Posted by fxckfeelings on July 30, 2009
When women are hooked on the wrong kind of love, they often want advice for the wrong reasons, which explains why sometimes good advice is worse than no advice at all. Oddly, giving romantic advice to friends is sort of like dating itself; if it doesn’t stick after a few attempts, then stop wasting your time.
–Dr. Lastname
I’ve given my closest girlfriend the same advice a million times, and a million times, she’s passively ignored me, so I’ll say straight away that my goal is to give advice she’ll actually listen to. The problem she always comes to me with is this (and in her mind, it isn’t a problem, at least at first): said friend is in a band, and because of that, she’s always on the road, and in her travels she meets these guys (either randomly for one night or for a few weeks at a time if they’re touring with her band, that kind of thing), and every so often she falls for one of these guys and wants to find a way to have a real relationship with him, even though it’s logistically impossible in the long term due to the fact they live in one place and she lives in another (never mind that they’re usually too young, too drunk, too full of themselves, etc). I tell her those things, but she insists her feelings (which is what made me think I should write you!) can’t be ignored, that guy-of-the-moment gives her butterflies and she can’t remember being this excited about anyone. It’s only a matter of time before things go horribly wrong (he stops returning her texts/calls, starts being a jerk to her, take your pick), and then she’s sad, tells me she should have listened to me, and wonders why she’s so dumb about guys. I, too, wonder, but I’m sure you’ve got it all figured out.
Instead of asking yourself what’s wrong with your advice because it hasn’t got through to her after a million times, ask yourself whether there’s any hope of her hearing your advice. Ever. And not because she has tinnitus.
Because the sad thing is, when it comes to the thrill of romance, some people are addicted to those “butterflies” and want to embrace that sensation, no matter how many times they’ve been burned. They love love, whether it’s real or phony, and regardless of how long it takes them to recover, or what else they lose while recuperating. Love is blind, your friend is deaf and dumb.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 27, 2009
When you work at a family business, you often feel obliged to go above and beyond what would normally be expected of you. But if “above and beyond” means your job has forced you into a moral quandary and a double life as a cop or therapist, then it’s time to forget family and get rational. And if you still can’t figure out a solution, it’s time to get a new job.
–Dr. Lastname
My family has had a business going back three generations; now my dad’s in charge, my sister and I work there, plus a bunch of cousins, aunts, and uncles. I was looking through one of my client’s files when I saw some numbers that looked off. Going through the records, it became clear that this was a persistent inaccuracy, so I went to my sister, who actually does the accounting. She was really upset I’d come to her—she admitted she’d cooked the books a bit, and hoped I wouldn’t notice—but begged me not to say anything to anyone or be mad, because our father had told her to do it, and said he had a good reason. I don’t want to ask my father what that reason is—even though I can’t imagine what reason he has in mind—but I do want him to stop, because he’s putting the entire business in danger. At the same time, he’s my father, and if I do challenge him, it would really upset him and everyone else in the family. They respect him and would consider it disloyal to question his judgment or put the family in trouble. But wouldn’t going under or getting sued also upset the family? I’ve always believed in doing the right thing, but is it right to confront him and get everyone mad at me and possibly lose my job, or to say nothing and be part of something dishonest? It’s killing me not to have an answer, and that’s my goal.
If you assume that there’s always a good way to do right—that there’s a black and white right and wrong—you’ll often make things worse for you and your loved ones. Simple-minded idealists probably do more harm in this world than all the thieves combined.
The problem with these idealists is that they elevate the peaceful feeling of a good conscience above considering what happens next or whom it harms. If this actually were a simpler world where the only temptations came from destructive or selfish impulses, and all of us really had the same ability to choose between good and evil…well then, that sounds like a very simple, logical place to be. But it also sounds like one nation under Skynet.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 20, 2009
Lots of men may be drawn to long legs and big boobs, but there’s nothing sexier to most guys than a severely unstable female. You can marry these women or try to help them, as the people in these cases have tried to do, but when it comes to semi-sane drama queens, there’s only one good bit of advice: run for your life.
–Dr. Lastname
My mother was crazy (bipolar or schizo, it was never clear), and as her youngest, I was the one who took care of her and eventually found a way to get her into the hospital where the state took care of her until she died. I was a crazy kid, but not technically crazy like my mom—I drank too much, got high a lot (too much), crashed a car or two. I met a girl who was crazier even than me, she got pregnant, and so we got clean together to start our family. I’ve stayed clean, but the mother of my kids—now my ex-wife—didn’t. She held it together when she was pregnant all four times, but otherwise, she’d fall off, and now that she and I are finally through, I’ve got the kids and she’s got a nasty drug problem which she funds through alimony, boyfriends, and money she wins from taking me to court for one bullshit reason or another. As for the kids, one has gone through rehab, one is a mom at 18, one’s on tons of medication, and one was killed earlier this year when he was driving drunk. This is a long way of asking a simple question: what the fuck is wrong with me, after the way I was raised, that I can’t stay away from crazy women? Now I’ve passed this curse on to my kids, and now one of them has died because he was unlucky enough to be born to a former-drug addict and a current psychotic crack whore. My goal is to get crazy out of my life for good.
It doesn’t take a Harvard degree (or two) or even a passing familiarity with Sigmund Freud to know that you tend to feel attracted by people who are like your parents, whether you like your parents or not, whether your parents were certifiable or not.
If you expect that feeling to go away, and meanwhile keep dating the people you feel like dating, you’ll keep on getting into trouble, because, surprise, that feeling doesn’t usually go away. And don’t expect therapy to take it away, either.
Like it or not, that feeling—that attraction—is stronger than whatever most therapists have to offer, so if your goal is to stop wanting crazy, forget it. You’re crazy for thinking you can help yourself. (That sounds like it might make a good country-and-western lament).
You’re right to think about the kids, but wrong to think about what your crazy-loving has done to them. The past is past and remorse will do no more than get in your way now. Instead, you should be thinking about how to help them handle their own crazy-loving urges.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 16, 2009
After our last post’s fun foray into terlet humor, we return to the more somber world of family dynamics. In this cases, two people learn that, while it’s always hard for parents to set limits for their kids, it’s even harder for kids to set limits for their parents.
–Dr. Lastname
I didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so I got a job at the local coffee chain when I was in high school so I didn’t have to rely on them. But I needed their help to go to college, so my dad sold some property to pay my tuition, and told me he was sure I’d succeed and he would expect me to help him out someday. After college, I went back to the coffee shop and became manager, and since then, I’ve actually moved up to a fairly high position in our regional office. I used to make lattes, and now I have a corner office and a car I paid for outright. At the same time, I became aware of how poorly my parents manage their money. They buy things they can’t afford and never say “no” to the other kids, no matter how stupid their requests. Then my father comes to me for money, always for specific bills he can’t pay, like the mortgage, or car insurance. But at the same time, he’s spending money he can’t afford, so I feel like I’m bailing out a sinking ship and my efforts are a total waste. My goal is to get my dad to understand that he has to budget his money and learn to say “no” and that I can’t continue to support him like this without going broke myself. But I can’t stop feeling responsible for saving my family from the mess they’re in.
If your dad could understand and accept the need for budgetary controls, it would have happened three major impulse buys/maxed out credit cards ago, so your goal as it stands now is useless.
Worse than that, even suggesting a budget to him will bite you in the ass, because he probably blames his problems on bad luck, not getting enough help, being too nice a guy, etc. So when you suggest, in the kindest way possible, that he’s a financial fuck-up, you’ll become the scapegoat. You’ll go from being the solution to being the problem so quickly, you’ll get whiplash.
He’ll see you as the ungrateful son who benefited most from his generosity, and now is too selfish to give back. You’ll get angry and pull away, which will unite the rest of family behind him, and leave you shunned, alone, and unable to give them help when they really need it. Your goal isn’t just useless, it’s the perfect shit-storm.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 1, 2009
Human nature tells us that the best way to solve a problem is to get to the root of the issue, but some problems, like mental illness, have no simple cause and no solution to speak of. In today’s cases, two people need to rethink their approach to mental illness; when you stop looking for someone to blame or a silver bullet cure, you can get to the real business of learning to cope with the reality of the present.
–Dr. Lastname
I think one of my sister’s kids might be mentally ill—he’s 9 and very intense and unhappy—but my sister doesn’t see it, and I don’t know how/if to get her to pick up on it. It should be fairly obvious to her since we saw the same symptoms in our mother, who wasn’t diagnosed as bipolar until we were kids and she had a chance to put on quite a show. I guess my sister doesn’t really understand that our mother wasn’t just a mean drama-queen but actually sick, maybe because she was younger when Mom went to the hospital and doesn’t really remember, or maybe because she’s in denial, or maybe both of those things combined with the fact she and her husband are space cadets that are such hands-off parents they don’t even notice that one of their own children is clearly suicidal. My goal is to get my sister out of the clouds and get my nephew some help, because if something happens to that kid, I don’t blame genetics, I blame her.
As any teacher well tell you, the danger of bestowing your idea of help on another parent’s child is that you have very little control over how parents react, because no parent wants to hear that something is wrong with their child. And their default response lies somewhere between defensive anger and general freaking out.
The freaking out also comes from the fact that it’s hard to keep the urgency and alarm out of your voice, no matter how diplomatic you think you are, and feelings trigger feelings. Suddenly you’re in a perfect storm of hysteria, but hey, no good deed goes unpunished.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 14, 2009
Nobody enjoys the break-up process, but there are ways, as either the dumped or the dumpee, to make that process even worse. Between a woman who thinks she’s permaturely ending things to a man who can’t let go, these two cases show how breaking-up is not just hard to do, but easy to fuck up royally.
–Dr. Lastname
I just broke up with my boyfriend, and even though I thought I was doing the right thing in the long run, I think I’m now making a habit of ending relationships before they get too serious. This time I ended things because, after a year together, I had to face the fact that I wasn’t as excited about him as I should be, and certainly not as excited about him as he was about me (and never was—this wasn’t an issue of the spark being gone, but never really being there in the first place). I left the guy before him because he and his mother were very close—maybe too close, in that his mother seemed to boss him around—and that mother lived hundreds of miles away, which meant he’d want to move hundred miles away eventually, and I really didn’t (let alone raise a family there so close to his crazy mother). I’m not that old, but I’m definitely in the marriage window, and while I think I’m just being realistic when I make these decisions, I worry that I’m just panicking in the face of actually settling down. I hate how much I’ve hurt my exes by what I’ve done, my goal is, I don’t want to do it again.
It’s understandable to feel bad when you’ve made someone else feel bad, but feelings aren’t that important when you’re looking at the bottom line. Before you start criticizing yourself for the painful outcome of these two relationships, considering the obstacles that make it difficult to find a good partner.
Ultimately, your goal isn’t to avoid painful breakups; it’s to deal with prospective partners honestly while you try to find a good match, knowing that it’s entirely possible to begin a relationship with someone you like and respect and then discover problems that would doom a long-term future.
That’s what you can’t control here: the unsolvability of two of those problems and the need to break the relationship sooner rather than later, regardless of the pain you might cause.
We both know couples who broke up because one of them is over-responsive to another priority in their lives, like a mother or job or college basketball. So when you’re considering settling down with someone, you need to ask yourself how this guy is likely to respond if the demands of our family conflict with his other loyalties.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 31, 2009
The concept of being one’s “brother’s keeper” has never been a very good one; from the Bible to the Clinton boys, older siblings taking responsibility for their youngers has rarely had good results. In these two cases, older siblings feel obliged to get their little brother/sister back on track, but being related to someone by blood doesn’t make them any easier to control. You can’t “keep” your siblings, but you can keep trying to do the right thing.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m one of seven kids, standard big Irish family, fairly standard/normal childhood, everybody seems to get along. My youngest brother, however, has always been a quiet kid (and I’m the oldest, so he’s much younger than me), and while he’s not the black sheep exactly, he’s always been a little bit different and maybe something of a misfit in general. One of my uncles died recently, and at the wake, my brother took me and all of our siblings aside to tell us that he’s been going to therapy and has recently recovered memories of being molested by our late father. Now, I’d never describe my dad as being a warm or lovable guy, but he wasn’t a monster– never raised a hand to me or anyone else in the house that I saw, and certainly never tried to touch me in a sexual way (or any of the other kids as far as I know). And, like I said, I’m not that close with my younger brother because I was in high school when he was born, so basically, to put it nicely, I just don’t think he’s remembering things right. None of the other siblings do, either, but ever since he made his little announcement, he’s been pushing us to support him and getting angry when we try to calm him down/kindly and tell him he should back off. Since I’m the oldest, my other brothers and sisters are looking to me to handle the situation, but I really have no idea what I can say to make this go away. My goal is to figure out what the hell is going on and get him to stop.
You might not know your brother that well, but I’ve dealt with his type many times: certain people go through life feeling different, cut off, ultra-sensitive, and constantly unhappy. They are troubled as much by not knowing why they’re suffering as by the suffering itself.
In their isolation and misery, they are constantly wondering what went wrong, if they did it to themselves, and what they should be doing about it. If they can believe that someone bad did something horrible to mess up their minds, whether it happened or not, it makes sense of their suffering and gives them something concrete to do about it.
Sure, something bad may have happened to them, or their reaction to constant suffering may have exposed them to additional harm at the hands of people they would otherwise have stayed away from. The sad thing is that no one has a solution to their suffering: not friends, not therapists, not older brothers.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 14, 2009
Everybody has one little thing about themselves they wish they could change, but more dangerous is the one little thing about someone *else* you wish you could change, either because you want to help them or help yourself. Here are two cases that prove that change truly does come from within…your own mind.
-Dr. Lastname
(And for those still hell-bent on wanting to change, you can always submit your own problems here).
I’ve been with my husband for 4 years now, and in that time, I’ve gotten less and less tolerant of his casual attitude towards keeping appointments and being on time. He doesn’t just not show up—he’ll always call with a reason he’s late, or at least make some joke that used to charm me enough not to get annoyed—but still, he knows it’s irritating, and I’m starting to think it’s indicative of something bigger, like, maybe he doesn’t love me enough to follow through on his promises. (And I know he does this to everyone, but he shouldn’t be doing this to his wife, and I know they’re mostly little promises, but shouldn’t those be the easiest to fulfill?) Just talking about this, I feel like I’m losing my mind, which means there’s nothing about his flakiness that doesn’t drive me crazy. Maybe, because it’s not cute anymore, I worry that nothing about him will be cute anymore? Do you think going to couples therapy would help? We should be starting a family by now, but should I be with a guy who can’t keep a simple schedule? Because my goal is to stay married and stop being annoyed.
First of all, don’t let yourself believe that your husband could stop being late if he loved you more. If you do that, you’ll attack him for devaluing your relationship, he’ll feel the relationship is devalued by your failure to accept him, he’ll act worse, and the devaluing will start to come true.
It’s much less dangerous, if more painful, to accept the sad facts that he can’t stop being late and you aren’t going to change him. Then you’re also free to respect his love and all the positive qualities you chose him for.
It’s tempting to drag him into couples therapy, let fly with your grievance, and hope the therapist can get him to change. Alas, therapists have no more power than you do to accomplish such change. The result will be much like a loud, chair-rattling fart: an explosion of hot air providing immediate relief for the one feeling the pressure, followed by a bad smell that everyone is helpless to dissipate. A good therapist will stop you before you start and ask you whether you really want to do this.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 10, 2009
How do you help people fix the way they help other people? The easy answer is, you don’t, but if the answer was easy, we’d be out of work. Here are two cases of helpers’ helpers in need of help themselves.
-Dr. Lastname
My wife is a good woman, but she can’t say no to people close to her or control her giving. Her mother has Alzheimer’s and often gets hysterical over aches and pains, or has paranoid ideas about being sexually molested by nurses, and my wife confronts the staff at the home at the drop of a hat to straighten things out. That just gets the staff upset because my mother-in-law is almost brain-dead and the complaints aren’t real, so now everybody’s mad at my wife because they think she’s blaming them. I’m not happy with her always being unhappy, and she blames me for not being supportive, and I’m worried she’s getting depressed. My goal is to get her to be less involved with her mother and less unhappy.
It’s hard to feel that you’ve done your best to help someone when they don’t get better, and they’re not satisfied with what you’ve done. Your wife can never feel she’s done enough for her mother; and you can’t feel you’ve done enough for your wife. And there’s no way to stop those feelings.
If you try to help her, you will probably make things worse. If you use a therapy session to confront your wife about her negativity and its bad effect on you and her mother’s care—if you suggest that she’s bending over backwards because her mother was really a jerk who always made her feel guilty–the more you’ll regret it.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on May 7, 2009
Since Monday was about anxiety, it makes sense that Thursday should be about the peanut butter to anxiety’s jelly– depression! In these two cases, depression has created urgent circumstances, not just for someone in pain, but for a sympathetic bystander. And, as often happens, the negative beliefs caused by depression are much more dangerous than depression itself.
–Dr. Lastname
Someone I’m close to called and e-mailed me a few times last night about killing himself, and this isn’t the first-time this has happened. The last time I got him to call a hotline and get help, and he agreed to go to therapy, but for whatever reason, it didn’t take, and now we’re back to square one. I’d like to believe that this time is another false alarm—that the fact he tells me he’s going to kill himself means that he wants me to talk me out of it—but how can I ever be sure? When he called last night, he asked me if I wanted to kill myself with him, I said no, but then he hung up before I could ask him where he was. Without a location for him, I didn’t feel like I could call the police, but I did call his parents (they couldn’t reach/find him, either). I don’t know what else to do, and frankly, I’m terrified. Please help me do whatever I can to keep him alive.
It’s dangerous to try to save the life of a suicide bomber, and that’s what certain very angry suicidal people are. It’s dangerous for them as well as for you, because the fact of your caring may give them a witness, a target for their anger, and a sense of meaning to their death.
If you don’t respond to his calls, he may take perverse satisfaction in letting you know he died because you failed him. If you do respond, he may tell you that you’re the only person keeping him alive.
Along the way, he tries to talk you into joining him. Whatever. He puts a terrible responsibility on you for his tortured life, and things go downhill from there.
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