I’m in a very loving and healthy relationship with a divorced father of a 5-year-old. I feel we are deeply in love and we plan to marry, however, when he has his son I feel like nothing more than an outsider. Although he is very fond of me, I can’t help but be overcome with jealousy at the attention my boyfriend gives him and I distance myself in order to hide my feelings. I end up feeling isolated and alone which ends with tears if he asks me what’s wrong. I’ve tried to separate my feelings from reality, because his son deserves his attention and time. I see him light up when his kid’s around, but it’s hard for me to understand their relationship since my own father is a deadbeat and I’ve been dealing with abandonment issues my entire life. I don’t want him to feel guilty because he’s such a great dad and misses his kid and I don’t want his son to feel that I’m indifferent to him and ignore him, but I can’t help but feel like the jealous older sister. My goal is to remove myself from these emotions and learn to appreciate our unique family blend.

Don’t feel guilty for your thoughts or feelings, particularly when your actions don’t reflect those feelings. You can feel wrong as long as you do right.

And you must be doing a good job with managing your bad feelings, because, regardless of how jealous or bummed you feel when you behold your fiancé’s warm father-son relationship, you’ve done a great job of keeping them to yourself. You’ve succeeded in protecting your most important relationships from the negativity.

One definition of professionalism is behaving in a benevolent, job-oriented way without letting negative feelings show or interfere. You’re obviously a pro, particularly since you’re doing it while managing a shitload of pain.

You’re entitled to ask yourself whether you can put up with the painful feelings, and keep yourself under pretty good control, once you’re married. A better way to put that question is, are the advantages of the relationship worth it, assuming that your control is good enough. My guess is that it is, and it is.

There’s also the possibility that, after enough time goes by, your painful feelings will ease up, particularly if you and your fiance’s son have a chance to hang out and develop your own relationship, creating your own unique bond so you have nothing to be jealous of.

What you don’t want to happen is to let your disgust at your negative feelings destroy your confidence or make you feel guilty. If you feel you’ve got to purge yourself of those ugly feelings, or confess them, you’ll make them worse.

Forget the exorcism then; you’ve got a demon, but disowning her entirely will only increase her power to terrorize you. You came by her honestly, you’ve done a good job of stopping her from running your life, and accepting her will let you re-affirm your solid self-control.

If your fiancé asks why you sometimes seem unhappy, tell him a positive version of the truth; that, because of your background, you sometimes feel painfully needy, plus he’s much nicer than anyone you knew growing up. You’re also confident that the feeling will pass because you love them both so much.

As you settle into your new life and new family, the feelings will settle as well.

STATEMENT:
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, which is to say hollow and mean, but I keep this problem to myself and, as a result, I’ve got a great fiancé. I expect to feel needier in some ways as we get closer, but it’s worth it, and I think we’ll be OK.”

I’ve got an evil father-in-law who is always ready to say something nasty about me, and my wife never really supports me. Right after I set up a rule or schedule for our family, my father-in-law will go out of his way to defy it, and then ask my wife to bring our daughter over for a visit. Instead of standing with me and telling her father that he has to respect our rules and that I’m a part of the package, she goes over there by herself and acts as if nothing happened. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to trust my wife again and, if that’s the case, I don’t see how we can stay married. My goal is to do my best to get her to see what her father is doing.

It’s infuriating, when you’re trying to manage a family, to have someone sabotage your arrangements and make you look like a dictator instead of a parent and husband. Still, it happens, and it’s hard to stop, even when your partner is in total agreement with your every move.

On the other hand, many of your not-so-distant, not-so-wealthy ancestors may have had to live together in close quarters and couldn’t escape. As a result, they probably checked out their in-laws very carefully before deciding to marry, because they knew, once things got started, they were stuck.

If you can bear the humiliation for a minute, stop and consider what’s best for you. Put aside your fury at your wishy-washy wife and meddling father-in-law and ask yourself whether she’s a good partner in other ways—as mother, manager of time and money, and loyal companion (in every non-paternal relationship).

No, this is not an attempt to change your feelings for her; it’s to get you to think about whether getting rid of the feeling of betrayal will be worth the loss of her partnership and the impact of divorce on your daughter, which will push her into your father-in-law’s arms. Your feelings are about betrayal, but if you let them run loose, you may expose yourself to a much greater betrayal with more dire consequences.

If, feelings aside, you believe you’ll have a better life and stronger influence on your daughter by avoiding divorce, then ask yourself whether you can learn to live with anger and bitter mistrust while keeping your feelings to yourself. It’s possible (see case above), but admittedly difficult. If you decide to go that route, seek coaching and a good support group.

If you can’t imagine living with those feelings within a marriage, then you can’t, but don’t expect divorce to provide you with rapid relief. On the other hand, if you stay married, you’ll probably have many opportunities to run the family circus, just not all the time and not with your wife’s full cooperation/compliance.

Your goal, if you choose the trial of living with your Judas wife, won’t be to regain a feeling of marital comfort and trust, but to learn how to live without those feelings, knowing that, on some rational level, the value of your wife’s strengths as a partner outweighs the pain that your father-in-law has stirred up. If you want to remain a full-time parent and husband, you don’t have a choice.

STATEMENT:
“I’ll never feel that I can fully control my household or trust my wife until my father-in-law is dead. Nevertheless, she and I are a good team and my ability to keep our daughter from over-bonding with her grandpa is better if I’m around full-time rather than during visitation only, so I’ll try to stay married and set quiet limits on an intrusion I can’t always control.

My 15-year-old son needs treatment for his irritability. He gets unbelievably angry over small things, to the point that he ups and goes to his room. He agrees that things are basically OK and he’s sorry afterwards, but it happens at least once a week. We have a happy home and he has friends in school and gets good grades. I think it’s his mood that’s the problem and it causes him and our family a lot of pain. My goal is to figure out how to get him some help with psychotherapy and/or medication.

Just because someone’s in pain doesn’t mean he needs help. Pain is just part of the complete life package, along with joy, hunger, death, etc.

Of course, you’ve got less to lose and more to gain from treatment if his irritability has caused bruised knuckles, broken sheetrock, and a growing familiarity with your local police. Pain is a normal part of life, but serving life in prison isn’t.

What you’re saying, however, is that, aside from his verbal explosions, he remains in physical control, does self-motivated time-outs, retains good relationships, and has no trouble focusing on work and getting it done. No pill could improve upon that.

So, if he’s handling his pain well, getting things done, and engaging in life, then making him get treatment for his irritability may make a bigger deal of his problem without necessarily providing relief. It’s a sad fact, but neither talk therapy nor psychiatric medication reliably improves irritability—just sometimes and more often than placebo.

It’s always possible that his irritability foreshadows a mood disorder that will eventually get worse and might be prevented or disarmed by beginning medication early. The trouble is, we have no way of telling whether he’s at high risk, and the medication has risks of its own, as well as being costly. The risks from antidepressants aren’t great, as far as we know, but there’s always the risk of what we don’t know because our tools for examining the long-term effects of medication on the brain are limited. If you try an antidepressant, ask yourself whether it’s helpful enough to be worth that risk.

As for most mood stabilizers, like Lithium, Depakote, and Abilify, the risk is much higher than for antidepressants (although you wouldn’t think so if you didn’t listen carefully to the end of Abilify commercials). Sometimes, pain treatment is worse than pain, and shouldn’t be considered without a careful assessment of the risk and rewards. From what you’ve said, the risks of most mood stabilizers dwarf the rewards by a mile.

Psychotherapy can be harmful if his shrink doesn’t accept the fact that treatment has limits. Find someone who can accept the possibility that your son’s irritable outbursts are unavoidable and coach him on managing them if they can’t be cured—though, clearly, your son is already a good manager himself.

In the end, the decision is yours, and various treatments might be helpful. If you accept the possibility, however, that treatment for painful conditions is not always better than no treatment, then you will weigh risk against benefit, regardless of how you feel, and make a good decision. After all, it’s risky to overestimate the power of medication and treatment, but it’s riskier to underestimate your son.

STATEMENT:
“It breaks my heart to watch my son have a meltdown and I’m terrified of what can happen to a teenage boy with an anger problem. I know he’s a good kid, however, and he’s showed an amazing ability to keep it together socially and academically. If a treatment seems to help him and be worth the risk, I’ll support it. If it doesn’t, I’ll support the many good ways he’s dealing with his temper and help him develop even stronger anger-management skills.”

My son is a nice kid, but his ADD makes him completely irresponsible. He seems motivated about getting his college degree, but, even when he takes his medication, he always comes late to lectures, leaves assignments to the last minute, and doesn’t get problem sets finished. He was asked to take a semester off because his grades slipped and he seemed out of control. Now that he’s back at home, he pays no attention to his bank balance and has bounced a lot of checks. When I confront him, he’s sincerely apologetic, but then he does the same thing the next day. I just wish I could get him to stop lying and care about what he’s doing.

If you can’t help someone with love and medication (see above), it’s normal to assume that he doesn’t really want to get better and your goal is to find the key to motivate him. The trouble is, some people who are motivated (and medicated) are nevertheless unable to perform.

They feel ashamed, apologize, avoid, feel more ashamed, and so on. They seem sleazy and unmotivated. The problem is that, if you treat them as if they’re sleazy and unmotivated, you make them worse.

The sad fact here is that medication can usually sharpen attention and make learning easier, but it can’t correct the executive function problems that make it hard for many people with ADD (and others) to get things done and deal with unpleasant priorities. Yes, you need character and willpower, but you also need some help from your brain, and some brains are too “in the moment” to be pushed into planned, prioritized activities, even when the will is willing and the attention razor sharp.

In that case, your goal isn’t to get your son to stop lying—he’s not purposefully dishonest, just permanently flakey—but to disarm his shame while helping him face the full extent of his disability. Forget about his lying, insincerity and apologies. Make it clear you’re not interested in the merry-go-round of avoidance and remorse and instead want to examine the power of whatever makes him fuck up in spite of the fact that he doesn’t really want to. That said, your goal is to help him find ways to manage himself.

Don’t let him present himself as a bad guy who could do better if he’d just try harder, because the evidence says otherwise. In reality, he’s a good guy with a permanent impairment, and it will take him a lot of work to get a handle on it.

Ask him if he’d like a wake-up call in the morning, or whether he should compose a daily log of his lateness to see when it’s better or worse and whether it’s responding to interventions, including medication changes. The more you talk about his lack of control as a fact, the more you challenge the shame that reinforces avoidance. Too bad he’s fucked, but there’s lots to be done. Most of us have weaknesses we have to work hard to manage, but most involve food and don’t involve bank fees.

Once you limit his responsibility and yours for what he doesn’t control, you’re free to bear down on the one part that he does have some power over. You don’t expect him to change his disability or understand why he has it—it is what it is—but you’re confident he can work on managing it, and that, with hard work and discipline, he can gain the control he needs and lose the shame that’s holding him back.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard to watch my son’s overly sincere apology for behavior that cost us half a year’s tuition, knowing that, if he hadn’t lied about what was happening, we could have helped him, and that he’ll do the same thing again. Nevertheless, he wants good things for himself and has a legitimate problem that is worse than a poor attention span. I will talk to him about the good things he can do with a bad problem, and urge him to seek coaching rather than moral reform or absolution.”

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.”

My ex-wife became the victim from hell after our divorce, which she and the kids blamed on my messing around with another woman. The truth is, I’d been eager to get divorced for the past 10 years, particularly because my ex was so good at messing up and then acting like a victim. I didn’t have that or any affair until I had almost put the divorce in motion and the youngest was about ready for college, and my not-mistress has subsequently become my wife. I felt guilty, however, and the kids see me as guilty, so they punish me with silence, or worse, extend an invitation to have a talk so they can hit me with a blast of endless recrimination before returning to silence again. Needless to say, explaining doesn’t help—their anger is endless—so when they call me up, I wonder what to say. My goal is to help them with their pain and restore a normal relationship.

Most good people feel guilty about leaving a marriage, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. Guilt the emotion, as opposed to guilt the legal state, is never necessarily caused by bad behavior.

You feel guilty because those you love are hurt and disappointed, and happen to blame you. Given the fact that one of the most important reasons that people marry—perhaps the most important—is to have someone to blame, guilt is an unavoidable part of both marriage and divorce that should never, ever be considered proof of criminality.

As natural as your guilt is, it’s dangerous to let it guide you when you’re managing seriously angry kids (or adults, especially when they’re acting like kids). It’s like showing fear to a tiger, or blood to a vampire, or low-hanging comedic fruit to Ricky Gervais. They’ll just keep coming.

Your first job is not to respond to the kids before you’ve decided for yourself whether you’re guilty, and what for. Begin by listing your standards, which should probably include trying hard to make marriage work, giving priority to the needs of the kids, and behaving well in a difficult situation.

They should probably not include being happy or keeping your family happy, because life is often unavoidably unhappy, and looking for marriage to make you happy, though nice when it does happen, is ridiculous.

The question is how dysfunctional your wife’s behavior was and how badly it affected your partnership, as well as your mood and behavior. My guess, from what you say, is that you tried hard, put great importance on raising the kids, but found yourself hating your marriage. If you believe that’s reasonable grounds for divorce (if you were judging a friend), then it’s time to stop apologizing. If not, then figure out what you did wrong (excluding everything that you didn’t control), apologize, and then don’t apologize anymore.

Once you’ve prepared your statement (see sample below), you’re ready to draw the line on receiving punishment you don’t deserve. You and the kids deserve a better relationship, and from your point of view, their anger is the main obstacle. You hope they can stop it, and the first step is allowing yourself to stop feeling perpetually guilty for doing what you believe was necessary.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I failed my first marriage since I’m the one who was unhappy and broke it up, and my kids blame me. After thinking it through, I see my responsibility as limited. If this response doesn’t satisfy the kids, I’m sorry, but I’ve heard their views and accepted their feelings and it’s no good for negative conversations to continue indefinitely. I love them and believe we can have a positive relationship, if and when they’re ready.”

The main thing wrong with my marriage is that we lost the incredible love and closeness we had for the first few years, and a major reason is that my husband keeps his distance. No, I don’t think he’s having affairs, and we still get along very well as partners and parents, but he says he just hasn’t felt comfortable with me since I went through a depressed, nasty period, so he avoids kissing and sex. I’ve told him I can’t go on like this, but I’m not going to beg for sex if he’s not going to give it to me. I don’t mention it most of the time, but it hurts. My goal is to figure out how to get the old love back or decide whether the current situation is good enough for me to want to stay married.

The trouble with mixing sex and love in a marriage is that sexual withholding feels like a loss of love, and a loss of love causes deep pain, which causes sexual withholding, and around it goes, flushed down the marital toilet.

If you think sex might bridge the gulf between you, then don’t request it as evidence of his love, or as satisfaction of your needs. To do so is to make the issue more wrought, personal and emotionally explosive. Of course you have those feelings, but expressing them won’t clear them up—it will make them worse.

Instead, propose sex as an activity that might reduce the distance between you by having a positive effect on your emotions. Now that your nasty period is over, you’re confident it will be a good experience, and, if repeated, it might build trust, as well as reducing an issue between you. As long as you don’t emotionalize sex in terms of love and intimacy, you reduce the risk of failure. Market it as nerve tonic, not as proof of his dedication or your personal worth.

If he doesn’t respond, then you know you haven’t scared him away; he’s simply stuck. You haven’t let your hurt feelings make you passive; you’ve done what you can, and your actions haven’t added to your pain by expressing it.

I assume you’ve apologized for the past (see above) to the extent that you could have controlled your nasty behavior, so it’s time to stop apologizing. Propose a better way forward and see if your husband can join you. Having sex, if he can do it, is a way of putting negative feelings to one side. The love issue will have to wait.

STATEMENT:
“The lack of a sex life leaves me feeling guilty, sad, and punished, as well as horny and needy, but I know I’ve been a good partner for a long time and don’t deserve punishment. I believe it would help my husband, and our relationship, if he could put a lid on his anxieties and just do it. It’s his job to try. What he does with it will tell me whether he can.”

I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anorexia nervosa purging type a few years ago. Both of these issues had pretty much consumed my life during the years leading up to that diagnosis and have continued to be impairing ever since. I started cutting myself two years ago (it has become more frequent this past year), and I’ve had several panic attacks in the past several months. Fortunately, my overwhelming desire to commit suicide has subsided, although I still think of suicide and my death in general fairly often. In addition to my own issues, I have watched my mom slip into a state of psychosis during the past two years, triggered by the death of her father. She has become so depressed, delusional, and violent that my parents separated and sometimes I don’t even feel safe staying in the house with her—a few weeks ago my dad and I had to stop her from going through with a suicide attempt. The police were called, and I had to hold her arms down while she was clearly in a psychotic rage. At one point, she tried to stab my hand to make me let go. She was taken to a mental health facility where she stayed for a week, and now she’s furious at us for making her go there and hasn’t been much better since then. I feel like I never get anywhere with therapists because they just prescribe medicines that make me feel numb to any emotions or focus on my eating disorder so much that I never get to work through these other issues. I feel like my life is unraveling and it’s gotten so bad that, honestly, I don’t feel like I even want to fix it. My goal in telling you this is to figure out a way to help my mom and how to get through school while I’m dealing with this.

It may seem strange to hear this, for someone who suffers as much as you do from depression, anorexia, and the burdens of taking care of a very sick mother, but I think you’re doing an amazing job.

Yes, you’re chin-deep in shit, but you haven’t drowned, and that’s a remarkable accomplishment.

Your depression hasn’t made you hate people or blame them, and your anorexia hasn’t caused you to pretend you’re not sick, so you must have a solid hold on reality. There you are, with all your pain, finding the love to help your mother and the energy to go on with your studies. You’ve got good values and a big soul.

So you feel hopeless because treatment hasn’t done you much good, or, I should say, hasn’t done your symptoms much good. It sucks, but that’s the way it usually is when symptoms are as severe as yours. That doesn’t mean they won’t get better by themselves, or that a better treatment won’t come along. It does mean that, at least for the time being, you’re stuck with heavy-duty pain.

That’s not important, however, or at least not nearly as important as what you’re doing with that pain, which is, as I said, amazing, and there’s treatment that can help you distinguish between you and your symptoms. Any good cognitive treatment will help, whether it comes from a cognitive therapist, a good coach, or a friend with a positive attitude. One treatment that is aimed specifically at helping people with this much pain keep a positive attitude is Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, or DBT.

The inventor of this treatment, Marsha Linehan [link: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/health/23lives.html], suffered similar symptoms and, like you, managed to stay focused on the value of helping people and improving her own skills. She wound up inventing a kind of treatment that helps others do what she did for herself, and, like you, she found that helping others was a great way to keep her own demons in check.

It’s normal for you to feel that your life is unraveling, but trust me, it isn’t; your pain is a mess, but you’re doing a good job of bearing it and doing good things with it.

You are not your pain; you’re dealing with a lot of shit, but you are anything but. You’re the person who’s managing it while leading a good and meaningful life, and that’s not someone you should give up on.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel like a hopeless, deteriorating mess, but I love my mother and care about my education and I’m doing good things about both. I may not be able to stop my symptoms or save my mother, but life sucks and that’s not a personal failure. I haven’t let my symptoms stop me, however, and that’s why I’m doing well, even if my pain and my mother are doing badly.”

I have a great life and there’s nothing I care about more than my family, so I became really worried when, out of nowhere, I started to have horrible thoughts about murdering my children. I’m too ashamed to tell my husband. I’m not an angry person, and I love my kids and get along well with them, and I’ve never needed a shrink, but the thoughts keep me up at night. If there’s the slightest chance I could hurt my kids, I’ve got to do something about it, but I don’t know what to do. Please help.

Before you get crazy about having crazy, murderous thoughts, check out the risk factors for crazy murders. It’s not hard to do. What you’ll find out is that crazy murderers don’t just have intrusive murderous thoughts; they’re crazy as well.

By that, I mean they’re very detached, or they have strange ideas about their kids that they actually believe in, or they’re hearing voices, or going through extreme mood swings.

Ask yourself whether you fit the picture of people who really run amok. While I don’t know you, of course, my guess is that you don’t fit the picture at all, which means you run the same finite-but-small risk as your average Joe.

Trouble is, everyone who has intrusive, horrible thoughts without other symptoms of craziness is nevertheless terrified of losing control, so reassuring yourself is hard to do. What you want, of course, is total reassurance that the horrible thoughts will go away and that you’ll never, ever lose control; as you say, if there’s the slightest chance that you might hurt your family, you feel obliged to take definitive action. Unfortunately, you can’t. No one controls such thoughts, and trying to control them will just add to your helplessness.

Your goal then isn’t total reassurance or freedom from fear, but reasonable self-control and an ability to go ahead with your life in spite of fear. Assess the real risk you pose to your family and take steps to protect them if you think it’s necessary. Having done that (and realizing that your family is better off with you just the way you are, crazy thoughts and all), learn to bear your fear and go about your business, which isn’t easy to do.

If you want to tell your family about your symptoms, that’s the story you’d tell. You’ve got these crazy thoughts, but you’ve checked on the internet, and probably seen a shrink, and discovered you’re at no particular risk of doing harm, you’re just at risk of suffering from creepy thoughts. Reassure them that you have no intention of letting the crazy thoughts interfere with your normal activities and that, if you thought you were dangerous, you’d do whatever’s necessary to protect them.

As with the woman above, you are not your symptoms; a good mom can have crazy thoughts, and a great mom can carry on despite them.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve got crazy thoughts and might lose my mind but the truth is that I’ve checked out my symptoms and the part of my mind I’m losing is pretty small and insubstantial (although the process is scary and painful). Whether or not I can make my symptoms go away, I’m competent to manage them, keep everyone safe, and go on with my life, and that’s all I need to do.”

Helping my daughter pay the rent on a bigger apartment seems to have lifted her out of her depression and she’s much more active at her job, but she’s still not making enough money and I’m running out of cash. If I tell her that she has to take a roommate, I’m afraid she’ll just crawl under the covers again and we’ll be back where we started. It shouldn’t be that hard for her to make enough money, but it is. I’m mad and I’m stuck. My goal is to get her to make more money and/or understand that I can’t keep supporting her like this.

While you may think you’re giving your daughter money out of love, you’re actually doing it out of fear. That’s trouble, because when you give money out of fear, you’re usually being mugged.

Fear makes you forget long-term risks, like what you’ll do after you run out of money and the consequences for you, her, and other people who depend on you. Your love is infinite, but your finances aren’t.

You’ll also forget that your daughter may be able to do more for herself now than she could before. She may be able to tolerate more stress and access other resources if yours are less available.

Finally, your fear amplifies her fear and vice versa, until you both doubt that she’ll be able to survive without your current level of support, without there being any evidence of that, other than fear itself.

If you want to manage her disability, rather than be managed by it, you must continually test out what she’s capable of. If she’s stressed by looking for a roommate, coach her on how to do it or how to find a coach. If the roommate is hard to live with, advise her on ways to protect herself. If you protect her more than absolutely necessary, you’re just stifling her growth in the long run.

After all, you’re not responsible for relieving her stress, but for teaching her how to live with it. You’re trying to ensure her basic safety and security, and while you wish she could be happy, that’s not something you or she control.

If she’s afraid of slipping back into depression, point out the constructive things she’s doing to prevent it. Stress may make her feel overwhelmed, but that doesn’t necessarily cause depression or mean that she’s slipping back. It just that means life is hard.

Don’t let her panic incite yours. Instead, think up an emergency, affordable bail-out plan in case she has a bad relapse. Don’t share it with her, just remind yourself that you know what to do for her safety and that the pain she may experience as you cut her funding is an unavoidable part of her recovery and your solvency.

By giving no more than you think is necessary, you become a strong fear-manager and learn self-defense against an emotional hostage situation. Ultimately, that’s the skill you want to give her.

STATEMENT:
“I’m terrified of the stress my daughter will experience if I cut back on the money I’m giving her, but I’ve thought carefully about what she needs and I’m sure she’ll be stronger if she can cope with the stress and do more with less.”

My 22-year-old daughter is mildly retarded, but she’s pretty well taken care of. She’s not unhappy—she worries about things much less than I do—but I’m unhappy, because I’ve never felt comfortable with her. Most people think she’s sweet and docile, but my daughter very much has a will of her own; she doesn’t like to shower, she doesn’t care about other people’s feelings, and she has no idea of how people are reacting to her, or anyone else. I’ve tried hard to find a point of positive connection, and failed. Other people think I’m a great father, but I can’t get over the feeling that I never met this challenge and that there’s unfinished business between my daughter and me.

Regardless of whether your daughter is retarded, super-powered or “normal,” you can never be sure that you’ll like her. It’s so much easier to be her father if you do, but that’s never a guarantee.

It may be that no one would like her if they really knew her, but that doesn’t matter. It sounds like you’ve tried hard to like her, but you don’t, and it’s not in your control.

Given the lack of good chemistry, however, you should appreciate your achievement all the more. You haven’t punished your daughter or told her she’s a failure; on the contrary, you’ve taken good care of her. You’ve done your job under much tougher conditions than most parents have to deal with, and I don’t mean because she’s retarded, but because of your negative feelings for her.

The test of a good teacher isn’t how well she teaches the kids she likes, but how well she does with the kids she doesn’t like and how well she hides that fact.

If this were the movies, your business wouldn’t be finished until the two of you have a good hug. Since this is real life, it’s never finished, so every day, do your best to treat her with respect and friendliness. If you slip and get nasty, apologize. It’s one day at a time.

It’s certainly sad that you couldn’t like her more, but it’s not a failure. It’s a success that, in spite of that, you treat her right, and one that only a great father could achieve.

STATEMENT:
“I will never feel comfortable with my daughter and I will always suspect that, if I were a better person, I would; but I am who I am and she is who she is and I’ve done the best job possible given that simple fact of life.”

My brother is really an upbeat, cheerful, friendly guy, but he turns into a viper whenever someone tells him what to do, even when it’s sure to get him into lots of trouble, and afterwards he’s convinced he’s been calm and diplomatic. When he and his wife got divorced, he was so argumentative with the judge that he lost custody of his kid. When his boss asked him to do something stupid, my brother fired off emails to Human Resources declaring he was being unfairly attacked. The funny thing is, he doesn’t mind when I tell him he’s being stupid, and the next time something happens he’s sure he’s done better; but he hasn’t. He’s not nearly as difficult as he seems to be, so my goal is to keep him out of trouble.

God bless the antagonists, for they know not what bile they speak.

Whenever someone is particularly quick to resist being pushed, we assume there’s an emotional reason for his actions, and that understanding why will help him to control himself, or help us shut him up and make him more tolerable.

Truth is, we often can’t explain or control oppositional behavior, which suggests there’s a basic force of nature driving some people to be reflexively, unthinkingly oppositional.

It’s actually on the spectrum of Asshole ™ behavior, but, since it lacks the malice required to actually fulfill the Asshole criteria, it remains a general pain in the ass, especially for those people, like you, who are close to him.

Maybe the Oppositional Instinct springs from a genetic trait that spurs creativity or guarantees that not everyone will follow the leader of the human herd, thus guaranteeing that some will survive if the herd leader is fatally wrong. The Bible’s Abraham certainly wasn’t a get-along kind of guy, Steve Jobs wasn’t a people person, and no shrink with a blog fxckfeelings.com is eager to go with the professional flow. Most of the time, however, instant opposition doesn’t win friends among authority, co-workers, family, and/or most mammals.

Since their actions are often infuriating, we think oppositional people must be furious, but in reality, they’re often just doing their thing, taking courage from the fact that everyone else is getting mad and is therefore the irrational party. You can’t try to change your brother then, or teach him how to protect himself.

Short of averting your eyes, you can help other people who care about him—the victims of his accidental provocation—most of whom will hate and love him in equal measure. Friends will feel he wasted their help and ignored their advice, family will blame him for endangering their security, and they’ll all speculate about the impact of the things they could have or should have said or actually did say.

If you brought them together in a support group (or did individual sessions), they’d discover that everything had been said, more than once, and it did no good. It’s sad, but, on the other hand, no one failed.

While you and those who related can help each other deal with the pain (in your ass), sadly, you can’t stop him from being an ass in the future.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling that I could save my brother from his worst problems if only I could get him to shut up, but I know better. The best I can do is appreciate his better qualities and accept the fact that it’s probably more painful to watch him than be him, since he’s always doing what he knows is the right thing to do.”

My father is the kind of guy who would always complain about my mother (his ex-wife) to my face, even when I was little, but, if I objected, he would get mad at me for being ungrateful and unsympathetic. He still does it now that I’m an adult, and there’s got to be a better way to deal with him then just avoiding him so I don’t have to hear it. My goal is to set limits on him that will stick.

While you may be in a unique position to know that your father has good reason to be hurting, you also know, from experience, that airing grievances repeatedly is a good definition of whining. It may provide your father with temporary relief, but it also binds him to his role of victim/husband in a relationship that’s long over.

The fact that he attacks you for not being sympathetic is the icing on the cake, as far as proving the unhealthy nature of his kind of venting; he widens his victimhood by sucking his near and dear into the role of villain. OK, I know he can’t help it but still, it’s not good for you to have this kind of conversation.

You’re right to want to stop it, and telling him how unhealthy his father-son venting is is a start, but you need stronger weapons than reasoning with him about his violating a parental boundary. In order to prepare, ask yourself what you’d do if he ignored your wishes and crossed that line, and be ready for when it happens.

List the reasons that you believe it isn’t good to listen, even though he believes, in his heart, that this makes you a hard-hearted kid. You know your listening does no good, brings out nothing good in him, and has you walking on eggshells. You also know that you won’t get him to understand this point of view.

Ironically, once you believe in your own values, over and above whatever your father tells you, you’re an adult, not a kid. It’s as an adult that you tell him it’s not a good subject to get into and you don’t’ want to talk about it. Knowing that he’ll object, and refusing to explain, is what an adult does.

So what’s important is not what you tell him, but what you tell yourself. If you believe that what you’re doing is best for everyone, then your silence speaks louder than words, and distance won’t be necessary.

STATEMENT:
“I’ve always felt trapped by my father’s complaints and confessions, particularly because he jumps on me if I don’t listen, and I can’t help but feel guilty. I’ve thought through the consequences of his actions, however, and my sense of what’s right is stronger than the guilt reflex he can always make me feel. As long as I stick with what I know is right, I’ll never be trapped.”

I thought I’d always be able to trust my wife, even though I’ve never been able to trust anyone else before. I’m just like that, always nervous and suspicious, even when people are reasonably nice. My wife is an unusually nice and nurturing person, but when I found out she was doing some compulsive shopping and she lied about it, I flipped out and I can’t recover. The more she tries to reassure me, the more I don’t trust her. She’s just about had it with me and I want to recover our old intimacy before our marriage breaks up.

It’s really remarkable that you assume that your wife isn’t necessarily bad, just because she’s triggered your suspicions. It’s also remarkable that she’s the first person you’ve trusted, but why focus on the negative.

Most people who suffer from severe suspicion are pretty sure that it’s the other person’s bad actions that have caused a loss of trust, but you aren’t falling for that trap.

You’re open to the idea that your wife isn’t that bad, even though her actions have shattered your peace of mind. But you’re also a little too accepting that one white lie and the sadness that lie has caused you can lead to your divorce.

It’s a bummer, but this sounds less like therapy-inducing “trust issues” and more like a severe case of “the honeymoon is over.” In other words, if you expect to get back that old trusting feeling, given the demon of suspicion that has always haunted you, you’re probably wrong.

Plus, trying to get it back will just make both of you feel more angry and responsible for the pain you’re in. False hope is more dangerous for your marriage than your wife’s covert shopping habits.

Rely instead on your good common sense and do a fact-based investigation of your wife’s trustworthiness as a partner; don’t listen to your feelings before you collect, and review, the facts. Begin by defining the crimes that you consider deal-breakers, like compulsive shopping that empties your accounts or major drug use or lying about other close relationships. Imagine advising a friend about the kinds of bad spousal behavior that can turn marriage into a dangerous, depression-inducing burden without hope of redemption.

Then weigh your wife’s behavior against these standards. If her shopping doesn’t represent a major drain and her lying doesn’t apply to most difficult topics, then it may not represent a major threat. From what you say, that’s a possibility, but it’s for you to decide.

If it’s true that she’s not so bad, however, then you’ve got a tough job ahead of you that will actually increase your pain, not make it better, but thems the breaks. If you decide your marriage is worth hanging on to, then you’ve got to stop breaking it up while seeking a relief you’re never going to feel.

Once you stifle your paranoia and decide this is your problem to manage, you open new doors for yourself. You can talk to a therapist about ways of thinking positively despite your mistrust, and you may also find that your mistrust gets better if you don’t stimulate it by expressing it. If nothing else works, you may find that medication can help.

It may initially make you feel helpless and hopeless to allow suspicion to reenter a relationship you thought would be a safe haven. In the long run, however, tolerating a certain amount of suspicion may save your marriage and allow a deeper sense of trust to develop. Sure, you’ll always worry about her shopping sprees, but you may also take comfort in the fact that she tolerates your faults and that your partnership is good for both of you. Trust your own standards, rather than your feelings, and divorce may not be so inevitable after all.

STATEMENT:
“I’m profoundly disappointed to discover that my marriage is no longer a refuge from the suspicions that have always tortured me, but I won’t let them control what I do with it. If I decide that my marriage is solid enough, I will find ways to keep my suspicion from making my decisions for me, even if I can’t get rid of them. If I let them control me in the past, I’d have never gotten married. Now I need to take the fight to the next level.”

I’ve broken up with my boyfriend many times over the 5 years we’ve dated, but after I made it clear to him, for the umpteenth time, that he had to start including me in his inner family circle, he turned around and told me not to drop by on Thanksgiving because he needed to spend time with his kids, which made me explosive. It’s not just that he excludes me from his inner family circle; he’s always backing out of plans, which is why we still live separately and I never know whether we’ll spend time together next weekend. Now that I’ve cooled off, I find it hard to really end things with him when we’ve been together so long and know one another so well. I feel like we should be able to work things out, but maybe we keep breaking up for a reason.

You’re obviously attached to your boyfriend and haven’t been able to give him up, even when you knew the relationship wasn’t working for you. Maybe you love him too much or you’re too needy, which are also two reasons that you should flee from this unhealthy relationship in the first place.

In any case, you’ve told him what you want, again and again, and there’s been no progress. The problem isn’t that you’ve failed to get through to him; it’s that reality has failed to get through to you.

The sad fact is that there’s usually no way to change the distance between you and the person you love. It’s like the distance between molecules; you can push it back and forth, but there’s something basic about it, on average, that you can’t change, even with a megaton of talk, therapy, or whatever.

If you can bring yourself to accept the idea that he, and the relationship, are not going to change, and decide that this relationship will never give you enough of what you want, then you have to find the strength to move on.

Remember that you’re right to look for someone who includes you in his intimate family gatherings and with whom you can make reliable weekend plans. Until you find that person and check out his credentials, however, you must become strong enough to keep your heart to yourself. Hang out with friends and family, develop social hobbies, and build up your independence muscles so you aren’t forced to lean on people who aren’t sturdy. Build your strength while remaining wary of your instincts.

Don’t assume there’s someone out there for you, because there often isn’t, and the false assumption that there is will confirm your belief that you’re doing something wrong every time you don’t connect, and that will lead you back to connecting too much. There may be someone out there for you, or not, but your job is to conduct a good search, not compromise your heart or try to force the wrong guy to do the right thing.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling very connected to my boyfriend, but I know he can’t meet my needs and I can’t change him. If I want a chance at a better partnership, I must move on and become independent enough to resist going back or falling into some new and equally painful compromise. I know what’s good for me and I can’t afford to accept less.”

I’m always a little annoyed at my boyfriend, even though we never really fight, because he always seems a little unavailable (you’d think at our age he’d be over playing games). If we spend lots of time together this weekend, then next weekend I can be sure he’ll call back late, find a reason we can’t meet early in the day, and leave me with an option for getting together briefly that doesn’t work well for either one of us. He used to say it was because he needed time for his son, but now that his son’s in college things haven’t changed. I don’t think he wants to date anyone else, and our friends think we’re great together, but I’d like to share my life with someone and our relationship is stuck.

Sometimes the worst thing about a relationship is that it’s too good to be bad, but too bad to be worth the effort.

Your boyfriend is almost a good match, good enough so that you look forward to seeing him every weekend, but it’s not mutual enough for him to feel the way you do. So you’re always chasing him, but never quite catching him.

If it were truly bad, then either he’d end it, or pride, fighting or the protests of friends might eventually help you break up, grieve and move on. Here, no such luck. You’re in relationship purgatory, but on the southern side.

Like Miss Piggy, it’s natural for you to have feelings about landing your elusive frog once and for all. You might wonder whether you need to make him love you more, or get him in the right mood, or lay down the law. Usually, however, if you’re not too bashful, you’ve already tried everything possible (short of karate chops), it hasn’t worked, and that’s the way it is.

So it’s time to admit that your goal isn’t to land him, because that’s just going to make you miserable. Your goal is to accept that, for whatever reason, he’ll never be fully available (and he won’t completely go away).

If you can accept that he’ll always be a grade B, then maybe you can stop feeling hurt and rejected and start thinking about whether he’s still good for something, better than the alternative, at least for the time being. If he’s better than nothing, at least until someone better comes along, then maybe he’s still worth seeing from time to time. If not, then stick with nothing and push him off into the sunset.

In any case, stop chasing him or pursuing what you want but can’t have. If you love him too much, keep away entirely. Otherwise, you will have fewer fights if you see him when he feels like it, enjoy your time together, and keep looking for something good, not just good enough.

STATEMENT:
“I sometimes feel like a loser because I can’t get my boyfriend to love me as much as I love him, but I know that I haven’t done anything wrong and that I’ve made a good effort to make things work. It’s not good for me to try to get someone to love me. I’ve got to protect my heart, give myself a future, and move on.”

My daughter’s seeing this guy who is crazy about her, but my husband can’t stand him. He’s hard-working, serious, very smart, and seemingly reliable, but he’s socially clueless and often irritates people without meaning to, including my husband, who’s equally socially clueless in that he can’t just be polite and hide his dislike. I like my daughter’s boyfriend and wish my husband wasn’t so unhappy with the guy who may marry our daughter.

It’s tempting, when you’re sensitive to social conflict, to want to help people get along, particularly when you see the long-term risks of conflict better than they can. If you’re gifted at overcoming awkwardness, smoothing out shyness, and getting antagonistic people to find common interests, it’s hard not to take responsibility for being a general, all around peacemaker and conductor of the harmony chorus.

Unfortunately, trying to stop a partner from expressing his anger may well give him a target for that anger, as well as renewing his determination to speak his mind, so don’t take responsibility for curbing your husband’s self-expressiveness or bad behavior. You might also be tempted to smooth over your daughter’s boyfriend’s rough edges, but this is equally likely to backfire.

So instead of trying to end hostility, see if you can get the parties involved to tolerate hostile feelings that may well be unavoidable. Begin by asking your husband what’s most important about his daughter’s boyfriend; whether he’s fun to be with, or likely to provide her with a good, solid partner and co-parent. Naturally, you and your husband would like your son-in-law to be both, but if that’s not to be, urge your husband to think through his priorities.

Then don’t ask your husband to be nice for your sake or his daughter’s, but for the sake of what he believes will be best for your daughter and possible grandchildren. In addition, he should ask himself whether he wants to drive his future son-in-law away.

I assume you think your daughter is aware of and accepts her boyfriend’s shortcomings, and that you’re not too worried about the long-term stability of their relationship. You get along with him fine and are ready to spend time with both of them, whether or not your husband is well-behaved enough to come along.

If you can draw a line, friendly but firm, between your husband’s behavior and your own, your partnership does not need to spoil your participation in theirs.

STATEMENT:
“I wish my daughter’s boyfriend was better with people and that my husband was better at stifling his dislike, but I believe her boyfriend has strengths that will make him a good partner for her, if that’s what she wants, and I won’t let my husband’s feelings or complaints interfere with the relationship I plan to have with the next generation.”

Please Note: The next new post will be 11/28, after American Thanksgiving.

My husband and I get along better since I left with our daughter to start a new job in a nearby town, and he is usually polite when he comes for his weekend visits (he sleeps on the couch). He’s a devoted father, but sometimes, when he’s in a bad mood, he gets as nasty as ever and calls me a loser and a wimp who can’t keep things clean or make much money, and I’m back with the old feeling of not being able to do anything right. I suppose I should shut the fuck up, because anything I say just sets him off and gets our daughter upset. My goal is to keep my feelings to myself and keep the peace.

It’s hard to tell nasty criticism from the valid kind if you already tend to get down on yourself for not getting much done. Then again, it’s hard to get much done when you have a kid and an ex-husband who’s always criticizing you.

What you seem to be taking issue with is how unfair your ex’s judgments are, as if you’re agreeing with him that you’re a loser, but you wish he’d be less harsh. The real problem, however, is that, without carefully applying your own standards, you’re allowing yourself to take his judgments seriously in the first place.

If you’re afraid of his reaction to your disagreement, you could say that staying quiet is a way of keeping the peace, and that peacemakers are blessed. It doesn’t seem blessed, however, to absorb nastiness indefinitely unless you can explain to yourself and your daughter why it’s necessary.

Otherwise, it actually make you a wimp, and it encourages him to be a bully, and while you can’t get double divorced, you can shut his criticism down without absorbing it.

After all, you’re no longer stuck with him and with doing nothing. You’re working during the weekdays and being a single parent, so you may be tired and have little to show for it at the end of the week. Still, you’re independent and accomplishing difficult and important goals, and you’d be foolish not to respect yourself, regardless of what your inner voice, or your husband, has to say about it.

Without getting mad, you can tell your ex-husband that you’re satisfied with how you run your life and don’t want his comments; if he insists on sharing, you insist on his leaving. It’s not hard to do if you believe you have a right (and he doesn’t), and it’s easier to feel you have a right if you’ve thought it through and don’t get into a fight.

You may never feel great about what you’re doing, given that you’re poor, tired, and have a critical ex who gives you a regular earful. Look objectively at the good things you’re doing, however, and you can stand up to those self-critical feelings and challenge anyone who echoes them. It’s time to recognize who the real loser is in this scenario.

STATEMENT:
“I may never feel like a winner, but I’m doing two tough and worthwhile jobs in working and raising a child, and I now have the right and opportunity to veto negative topics my husband would like to share. I will let him know that, if he escalates, he goes.”

I get enough done when I have a full-time job to go to—I’m motivated, show up on time, and keep up with my work—but since I’ve been unemployed I can’t seem to keep moving. I get up late, scan the internet, play some games, and go back to bed. It’s depressing, and the more depressed I get, the less I do. I’m turning into a total loser. How do I kick myself into action?

Lots of people need structure to keep moving; at school, you’ve got bells, attendance, and homework. At work you got a time-clock and a boss who will notice if you no-show or don’t get your work done. As such, structure’s basically a fancy word for having other people force good habits upon you so you don’t have to worry about them yourself.

When people don’t have structure, they have trouble getting things done. Some people, of course, are very good at staying energetic and knocking off their priorities in a disciplined way. And then there’s the rest of us.

Of course, when people don’t get much done they see themselves as lazy; with all that time on one’s hands, there doesn’t seem to be an excuse for accomplishing nothing. It’s the same tone we use to chide ourselves for making a careless mistake or eating too much pie. The negative criticism usually makes escape more attractive/leads to yet more pie.

If you’re ashamed of your low productivity, you may hide it by diverting energy into appearing busy and inventing a cover-up to explain what you haven’t done. The less you do, the more it becomes a secret. When the secret comes out, you’re more likely to be chided for laziness, the more you’ll want to hide again.

Don’t sink into that rut. Instead, treat your problem as important and respectable, and become your own boss or principal. Wage a campaign to be structured, whether you like it or not, to the degree to which you can get your employee/self to go along with you.

Start with a job description that keeps you busy and attends to priorities, i.e., what work you need to accomplish everyday until real work comes along. It should have enough time for hygiene, exercise, work, and friends. Not perfect, but good enough.

Look for help wherever you can get it. You may need help in putting together a schedule, or appreciate a call or a visit from a friend to watch you do something you said you’d do but wouldn’t do if there wasn’t somebody watching.

If you ask friends to help out, they’ll appreciate the chance to be helpful and will respect your struggle to bring your inner sludge under control. You’ll find lots of them have the same problem, so you can create a structure for each other until you’re back in a cubicle without so much cursed free time.

STATEMENT:
“I feel lazy and incompetent when I realize I can’t get much done when no one is watching but I realize that good people are often unable to control bad habits, so I’m determined to bear the shame and take advantage of every trick I can to get where I need to go.”