Posted by fxckfeelings on March 12, 2012
The problem with most of our methods for rating ourselves is their reliance on feelings; the pleasure of doing things perfectly, or the satisfaction of beating the other guy and pleasing your parents or the pain of being disrespected by the community because of who your parents are. Naturally, these feelings are often false, since we tend to feel good for the wrong reasons or can’t feel good because of reasons we don’t control. So, instead of letting emotions dictate when you’ve succeeded or failed, consult your values and judge yourself the way you’d judge anyone else. You can’t make feelings of failure go away, but when they try to lead you to negative conclusions, you don’t have to follow.
–Dr. Lastname
Compared to my father, I’ve failed to achieve much in life. He inherited a lot of money, doubled it, and was well respected as a banker and business consultant. Sure, he was also a jerk who was unbelievably nasty with everyone at home, but that’s another story. He still made sure I got a great education and went to business school, which he never did. I was fantastically lucky with my wife and kids and I worked hard, but I never came close to his success. Forty years later, I’ve barely got enough money to retire and I can’t help my grandchildren with graduate school. People think of me as a nice guy but not as an impressive businessman and I leave no great fortune to the next generation. How do I live with the fact that I’ve failed?
Somewhere in the human brain, somewhere near the mammal brain and the lizard brain, is the lesser-known marine brain. It’s the part that makes us, like fish in a school, define how we’re doing by where everyone else is.
There’s no shame in it, but there’s no reason to listen to it, either.
In the more advanced parts of your brain you’ll find your values, and they’re worth reviewing first, not just in order to be a good person, but to develop standards that protect you from being too fishy and comparing yourself to friends and family. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 16, 2012
More often than not, being nice isn’t. It can get you focused on doing good for other not-quite-so-nice people who will never be able to return the favor, or on cleaning up impossible messes, instead of focusing on the larger, more important goals that go beyond good gestures towards common sense. Be nice if you must, but remember that you have other goals, one of which is knowing when you have to be cruel to be kind.
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t stop thinking about my wife’s lack of support. I’ve supported her in everything she wanted to do, whether it was getting a professional degree or going away for a week to study photography, but now I’m the one who wants to go back to school part-time to get a special ed certificate, and she’s hemming and hawing about how we don’t have the money. I’ve done the budget, and we can get by while I’m in school, and the degree will pay off, but she’s very cool to the idea. I want her to see how unreasonable she’s being and how unfair this is after all I’ve done for her.
There’s nothing wrong with being a giving, loving partner, as long as you don’t expect the world to treat you fairly. And the world includes your wife.
Few people are nice and giving all the time. Even worse, no matter how nice you are to those around you, there are lots of people who don’t give a shit about your generosity, are teflon when it comes to good will, and are never going to be nice, period. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 13, 2012
During a recession of any size, work places often turn mean; salaries fall, everyone is afraid of layoffs and unemployment, and fear, like shit, flows downhill. In times like these, unless you’re a lucky member of the one percent, stress is not a preventable condition. A large part of the stress, however, comes from the feelings that you have about work, rather than the work itself. After all, if you feel like your office is a family, then a tense office will affect you way too personally. If you remember why you’re there, and keep your standards, you can keep a level head in a shitty economy, no matter what percentage you’re in.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve put up with a lot at this job, but this really takes the cake, and I’m not sure if it’s worth putting up with my boss’s bullshit anymore. So, recently I asked for a raise, but then my boss cuts my hours, so that I am basically making the same amount of money that I made before and the raise doesn’t even count. Is that even legal? Probably, because he’s studying to be a lawyer to find more ways his employees can get screwed. I’ve been working my butt off, and I’m getting nowhere. My goal is to get what I deserve.
We always have lots of feelings about our bosses, usually negative, that make us forget what we’re there for; not getting treated well, just getting paid.
When it comes to the people who have power over our lives—bosses, parents, political leaders—we expect nothing less than appreciation, fairness, security, a good income, justice, etc. No wonder the feelings are negative. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 6, 2012
Mental pain is like the check-engine light on your car; it tells you something’s wrong, but doesn’t specify what, so it could be anything from an impending engine fire to a stupid broken check-engine light. So, when communication is painful, don’t assume you need a new communicator, and when you don’t like the image in your mirror, you may not need a make-over. You’ll always do better at figuring out what your problems are really about, and what to do for them, if you ignore the painful messenger and refuse to let it make your diagnosis for you.
–Dr. Lastname
I wish my boyfriend wasn’t so critical about the money I spend on clothes. Couples therapy helped me understand that growing up poor left him with deep insecurity about money (he still doesn’t make much compared to me, though he’s a hard worker). What therapy hasn’t done, however, is stop him from giving me a hard time about every sweater I buy, even though I’ve got good savings, no debt, and a total willingness to carry more than my share of expenses. If we get married, I’m sure his criticism will get worse and I don’t think I can stand it. My goal is to get him to back off, so we can have a life together.
The potentially bad side of couples’ therapy, as readers of this blog know, is that it can encourage a person’s tendency to take unlimited responsibility for getting through to their spouse. Like food, booze, or anything you enjoy, communication should be enjoyed in moderation.
After all, you’re supposed get a break from that responsibility once you’re sure you’ve done the right thing, but couples’ therapy can make you into a share-aholic who can never rest until togetherness has been restored. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 30, 2012
If you life has been touched by an Asshole™, your ideas of right and wrong, as well as those of other people who know the two of you, have probably been distorted. It’s your job to set things right, but not by doubting yourself when you’re threatened with conflict, or by attacking those who treat you badly, because both make you look even crazier than the Asshole in question. Instead, re-establish your credibility with yourself and others by staying calm, being patient, and finding good (legal) support. Then everyone can see the Asshole’s true colors—brown—and your work is done for you.
–Dr. Lastname
I think my girlfriend is basically committed to me (after 4 years of our having a steady relationship, despite living in different cities). After much backing-and-filling and hemming-and-hawing, she introduced me to her 3 kids and her ex. The problem, I think, is that her ex-husband is an evil drama-monster who bludgeoned her with tantrums, legal threats, and ultimatums until she would do anything to appease him. It makes her a total wuss with the kids and interferes with her availability for our relationship. That makes me push her sometimes, which makes her jump like she’s been scalded and trapped between two powerful, demanding masters. I don’t think she’s into dominant men any more (at least, I don’t see myself as one), but my goal is to help her resist her evil ex without making her feel she’s doing it to appease me.
No matter how nice your girlfriend is, if she’s over-reactive to an evil ex, you can find yourself getting irritated, worried, and sometimes outraged. You’re sorry she has trouble setting limits with the guy, but you sure don’t want him to control your life.
If she doesn’t learn how to manage him and the feelings he stirs up in her, however, that’s what will happen, and your relationship will be riddled with the drama you’re both trying to avoid (and also become very crowded). WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 16, 2012
No one ever totally controls art or business, which doesn’t stop artists and professionals from being control freaks who rate themselves by their results. The difference between them is that a businessperson with poor results usually still gets paid, while an artist who produces bad art, or good art in a bad market, doesn’t. No matter what one’s field, all anyone can do is keep working, because the only way you can guarantee shitty results is by giving up work entirely.
–Dr. Lastname
Like a lot of artists, I don’t think I’m good at anything else. I’ve been “the arty one” since I can remember, I went to art school on a scholarship, and I’ve gotten illustration work pretty steadily since then. Ever since my last job, however, I’ve started to wonder if I’ve lost it somehow. I got a steady gig in a graphic design department, and at first, I totally got along with my co-workers and we seemed to share a sensibility. Then, for some reason—maybe it’s my age (I was the youngest one), the new department head, an off-the-mark project I completed, I don’t know—the group consensus turned on me and I was treated like an untalented hack for the first time in my life. I’ve never dealt with this before, and I still don’t get it, because the higher-ups were still pleased with my work even if my peers decided it sucked, and I was always nice to everyone. The only thing that did happen was that I started to doubt my ideas more, because every time I’d come up with something I’d immediately think of all the reasons my co-workers would hate it. After a few months of this, I couldn’t take it anymore, so when a college friend told me there was an opening at his work, I jumped on it. The problem is that I still can’t get that negativity and doubt out of my head—maybe I am a hack, after all—and I’m terrified of starting this new job and either not coming up with anything good or not coming up with anything period until eventually I can’t get a job at all. I’m not good at anything else, but what if I’m not good at design anymore, either? My goal is to get my mojo back (or at least get these assholes out of my brain).
One of the curses of being talented, in arts or sports, is that talent becomes the heart of your self-esteem. Talent and ego have a flawed-yet-symbiotic relationship.
It’s particularly true if, like many talented people, you’re actually not so hot at doing other things. It’s as if your talent takes up extra brain-space, crowding out room for the basics and leaving you both gifted and klutzy, brilliant and ADD, hyper-capable and totally incompetent.
Other people might tell you that you’re good at other things, but those other people are wrong; they don’t have or understand an artistic mind. They had to decide on a career, whereas you probably felt like you didn’t have a choice. They also probably have health insurance. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 29, 2011
Being thoughtful is good, but being thoughtful to the point of painful obsession is having OCD, with fearful thoughts that stick in your brain and won’t go away unless you do something sort-of-magical and sort-of-stupid that gives you a moment of relief (before your fears start again). The good news is that it happens to good people who learn how to manage and live with it, which can happen much more easily if you can abandon the worst obsession of all—finding a way to cure the OCD altogether.
–Dr. Lastname
Please Note: Monday is also a fxckfeelings.com holiday. Happy New Year (and again, if/when it’s unhappy, you know the drill).
I’m a current student and I’ve sort of self-diagnosed myself as having an unusual kind of OCD. It started out four years ago when I was studying for an upcoming major exam. I had always been one of the few top students, but at one point in time in the midst of hours of straight studying, I couldn’t absorb any more info, and in a fit of frustration, a ball of emotions welled up and I actually said harshly in my mind to myself, “you shall FAIL!”, even though I’ve always tried to avoid such negative thinking. What came next was an unshakable, unexplainable, and annoying-yet-scary series of feelings, thoughts and emotions for the next few days and weeks. After that episode, I developed an irrational apprehension about me having “ruined” myself and my academic ability. To get myself back to my normal, anxiety-free mind when studying or doing anything related to studies, I imagined “transferring” the whole chunk of this mental mess on other stuff, whether it is the faces of people who did badly in academics in my field, to those I don’t like, etc. Still, my mind would automatically be inclined to have these random obsessions appear in my mind while studying, and it’s really prevented me from fully unleashing my full academic ability in subsequent grades. I really felt restrained and trapped by this, and my goal is to eliminate this strong-rooted (it’s been 4 years) mental condition that happens whenever I study and then makes it almost impossible.
Some OCD thoughts are crippling but come out of nowhere, like fear of contamination or making a mistake. While they often lead to compulsive rituals, like repeated hand-washing and fact-checking, you manage to keep studying. So, while you’re suffering, you’re still lucky.
The fact that your obsessive fears are tied to school may make them easier to deal with, because, unlike germs, school (usually) doesn’t go on forever.
School is built on mental constructs that attract obsessions like lint to a dryer vent; it’s got grades, grade-points, and exams that hinge on a word or the instructor’s interpretation of same. It invites obsession and obsessive argument, which can be torture, but at least it has an end date. 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 15, 2011
Feeling you’ve made a mistake is usually an instinctive reflex that has nothing to do with sober judgment and/or actual responsibility and a lot to do with guilt. You feel you’ve made a mistake when things turn out badly, or your efforts fail, or you’re still in pain, so you feel obliged to give yourself a good kick…which usually makes things worse. It’s not that we’re incapable of examining blame and responsibility rationally, it’s that self-flagellation gets rid of guilt faster than self-reflection keeps us from accepting a guilty verdict.
–Dr. Lastname
I have been struggling with performance anxiety for years. It was particularly difficult during university, where I saw three psychologists, including a campus counselor, who, while supportive, weren’t helpful. It got much better though when I was able to take control of a treatment group I was facilitating, where I could design the program and run it the way I wanted to. I enjoyed being the therapist who helps others, and the experience gave me confidence. Still, the anxiety has not been extinguished in all situations—when teaching and presenting at conferences, the anxiety in these two areas is just as high as it was previously. I have been managing this for a long time and I do not feel motivated to continue to place myself in situations where my anxiety is raised again so high that I experience nausea, stomach pains, dry mouth, etc., not to mention the exhaustion I feel after the anxious-provoking event has finished. I do have some mild/moderate social anxiety—I don’t like socializing in big groups unless I know the people, and this prevents me from making new social contacts and networking for my profession. I am well versed in exposure therapies and ACT and have used these to get me to the point I am at now, and I continue to use them. However, I don’t think my anxiety will ever improve beyond where it is now and I am too exhausted to continue to try. I guess I’m stuck and don’t know if I should try to find a specialist to help me to continue to force myself to network, push myself to present at conferences, and become an academic psychologist or move into working as a clinical psychologist in a private practice, where I would work more on my own and I would be happier and more relaxed but also know that I am avoiding the events that are anxiety-provoking.
Maybe being in the mental health business makes you feel more responsible for controlling symptoms of anxiety and becoming a role model for good mental health. It’s ironic, given that most people in our field are the worst role models for mental health. If we were totally sane, we’d just go into dermatology and rake it in.
If you are driven to perfection, it’s causing you to forget that certain symptoms, like anxiety, tend to be incurable, and that, if you’ve reached the point where you can’t make them better, it’s because you’ve done an amazing job of managing them and pushing yourself to the limit of what you can bear. 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 »
