Posted by fxckfeelings on March 31, 2011
On a good day, the average person makes about 10 mistakes. Slight screw-ups are annoying, but not exactly indicative of one’s character. Major screw-ups, on the other hand, deserve some consideration; they’re the kind where you don’t mess up by doing something incorrectly, but by correctly doing something that’s wrong. When it comes to evaluating todays mistakes, it’s important to distinguish between not double checking your work and not double checking your values.
–Dr. Lastname
An email I intended to send to one person, I mistakenly sent to another. As a result, I have managed to obliterate, in one push of a button, what feels like my entire world. Yea, I know this sounds overly dramatic, but honestly, even after attempting to make things right with the people involved, things will never be right. I can’t figure out how to get over, under or through the degree of self hatred I now have for being such a complete f*ckup. I’m human, mistakes happen blah blah blah, but that’s no comfort to me since the people involved aren’t interested in any sort of apology. How do I ever forgive myself??
There’s a big difference between self-forgiveness as a feeling, and self-forgiveness as a moral judgment. After all, there’s a big difference between doing wrong and doing dumb.
Having committed a stupid but not malicious act that’s fractured relationships forever, you don’t have any reason to ask forgiveness of yourself, because you’ve committed no crime. Shazzam, you’re absolved. Dr. Lastname absolves thee! Tada!
If you don’t feel better, I’m not surprised, because your self-accusation isn’t moral, it’s chagrin over bad luck and rejection by someone you care about. Sadly, that’s proclamation proof.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 28, 2011
Despite being one of the most intense emotions in the world, love is not something you should take personally. You’re wired for it, in the deepest parts of your brain, just like penguins and meerkats. Even in the wild kingdom, the resulting attachments seem extra intense, unhappy, and/or joyful. If you need to share your tortured feelings, go ahead, but at some point, shut up and figure out how to manage the hurt. Re-stimulating the love-fixation centers in your brain by venting your feelings won’t help you control them, and, instead of mating for life, you’ll end up moaning alone in the emotional wilderness.
–Dr. Lastname
I am in love with a man who is married and has 2 children. He left his wife and family and wanted to live with me, but then I had a miscarriage and then felt I could not live with him. He has since gone back to his wife and I feel so awful.
What gets lost when you feel awful about a love gone wrong is that love often goes wrong. You didn’t beat the odds, but most people don’t. And most people weren’t as up against it as you were.
What you need to do now is remember that you had goals of your own before you fell in love. It’s your job to think about where love is likely to go, even when you’re crazed by it, so you’ll be prepared for moments like this.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 14, 2011
When someone expects a lot from you, it’s supposed to be a sign of respect; they think you’re capable enough to achieve great things. A lot of the time, however, it’s just a reflection of their false hopes and laziness, because they want you to be able to do everything they can’t do, the generally impossible, the dishes, and everything in between. If you accept their overly-optimistic assumptions, you’ll also share their frustration, guilt, and maybe blame. Don’t start helping before giving careful thought to what’s really possible. Then figure out a positive way to share the bad news…in the most respectful way possible.
–Dr. Lastname
It was just starting to look like my 25-year-old son had found some happiness and confidence when, bang, he had a bad motorcycle accident, broke his leg, lost his contract job because he couldn’t do it, and slipped back into the depression that has dogged him (and the rest of the family) since he was a teenager. He’s a good kid who managed to finish college in spite of dropping out a couple times because of depression, and now, to see him lying around the house, declaring that he’s just another “failure to launch,” is breaking my heart. My goal is to help him feel better about himself and life.
We’ve talked a lot recently about how some people have difficulty getting motivated after a long depression, but when you are depressed, you actually have tremendous motivation…to see your world as being shit.
Depression gives you the power and motivation to refuse to see it any other way. Even when depression isn’t in the cards, it’s hard to convince someone who’s feeling down that they’re wrong.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on February 24, 2011
Finding a partner isn’t just a matter of compatibility; after all, the most compatible creature you’ll ever meet is the one who wants to please you the most, and there’s a reason so many Labradors are single. Compatibility isn’t just a matter of sincerity, either, since some prospective partners love you sincerely…right up until the moment they don’t, while others love you forever because they sincerely appreciate your ability to carry the relationship. Nope, finding a partner always begins with an assessment of what you really need to make your life better or accomplish something really difficult, like raising a kid, and whether someone actually has the qualities you’re looking for to go the distance. You don’t need a totally compatible mate, even if he has a snazzy bandana; you just need someone with compatible strengths and goals.
–Dr. Lastname
I am a divorced single parent of 2. It was entirely the wrong marriage, and I initiated the divorce and became happily single. I dated a bit and then met someone who rocked my world, both in positive, healthy ways, and in destructive, dysfunctional ones. Still, what we had was unprecedented for me. He was the coolest person I had ever been with, and someone who never, ever needed explanation for my weird idiosyncrasies. We went up and down and up and down on the roller coaster for almost 4 years. He told me he wanted to blend our worlds, though very different, and that we were “one” and he had my back. That was until he dumped me last summer, citing my world (read: kids, location, etc.) and his inability to accept it as the reason. I know I should feel fortunate that he did it before we married and see the relationship for what it was–a sex-filled, passionate, chemistry-laden, mad, crazy affair, and nothing more–but to me, it was more, and I’m still heartbroken and in a considerable amount of pain 10 months later. My goal: to have my head become louder than my heart. My goal is to move on and to become whole again, because my life as a fractured woman is keeping me in the cave.
There are a lot of bad things people do because they feel good—drugs, drink, consume mass quantities of pizza—that have recovery groups that help you see that the feelings don’t justify the fallout.
As we always say, if only there was a Jerk Boyfriend Anonymous.
Until such a group exists, what may help you to move on from your intensely passionate but destined-to-be-dumped relationship is to acknowledge, from the beginning, that what turns you on the most just isn’t good for you. Because the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
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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 13, 2011
When faced with scary health issues, from strange lumps to bad thoughts, people often avoid treatments that hurt, particularly after long-standing symptoms have sapped their hope, fed self-hate, or fostered bad habits. They deny anything’s wrong, or they insist that resistance is futile, but either way, if you criticize them for not helping themselves, they will readily agree, hate themselves more, and burrow deeper into their holes and further away from treatment. Before they can find the way out, they need to reconnect with their real strength. Only by recognizing their actual achievements and their past and potential courage, can they face what ails them. The pain may continue, but not its power to intimidate and paralyze.
–Dr. Lastname
Please Note: In responding to suicidal goals, as in the case below, we do not presume to offer emotional support. If you’re at risk of hurting yourself, you should, of course, go to an emergency room, discuss your state of mind with a professional, and decide how much support you need in order to remain safe. In most of the cases we encounter, however, our correspondents are not simply suicidal; they are familiar with treatment and have come to believe that it won’t help. Often, we must agree that their feelings are unlikely to change in the near future. What we try to demonstrate, however, is that negative feelings create falsely negative and hopeless beliefs and that there are ways to recover your strength and perspective, even when the pain won’t let up.
I’m considering suicide. My life is a joke. I am in my late 30s and female and I have never had a relationship with a man. Several men have used me for sex and at least 2 of them begged me not to tell any of their friends they’d had sex with me. I’ve never been loved, been held, been listened to, been cherished. I’ve just been used like a toilet. On the outside I’m pretty. I can hold a conversation and I have a reasonable number of friends. But I hate myself and I don’t feel good enough. I was abandoned by both parents and I was raped for the first time when I was about 2-years-old. It’s like men I meet can smell the self-hate on me and they treat me accordingly. I do not have even one person in my life who cares about me or who I could trust. My friends are there to go for drinks or dinner with me if they can find nothing better to do but they are not there to be supportive ever, in any way. What is the point of me continuing to live?
It’s horrible to feel that you don’t belong to the human race, except for your ability to satisfy the needs and cravings of jerks.
Remember, however, that those feelings almost always beget more falsely negative beliefs, particularly about relationships. Whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, you feel infinitely rejectable, comfortable in the company of jerks, and anxious around people you respect, since you know they will reject you for your anxiety and fundamental worthlessness.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on December 27, 2010
Maybe, on an animal level, disrespect is a challenge to our status in the herd that must be met with immediate, overwhelming attack, or we lose out. What an emotional reaction to disrespect usually results in, however, is more conflict and more power to the disrespecter. Take disrespect as a chance to see whether you measure up to your own standards and, if you do, your defense will become simple and require no huffing, puffing, or drama around the watering hole.
–Dr. Lastname
PLEASE NOTE: The next new post will be 1/3/11. Have a happy New Year’s Eve, but for our sake, an unhappy new year overall. (Not really.)
I get no respect and nothing but criticism at home, and only an idiot would stick around. My teen-age daughter complains loudly, to anyone who will listen, including holiday dinner guests, that I was never there for her, and my wife treats her as if she’s a sensitive soul who needs understanding and shouldn’t be contradicted. I think my daughter is verbally abusive, disrespectful, and embarrassing, and that my wife encourages her. As a practicing physician, I have no trouble finding respect at work; at home, I’m chopped liver. Tell me why I shouldn’t leave.
I’ll take your word that you’re a doctor, because your need for respect makes you sound more like a drug dealing thug from “The Wire.”
Disrespect might make you feel like you’re being perceived as weak, but that’s nothing compared to telling yourself, or anyone else, that criticism or disrespect is driving you out of your house.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 4, 2010
We’re hardest on family because, unlike those we’re not bound to by blood, family is stuck with us forever. Then again, being stuck together often forces the released negativity to bounce back and forth, like light in a laser, until it gets strong enough to zap your perspective and make you feel like a loser. Getting out of that mindset requires looking outside of the family circle and unsticking yourself from your nearest, dearest and harshest.
–Dr. Lastname
I don’t consider myself a lazy person—I take care of the kids and sell some of my paintings—but my husband isn’t crazy about selling cars and would really like to stay home and take care of the kids himself, so he’s always making remarks about having to carry the harder load and asking me if I could find a way to make more money. I’ve tried to find better-paying work, but I’m dyslexic, and what I’m doing is probably about as good as it gets, given my skills and the flexibility I need for the kids. Anyway, he’s been nastier lately because car sales are down and it’s getting to me. My goal is to get him to stop putting me down.
You can’t stop someone from putting you down—haters gotta hate, as the kids say, even if the hater is your husband, and most husbands are haters, at one time or another.
On the other hand, just because someone you love is trying to put you down doesn’t mean you have to take their criticism to heart and sink, doomed unless you can get them to take it back and promise never to do it again.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on September 2, 2010
Being a negative pessimist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re chronically depressed, and being a blind optimist doesn’t exactly mean you’re a flakey idiot. However, if you do find yourself unable to see a silver lining, or have to deal with someone too blissed out to ever see storm clouds, it can be problematic. Instead of trying to change yourself or someone else, you’d be better off learning to accept whatever you get in your glass, whether it’s half-empty or half-full.
–Dr. Lastname
What I would like to share with you, and in turn, hear you share your thoughts about, is chronic unhappiness. Is there ever an end to depression and its shadow? Is there a way to “get over it’? My goal is to be able to live beyond depression and to actually grow from it. Sure, I hate those books where people claim to be grateful to their depression… but I hate it mainly because I resent their ability to feel that way! What do you think?
There’s no way to “get over” problems you have no control of in the first place and, no matter what form it comes in (shitty in-law, brain tumor, Hurricane Earl, etc). Chronic unhappiness is high on that “uncontrollable” list.
So now you have to ask yourself what it means to “get over” an uncontrollable problem. Usually, it means you’ve asked yourself to do the impossible and thus given yourself a chronic headache to top off your chronic unhappiness.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 22, 2010
Ignoring problems is supposed to be bad for you; the only thing we love more in this society than money and fried foods is unbridled confrontation. Sometimes, however, not paying attention to life’s annoyances is the best option for dealing with the nasty little tricks your mind likes to play with you. Until life’s problems go away—which they won’t—you can train your self to stop paying attention to them (and the over-reactive voices in your head). Instead, focus on other important things, like getting paid and eating onion rings.
-Dr. Lastname
My biggest frustration on a daily basis is having someone ask me a question and then either get angry in response to the answer or the fact that a decision has already been made and then ignore the answer they asked for. My wife will ask “do you mind if I do/go/be “x,” and if I answer “yes I mind” then she’s angry and usually proceeds with what she’d already scheduled anyway. Just today my sister asked if the coffee I was holding was warm enough. I said yes, and she then proceeded to take the cup from my hand and run to the microwave with it. OK, so maybe her intentions were good…but why the hell did she ask me, when my answer didn’t matter? Because this seems to happen to me ALL the time, by MANY different people, I’m getting to the point that I don’t even want to be around other people. Should I just shut up and quit even answering questions, or start answering with what I know they want to hear? Giving honest answers is clearly NOT working for me. Can you shed some light on what I’m doing wrong here? And more importantly, what do I do about it?
Nobody likes to feel ignored—at least by people we like and particularly by the ones we love—but some people are particularly sensitive to it.
They feel it as a kind of peace-destroying personal injury that injects them with a festering dislike of their fellow human beings. This leads to a desire to learn wilderness skills or get a solo gig on a space station.
You’re the kind of person whom being ignored gets to, and if I asked you to change, you couldn’t help but ignore my request, even if you tried not to.
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