Posted by fxckfeelings on March 3, 2011
Pride comes before the fall, and the fall is sometimes into a prolonged depression, which, to mix metaphors, can lead to a lengthy winter of discontent. No matter how much you deserve to be confident in a job well done at work, there are uncontrollable things that can put the brakes on your momentum or just stop you from doing excelling work. One of the major sources of stalling is the aforementioned depression. That’s when you either find a more solid source of pride or start seeing yourself as a failure, and you know what we advocate. Real excellence is accepting your best work when it’s not excellent, and real pride comes with healthy expectations and is fall-free.
–Dr. Lastname
After 5 years of facing up to issues with PTSD after a sexual assault, depression, anxiety and feeling generally emotionally disconnected, I felt that I made progress. As a creative person, I was stuck in a job surrounded by other artists but not creating anything myself. I left my job last autumn and set myself up as a freelance artist and have been working hard at being pro-active. I have been ignoring the signs of depression since last November, maybe earlier. I am doing the bare minimum just to support myself but over the past month or so I have been sinking down further and further. I feel like a failure to be back at this place again. In the past I have taken anti-depressants but they cut all creative flow off and I just can’t do that again, it’s the only thing holding me together at the moment. I cried last night for the first time in 9 years at the sheer frustration of not moving forwards and not being the artist I want to be. I’ve kind of given up on the idea of having the things normal people do like family (have no contact with my own), so I do tend to define myself by my art. My goal is to be brave enough and good enough to create the work that I feel is inside me without sabotaging or running away.
One of the dangers of being an artist is that you may gain too much confidence in your control over creativity. Sometimes, you feel the muse. Most of the time, you feel the misery.
When you feel inspired, you define yourself by your art, despite the lack of control you have over it. Creative types are in the unique position where talent and productivity don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. When the former outweighs the latter, problems ensue.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 21, 2011
If you’re a hard-working woman who fails to achieve her ambitions, you probably want to eliminate whatever gets in your way, whether it’s sexism or an obstacle within your personality (all while being stereotyped as a shoulder-pad-wearing, stiletto-wielding, backstabbing she-beast). Don’t forget, however, that the most common obstacle isn’t evil co-workers or ill-fitting suits, but the irritating fact that life is hard and unfair, meaning it’s completely out of your perfectionistic control and power to eliminate. That’s why you can never let your definition of success depend on luck or outcomes, or judge yourself by how far you get. Instead, base your evaluation on what you do with whatever you’ve got, including bad luck, stereotypes, and fashion.
–Dr. Lastname
I am writing about my wife, who’s in her 50s. She is a very successful surgeon (one in a handful women head of dept. in her country), but she’s been very unhappy at work and I am writing you a), for advice on how I can help her and b), to ask if there is something I overlooked. She is unhappy since she has now twice been sidelined and been made to leave jobs where she worked very hard and believed she made a positive difference. In the first case, her department (one she build from scratch to become the largest in the region) was merged with another to meet international norms, but she was passed over to head the new, merged unit and was asked to accept half her salary (she refused and won a settlement in a lawsuit). In the second case she ran a department for a few years, then management decided to hire a new head as her senior and restrict her duties to exclude her specialties and personal preferences. She decided to stay, but even though she’s working hard, and numbers and patient reports say she is doing a good job, she not only does not receive recognition she craves, but sees her career and job threatened again. She cannot do her job halfheartedly, but she doesn’t have a sunny temperament and is hard on herself. Our children have moved away, and she and I work so hard we really only see each other on weekends, so there’s so much to put her happiness in peril. How can I help her? Why did she get demoted? Would fixing her work fix things or make them better?
Of course you’d like to spare your surgeon wife the unhappiness that goes with perfectionism and power politics. You love her, you want to see her happy, and you wish you could remove the pain the way she’d slice off a tumor.
Before I get to all the questions you’ve posed, however, you need to ask yourself one important thing—why or how you think sparing her such pain is possible.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 3, 2011
Just as it’s sometimes better to be feared than loved, it’s sometimes better to be afraid than completely at ease. Yes, anxiety may push up your blood pressure, pound your pulse and punish your insides to the point where it feels like pure punishment. On the other hand, anxiety will also help you run faster, be more aware, and work harder. All these survival skills go back to the cavemen, who couldn’t kick back and feel too good, lest they end up getting snatched up and tasting good to a predator. Even now that we’ve moved from caves to condos, everybody needs a healthy dose of stress to stay alive.
–Dr. Lastname
I never used to be particularly anxious, but that’s because I could count on my wife to run the family, manage the finances, and take care of the kids while I focused on work. Then a month ago, after she announced she was having an affair and wasn’t sure that she wanted to stay together, I started to have anxiety attacks and a feeling of dread. It changed my entire outlook on my life, past, present, and future. My anxiety got worse when I started to look at our finances and discovered we’ve got loads of debt she never told me about. Now she tells me that the affair is over and she wants to make the marriage work, but the anxiety isn’t going away—this whole incident has opened up a Pandora’s box of worry that goes way beyond her cheating. My goal is to get back to the way I felt before and not wake up to this terrible feeling every morning.
If you believe every pharmaceutical ad you see on TV, you might think that anxiety is as deadly as cancer and machine guns combined.
There’s a great disconnect, however, between random anxiety attacks and the very real possibility that you might lose everything and go totally, tits-up broke.
When you let someone else do life’s worrying for you and then discover they’re not really competent, you’ve probably got a lot of past worrying to catch up on.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 31, 2011
Like fine art, job performance is open to interpretation, and like artists, workers are sensitive about how others interpret their output. Most artists know that they can’t control how they’re perceived, but your average employee isn’t so lucky, and s/he can react to criticism by speaking his/her mind and bickering over whose perception is accurate. If you can keep anger and defensiveness safely tucked away, there are better ways to manage a negative performance review and protect your right to judge for yourself and act accordingly. Otherwise, you’ll be the artist formerly known as employed.
–Dr. Lastname
I don’t know why my husband accuses me of being lazy and ineffective, like I’m forcing him to do all the work to support our family. I’ve always seen myself as hard-working and conscientious—that’s the way they saw me at my old job, which I quit to have kids. Now, it’s true I often get interrupted because I’ve got to meet the kids’ needs, but that’s not my fault. Plus, it’s hard to do free-lance work unless you get yourself organized and have all the pieces in place first, and that’s been twice as hard for me since I’m also overcoming depression. My husband says I do lots more for the kids than is necessary, and that I spend so much time getting organized that I never get down to work. That’s not the way it feels to me though, and the harder he criticizes me, the harder it is for me to stay focused and keep working. My goal is to get out of this hole.
While erectile dysfunction is a well-known disorder that is treatable with medication you can buy by the bathtub-full, executive dysfunction doesn’t have that kind of recognition.
In fact, it might not be recognized beyond this website, but it appears that you’ve got it.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 27, 2011
You may love someone who loves you back, and you may want to live happily ever after, and you may have your appointment for “bridalplasty” all lined up, but there are many obstacles that can make partnership impossible. Sometimes it’s some unchangeable aspect of personality, sometimes it’s a life situation, either way, it’s a heart-shaped brick wall. Instead of trying to amp up the love that’s supposed to conquer all, figure out what else you need and accept that you need it. Sadly, when it comes to love, love is not enough, and not even liposuction can make it better.
-Dr. Lastname
I thought my problems were over when, a few months ago, I met an attractive, recently single guy who seemed very interested in me and talked openly about my being the sort of guy he’d like to marry (I’ve been burned too many times by younger guys who seem interested for awhile and then just get bored). Recently, however, I got spooked by the way he made several big choices without telling me or asking my opinion, like buying a house. I was shocked, and while he told me I could decorate the place anyway I wanted so I could feel at home, I was still emotional about him making such a big decision without even telling me. When I asked him to examine why he’d done it, he suddenly got mad and told me he didn’t need a lot of drama in a relationship and maybe we should take a break. I was shocked. I don’t want to break up; but my goal is to understand this relationship and make it work.
Just as dating should lead to marriage, the next step after fighting is supposed to be communicating and understanding one another’s position. In a fair world, this would be true. Alas, we haven’t even located that solar system yet.
If you can’t reach an understanding and instead seem to be triggering a breakup with someone who has, until now, been loving and generous, it’s natural to doubt yourself and wonder what you’ve done wrong. It’s also natural to not use deodorant—doesn’t mean you should.
Again, in a fair world, no true friend would threaten to break up with you unless you said something terrible, but that rule holds currency only in a galaxy far, far away.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 20, 2011
Work, like relationships, weight gain, and luck in general, is a big part of life, but not always telling of who we are as people. When people feel like work defines who they are, they always feel like a failure if they’re working too little, too much, or in a job that doesn’t offer enough. Sadly, you don’t control your job (or your ability to find someone, or to keep M&M’s from bloating you up like a deer tick, or preventing an anvil from falling on your head, etc.). What defines you is how you deal with the necessity of work, your performance, and your limitations. And whether or not to supersize that.
–Dr. Lastname
I have arrived at a destination in my life after a long period of study, with a two year gap to overcome the burn out, and a return to the mammoth uphill battle to complete the certification requirements, where I thought, never again will I feel apathy, scared, bored, hatred of employment. I was a passionate dedicated student and I loved being a student up until the last couple of years, which were made worse by a university in turmoil and academics who lost interest in my specialist field when it was cut from the university. I was dedicated and driven to succeed, but after a immense effort to find any work in my new chosen field or related field with not much luck, it then struck me, that at the ripe old age of fifty-two, I don’t care much for work, of any kind. I am now living on welfare, because I could find work initially but now I don’t want it. I have to do something with my life, I can’t just up and retire and I don’t have the money anyway. My friends seem to be getting on with their lives, buying houses, but do I want to slave away and struggle on my own to pay off a mortgage only to be probably too old to enjoy it when I get there? I have developed some medical issues over the years, but I do not see myself as disabled. My goal is to become unstuck, find meaning in life/work balance again, get my mojo and drive back.
One of the good things about being 52 and unemployed is that you’re old enough to see your priorities more clearly than when you were younger. You now have the experience to know what you can and can’t do with none of the messy hopes and dreams.
One of the bad things, however, is that you don’t have that much time left on this earth and your material needs are obvious and more and more pressing.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 17, 2011
At this point in our culture, optimism and communication are reflexive answers to almost every question; if life or your family is treating you badly, your gut tells you to look on the bright side and try and hash it out. What people don’t like to realize, however, be it in their brains or in their guts, is that there are often things we don’t control, and most of the time, bad circumstances and other people’s bad decisions fall under that purview. The basic rule of human behavior may be to go with your gut, but that’s actually pretty foolish when you realize your gut is full of shit.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve got 4 kids, all under 7, and a wife with a chronic, hard-to-diagnose condition that has her walking with a cane. So sometimes I feel overwhelmed. That fact is, I’ve got a good job and my wife and I get along well, and I know people who have more problems than I do. I feel I should be grateful and counting my blessings, and that’s my goal– to be at peace and not feel so overwhelmed.
The unhealthy part about feeling grateful for life’s blessings is that they’re often transitory and sometimes non-existent (unless you consider a cane a blessing).
After all, if you’re grateful today, it’s hard to feel grateful tomorrow when you don’t have those blessings, or meet someone with many more of them who is far less thankful or deserving than you (unless you’re grateful for getting to punch them in the face).
Then there’s always the chance you’ll actually meet that special person who is even worse off than you. If you feel lucky you’re not him or her, you’ll wonder why you deserved better and then need a lobotomy to protect yourself from guilt.
That’s the problem with the words “grateful” and “blessings;” they imply a relationship between you and the Celestial Bestower of Good Luck, and that will always drag you into questions of why, why-me, and what-did-I-do-wrong if/when things get worse.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 23, 2010
When you do something truly stupid, the punishment is twofold; first, you have the knowledge of your stupidity, and then, you have living with the results of said stupidity, or making someone you love live with your stupidity, which makes you feel guilty and makes them feel stupid for loving you in the first place. Unfortunately, stupid is an incurable part of being human—some of us have a more dominant stupid gene than others—and remorse makes it worse. If you want to get smart, begin by accepting your inner stupid and getting to know its habits. Then, maybe next time stupidity calls, you’ll have a better answer and skip the punishing results.
–Dr. Lastname
PLEASE NOTE: We will have a new post on Monday, 12/27, but we’re taking a week off after that for family’ing. If you have angst, holiday related or no, that you need to share, speak now or wait until 2011.
Every now and then my husband, who is a sweet soul and mostly very smart, does something so mind-bogglingly stupid that it puts the whole family in danger. The latest incident happened when he was hanging out at a bar after work and, deeply (into drinking and) moved by the hard luck story of the guy on the stool next to him, he offered, without asking me, to guarantee the guy’s car loan. The next thing we knew, the bank was after our savings because his ex-best-bar-buddy had stopped paying the loan and the car was nowhere to be found. I admit it, I did a lot of screaming and feel like I was a saint for not killing him, but the real goal here is, how do I prevent him from doing it again.
You’re asking a mental health clinician to help you understand and/or change your husband’s behavior. Instead, you should be talking to a lawyer.
You want to stop him from doing it again, but what you really need is to protect yourself from the sure-to-happen next time his impulsive, besotted generosity imperils the family treasury.
You probably expect me, as a mental health clinician, to support the humanistic, liberal, uplifting belief that therapy can help people can change. Sadly, you don’t need a professional of any kind to tell you what you already know: that therapy doesn’t have that kind of power WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 20, 2010
Whenever people are hurting at work, management will try to boost productivity by easing pain, which makes them feel both competent and compassionate. Trouble is, most such efforts piss everyone off by trivializing pain and suggesting things can be better when they can’t. Instead of trying to coddle your workforce or push up your company morale, both the employee and the employed would probably do better if they respected the fact that work is often painful, kept the personal bullshit to a minimum, and just got back to work.
–Dr. Lastname
[Adapted from a reader’s comment.]
Our boss tried to improve sagging morale by having us meet regularly in small groups led by a psychologist. I wish I could figure out what she’s trying to do and not be so annoyed by the way she’s doing it. She asks us to think of a wish-list of how to improve the way the organization functions, and then asks if that’s alright, and then, when someone describes something they’d like to see, like making people feel special by recognizing their birthdays, she praises them for having a great idea and makes them think of ways they could implement it, and then asks us if that’s alright, and then tells us we’re doing great and asks for more and is that alright. She sounds like Hal in 2001 and acts like a computer reinforcing people for contributions that will lift the group. Frankly, she creeps me out and the reason morale is bad is because we’re working too hard and not getting paid enough. My goal is to figure out what to do about someone who is being false and unhelpful.
Your work colleagues are not your family, regardless of what the boss and the boss’s psychologist tell you. When they start holding “sharing” sessions like this, the office becomes “The Office.”
Positive recognition and communication are not the answer to your work troubles, if only because work often sucks, which is why you get paid to do it. If you’re unhappy about doing too much for too little, it sucks even more.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 9, 2010
There are lots of frightening things in life, and unless you want to live out your days in a panic room, freedom from fear is never an option. Besides, if we all gave up after our first major scare or humiliation, everyone would still be hiding in a high school bathroom stall. So, instead of running for cover in your nearest small space, get used to freaking out and/or fucking up and ignoring whatever dismal news or critical judgment that fear tells you is the truth. Rely on your usual, pre-fear abilities to size up dangers, emerge from your hidey-hole, and respect yourself for doing whatever you think is necessary when fear is trying to bring you down.
–Dr. Lastname
I haven’t been able to recover my confidence since my new boss screamed at me and humiliated me in front of my team. He’s an ex-Ranger who’s been known to become abusive, like the drill sergeant he used to be. The company has reprimanded him, and my job isn’t in jeopardy, but even thinking about going back to work leaves me shaking, and I’ve had nightmares, so I need to get myself back together before going back to work.
This may sound unkind; but taking time to feel traumatized won’t put food on your table.
If there were a cure for your condition, I wouldn’t say that. I’d tell you to get cured, feel better, and then get back to work. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as canned “trauma-be-gone,” but government cheese is very real.
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