Posted by fxckfeelings on December 10, 2009
Most of us make a big deal out of apologies, but the sad truth is that “sorry” doesn’t serve as a guarantee of lessons learned or absolution, just a band-aid on our hurt feelings until one party messes up again. For all our emphasis on forgiveness, it’s hardly a virtue, Christian or otherwise, if it requires you to assume that people have more choices than they really do.
–Dr. Lastname
My daughter is turning into a petty criminal. She’s getting kicked out of school again, she won’t stop messing around with drinking and drugs, she has unprotected sex, and her boyfriend is probably the guy who broke into our house and stole our TV, though she refuses to believe it. My husband and I have tried so many times to get her to see what she’s doing wrong and steer her in a better direction—we’re our own private “scared straight” program at this point—but every time we confront her about where she’s headed, she says she feels terrible, that she’s sorry, that she never wants it to happen again…and then she gets wasted and everything repeats itself. If only we could get her to understand the harm she’s doing, maybe we could get through to her and turn her around. Meanwhile, it’s killing us. We try to forgive her, but it’s hard. My goal is to forgive her and get her to see what she’s doing to herself and everyone who loves her.
There’s no point in getting your daughter to see what she’s doing wrong if she can’t really stop herself from doing it, and she really, really can’t. You can’t scare straightness into a boomerang.
Regret and remorse will make her feel bad, and you might think that will stop her from fucking up next time. Well, au contraire, my dear unHarvard-educated sap. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. You should know that since you’re the one missing a TV.
According to Christmas movies and sentimental parts of the Bible, repentance leads to redemption, but I say, goddammit, that’s just wishful bullshit.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 30, 2009
Seeing someone through a long illness makes saying goodbye a little easier, but that’s like saying that lifting weights makes it easier to lift a truck; losing someone you love is an impossible, painful task, no matter what the circumstances. You don’t protect them from death by protecting them from death, but by bearing the sorrow of their memories.
–Dr. Lastname
My father, a Holocaust survivor, is dying of cancer. I’m his only child, and while my mother is doing the best she can, I feel overwhelmed with responsibility and grief. I don’t know how to stop feeling so helpless, not just because I love him and can’t save him, but because he overcame so much to make life possible for me, and now all I can do is watch him die. My goal is to figure out what I can do for him since he’s done so much for me.
Don’t fall for the common misconception that you fulfill your duty to your parents by taking care of them and keeping them safe when they’re old. As a genuine geezer, Dr. Lastname can tell you with authority: you can’t, and it’s not your duty anyway.
No, I’m not telling you to push your dad out on an ice flow or forget about him, not for a moment. I am telling you to think about two things: what your goal will be for your kids when you get old and need their help, and how little you can do for anyone when they’re suffering from old age.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 19, 2009
Unless you’re holding a weapon, getting someone to do something they don’t want to with a simple request is virtually impossible. Even harder, however, is getting someone to do something they don’t want to do by passively nudging them; now both the request and the delivery of the request are so repellent that you’ve guaranteed a bad outcome. Taking a stand isn’t easy, and jebus knows it’s often a bad idea, but when it has to be done, you need to cowboy up and be direct, weapon or no.
–Dr. Lastname
Lately, I’ve been trying to get my life together, and part of that is quitting drinking; my fiancé and I are actually getting sober together. The problem in all this is my mother; she lives nearby and comes over often (believing she is providing “moral support” for turning my life around), and, for whatever reason, no matter what the occasion, she brings a bottle of wine as a gift and makes a really big deal about the vintage and how refined it is and all this nonsense. I guess she doesn’t really understand that drinking is a big source of my problems, and both my fiancé and I have dropped hints to that effect, but it’s not getting through, and so, surprise, it’s messing with our sobriety. My goal is to get through to my mother that, while I appreciate her kindness, she’s actually being kind of cruel.
When you decide it’s necessary to get a grip on any powerful hard-to-control behavior, your goal is not to get people to take the hint that they should avoid tempting you. (Hint, hint—you’re being a wuss).
If you’re hinting, it’s because you’re afraid to tell people, straight out, that you’re trying to get sober, and that means that you’re more worried about what they think than about your reasons for not drinking. Your sobriety doesn’t stand a chance; you’re not strong enough.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 12, 2009
Boundary issues are always a fun topic for us at fxckfeelings.com; from those who want to get too close to those who push others too far away, people are always clashing over personal territory while assuming the other guy is violating the rules. But what if we’re wired to see our territories differently and talking about it just gets everyone more annoyed? That’s when your goal gets more interesting.
–Dr. Lastname
My next door neighbor is your typical Mrs. Kravitz…always in my business asking me personal questions. Lately, she’s taken to walking into my driveway while I am working to get more dirt. My proposed solution to remedy the uninvited driveway visits is to add on to the existing fence, cutting down the easy access. I don’t want to have a conversation about “why” I am putting up the fence, so I am just going to do it without letting her know. My only fear is that there will be some kind of future confrontation because this neighbor gets insulted at the drop of a hat. My goal is to protect my boundaries, one way or the other, without having an angry neighbor to deal with for the next 30 years.
Using a fence to block out your neighbor’s intrusive curiosity may work…unless it actually does the opposite.
After all, it may just serve to whet her appetite, and pretty soon, she’ll have you under 24 hour surveillance with Predator overflights and under-eaves webcams. You’ll look like Wile E. Coyote writing away to Acme (or the German Democratic Republic) for ever-more-advanced fencing.
In other words, your goal isn’t to stop her, but to try. If your goal is to stop someone from prying when you can’t, you’ll go nuts, and your helplessness will draw her like a magnet (and your misery will draw you to me like a magnet, trust me).
If you begin by admitting you might well be fucked, then you’ll probably try cheaper options first (unless you already have).
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 29, 2009
When people feel most powerless, they instinctively attempt to exert as much control as they can; even—especially—when they have less control than ever. In those situations, they go to the one thing over which they feel they’ll always have control, which is their own life, or the lives of those closest to them, but the more they discuss whether or not to continue life, the more they make that life difficult. Ultimately, it’s best not to ask “should I live,” but to admit—you guessed it—”I am fucked.”
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t seem to make a decision about the life/death issue. I want to want to live, or have the balls to call it quits. Shit or get off the pot. It takes too much damn energy vacillating.
“To be or not to be”—that’s still the question, right? Well, it’s also a question I never like to answer or hear.
Shakespeare or no, it’s a bad question to ask, because most people who ask it don’t really want an answer; they want an antidote to their hurt or someone to blame for not providing it.
It’s similar to the way Boston taxi drivers ask the passenger whether to take the Pike or Storrow to Logan airport — to have someone else to blame when, either way, they inevitably run into heavy traffic.
I know, the question expresses your deepest feelings. It also wears out friends, drives them away/proves that no one can help, and confirms your right to be very, very unhappy. The whole cycle sucks and it’s unhealthy. Keep asking it, and somebody will go ahead and hurt you more.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 26, 2009
Like the injured gazelle at the watering hole, human beings also have an instinct to conceal their weakened status; often, our worst fear isn’t being set upon by unknown predators, but by those close to us, who will be disappointed when our wounds impair our usual performance. Even a gazelle, however, would realize that, when wounded, putting pride and other people’s needs first is ridiculous.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m an early middle-aged woman, lucky enough to have the problems that come with getting saner and older. I grew up in one of those sad alcoholic homes from which I never gave up working to extricate myself. I screwed life up at first but have been recovered from alcoholism over twenty years, similarly recovered from eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia, binge eating), returned to the school I had ditched to finally graduate with honors, kept jobs (now retired) and, a real miracle, I have been married to a terrific guy in my sobriety and am (for real) happily married. I have solid loving friends. I’ve seen therapists for the depression, which intermittently interferes but even found a half-assed but useful medication. A good life…except for the real problems that come with age. That wonderful husband has a couple of chronic diseases, my best friend died of the cancer I survived, and everyone is dead in my small original family. I am experiencing that trapped childhood feeling of being in a world in which I am helpless and those I love are hopeless and going away. I realize I must just feel the hurt and keep on anyway, but I am tired, and my stamina is more fragile now. I disappoint those I love and make mistakes more. Goal in writing you: To get a better grip on myself and accept more deeply that I cannot change the pain of life. I would like to not keep blaming myself, a old bad habit that lingers. Sorry I’ve gone on so long but I guess I wanted to show that I have really tried to help others and myself even if I’m whining now.
You see your goal as rising above the pain of aging, but you can’t fool me (remember, I went to Harvard): your deeper goal is to help people, to the point that their aging has worn you down and caused you to forget that you have other goals. For example, not getting worn down unless it’s really necessary.
So it’s not aging that’s your problem, but what aging has done to your ability to help others while keeping your priorities straight. That’s what I think is causing you the most grief. After all, if you were old but weren’t as responsive to the needs of others, all you’d have to worry about is your bad back and Tivo’ing NCIS.
On top of ascertaining your real goal, I can also guess you’re not from Samaria, so you don’t have a Samaritan license (funny, you don’t look Samaritan). That’s the first thing that’s wrong with your initial goal—wanting too much to help others.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 22, 2009
When different members of one family worship more than one god, life can become an unholy mess. If all parties can appreciate each other, however, and share the same values—even if they attribute their higher motivations to be good to different sources—then religion doesn’t have a goddamned thing to do with the love that a family shares.
–Dr. Lastname
My wife is Jewish, and I’m not (I’m a severely lapsed Catholic). Our oldest kid is about to enter school, and my wife has put it on the table that she wants him to go to a Jewish private school, which is surprising to me, not just because I’m not Jewish, but because my wife isn’t that religious at all—we go to celebrate a couple of holidays a year at her parents’ house but we never go to temple or anything. Now she wants our son to learn Hebrew, and I don’t get it, not just because she’s never cared before, but because if she’s worried about getting him a good education, Catholic schools are cheaper and he doesn’t need to learn a new alphabet. I don’t know how to get into this discussion without opening a huge holy can of worms, which is so strange considering how small a role religion has played in our married life up to now. My goal is to figure this out without stepping on any landmines or having my son end up studying and entering a religion I myself don’t practice (nor does my wife!).
If you stick with your own kind, be they your same religion, race, or member of the same area Trekker group, you can take lots of things for granted. It’s easier, there’s less pain, and you share common holidays, religious education, and strange-smelling foods.
Then again, maybe you knew what you were doing when you married outside the clan; it’s going to be a lot more interesting. Of course, if you dislike negotiation and conflict, you should have stayed away from Jews [disclaimer: Dr. Lastname is a proud member of the tribe].
If you can accept the fact that there are some painful, unavoidable differences between you and your wife, however, then you can start working on defining your areas of commonality and difference and find respectful ways to compromise without incurring any wrath, be it God’s or your wife’s.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 15, 2009
Accepting that we are all fucked by life is a basic tenet of the f*ckfeelings.com philosophy; there’s a certain zen to it, as we encourage not just being one with the universe and its glory but also with its amber waves of pain. For people who suffer from depression, pain makes an obvious attempt to define your life goal as “I’ve got to stop this.” But killing pain, as desirable as it is, will always compound your troubles if you make it your goal. Your goal is your goal and pain is pain and never the twain should meet.
–Dr. Lastname
I have been struggling with depression for most of my adult life, and I do mean struggling. No matter how many times I find myself going through months at a time of feeling hopeless, angry, and miserable, I know it’s a treatable illness—a chemical imbalance— nd that there must be a way to control it. Over the past twenty years, I’ve been through a handful of shrinks and at least a dozen medications, because no matter how bad it gets, I’ve refused to give up looking for the treatment that will allow me to fulfill the promise of my otherwise lucky life. The problem is that, twenty years into this battle, and I’m still not winning. Treatment works for a while, and just when it seems like things are finally working out for me and I’m in the clear, everything falls apart again. My goal is to figure out how—with what treatment, medication, game plan—to get control of this disease and live a normal life, because I’m stronger than this, and I refuse to let depression get the last laugh.
Hold up—did I miss the morning’s headlines that declared depression a curable illness? Up until yesterday, it wasn’t, and when you think about it, the list of truly curable diseases is an adorably short one. Really, unless you’ve got athlete’s foot, you’re probably shit out of luck.
That said, it doesn’t mean you should shoot yourself unless you’re similarly upset by the incurability of hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, high cholesterol, and all the other illnesses that most of us get, sooner or later. Even athlete’s foot isn’t worth it.
The issue here is that if you think that beating an illness means getting rid of it, you’ve lost before you’ve begun to fight. And if that illness is depression, then losing means getting more depressed, which means becoming a bigger loser, ad infinitum.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 13, 2009
Sometimes, knowing is indeed half the battle, at least if you’re talking about where you left your car keys or the answers to a math test. When it comes to tracing the origins of your behavior, however, pinning your temper on dad or your bad taste in men on bad boys isn’t going to lead you to a nicer, smarter you. Knowing why you’re a prick won’t make you better; not being a prick will, regardless of where the fault for your prickish genes lies.
–Dr. Lastname
It’s been a tough year (surprise), and so I’ve been a little more quick to anger than I usually am, and I tend to have a few more beers after work than I would normally have. Things with my wife were kind of rough because of all of this, so she told me to see a therapist, and for the sake of my marriage, I agreed, because losing my wife would be the worst thing that could happen. Six months or so ago, my therapist started asking me about my childhood, and it finally clicked that my dad also had a really bad temper, and was also a pretty lousy drunk, but I’d never really thought of him that way, and I’d never really made the connection to my own behavior. My therapist was really pleased at my breakthrough, but here I am, six months later, and I don’t feel any better, and my wife is ready to leave if I don’t stop yelling at her. My goal is to use what I’ve learned in therapy to solve my problems, but what is it I haven’t figured out, why do I keep acting this way, and why am I spending money on therapy if I’m getting nowhere?
Once psychotherapy helps you figure out where your mean streak comes from, you can write an interesting book about it and, usually, blame it on a brutal ancestor and tell Oprah all about it.
What all that hard-earned knowledge probably won’t help you much with is keeping you in check the next time you get irritable and/or drunk. Bad daddy or no, what will help you a lot more is to get sober and learn how to shut the fuck up.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 8, 2009
It’s easy, when someone can’t control their behavior, to assume that they are evil, stubborn, or somehow defective and that you’ve got to get through to them, one way or another (not so nice) way. Just because someone can’t behave, however, doesn’t mean s/he’s evil and/or totally resistant to your values; and just because you’re getting nowhere with them doesn’t mean they won’t get it together eventually. It’s easy to write someone off, and it’s easy to be written off, but if you’re hoping to work through a problem instead of just blame someone for it, the only thing incurably defective in these scenarios is the moralizing.
–Dr. Lastname
My older daughter just turned 10, and I’m fairly certain that she is pure evil. My wife and I are not bad people—no family history of mental illness, either—but our older daughter, who looks like a normal little girl, says such nasty things to her little sister that it would make your head spin. Our younger daughter, who’s 7, thinks her sister is a miserable terror, and I have to say, I agree with her; the stuff that comes out of our 10-year-old’s mouth is so cruel, I’m almost in awe of it. My wife and I have sat her down and asked her if she acknowledges how awful her words are, how much it hurts her little sister, and how serious we are about how much she needs to change her attitude. Since then, our older has been less mouthy with us, but just as terrible to her little sister, and we have no idea how to make it stop. My goal is to stop my older daughter from being so mean—that is, if she’s not just satanic and hopeless. I’d really like to get her to understand what she’s doing and why she needs to stop (if I can get that through her evil mind).
As those Spanish Inquisition cardinals learned while swishing around in their gorgeous red gowns, any effort to stamp out the devil gives him a giant energy boost and brings him (or her) to dramatic life.
This is because most of us—even the best of us, like David Letterman—have some devilish impulses that bust out when we’re tired, or rubbed the wrong way, and generally when our control is far from perfect.
So when someone tries to eradicate our wickedness, we may initially agree with their goals. Sooner or later, however, when our impulses don’t cooperate by disappearing, self-hate and shame get stronger and, yes, you guessed it, feed the nasty impulses, whatever they are. The cardinals get to meet the very devil they were trying to exorcise, and the devil’s poor host snarls back and throws up pea soup. A classic vicious circle.
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