts.
Don’t assume there’s someone out there for you, because there often isn’t, and the false assumption that there is will confirm your belief that you’re doing something wrong every time you don’t connect, and that will lead you back to connecting too much. There may be someone out there for you, or not, but your job is to conduct a good search, not compromise your heart or try to force the wrong guy to do the right thing.
STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling very connected to my boyfriend, but I know he can’t meet my needs and I can’t change him. If I want a chance at a better partnership, I must move on and become independent enough to resist going back or falling into some new and equally painful compromise. I know what’s good for me and I can’t afford to accept less.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 28, 2011
If you take any relationship wisdom from this site, it should probably be that good partnerships are not the same as relationships that feel good. That doesn’t mean they have to feel bad (although bad feelings are unavoidable sooner or later), just that they have to survive bad feelings and offer benefits to both parties that are worth the trouble. So relationships that grab your heart but show no signs of becoming good partnerships are dangerous to your health, and relationships that turn you off but have much to offer are worth putting up with. Ain’t love grand, and ain’t love gone wrong a royal pain in the ass.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m always a little annoyed at my boyfriend, even though we never really fight, because he always seems a little unavailable (you’d think at our age he’d be over playing games). If we spend lots of time together this weekend, then next weekend I can be sure he’ll call back late, find a reason we can’t meet early in the day, and leave me with an option for getting together briefly that doesn’t work well for either one of us. He used to say it was because he needed time for his son, but now that his son’s in college things haven’t changed. I don’t think he wants to date anyone else, and our friends think we’re great together, but I’d like to share my life with someone and our relationship is stuck.
Sometimes the worst thing about a relationship is that it’s too good to be bad, but too bad to be worth the effort.
Your boyfriend is almost a good match, good enough so that you look forward to seeing him every weekend, but it’s not mutual enough for him to feel the way you do. So you’re always chasing him, but never quite catching him.
If it were truly bad, then either he’d end it, or pride, fighting or the protests of friends might eventually help you break up, grieve and move on. Here, no such luck. You’re in relationship purgatory, but on the southern side. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 21, 2011
Most of us are sensitive about the stuff we don’t get done, particularly if we’re perfectionistic, prone to procrastination. If there isn’t an internal voice bombarding you with nagging, critical comments, there’s usually a parent/parent surrogate telling you to get off your ass and stop being such a lazy loser. By the way, if you don’t hear these motivational/critical messages internally or externally, you’re either unbelievably relaxed and confident, or you’re dead. Either way, you’re not someone who’s going to read a site like this. In any case, judging your performance reflexively is dangerous; it prevents you from protecting yourself against abuse and/or taking positive steps when you’re in a rut. The voices might always be there, but you should listen according to your own judgment.
–Dr. Lastname
Please Note: The next new post will be 11/28, after American Thanksgiving.
My husband and I get along better since I left with our daughter to start a new job in a nearby town, and he is usually polite when he comes for his weekend visits (he sleeps on the couch). He’s a devoted father, but sometimes, when he’s in a bad mood, he gets as nasty as ever and calls me a loser and a wimp who can’t keep things clean or make much money, and I’m back with the old feeling of not being able to do anything right. I suppose I should shut the fuck up, because anything I say just sets him off and gets our daughter upset. My goal is to keep my feelings to myself and keep the peace.
It’s hard to tell nasty criticism from the valid kind if you already tend to get down on yourself for not getting much done. Then again, it’s hard to get much done when you have a kid and an ex-husband who’s always criticizing you.
What you seem to be taking issue with is how unfair your ex’s judgments are, as if you’re agreeing with him that you’re a loser, but you wish he’d be less harsh. The real problem, however, is that, without carefully applying your own standards, you’re allowing yourself to take his judgments seriously in the first place. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 17, 2011
Just as there are diseases that can compromise the human immune system, there are factors that can compromise our emotional immune systems, as well. If you’ve been abused or take too much pleasure in giving, you’re more susceptible, not just to bad relationships, but to more psychic damage from those relationships. There are ways for the emo-immuno-compromised to protect themselves by strengthening their minds and learning to avoid the kind of people that could hurt them the most. Until they develop a mental prophylactic, adopting strict self-standards is the best way for anyone to stay safe.
–Dr. Lastname
I was sexually abused quite a bit by my dad (and am de-repressing memories right now, fun-fun). I am realizing that I am very fearful of the people I love, and avoid them. Honestly, if I didn’t need to bond to keep from going insane, I would never have a close relationship, because anyone I care about enough can destroy me. But I’m in a lot of pain from loneliness as it is.
Many people believe there are tons of benefits to confronting your past, namely that it will teach you something that will bring catharsis to your present. The common notion being that if you can figure out what went wrong then you can avoid being victimized again.
The problem here is that reviving memories of sexual abuse by your dad will also bring back the old feelings of helplessness and having no choice, which, of course, is the opposite of your situation as an adult, so the lessons are the opposite of useful to your life now.
You’re not examining the past to drown yourself in feelings of helplessness, but to assure yourself that you can protect yourself from abuse. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 14, 2011
When you love someone who gets mentally ill and doesn’t recover, you may not only lose that part of their personality you loved the most, but also get stuck with a double dose of what you liked least. After all, it’s one thing to vow to be there in sickness and in health, but sickness and negativity and mania are usually more than most people bargain for. If your spouse’s mental illness makes your marriage unbearable, keep a lid on your negative feelings by respecting the burden life has put on both of you and refusing responsibility for putting things back the way they were. Once you can accept that sad reality, it’s time to figure out whether there’s room in your marriage for you, your spouse and the disease, or if your old vows no longer apply.
–Dr. Lastname
My wife suffers from non-medication responsive depression (we’ve done ECT’s, every med in the book, and she has a psychiatrist). She’s bitter and short to family; she goes off on the kids and then can turn around and be nice. I do all the work around the house, get the kids to activities, etc., and I’m wearing out. She comes home from work and just logs on her lap top and sits in front of the TV while I get dinner and clean up. She shows no affection towards me and I feel like a servant. When I complain or push her, she talks about killing herself and putting herself out of our misery (she’s been hospitalized several times) or just hurting herself (sometimes she cuts on her arms and legs). I’m getting to the point where I don’t like her anymore. She just seems to have given up. Nothing interests her, nothing tastes good…she gets no enjoyment from anything. What can I do? She’s in her forties, now, but she struggled with depression in her twenties and this current bout has been going on for 5 years. Her doctor and therapist are really committed to her, but it seems like she doesn’t care, like she enjoys being miserable. Sometimes I feel like I’m spiraling down with her, but I’m not going to give up. If I just stand by, she seems to just sink lower, but I can’t leave, because she’s said that the kids and I are the only reason she’s still alive.
If you’re like most married people, you become dependent on your spouse for a positive response, no matter how independent you are as an individual. You married her because you respect her opinion and take pleasure in her approval. You make her happy, everyone feels good. You see the problem here.
So it’s normal to feel bitterly disappointed and deflated when depression turns her into a grouchy, nasty, unappreciative, unaffectionate black hole who threatens suicide if you criticize her and never does her share.
It’s not just the lack of approval from her that’s bothering you, it’s the overabundance of disapproval, of you and everything else. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »