I think my girlfriend is basically committed to me (after 4 years of our having a steady relationship, despite living in different cities). After much backing-and-filling and hemming-and-hawing, she introduced me to her 3 kids and her ex. The problem, I think, is that her ex-husband is an evil drama-monster who bludgeoned her with tantrums, legal threats, and ultimatums until she would do anything to appease him. It makes her a total wuss with the kids and interferes with her availability for our relationship. That makes me push her sometimes, which makes her jump like she’s been scalded and trapped between two powerful, demanding masters. I don’t think she’s into dominant men any more (at least, I don’t see myself as one), but my goal is to help her resist her evil ex without making her feel she’s doing it to appease me.

No matter how nice your girlfriend is, if she’s over-reactive to an evil ex, you can find yourself getting irritated, worried, and sometimes outraged. You’re sorry she has trouble setting limits with the guy, but you sure don’t want him to control your life.

If she doesn’t learn how to manage him and the feelings he stirs up in her, however, that’s what will happen, and your relationship will be riddled with the drama you’re both trying to avoid (and also become very crowded).

That doesn’t mean, of course, that she loves him more than you; he just has the power to make her more frightened or guilty than you do, because he isn’t as “nice”, and she doesn’t know what to do with those feelings other than appease him.

Of course, that may tempt you to fight back by showing her that you’re just as good at making her feel bad, which would turn you into a chair-slinger in someone else’s soap opera (as well as something of a jerk), and it’s clear you’re not letting that happen. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a relationship with him if you want a relationship with her.

Your best weapon is the same one we use as shrinks (and the one you seem to be using now); coach her to see a better, though not comfortable, alternative, urging her to use a lawyer to figure out when she can say “no” and what to say to her ex and kids if they attack her for being mean or unreasonable. Support her in doing what she believes is right and what will work out better, rather than in doing what will make you happy or her less stressed. Odds are, if an action is right and reasonable, it’s guaranteed to make her ex pounce.

Continue to offer her your positive perspective; she’s a good woman who has done her job as a mother and can do a better job by learning to say no. In doing so, her best therapist is her lawyer (used not for venting feelings, but for information about standards and consequences).

If she can’t make progress with that approach, then the package is what it is, and you’ll need to take it or leave it. What seems to be happening, however, is that she’s getting tougher, in part because you know how to keep a lid on your negative feelings while giving good advice. Her ex puts a burden on your life, but he doesn’t control it, and he doesn’t have to ruin the life you and your girlfriend share.

STATEMENT:
“My girlfriend’s wussiness about her ex drives me crazy, but I know she’s a good, responsible person who’s come a long way in learning how to take a stand. It’s been frustrating, and often feels like work, but I’ve done a good job managing my anger, she’s doing better at managing her fear, and we both continue to feel the relationship is worth it.”

My ex-husband has the divorce court judge in his pocket and it’s driving me crazy. Regardless of our divorce agreement, he takes me back to court every year for additional money for our daughter’s residential treatment (she has as addiction problems), and the judge buys his story in spite of its being full of lies and bullshit. He says I have money I don’t have—I can no longer afford a lawyer. He wants me to pay for a fancy, private facility that won’t take our insurance when there’s a good one in our insurance company’s network. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I want my daughter to get treatment as much as my husband does, but what I really want is for that judge to know how wrong he is to think I’m a skinflint and allow my ex to torture me year after year.

Unless you grew up with parents who were always fair and unbiased, you know there’s a real danger in expecting justice. The more justified you are in feeling screwed by the judge/parent, the bigger the danger.

Yes, you’d hope that expressions of injured innocence would get him/her to reconsider and, in a fair world, that’s what would happen. In this world, however, expressing negative feelings about a judge’s judgment usually makes the judge feel attacked and insecure, particularly if you’re angry and right. Not only does justice does not ensue, your hole gets deeper, as does your injury, anger, and tendency to make more trouble for yourself.

If your ex-husband is an Asshole (readers of this blog understand that I use this term diagnostically, and not pejoratively), he truly believes he’s a righteous defender of the weak, so it’s not hard to see why a judge who doesn’t know him would be taken in. If you then attack him, you’ll look like the angry girl your ex says you are.

So put the same lid on venting outrage as you do on alcohol; stay sober, and stay quiet. Remember, keeping negative feelings inside is not nearly as bad as letting them out in front of the wrong audience.

Now that you’re ready to eat your shit sandwich—cry if you must, but please don’t bring it up again—you’re ready to say something positive about your own plan for your daughter. Namely, that you want her to get help as much as your ex does, but you expect her to need help for a long time and you’re trying to save money now, because she’ll need it later. That’s why you’re trying to save on legal bills and don’t want to pay for the best intervention program when the difference between best and good is not worth it.

Don’t get distracted by the judge’s willingness to believe you’re a bad, stingy parent and don’t defend yourself by attacking his judgment or the unfairness of being dragged back into court. Stay on message: talk about your concern for your daughter and your belief in the advantages of your plan.

Given time and no attacks from you, the judge will probably catch on to your Asshole husband’s bullshit, particularly if you stick to your agenda and don’t push his buttons. You might not get perfect justice, but you’ll get a good feeling of pride for having expressed yourself as a caring mother, without getting screwed by him and your old negative feelings.

STATEMENT:
“It’s horrible to feel I can be dragged back into court at any time, to be judged by someone who believes I’m an asshole no matter what I say or do, but that’s life. I know I’m ready to do right by my daughter and that I’ve got a good plan. Beyond that, I don’t control.”

Approximately three years ago I realized my psychiatrist preferred other patients and liked other patients more than me. That realization was incredibly devastating to me. I want to deal with this reality, however, my psychiatrist keeps denying this is the reality and will not openly admit he does indeed prefer other patients. Part of me that hopes (wishes) this truly is not the reality (him preferring other patients) and I TRY to believe that what he says is the reality! However, I simply can’t believe him. I have told him I can’t believe something that I think isn’t true. Even though he has helped me immensely in many ways, and I’m extremely attached to him, I have lost trust, confidence and faith in my psychiatrist over this issue. I think he is preventing me from having the opportunity to deal with reality by denying he prefers other patients. I have a need to hear him say, “Yes I do prefer other patients and your observations/perceptions about this have been accurate.” I think if I hear him say these words I could actually work to deal with it. Since he’s obviously not prepared to say this, MY GOAL is to somehow “detach” from him, stop therapy with him and move on and forget about it.

When you do therapy right, a shrink is like a thesis advisor, helping you explore the toughest issues in your life until your work is complete.

If you lean on therapy too much, however (sometimes through no choice of your own), a shrink is a crutch, which makes deciding when and how to end therapy much more complicated. Remove the cast too early, and you still can’t walk on your own.

So, while it’s a reasonable goal for you to reduce your attachment to your psychiatrist, it’s only worth doing if you think you’ll get through it intact.

The truth is, it’s never a great idea to get attached to psychiatrists or therapists of any kind unless you think it’s really necessary; we cost a lot, the meetings don’t last long, and we’re not all that friendly, really, judging from the way we talk about one another. Most importantly, whatever you imagine you’ll eventually get from the relationship, like unconditional love or feeling like a favored child, doesn’t usually happen.

If what you think you’re getting, however, is a mental stability that you might not have otherwise, then you may be better off sticking with your shrink, regardless of feeling humiliated or rejected by not being his favorite.

As to wanting him to tell you where you really stand in his patient hit parade, ask yourself whether you’ll really be satisfied with his answer; if he tells you that you have “most favored patient” status, you’ll doubt whether he means it, and if he tells you that he likes someone else more, you may not feel so hot about that, either.

That’s the problem with most people who have unsettling doubts about someone they’re close to; they become obsessed with confirming their fears until their doubts damage the relationship and, voila, their fears are confirmed. Instead of going that route, it’s better to shut up or change the subject. Since you’ve been on that route for so long, however, that’s going to be tough.

For now, find goals for your treatment that are less dependent on how you and your psychiatrist feel about one another. Ask yourself what you’d like to change, and look at your psychiatrist as Professor Problems, whom you’ve hired to help you make that change. Judge him as you would any teacher or tradesman, not just by whether you get along but by how well he’s doing the job you hired him for.

In the end, you may manage your strong attachment more safely and effectively if, instead of stopping therapy abruptly, you focus on what you want your hired guy to do for you and confine your conversation to this topic. Make it less about how you feel about one another and more about what you want him to help you do.

If you can’t get past your fixation on his favorites, you should probably look for someone else. After all, this Professor Problems has got you thinking too much about him and you, instead of your true field of study—living life more effectively.

STATEMENT:
“My feelings for my psychiatrist are full of doubt, mistrust, and hurt, but there’s no way, after more than 3 years of trying, that I can make those feelings go away. What I can do, however, is decide whether the value of treatment is worth putting up with those feelings and, if so, start to see him as seldom as possible while using what I’ve learned from treatment to live my life.”

I can tolerate the fact that my son lives with a drug addict, but it’s hard. He’s a good-hearted kid who believes his love will eventually win her over to sobriety. Meanwhile, she never stays clean for long and always winds up stealing from him and prostituting to feed her habit. As a result, though my son works hard, they never have enough money and always wind up skipping out on the landlord or squatting. I make sure he has enough to eat, but I can’t give him anything without its winding up in her hands. He defends her when I call her a thief and a whore. My goal is to rescue him, and I’m getting nowhere.

You want to save your son from a destructive girlfriend and he wants to save her from herself and since you’re both going about it all wrong, allow me to save you a lot of trouble.

You can’t help anyone by taking responsibility for their fates or feelings; in fact, the more you push them with anger or urgency, the more they define themselves by pushing back, rather than by figuring out what they need to do for themselves. If you want to help, you’ve got to control your urges, much as you want them to control theirs.

So instead of making it your goal to save him, try to build his ability to save himself. Instead of pulling him from his girlfriend by damning her faults, respect his love and altruism while encouraging him to think about where it leads and how it conflicts with the other good things he wishes to do in this world.

If you know what it’s like to want to save someone whom it’s not in your power to save (and you do know this topic), share your awareness of how easily the saving obsession can endanger your other goals, commitments, safety and security. Tell him that you once thought that love can heal vulnerable souls, but that it doesn’t. Suggest that he will have a little more power to help her if he builds his independence, keeps his money out of her hands, and provides her with support when she’s clean.

If he objects that the only way to support her is by showing her consistent love and support, insist that you agree, excepting what he means by “love.” You believe it takes more love to do something good for someone that they won’t like than it does to give them what they want, which, if they’re addicts, is almost always bad for them.

So, instead of pulling him away from her, insist that he will do more to help her by doing the right thing himself, welcoming her when she accepts his values, and keeping his distance when she doesn’t, or can’t. In other words, setting a good example is the best way to set him straight.

STATEMENT:
“It kills me to see my son bleed himself dry for a sick, selfish, undeserving shithead of a girlfriend, but I respect his strengths and I can show him how to love someone without taking responsibility for his or her self-destructive behavior.”

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).

Trouble is, the only way to defend your self-respect when things go wrong is to ask yourself whether you did your best and then believe in the answer. Otherwise, you’ve given yourself total responsibility for all bad things, which is pretty unfair (as unfair as having your “best friend” be jealous of a guy you dated years ago).

If you accept total responsibility for all sorrows, you also have no way of judging anyone else’s contribution; by deciding that you’re the one who fucked up/the one guilty party, you give any offending assholes involved a clean record and lose your ability to defend against them.

If you look back at the situation with a clearer head, you’ll see that a lot of what went wrong wasn’t just someone else’s fault, but completely out of your control. After all, you can wish you’d brought an umbrella, but you can’t beat yourself up for making it rain in the first place.

So stop giving yourself grief for losing your “one true love” and apply your own standards of right and wrong. By your standards, there was nothing wrong with your brief relationship with the guy Mr. True-love happens to hate, and there was no reason you could think of why, two years later, he should still get jealous enough to throw away the good thing you had going.

Instead of giving yourself a hard time, ask yourself whether intense jealousy that appears for no reason is likely to go away, and what it’s like to live with someone who’s jealous and suspicious and feels entitled to make it your problem. In other words, consider not just the circumstances for what caused things to fall apart, or how painful it feels, but the actual value of what was lost.

Relationships don’t need love as much as trust; if he couldn’t bring it to the table from the get-go, you’re biggest mistake was letting feelings instead of thinking guide you forward. You’re doing the same now, but you can separate your friendship from your pain if you can see your ex as the flawed, less-than-ideal partner that he is and adjust your expectations of him accordingly. It’s not a painless process, but it’s necessary if you want to stop torturing yourself, which is more painful (and much more useless) in the long run.

You wouldn’t punish a kid for doing nothing wrong: don’t do it to yourself. Be a fair judge, and, while it’s true, you’ll never cure your ex-beloved’s jealousy or win him back, you’ll treat yourself fairly and protect yourself from taking responsibility for your ex’s dark side.

When you learn to see the red flags, you’ll stop blaming and start crediting yourself for the preparation it takes to avoid heartbreak, rain, a fastball, or anything else.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help missing the love we had, but I know that, for some people, jealousy is a curse that can’t be controlled and it’s impossible to live with. Next time, no matter how nice he is, if a guy tells me that jealousy has destroyed his relationships, I’ll stay away.”

I don’t know how to keep my daughter out of trouble, particularly since she doesn’t want help. She’s always flown into rages whenever she’s frustrated, and it got worse as she got older. She has learning disabilities, so she was often frustrated, and I feel for her, but the worst part is that she blames everyone else and thinks she has a right to hit anyone who deserves it, meaning anyone who makes her angry or “disrespects her” or “causes drama.” Now, at age 21, she’s living with me and I’m afraid she’ll even hurt me if I make those mistakes. She sees a therapist because her parole officer insisted, but she says nothing and it’s doing no good. I’m afraid for both of us. What should I do?

During the early years of childhood, parents assume that when their child has a tantrum, it’s their responsibility to calm them down, deliver the desired relief, and accept an apology or contrite behavior afterwards. Every now and then, especially beyond puberty, however, that’s not a safe assumption.

Ask yourself whether your daughter feels sorry about hurting people, especially you, or whether she wants to avoid getting into trouble. If the answers are no, and they seem to be, you can’t keep on thinking of her as an unfortunate kid who needs something you haven’t yet been able to provide. Thinking that way gives you responsibility for something you don’t control and forces you to keep your door open when it may be dangerous for both of you.

You’re not responsible for her rages or for housing her if you’re afraid of her; you’re responsible for helping her control her rages if, and only if, she agrees to try and you and she are reasonably safe.

Give her information about where she can stay if you can’t let her stay with you, and don’t be ruled by fear or guilt if she refuses your recommendations and threatens to hurt herself if you send her out the door. Your safety and hers may depend on her believing that she leaves when you say so, with or without a police escort.

Then write a contract of basically acceptable behavior, making it clear than any basically unacceptable behavior will require here to leave your home, at least for a day or two. The basic no-no’s should include not backing off when you tell her it’s necessary, not contributing her share to the house, and not taking drugs if you think they’re dangerous for her.

As the parent, you know what’s necessary to keep your house safe and your daughter from doing anything destructive. Don’t expect her to understand; just to agree and follow through. The same argument you used when she was a toddler applies now; because you’re the mom, that’s why.

Her not getting better doesn’t make it your responsibility to do more, but rather to define the limits of acceptable behavior so that you don’t make an unsafe situation even more dangerous. Even if you can no longer soothe her, you can still give her a well-deserved time out.

STATEMENT:
“I feel for my daughter’s pain and anger and I know she has good reason for her feelings, but I can’t hold myself responsible for giving her self-control. I won’t let guilt or fear stop me from telling her that she can’t stay with me if that’s what I believe is necessary. In the end, I hope that will help her to straighten out.

I’m wondering whether I should try to do something to help my ex who I feel is spiraling into unhealthy (mentally and physically) old age (i.e., be my brother’s keeper rather than “let live”). He’s been acting weird, keeping strange pets and stranger company, and he moved to a rough part of town though he has the money to live wherever he wants. It’s like he’s having a late-life crisis. I know he’s got a bunch of medical problems and I wonder whether he’s taking care of himself. My goal is to figure out how far I should push him to get help.

Whether or not you should be your brother’s, or your ex’s, keeper is a meaningless question if you expect the answer to be yes or no. Nothing involving exes is simple (even their pets).

If you’re actually wondering how far you should go, that’s a terrific question for which there’s a good way to develop an answer of your own.

The trouble is, people usually approach this question in terms of weighing the pros and cons of the feelings involved: the bad feeling of anger, disappointment, resentment, vs. the good feeling of helpfulness, loyalty, and caring for your fellow man.

In real life, it’s a lose/lose, and you wind up reacting too much to your mood, the other’s guy’s attitude, your anger at his attitude, your guilt about your anger, and your determination to help someone across the street whether or not he wants to go.

After all, some people are naturally angry while others can’t stop giving and never get angry. So, as I always tell you, don’t let your feelings be your guide, or you’ll probably end up going off the cliff.

Ignore your anger (although that’s not your problem) and your desire to help (which sounds much closer to your natural style). Instead of being driven by your feelings, consult your values and draw up guidelines for balancing your wish to help an old flame vs. your right to live your own life and not waste time on old, unwinnable struggles.

In other words, if you know he won’t listen (because you or someone more persuasive has tried), save your breath. Be sure, however, that you’ve considered every reasonable possibility.

If you think there’s something helpful worth trying, do it, unless it’s someone else’s job; you’re the ex-wife, but there may be others who should step to the plate first, or he himself may be the only person who can do what needs to be done. Figure out where your boundaries are, and don’t overstep them or you’ll make things worse.

Finally, before trying to help him, figure out whether you can afford the cost. After all, you have other obligations, including taking care of yourself and managing your own possible rainy days, so remember, you’ve got a budget, and helping can become an obsession.

If you can think of any complications that these rules don’t cover, let me know. That you want to help is wonderful, but be careful to follow your guidelines and not push yourself to the point of danger, exhaustion, or conflict. Evaluate the situation on your terms, act accordingly, and you won’t end up getting hurt (by him or his menagerie).

STATEMENT:
“I wish my ex-husband well and want to honor the life and love we once shared. As always, however, I must keep in mind the limits of what I can do, accept possible helplessness, and remember my other obligations.”

I can’t count on my family for anything, and it’s gotten to the point where I think it would be best to cut ties altogether. Recently, when my father died, my brother, who was my dad’s favorite and the executor, managed to give himself most of the money, buy off my sister with a big gift, and give me nothing (he said he needed it more and my sister went along with it). I know I’ve always been the responsible older brother who worries and nags and takes responsibility for everyone, but I’ve finally woken up to the fact that no one worries about me. My goal is to stop feeling responsible and never see the jerks again.

The main reason to be your brother’s keeper is not to get gratitude or recognition, but to know that you’re being a good person. That’s why it’s important to do it and not overdo it and maybe become your brother’s occasional-watcher instead.

It’s likely you started taking care of them when you were younger, because people praised you for it, or it helped your family survive as a family. There’s always a good reason, but knowing why you did it usually doesn’t make a difference.

Now the question is, how good should you be to a brother and sister who have turned out to be jerks. It’s too bad they’re jerks, but you came out of your early family time knowing you did good and they didn’t come out as well. So, whether they’re ungrateful or avaricious, you still come out the winner.

The sad thing is that they didn’t turn out to be good people you could be friends with, which is what happens to many people with their siblings. If you don’t accept this fact, you’ll spend your time trying to get them to see their mistakes and improve. So accept it, mourn your loss, and prepare your own guidelines for being decent to sucky sibs.

As in the case above, don’t be guided by your feelings. Your values tell you that you will always have a connection and should always see to their basic safety. At the same time, their bad behavior will probably cause problems that you can’t fix, so don’t hold yourself responsible for fixing them. Their personalities are their problem, not yours.

Letting them know that you’re angry or critical usually does more harm than good, so don’t bother; instead of feeling guilty, they’ll just blame you and get nasty. This is a classic example of a Feelings Fart”™, when an explosive, emotional emission gives you temporary relief that actually poisons the air, and your relationship, for much longer.

That’s why it’s smarter to act nice, stay superficial, and keep it short from now on. You were a good brother growing up and you’re a good brother now, but you weren’t lucky, so you won’t get much satisfaction or reward from the sibs you helped raise.

Still, they are your family, so it’s better to keep them at arm’s length than cut them off entirely. You were your brother’s keeper, but you’d be better off just being a brother instead.

STATEMENT:
“I’m proud of being a responsible brother and I wish my sibs and I could be close, but they didn’t turn out to be people I could be friends with. Fortunately, I now have less to be responsible for, other than accepting them, keeping it pleasant, and looking elsewhere for trust and friendship.”

Well, I’ve been with my boyfriend for 5 years, and during our third year I got into his Facebook account and saw that he’d cheated on me by talking online with girls saying he loved them. I walked away for about 4 months. He tried everything to get me back and after he showed me he changed I thought I should give it one last chance since he is my first everything. I’m trying to move past this but I feel there is something inside me that wants to explode every time I am with him. What advice can you give me to forget this incident or should I not forget?

You’ve given this guy one more chance because he’s your “first everything,” which is understandable. At this point, however, he’s also your first lesson in how character, unlike love, is forever.

He didn’t do this to hurt or disrespect you, because that would imply he thought his actions through before taking them. Instead, he acted on his very flawed set of instincts, which is what brings his character into question.

Sincerity, tons of respect, and heaps of flowers shouldn’t get you to lower your guard. Most guys who sincerely regret their bad behavior regret it because they got caught, or they don’t feel like that any more, or they wish you weren’t mad at them.

Sure, guys like this may really, really love you and have nothing but sincere regrets, but they can’t admit that their basic instincts haven’t changed, won’t change, and will always come back. They sincerely wish that weren’t true and that the guy who did those bad things was another guy, but all the earnest wishes in the world don’t guarantee that his actions will improve.

Most guys with bad instincts improve, not by becoming better people, but learning to control themselves after getting to truly know themselves, for better or worse. At some time or other, they accept the fact that their bad instincts will never go away, and that they will always have to struggle to keep them in check. They know that the moment they think they’ve won permanent control, they’re in real trouble.

Unless he worships the ground you walk on, your boyfriend’s love will probably not keep him on the straight and narrow. If he controls himself because he loves you and doesn’t want to hurt you, that’s fine for as long as it lasts. Usually, however, real couples get mad at one another over stupid things and have petty urges to hurt one another. That’s when his control will break down, unless it’s rooted in deeper, personal values, not just loving feelings that can fade after a shouting match.

Your goal then isn’t to forget this incident, but to first figure out whether it’s indicative of what your future together holds. Don’t pay lots of attention to the sincerity of his love or whether he shows you tons of respect, but do give him points for admitting that he has an honesty problem, and give him more points if he wants to change because he wants to be a better guy, and not just to get your love. Give him lots of points if his actions reflect his words over a long period of time.

You know what you think about his cheating, but the real question is, what does he think about it, and what does he plan to do. If his plan just involves groveling and empty promises, get ready to be the first one in the relationship to say it’s over.

STATEMENT:
“Cheating feels like my boyfriend disrespects me and that it won’t happen if his respect is real. That’s not true. Cheating is a bad habit that’s hard to change and it has very little to do with how much he loves or respects me. The only way I can safely trust him with my future is if I see that he owns his problem, wants to be a better guy, and keeps his hands, eyes, and email connections to himself.”

After 10 years of working my butt off for this company, my boss rewarded me by giving me all the shitty parts of her job and taking away all the things I liked to do and giving them to herself. She’s not mad at me and doesn’t want to force me out. I don’t think she expects me to be mad and if I told her, she’d think I was being touchy. My goal is to feel better about these changes so I don’t blow up, but doing this job has never been easy and now it feels like an endless humiliation.

If you’ve worked your butt off for a company and gotten treated like shit, there’s a wonderful lesson to be learned. You should never, ever treat work as if it’s family or the whole of your life. You also shouldn’t be surprised if losing your ass makes a shitty feeling increase.

I know most jobs come to feel like family; you see more of the people you work with than anyone else, and the bosses talk about caring, loyalty, and fairness. It’s hard not to feel humiliated and/or like the mistreated middle child if no one listens and you’re given tasks that everyone else hates doing.

Remember, however, that your goal in working is to make a living, not to get the job done or win your boss’s respect. You work for yourself and your own values, and, while your boss is your most important client, that’s all he is. Until the day arrives when respect becomes currency, focus on your paycheck and timecard instead.

If you care too much about your work and then feel unappreciated, your feelings become dangerous. It’s not just that disgruntlement gets noticed, but that criticized bosses always find something wrong with you. At that point, it gets personal and moral, and you’re the one who will wind up in the shrink’s office, not them.

Step back, assess your strengths and opportunities, then market yourself and see what’s out there. If the job market is dead—and that’s been the rule for the last few years—respect yourself for working with disrespect. It’s hard enough to make a living when your boss likes you.

Take comfort in this secret: the guy who does the shit-work no one else wants usually has a more secure job because processing shit is the most essential part of any job. Work hard, but get your butt back; after all, you already work for an asshole.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel as if my devotion has been rewarded with humiliation and disrespect, but that means I’ve been giving too much to my job and not thinking enough about my own priorities. It’s time to become my own boss and develop a job description that limits overwork and attends to other parts of my life. I don’t really want to be a well-appreciated worker who knocks himself out for the sake of the company. I want to be a guy who values his own work and loves quittin’ time.”

I’m feeling a little lost. For most of my life, I’ve been an excellent student. I made As and Bs with minimal effort. Seriously, I’d just show up to class, take a few notes, and get an A. I didn’t really have to try. It just happened. The past two years, however, it seems like I’ve been sinking further and further into a hole that’s gotten so deep, I can’t even see where I fell in. I have difficulty motivating myself to get out of bed 90% of the time. When I used to be able to pen an excellent paper in a few hours’ time, I find myself now staring at a blank Word document with nothing but a header for weeks. My GPA has plummeted from fantastic (not stellar, but it would’ve done well enough) to abysmal. The only thing keeping me from dropping out of college entirely is the fact that I know I’d have nothing else at all to live for. My family already thinks I’m a failure, because I haven’t graduated yet. The past two years has put me painfully behind schedule. I’m thoroughly unhappy, and I honestly don’t know how the hell to stop it. I need help figuring out what the hell I need to do to get out of this hole.

Pretend you’ve just been told you have a fatal disease. Suddenly, your GPA and the opinions it inspires in your family and friends probably matter a lot less, no?

When you’re in workplaces, families and/or schools, they seem to be the whole universe and your place in them seems to define who you are. The best thing about being cast out, or even just moving on, is that you gain an opportunity to define your worth more independently, in terms of your values and efforts, instead of what people thought of your performance.

Right now, your grades and your family are telling you you’re a failure, but they don’t deserve to have the last word. You have obstacles you can’t control, and you have good qualities not currently recognized in your limited universe.

It’s time to reassess not just what’s wrong, but how it’s wrong, for whom, and how much is really in your power.

Start by exploring your learning stoppage. For most people who want to learn something but can’t, the two most common reasons are depression and learning problems (or some combination of the two). Find out whether you have these problems and, if you do, get help.

Remember, you don’t control whether you have those problems, and there’s no perfect cure. What you are responsible for, however, is doing your best to get moving and learn what you want to learn, regardless of equipment/perceived failures.

Fear tells you that you’re caught between the helplessness of not being able to function and the hopelessness of having nothing to live for. Those are terrible thoughts that you would never, ever impose on anyone else, and you certainly don’t deserve to hear them yourself. Your school and your family probably don’t feel this way either, although depression can convince you otherwise.

If you were counseling a friend, you’d tell them that good people are sometimes unable to function and that achievement is never a good thing to live for, because sometimes you can’t achieve. You’d urge a friend to live for the values he or she has always lived for and accept the fact that sometimes you’re fucked.

With or without a fatal disease, we’re all at risk for sudden death, but there are measures we can take to try and make life last. It’s time to put your health above academics and other people’s opinions. If you’ve got the right priorities and perspective, then failure is not an option.

STATEMENT:
“I’m getting nowhere and have lost my ability to perform, but there’s no reason to think my problem is permanent and there are lots of good things I can do, other than school, until I recover. I may be flunking out of school, but I’m also enrolled in Impairment 101, which forces me to think constructively about my impaired performance or get swept away by fears of failure and humiliation. I intend to do well.”

I used to love my job, which I began while I was still in high school. My first boss was a wonderful mentor who groomed me to take over when she got promoted, and for about 10 years I followed her into her old jobs as she moved up in the company. I worked hard and people respected me. Then we got bought by another company, she left for another city, and I reported to a new boss who was much more comfortable with his male buddies from the other company than with any woman, including me. I knocked myself out to show him what I could do, and he still found fault and gave all the good assignments to the guys. Finally, after a negative performance review, I let him know I was thinking of suing for sex discrimination, and suddenly no one is talking to me. They’re not threatening to fire me, but people avoid eye contact and I’m totally out of the loop. So now I’m depressed and it’s hard to get to work and I’m worried they’ll really have grounds to fire me, because I’ve lost all my get up and go. I don’t see any way forward. My goal is to get back on track.

The real Horatio Alger American Dream isn’t just about getting ahead because of hard work; it’s also about good, hard-working people always getting what they deserve. It’s a promise made by every teacher and every CEO; work hard, and you’ll get ahead.

Too bad no one can actually deliver on that promise. It’s called the American Dream, not the American Reality, for a reason. Yes, great teachers and great bosses are wonderful, and they sometimes happen. So does good weather. And so does hail.

It’s tempting to believe you can create a better world in your particular social or work group or family, and it’s certainly worth trying. Sooner or later, however, things can go sour and it’s your job to have individual priorities and principals for yourself that can take over in an emergency, when the lights and liking and fairness go out and you have to find your own way to the exit.

If you can prove sex discrimination and make a bundle, more power to you. What it sounds like, however, is that you’re expressing your anger and helplessness at the injustice and exhaustion of your position, and that’s destructive. Your boss, of course, doesn’t see it that way and neither does his boss. So the moment you take them on, you’re out in the cold. Bad weather made worse.

Give up on them, but not on yourself. Absolutely nothing has happened that should shake your belief and faith in yourself and your own accomplishments. Despite your history, you need to dismantle your emotional ties to this company and these people; they’re not your family, they’re not good for you, and they have nothing else to offer at this point.

Think harder about the assets you offer and the sort of workplace you need to find that would be a good fit, even if you need to work with a headhunter or a job coach. Remember who you are and the professional you’ve become.

If, like the idealist above, you feel depressed, a doctor might be able to help. For now, remember that getting what you deserve is a fantasy; get out of this job, and get what you need.

STATEMENT:
“The abilities I’ve discovered in myself, the skills I’ve acquired, the things I’ve accomplished, and my dedication and motivation haven’t changed one bit. The only thing that changed is that I’ve learned that good jobs can go bad, no matter how good you are, and that’s a painful but valuable truth. I’m going to suck up the pain and make use of the truth.”

I was a wild girl as a teenager and took drugs and cheated on my boyfriends, but one of them stuck by me and now I’ve got a good marriage and 2 nice kids. Life has been pretty good to me, but lately, I don’t know whether it’s getting older or having some acquaintances die, but I feel preoccupied with death and a feeling of not being a very good person. I mean, focusing on those things makes me feel ungrateful, because I’ve been so lucky, but then I feel guilty that I’ve had so much while people I came up with didn’t get the same things I did. I wish I wasn’t so worried about death and thinking about what a jerk I was and how I didn’t get what I deserved.

What we all deserve is a good childhood and a decent set of genes. What most of us actually get doesn’t come close.

Instead, most people end up with a random mishmash that easily includes an extra dose of wildness and parents who are too wild themselves to help us manage our own impulses (the apple, and the genes, don’t fall far from the tree). In a world that’s this unfair, nobody can claim to deserve anything.

If you’re disturbed by the unfairness of life, especially the way it doesn’t punish you the way you deserve, you’re not alone (although it might not comfort you to know you’re in the same company as Woody Allen). Think of it as an instinct, a need for justice, that’s both good and bad.

The good side is that a passion for justice helps you be fair with your kids, and keep your mean side under control. The bad side is that it gets you mad and upset when things aren’t fair, which causes you to try to straighten things out, which, in this messy world, usually winds up with causing more unfairness (see: Vietnam). Instead, you need to get used to living with the feeling and keeping your hands folded in front of you.

The awareness of death is another one of those painful feelings that can be good or bad. The bad part is that it’s painful to lose people or die before your time or die almost any time (unless you’ve been previously softened up by a long, punishing course of illness, suffering and disability, and that’s another story).

The good part is that death-awareness helps you get your priorities straight. Yes, you’re gonna die, but that should make you think hard about what matters today. Hint: it’s not about feeling better, being happy, or owning more. It’s about doing whatever you think is important.

So what counts is what you do with this mess. If your boyfriend loved you enough to stick by you, you were smart enough to appreciate and take advantage of what he was doing, which means you both deserve credit. You’re not into drugging and excitement, but building a family together.

You’ve done the right thing, but don’t expect it to make your pain go away. Life isn’t just unfair, but painful and difficult. Don’t feel guilty that you’ve avoided so much of that pain, but proud that you’ve achieved so much in spite of your flaws. Doing good things, in spite of losing friends and facing death, is what makes us great.

STATEMENT:
“Life has been better to me than it was when I started out, and that’s partly because I’ve done the right thing and I’m on a good course. Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve it or that I should be more happy than I am. Wrong. Unhappy feelings are part of the territory, part of what I work with. Fuck’em. I’m proud of my ability to ignore them.”

I don’t know why, but my grandmother always relies on me whenever she has a problem with her health, her roof, her taxes, whatever. She doesn’t rely on my mother, because she’s a flake, and she doesn’t rely on my brother, because she sees him as an important lawyer who doesn’t have the time to spare on her little problems. I’ve always pitched in because I’m a good guy who likes to care for people, (I’m a social worker), but I realized, recently, that my grandmother has willed the largest part of her estate to my brother because she assumes I can take care of myself and besides, I’m gay and don’t have any children. My goal is to deal with how angry I am and get my grandmother to see that she’s being unfair.

There’s no way you’re going to make things fair in your family (see above) or change your grandmother, so ask yourself instead what you can do with the situation as it is. I know that doesn’t take care of your anger, but that’s the idea, because almost anything that makes your anger better makes things worse. Anger is only useful to actors, professional fighters, and hack comedians. For everyone else, it’s a detrimental, dangerous pain in the ass.

It’s nice that your grandmother has money; that means she can pay for services without your having to worry about what will happen to her if you don’t help. Which allows to me to review the Three Laws of Giving.

1) Don’t give unless it will actually do some good (not a problem here, because your grandmother doesn’t misuse help). 2) Don’t give beyond what you can afford (meaning you’ve got other responsibilities). 3) Don’t give when it would be better for someone else to do it, and that’s the one that applies here.

If you charge market rate for your services, then your grandmother gets what she needs from someone she loves, and you get paid for your time and a little bit of the lost inheritance. Everyone wins, no one blows a gasket.

You can always try to overcome your grandmother’s prejudice by noting how much you enjoy helping people and how much more you could do if you weren’t as tight for cash. That’s the same pitch you would make with any potential funding donor. Beyond appealing to her rationality and generosity, however, you don’t want to go.

Most prejudiced people tend to feel it’s the other guy’s fault, so confronting them usually causes nothing but conflict. You might feel proud of yourself if you stand up to her, but when you add in the pain it causes her and everyone else involved, and her inability to understand where you’re coming from, it’s probably not worth it. You’re not an ultimate fighter, you’re a put-upon grandchild; don’t get angry, get paid, and then, get over it.

STATEMENT:
“I’m proud that I like to help people and I’m getting smarter about doing it while keeping other things in mind, like my obligation to take care of myself and consider other values and priorities. I can’t help but feel angry at my grandmother; but I will keep that feeling under wraps, if necessary, while I stick with my original goals.”

I didn’t have any serious injuries after falling off some scaffolding, but I began to have nightmares and the thought of returning to work gave me anxiety attacks. So I took a medical leave, saw a therapist, and got some medication and now I’m much better, but I’m still far from 100% recovered and the thought of climbing a ladder still makes me feel like I’m going to have another attack. So I’m wondering whether to extend the leave until I feel better—I don’t know how long my disability insurance will cover this—or find something else to do, and it’s hard to make a decision when I don’t know whether I’m ever going to feel better. My goal is to feel well enough to make a decision.

Severe anxiety makes sissies of everyone. The primal part of your brain thinks it’s doing you a favor; it’s the part that says fire bad, sun hot, sex yay. Now it’s saying, ladders evil, followed by, run!

Meanwhile, anxiety attacks are so painful, the thing you’re most afraid of is having one again, the very thought of which makes you anxious, which feels like you’re about to have another. Your brain’s protecting you in a hellish spiral.

The scary thing you need to accept up front is that your anxiety, and your anxiety about anxiety, may never go away. If you think you’re supposed to make it go away, you’ll be more discouraged when you can’t; if you climb the ladder while telling yourself it will never happen again, you’re putting yourself into danger. That’s the kind of hope and optimism that will get you into trouble.

While you may never get over your anxiety, however, there’s lots you can do, and probably have done, to keep it from exploding and damp the explosions pretty quickly if they happen anyway. In addition to relaxation training of various kinds, there’s always cognitive therapy, which means stopping the negative thoughts from becoming negative beliefs.

That’s what we do here, arguing, as you know, that the most powerful tool for fighting negative thoughts requires facing your real helplessness first. You’re traumatized, you’re fucked, but you’re not without options, and the only way to see them is to accept your condition.

Once you’ve done your best to learn how to manage anxiety and the infectious negativity of fearful thoughts, your goal is to forget about it and make your work decisions the way you usually would. Assuming that returning to work may cause anxiety but that the anxiety will probably ease over time, add up the pros and cons of doing this work versus something else.

If you can, return to work and see how it goes before you decide to opt out. Take your therapist’s advice, your meds, and your lunchbox and get back to the site.

If your primal brain starts trouble, remind it that if ladder evil, unemployment worse, because food important. Then ignore your mental caveman altogether and start on that first rung.

STATEMENT:
“It’s a bummer that I now have to work so hard to get myself to work, when it was easy before, but that’s life. I now know much more about fear than I ever wanted to and I’m proud that I can manage it without letting it tell me what to do.”

What bothers me is that it feels so unreal to see my parents acting like nice, loving grandparents to my kids when my brother and I know that my father was a mean, physically abusive drunk and my mother acted like nothing was happening and was pretty mean herself. We tried talking it out with them once, when we were in our 20s, and they said we were distorting things and it was our problem, and after that, we didn’t talk for a year. Now, we have regular, though not frequent, contact because I want my kids to know their grandparents, but I keep it polite and superficial because a blowup would be good for no one, particularly the kids. The superficiality hurts, though, because it feels unreal and brings back memories of living a trauma no one else knew about. Am I making it worse by sweeping things under the rug?

Many people feel that overcoming trauma requires, at some point, a kind of “truth and reconciliation” procedure, or at least a public acknowledgment of truth, before it’s possible to move on. As loyal readers know, I am not most people.

The very fact that having your abuse experience validated would feel so good (that’s why it plays well on TV) tells you that expecting validation is dangerous. That’s because of what happens when validation is impossible, which it is, 99.9% of the time.

As you’ve experienced yourself, your abuser has his/her own view of reality, or doesn’t care. There are no witnesses, or witnesses have their own reasons for covering up or choosing sides. So validation usually brings back the pain, and the satisfaction, if any, is brief.

Even wanting validation is dangerous, because it makes you more reactive to others, particularly your abusers, and feeds your negative ruminations. Yes, you may argue that validation would make your ruminations go away and reassure you that you’re not crazy, but validation is like a post-Thanksgiving dump: great, if temporary, relief. The cycle begins again when you have pumpkin pie for breakfast, and see that your parents are still your parents, and still don’t get it.

A better way to fight the feeling of unreality is to assure yourself that you know what you know and have the strength to live by your convictions, whether they’re validated or not. Yes, you can assure yourself that your brother, who was there, agrees, but don’t spend much time seeking that validated feeling. It’s just another slice of pie.

What you need is not validation, but what you already have: the strength to believe in your own point of view and deal with your parents accordingly, which is what you’re doing. You’re carrying out your policy of having as little contact with your parents as necessary for minimizing conflict and maintaining overall family connections.

To do that, without outside support is a real achievement, just like creating your own family despite your traumatic history. Focus on that, because that’s all the “truth and reconciliation” you need.

STATEMENT:
“I wish I could forget my awful childhood, and it feels unreal to be chatting nicely with the monsters who abused me. What counts, however, is what I did with that childhood and, if it helps for me to maintain diplomatic relations with my parent-monsters, then I’m proud that’s what I’m able to do.”

I’ve run a small non-profit for 20 years and always enjoyed a good relationship with my board, but the new chairman, who’s a nice guy, has started to drive me crazy. We should be working closely together on a search for the new chief financial officer, but instead this guy seems to be waiting until the last minute and does nothing to keep me in the loop. I want to let him know I’m upset with the way he’s been avoiding and ignoring my input and get the search process back on track. My goal is to regain control at work and get the respect I deserve after two decades at this job.

Life is an endless series of assaults on your respect. Your kids don’t respect you, your Starbucks cashier doesn’t respect you, the people who write ads for the Superbowl certainly don’t respect you. Alas.

So, no matter how much right you have to feel disrespected, and how hard it is to ignore the feeling, disrespect is not the issue you should be addressing, or really bother addressing, ever.

As the wise Carrie Fisher once said, “resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.” Focusing on this other guy and his perceived slights just distracts you from your own agenda.

You know what will happen if you imply your opinion has been disregarded, and it doesn’t involve a tearful mea culpa. Instead, the chair will deny that was his intention and explain how carefully he has tried to keep you informed. You’ll detail his mistakes, he’ll suggest you’re mistaken and oversensitive, and you’ll be further away than ever from the collaboration you need to get the job done.

Your real priority is to conduct an effective search for a key position; you have the experience to know how such a search should be conducted and the standing to believe your advice will be well received. Your goal then is to get the process on track without making anyone feel criticized, particularly those who deserve it. You know what you’re doing, so instead of throwing a tantrum, show those clowns how it’s done.

Write up a proposed plan for the search for the CFO, including job description, timelines, and a schedule of work-meetings between you and the chair. Present it as a summary of what’s worked well in the past. Praise the achievements of the current board and chair, while reminding them of the need to move quickly. If necessary, ask for support from prior chairs. Invite comments while urging a finalization of your schedule.

Given your experience on the job and good relationship with the board, assume that your proposal deserves respect and that the structure you’re providing will help the chair and board get going while putting you at the center of the process.

The other guy might be a pain, but when he ignores you, it’s due more to incompetence than disrespect. When you show your competence, you’ll get results, and that means a lot more than respect, no matter how much humiliation you experience from work, wife, kids and Doritos commercials.

STATEMENT:
“I’m worried and annoyed by the way my chair keeps his distance and drags his feet, but I know what I’m doing, I’ve got good political support, and I’m more likely to drag him into an effective collaboration by providing praise, plans, and structure than by airing my negative feelings about our relationship.”

My goal is to get a new job as a saleswoman now that my old job has dried up, but it will be hard because the economy sucks and the ads say they want a young person with “piss and vinegar who has the raw energy to take on all comers.” I’m not young anymore, although I’m good at identifying key people and pursuing them personally until I can create a relationship. I would have succeeded at my previous job if the product support team had been barely competent, which they weren’t. I’d like to succeed, but I have my doubts.

If you accept other people’s definition of success, in terms of dollars, age, energy, piss, or vinegar, you’ll define yourself as a failure without actually trying to do a damn thing.

Fortunately, you’re smarter than that. You respect your experience and effort, and if you’re doing sales after all these years, it’s because that’s what you like to do and do well.

Yes, someone else may say that you’re old and tired and haven’t generated any good numbers lately, but your goal is to present your reasons for seeing yourself as a success with much to offer, despite the fact you’re piss- and vinegar-deficient (and overly abundant in years).

The challenge is to ignore your feelings of doubt and sensitivity to what others are thinking, and instead go out and do what you do best: make the sale. Except in this case, you’re selling yourself as an employee.

Don’t accept their way of thinking and feel apologetic for not looking young and successful in their eyes. Tell them how they’d benefit greatly from your services and why they’d be smarter to see things the way you do.

Using reasonable measures of success, describe your strengths: your level of effort, patience, selectiveness, and ability to generate reliable long-term sales based on trust. What you lack in youth, you have in experience. Perhaps you still have some piss and vinegar in you yet.

STATEMENT:
“I’m an experienced saleswoman with a proven ability to target key people in an organization, create relationships, and treat them as clients who can trust me to safeguard their interests. I am interested in selling products that I can believe in. I’m old enough to be smart and young enough to still be hungry.”

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.

The opposite of feeling grateful to God for good things isn’t atheism; it’s simply a refusal to hold him/her or ourselves responsible for the stuff we don’t control, so that we can avoid the time and expense of all-in-your-head ruminations about blame and find better-grounded ways to be positive when times are tough.

Assuming that neither God nor Buddha nor Pat Robertson’s prayers are steering the hurricane of bad luck in your direction (or narrowly to one side), the most positive way to fight overwhelmed feelings is to think long and hard about what you’ve done with your disasters.

You’ve got good reason to feel scared, but you haven’t run away or turned the fear into a fight with your wife. You’re soldiering on, and you’ve got your priorities straight. This isn’t good fortune, it’s heroism.

Heroism doesn’t mean feeling at peace about your prospects when danger threatens; fear, from what we know of evolutionary biology, probably helps you fight harder, spot trouble sooner, and run faster. Animals that don’t get worried and feel their adrenalin pumping are the ones most likely to get eaten, which is why most of us have jumpy ancestors and are not so calm, particularly when danger threatens.

So don’t expect not to feel overwhelmed, don’t count your blessings, and don’t feel grateful. Accept your fear, bad luck and bad feelings and then count the good things you’re doing with them, or trying to, anyway.

That’s where your pride should come from, and nothing can touch it as a source of strength, including more hard times, an angel, or a punch in the face.

STATEMENT:
“I can see disasters ahead and no way to prevent them, but that’s not my job. If I can avoid them, I will. Otherwise, I’ll keep on working hard and try to be a good husband and father and scrape by on what we’ve got. The tougher it gets, the bigger our achievement. Nothing else matters.”

My teen-age daughter has always been a handful, but she did much better last term when she played soccer because it kept her busy and used up her extra energy. Once the new term began, however, she was back on the phone every night, non-stop, and texting and browsing Facebook and not doing her homework. When I try to stop her, she gets nasty, and I can’t seem to get through to her that she needs to control herself and that grades are important. I have a strong belief in self-discipline and the value of hard work and it seemed to be getting across when she was playing sports, but now it’s gone. How can I get through to her?

Thoughtful discussion is not the only way to get through to a kid, although it’s not a bad place to begin. That’s because some kids, like the rest of us, have trouble with controlling their impulses and can’t do what they’re supposed to do, even when they know it would be much better for them in the long run.

So, not unlike adults, they become adept at avoidance, misdirection, secrecy, and obstruction. At that point, reasonable words are not your strongest weapons, nor are weapons your strongest weapons, no matter how tempting adolescents make that option.

Your strongest weapon, probably, is an acceptance of the fact that you never have complete control of your kid, now or going forward. The best parents have partial control, and it’s often good enough, but there will always be certain times with certain kids when nothing works, and it turns out that no one else has the answer, either, including teachers and mental health clinicians.

It’s another one of those sad facts of life, but it leaves you free to focus on doing your best to manage your child, rather than wondering what you’ve done wrong, or what they’re doing wrong, or what’s wrong with the universe that soccer can’t be played all year round.

The next weapon is a belief in your own values, so that you don’t feel obliged to explain and aren’t concerned if your requirements cause some unhappiness. Of course, you’d prefer your child to be happy and agree with what you’re doing and, indeed, give it her blessing. If you believe in your values, however, your need for peace, happiness and understanding are subordinate to getting the job done.

Now that you’re as well-armed as possible and ready to go, tell her she loses the phone until her homework gets done. If and when she resists, prepare yourself to be friendly and calm. Don’t explain or argue, just tell her what will happen next and then do it. If one thing doesn’t work, keep trying other things, and if nothing works, at least you’ll save money not having to pay college tuition.

There’s a good chance though that, between your efforts and the repercussions of slacking, your kid will figure something out. Or maybe she’ll just learn to ski.

STATEMENT:
“I know my daughter controls her impulses better and gets more work done when school and sports keep her busy, but that doesn’t mean I (or she) can control her impulses all the time. I believe in the value of hard work and self-discipline, even if her temperament makes her very resistant, so I’ll stop at nothing to give her incentives. If she’s not happy with my rules, there’s no need to feel guilty or argue or blame. If they don’t work, I’ll take pride in doing my job and avoid blaming her or myself.”