Posted by fxckfeelings on January 23, 2012
For those of us in the helping professions who overestimate our ability to help, (off-hour phone) calls for help can become a big problem. Whether you’re soft and sympathetic or blunt and tough, there’s no problem you can’t make worse by taking too much responsibility for messes that are beyond your (or anyone’s) control. If, on the other hand, you know the limits of your powers, you can respond to calls pleasantly, do your job, and still help someone without hurting your own sanity.
-Dr. Lastname
While most mental health clinicians would feel guilty admitting this, I’ve been in the biz for long enough that I don’t give a shit and I need to vent. Most of the crisis calls I get from my psychotherapy practice are senseless and irritating; they’re from patients who feel bad because they forgot to take their medications, or drank too much or when they shouldn’t, or allowed their demons to wreak vengeance on their enemies, the nearer the better, self best of all. A few call me because they’re feeling suicidal (but won’t go to the hospital) and just want me to make them feel better, which is hard when it’s late and I’m tired, and often impossible just because I don’t have that kind of power. I try to be civil, but their calls leave me feeling helpless and wondering whether I’m doing any good. Discussing their responsibility for their behavior is useless, because it usually makes them mad or apologetic. My goal is to figure out what to do with crisis calls that are really a useless pain in the ass.
Many crisis calls you receive as a shrink do a good job of showing off a patient’s worst behavior. It’s like having partial custody of a colicky child.
It’s not that their distress isn’t real and severe—it is, almost always—it’s that it causes self-defeating behavior, like drinking or mouthing off or retreating from the world, which creates a jam that is extra hard to get out of.
Bad feelings cause bad behavior, bad listening skills and bad regrets about going into the therapy business instead of owning a Toyota dealership. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 19, 2012
Sometimes, when you most need friendship, neediness messes it up. Maybe it’s a need for the wrong kind of person or for the wrong kinds of intimacy that are very satisfying in the short run and explode later. Ultimately, friendship isn’t the answer to your needs, but managing your needs will give you a good friendship.
-Dr. Lastname
I have always had a problem with keeping friendships because of moving too much, anxiety, and some other reasons. Almost every friend that has come into my life seems to be very needy and I tend to become anti-social when this happens. My current best friend has showed many signs of being very clingy and a bit controlling; she buys me things when she knows I am busy just so she can hang out with me, she calls me frequently even though she knows I dislike talking on the phone, she is demanding and apologetic at the same time. I am confused on what to do because she is always there for me and I can’t always be there for her. Lately, I have been having so much negative feelings about her that I don’t want to work on the relationship and this is exactly my problem—I lose people because I let my feelings get in the way. Maybe I am not finding the right people to hang out with? I mean we have so much in common, but that might be the problem because we both have severe anxiety and what we hate about life seems to be all we talk about, so it’s just negative energy most of the time. I will admit I am selfish and should be more thankful that I have someone that understands me and is there for me, but I guess I am too unhappy in my life and unhappy with myself to be appreciative of the goodness in others. It’s something I would like to work on, but I don’t even know where to begin.
Whatever draws people into relationships– neediness, sex, an encyclopedic knowledge of “Law & Order”—it isn’t necessarily good for you. When you’re operating on instinct, you stop thinking.
It sounds like you’ve got a good idea of what’s good for you, and it’s a friendship that discourages whining and encourages breathing room and independence. Nevertheless, you give in to the pull of your instinctive need for needy, whiny friends.
Once you give in, you’re stuck. You like the close attention and some of the intimacy, but you also don’t like the high demands and expectations, so you want to pull away. That leaves you guilty, lonely, and more in need of a needy friend. The shitty friendship cycle remains unbroken. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 22, 2011
Grief often stirs up regrets and needs, which can then weigh down your sadness with feelings of failure and make you sink further into general misery. You can’t stop having those feelings, but don’t give them equal time or heft. Grieving is about valuing what’s lost and carrying it forward, not holding onto everything until you sink. Do your grieving, and don’t let other feelings deter you or lower the value of your past or current relationships. Instead, choose to let the happy memories and important lessons push you forward in life.
-Dr. Lastname
Please Note: Our next post will be a week from today. Happy holidays, everyone! As always, we look forward to hearing from you if/when they aren’t.
I’m having a hard time since the death of my father. I was expecting the grief to be rough, but I thought I’d reached the acceptance stage and was starting to feel better. Then I noticed that my two sisters were able to talk and share memories much more easily with one another than they could with me, and suddenly I felt more alone than ever before. My wife is supportive, but I don’t want her to feel I don’t love her by telling her I feel alone. My goal is to get over this grief.
You probably were starting to recover from losing your father, but that’s when you experienced another loss—a broken connection with the people who should be the most understanding.
When you grieve the loss of parents with your siblings, a major source of comfort is knowing that, whatever your differences, you’re the only ones who remember the world of your family home and share the experience of growing up there. With that missing, you’ve got a double source of grief. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 17, 2011
Just as there are diseases that can compromise the human immune system, there are factors that can compromise our emotional immune systems, as well. If you’ve been abused or take too much pleasure in giving, you’re more susceptible, not just to bad relationships, but to more psychic damage from those relationships. There are ways for the emo-immuno-compromised to protect themselves by strengthening their minds and learning to avoid the kind of people that could hurt them the most. Until they develop a mental prophylactic, adopting strict self-standards is the best way for anyone to stay safe.
-Dr. Lastname
I was sexually abused quite a bit by my dad (and am de-repressing memories right now, fun-fun). I am realizing that I am very fearful of the people I love, and avoid them. Honestly, if I didn’t need to bond to keep from going insane, I would never have a close relationship, because anyone I care about enough can destroy me. But I’m in a lot of pain from loneliness as it is.
Many people believe there are tons of benefits to confronting your past, namely that it will teach you something that will bring catharsis to your present. The common notion being that if you can figure out what went wrong then you can avoid being victimized again.
The problem here is that reviving memories of sexual abuse by your dad will also bring back the old feelings of helplessness and having no choice, which, of course, is the opposite of your situation as an adult, so the lessons are the opposite of useful to your life now.
You’re not examining the past to drown yourself in feelings of helplessness, but to assure yourself that you can protect yourself from abuse. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 14, 2011
When you love someone who gets mentally ill and doesn’t recover, you may not only lose that part of their personality you loved the most, but also get stuck with a double dose of what you liked least. After all, it’s one thing to vow to be there in sickness and in health, but sickness and negativity and mania are usually more than most people bargain for. If your spouse’s mental illness makes your marriage unbearable, keep a lid on your negative feelings by respecting the burden life has put on both of you and refusing responsibility for putting things back the way they were. Once you can accept that sad reality, it’s time to figure out whether there’s room in your marriage for you, your spouse and the disease, or if your old vows no longer apply.
-Dr. Lastname
My wife suffers from non-medication responsive depression (we’ve done ECT’s, every med in the book, and she has a psychiatrist). She’s bitter and short to family; she goes off on the kids and then can turn around and be nice. I do all the work around the house, get the kids to activities, etc., and I’m wearing out. She comes home from work and just logs on her lap top and sits in front of the TV while I get dinner and clean up. She shows no affection towards me and I feel like a servant. When I complain or push her, she talks about killing herself and putting herself out of our misery (she’s been hospitalized several times) or just hurting herself (sometimes she cuts on her arms and legs). I’m getting to the point where I don’t like her anymore. She just seems to have given up. Nothing interests her, nothing tastes good…she gets no enjoyment from anything. What can I do? She’s in her forties, now, but she struggled with depression in her twenties and this current bout has been going on for 5 years. Her doctor and therapist are really committed to her, but it seems like she doesn’t care, like she enjoys being miserable. Sometimes I feel like I’m spiraling down with her, but I’m not going to give up. If I just stand by, she seems to just sink lower, but I can’t leave, because she’s said that the kids and I are the only reason she’s still alive.
If you’re like most married people, you become dependent on your spouse for a positive response, no matter how independent you are as an individual. You married her because you respect her opinion and take pleasure in her approval. You make her happy, everyone feels good. You see the problem here.
So it’s normal to feel bitterly disappointed and deflated when depression turns her into a grouchy, nasty, unappreciative, unaffectionate black hole who threatens suicide if you criticize her and never does her share.
It’s not just the lack of approval from her that’s bothering you, it’s the overabundance of disapproval, of you and everything else. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 3, 2011
When people who look smart and capable perform poorly, we assume they can do better, and if we can only bless that co-worker/child/local sports team with more encouragement, they’ll be able to come out on top. Trouble is, many of the obstacles to good performance are big, bad, and beyond our understanding, and that’s when a “can-do” attitude becomes a burden and a curse to those who look so capable but are actually “can’t-don’t”s. So, when encouragement becomes discouraging, keep your positivity up, just lower your expectations.
-Dr. Lastname
Is the habit of procrastination a reality that cannot be changed, or not? I often find myself procrastinating so long that something I feel I want to do or should be doing is no longer possible to do. Then I feel terrible about myself and berate myself. Should I give up those dreams/things I want to do or should I plug on and do the best I can, hoping that I can overcome procrastination enough to actually accomplish a few things?
Berating yourself whenever any bad habit gets the better of you can make you feel weak, angry, hopeless, etc. The one thing it can’t do is make that habit go away.
On the plus side, your frustration shows that you care about doing better, but self-blame leaves you feeling weak, angry, hopeless, etc., which makes it harder for you to get out of your chair and start catching up.
While logic dictates that finding the source of a problem will lead you to the solution, trying to find out why you procrastinate doesn’t usually help. For one (deliciously ironic) thing, it gives you a reason to avoid doing what you need to do. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on October 10, 2011
Whether you feel you’re in the right or in the wrong, defining your moral position in terms of someone else’s feelings is going to get you lost. If you feel you’re in the wrong, you don’t have to win forgiveness to make it right. If you feel wronged, trying to get an apology will probably making the wronging worse. If you’re doing what’s right, it won’t matter how people respond; having confidence in carefully considered choices will keep you on course.
-Dr. Lastname
I was a terrible mother to my kids when they were younger—I yelled all the time and even hit them, and my husband had good reason to divorce me and allow nothing but occasional custody. Still, I love them dearly and I’ve always wanted to make amends; we’re all older now (they’re in their 20s), I’m a lot calmer after a lot of therapy to work through my anger issues. I’d do anything to help them, but one of them threatens to stop talking to me if I mention the fact that she drinks too much, and the other is polite but pretty distant. I feel I can’t get through to either of them because the mistakes of my past have ruined things forever. What can I do to mend our relationship?
I don’t doubt you want to help your kids, but that help comes with a high price– forgiveness for being an asshole when they were younger.
That was years ago, though, and you’ve continued to care for them and pay for them while learning to control your behavior (their being older probably helped). So before you ask how to get their forgiveness, ask what you have to do to forgive yourself. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 22, 2011
No matter how many times we say that no love is so powerful that it should render one powerless, we keep getting emails about broken hearts, broken promises, and the resulting broken lives. When love pushes you to fuck up your life and/or someone else’s, it’s your choice to either fight to stay in control or say, well, love is all you want, so whatever happens must be worthwhile. You might be in love, but you’re not without choices. And if/when you make the wrong choice, you can always choose to write us.
-Dr. Lastname
When my son was born 30 years ago, I met two other moms and we became friends. Although with partners, we shared the same interests and our kids got along well, and we spent the next years as very good friends doing lots of things together and with the children-one of those friends even married my brother (one son and three years later, they divorced). At the same time, I met a new partner (I was now separated from my son’s father), and we spent the next 27 years having a very on-off relationship. It’s difficult to sum up all those years but I think I can say that I probably cried through most of it! I should have left, I didn’t, he wasn’t committed, I was, I wanted a family life, he didn’t. I’m not perfect and I didn’t always behave well. Five years ago he had a son by another, not partner, woman and when that didn’t work out he and I got together again. Then last year, I invited my friend/ex sister-in-law to lunch with us, and they got together. The shock was immense … and it’s not so much the loss of either but this terrible feeling that I have been used as a sort of dating service by my friend and I just can’t get rid of this feeling of betrayal. It’s now a year on and I haven’t seen them since, and the emotional hurt is a lot less– I have done lots of new things, made new friends, and life is rosier, but I have this constant anxiety that this friend is going to take someone else from me – my sister? my other brother? and, worst of all, I have this strange fear that it will be my son. I would like to be happy for my ex and my friend, but I can’t. I protect myself by staying away but I have this huge sense of loss that I have lost this whole part of my life. I need to let go of this underlying anxiety that I am going to lose someone to her again.
When it comes to kids, we expect parents not to expose them to unnecessary rejections and losses from adults they’ll get attached to, who will then go away. When it comes to how parents protect their own hearts, however, the same standards don’t seem to apply, even though, as your experience shows, they really should.
Yes, I understand, you’ve loved a guy for 27 years, but it was always off-and-on, causing you intermittent heartache and wasting your opportunity for something better. You wouldn’t have needed a shrink, psychic, or your average plumber to predict a sad end to all you invested in him and his family.
That doesn’t mean your love was meaningless or less than real. It was powerful, at least for you. Like a good mother, however, your job is to protect yourself from real attachments that can’t work, and you haven’t done that. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 15, 2011
As diseases go, mental illness is a doozy to treat; some mentally ill people are too humiliated to ask for help, and others are too crazy to ask. If you want to help them (or yourself), keep in mind that it’s the illness, stupid, which distorts the attitude towards treatment. Use the same logic and moral values for mental health treatment decisions that you would use for other illnesses; there’s nothing humiliating about getting sick, no matter what a sick brain decides.
-Dr. Lastname
I have been wrestling with depression for years now and my maternal side of the family has a history of depression and suicide. I don’t feel that I can do this on my own anymore and need help. I don’t want to just take a medical cocktail of antidepressants. My question to you is how do I go about finding a therapist and/or doctor that will be most helpful to me.
The first step for getting treatment for your depression seems simple– don’t get depressed about treatment for depression. After all, depression’s just another form of pain unless it twists your thoughts into thinking that not getting rid of it is a kind of failure that marks a meaningless life.
As long as you realize depression is a persistent ailment, just like persistent back pain or diabetes, you’ll have an easy time making treatment decisions because you won’t regard using treatment as evidence of weakness. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 12, 2011
When it comes to the doorway of self-respect, some people are doormats while others are battering rams. The key (pun intended) to respecting yourself is being sensible about assigning blame; not everything is your fault, not every person can be helped, and no insult is worth taking to heart. So instead of allowing yourself to be stepped on or administer punishment, judge yourself fairly and stand firm.
-Dr. Lastname
My best friend and I got together after 9 years of friendship. A couple of years before we got together, I was with a guy that my best friend absolutely hates and also works quite closely with. My friend and I love each other immensely, but after only six months it was all over and done with; his trust and jealousy issues got the better of him in our relationship even though there was no basis for it, and he called it off as he knows that won’t change about himself. While he loves me, he wants us to be in each other’s lives forever so broke it off. I thought it was something we could work on so never really gave up hope that he would return. We finally had a proper talk about all of it, however, and now I get that he is never coming back to me, but I still don’t know how to reconcile that. How can he give up on himself and his chance of love, and how do I stop beating myself up over the guilt I feel for being with that previous guy, when all that goes through my head is that had I not done that, we could still be together? I feel like I ruined what could have been the best thing in my life and don’t really know how to move on, especially when all I want is for him to have a main role in my life. How do I separate my friendship and feelings? How do I stop hating myself for what I’ve done?
Many people hate themselves whenever something goes wrong, picking apart everything they might have done different, from bringing an umbrella to not swinging on a pitch that was down in the dirt.
As long as you don’t think too hard, there’s no difference between could have and should have, leaving you with heaps of regret (along with ruined shoes and/or play-off chances). WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
