Posted by fxckfeelings on May 5, 2011
People like to turn to an authority when they’re helpless, and if that helplessness only applied to 911-like situations, there would be no problem. For problems that don’t involve theft or fire but sadness and family, however, authority is useless; sure, doctors like me can give advice, but until medical schools start borrowing from Hogwarts’ curriculum, the best resources you have are your own. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll learn to draw on your own authority to come up with the best possible management plan and execute it with confidence. You are your own best first responder.
-Dr. Lastname
I need to find a doctor who will tell my daughter she needs to take her medication. She’s always had a problem with depression, and she did well in high school when she took antidepressants. Now, however, she’s 24 and very reactive to however she’s feeling, whether it’s not getting out of bed, or not working, or feeling dizzy and deciding it’s the medication and stopping it. My husband and I can’t get her to stick with anything, and she won’t listen to us in any case, so our goal is to get you, or some professional, to tell her what she needs to do.
Whenever parents want a doctor to tell their kid what to do, you can be pretty sure they’ve lost faith in themselves and overestimated the power of communication/a medical degree.
And no, it doesn’t matter how old the kid is or how many Harvard degrees the doctor has; the doctor doesn’t have more power than the parents, no matter how powerless the parents feel.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 25, 2011
There’s plenty of evidence out there, from newspaper headlines to vicious drivers, that life is unfair. The clearest proof, at least as we see it at fxckfeelings.com, is that we never cease to get cases about unfairness and the need for justice it inspires. Accepting that life is unfair doesn’t mean giving up, just giving up on the futile goal of stamping out evil altogether. Learn to tolerate unfairness and manage the anger and pain it inspires. After all, given all the ways life can suck, we’re sure you have tons of other personal problems you can write in about.
-Dr. Lastname
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.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 21, 2011
Love without trust is always a painful, combustible combination. If your partner does something to lose your trust, s/he’s got to get lost, no matter how much love remains, and you’ve got to learn your lesson and move on. If you can’t trust someone whose behavior is OK because your trusting feelings just won’t come, then maybe the pain is worse, because there’s nothing to learn and nothing to do. In either case, when the trust goes, acknowledge that you’re not going to get what you want and need to settle for the best possible disaster before everything blows up in your face.
-Dr. Lastname
My partner cheated on me while I was pregnant with our baby, and kept ME the secret. He told lies about me and told people that we were no longer together so that he could openly date the other woman. I’m struggling to stop thinking about it all, and the whole ordeal has triggered a particularly intense bout of depression and self-harm. I have hundreds of questions I feel I need answers to, but my partner is 100% unwilling to discuss the matter, seeing it as “dragging up the past”. My goal is to be able to get through the day without memories of the betrayal and the gossip that surrounded it intruding on my life.
When a guy hides his relationship with you when you’re pregnant, you don’t have hundreds of questions that need answers; you’ve got a few simple, sad, unpleasant answers that need to be accepted.
After all, you’re not doing a PhD in trying to understand him. That’s a waste of time and, like most inquiries into the sad “whys” of this universe, a sneaky way of avoiding acceptance.
You could see it as him not being that into you, but the reality is that he’s not into anyone, at all, except for himself. At this point, the only important question is one you have to ask yourself, and it’s figuring out what’s the right thing for you to do, regardless of what your should-be-ex might think.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 20, 2011
Work, like relationships, weight gain, and luck in general, is a big part of life, but not always telling of who we are as people. When people feel like work defines who they are, they always feel like a failure if they’re working too little, too much, or in a job that doesn’t offer enough. Sadly, you don’t control your job (or your ability to find someone, or to keep M&M’s from bloating you up like a deer tick, or preventing an anvil from falling on your head, etc.). What defines you is how you deal with the necessity of work, your performance, and your limitations. And whether or not to supersize that.
-Dr. Lastname
I have arrived at a destination in my life after a long period of study, with a two year gap to overcome the burn out, and a return to the mammoth uphill battle to complete the certification requirements, where I thought, never again will I feel apathy, scared, bored, hatred of employment. I was a passionate dedicated student and I loved being a student up until the last couple of years, which were made worse by a university in turmoil and academics who lost interest in my specialist field when it was cut from the university. I was dedicated and driven to succeed, but after a immense effort to find any work in my new chosen field or related field with not much luck, it then struck me, that at the ripe old age of fifty-two, I don’t care much for work, of any kind. I am now living on welfare, because I could find work initially but now I don’t want it. I have to do something with my life, I can’t just up and retire and I don’t have the money anyway. My friends seem to be getting on with their lives, buying houses, but do I want to slave away and struggle on my own to pay off a mortgage only to be probably too old to enjoy it when I get there? I have developed some medical issues over the years, but I do not see myself as disabled. My goal is to become unstuck, find meaning in life/work balance again, get my mojo and drive back.
One of the good things about being 52 and unemployed is that you’re old enough to see your priorities more clearly than when you were younger. You now have the experience to know what you can and can’t do with none of the messy hopes and dreams.
One of the bad things, however, is that you don’t have that much time left on this earth and your material needs are obvious and more and more pressing.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on January 13, 2011
When faced with scary health issues, from strange lumps to bad thoughts, people often avoid treatments that hurt, particularly after long-standing symptoms have sapped their hope, fed self-hate, or fostered bad habits. They deny anything’s wrong, or they insist that resistance is futile, but either way, if you criticize them for not helping themselves, they will readily agree, hate themselves more, and burrow deeper into their holes and further away from treatment. Before they can find the way out, they need to reconnect with their real strength. Only by recognizing their actual achievements and their past and potential courage, can they face what ails them. The pain may continue, but not its power to intimidate and paralyze.
-Dr. Lastname
Please Note: In responding to suicidal goals, as in the case below, we do not presume to offer emotional support. If you’re at risk of hurting yourself, you should, of course, go to an emergency room, discuss your state of mind with a professional, and decide how much support you need in order to remain safe. In most of the cases we encounter, however, our correspondents are not simply suicidal; they are familiar with treatment and have come to believe that it won’t help. Often, we must agree that their feelings are unlikely to change in the near future. What we try to demonstrate, however, is that negative feelings create falsely negative and hopeless beliefs and that there are ways to recover your strength and perspective, even when the pain won’t let up.
I’m considering suicide. My life is a joke. I am in my late 30s and female and I have never had a relationship with a man. Several men have used me for sex and at least 2 of them begged me not to tell any of their friends they’d had sex with me. I’ve never been loved, been held, been listened to, been cherished. I’ve just been used like a toilet. On the outside I’m pretty. I can hold a conversation and I have a reasonable number of friends. But I hate myself and I don’t feel good enough. I was abandoned by both parents and I was raped for the first time when I was about 2-years-old. It’s like men I meet can smell the self-hate on me and they treat me accordingly. I do not have even one person in my life who cares about me or who I could trust. My friends are there to go for drinks or dinner with me if they can find nothing better to do but they are not there to be supportive ever, in any way. What is the point of me continuing to live?
It’s horrible to feel that you don’t belong to the human race, except for your ability to satisfy the needs and cravings of jerks.
Remember, however, that those feelings almost always beget more falsely negative beliefs, particularly about relationships. Whether or not you’ve done anything wrong, you feel infinitely rejectable, comfortable in the company of jerks, and anxious around people you respect, since you know they will reject you for your anxiety and fundamental worthlessness.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on October 4, 2010
We’re hardest on family because, unlike those we’re not bound to by blood, family is stuck with us forever. Then again, being stuck together often forces the released negativity to bounce back and forth, like light in a laser, until it gets strong enough to zap your perspective and make you feel like a loser. Getting out of that mindset requires looking outside of the family circle and unsticking yourself from your nearest, dearest and harshest.
-Dr. Lastname
I don’t consider myself a lazy person—I take care of the kids and sell some of my paintings—but my husband isn’t crazy about selling cars and would really like to stay home and take care of the kids himself, so he’s always making remarks about having to carry the harder load and asking me if I could find a way to make more money. I’ve tried to find better-paying work, but I’m dyslexic, and what I’m doing is probably about as good as it gets, given my skills and the flexibility I need for the kids. Anyway, he’s been nastier lately because car sales are down and it’s getting to me. My goal is to get him to stop putting me down.
You can’t stop someone from putting you down—haters gotta hate, as the kids say, even if the hater is your husband, and most husbands are haters, at one time or another.
On the other hand, just because someone you love is trying to put you down doesn’t mean you have to take their criticism to heart and sink, doomed unless you can get them to take it back and promise never to do it again.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on July 8, 2010
Hate makes us feel particularly alive; Sox fans may hate the Yankees (and the Rays, for the matter), but that rivalry is a big part of what keeps those fans coming back. At the same time, however, indulging in hate excessively is dangerous, because it pushes us to wreak destruction. Once hate takes over, levity leaves; you’re not for one team, you’re just against another. You can’t stop feeling hate, but you can learn to manage it. Otherwise, the season’s as good as over.
-Dr. Lastname
I hate life. What is the most reliable and painless way to commit suicide?
You hate life, and I hate the kind of dangerous, self-lacerating whining that makes a painful life seem meaningless, when it isn’t.
Hating life is an understandable feeling, whether the problem is a hateful life or your own, reflexive intolerance of life’s general hatefulness. There’s no doubt that life is sometimes hateful, some people’s lives are more hateful than most, and some good people are more sensitive to its hatefulness.
There’s more than enough hate to go around, and you can’t help how you feel.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on April 26, 2010
Bad habits are rarely personal—your average nail-biter doesn’t have a cuticle vendetta—but when one half of a marriage gets into bad behavior, even if it has nothing to do with his/her spouse, it’s hard for the other half not to blame his/herself. Women want to discuss the bad habit, men quietly stew, and either way, something impersonal feels like an affront. There’s no escaping the pain when a partnership starts to break down, but you can find ways to talk about bad habits without implying that anyone has failed, or doesn’t care, or just plain bites.
-Dr. Lastname
My husband and I have two kids, we both work hard, and he always used to find time to play with the kids and spend time with me, but in the last few months, he’s buried himself in online poker in the evenings, and the kids see a lot less of him (I do, too, and it’s been a long time since we had sex). He tells me there’s nothing wrong and that he’s not betting with real cash, but I know what I see, so I’ve told him we need to talk, and that’s what’s really infuriating, because then he won’t talk at all. My goal is to figure out why he’s stopped caring about me and find a way to get through to him.
You’re assuming there’s something bothering your husband that you can figure out and communicate about, because that’s what would allow you to fix things; that it’s not the poker that’s really the problem (or the not being poked).
Before you sit him down and try to take him away from the e-poker table, ask yourself what happens if it doesn’t work, which it often doesn’t, and clearly, in your case, hasn’t.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on March 29, 2010
For our 100th post, we address a problem that causes loads of people useless worry, and that is…useless worry. Just because horrible things may happen to you or someone you love (or because of someone you love), life shouldn’t end. Prepare yourself the best you can for whatever trouble you think you see coming, and then continue your regularly scheduled, useful life.
-Dr. Lastname
Living with my mentally ill 30-year-old daughter is wearing me out. My wife and I can never leave her alone, but we also can’t take her with us because she gets uncomfortable when she’s around people she doesn’t know and says inappropriate things in a loud voice and has to get up and leave. The problem isn’t her, though, it’s my wife, who is so worried about what will happen if we put her in a half-way house with other sick people that she can’t think clearly about it. We’ve got some money, but if we paid for my daughter to have her own condo and a nurse to keep an eye on her, the money wouldn’t last long. Then again, if she continues to live with us, we won’t last long. My goal is to get my wife to see that we have to get her into a state-supported program, for her sake and ours.
You hope to get your wife to see that your mentally ill daughter needs to live independently, but if you were making any progress in that direction, you wouldn’t be writing.
Let’s assume then, at least for the moment, that your hopes are false and your wife can’t let go, and if she can’t let go, she’ll always be thinking of new ways to make your daughter feel more comfortable and better understood. Which makes your goal a more and more distant dream.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on November 30, 2009
Seeing someone through a long illness makes saying goodbye a little easier, but that’s like saying that lifting weights makes it easier to lift a truck; losing someone you love is an impossible, painful task, no matter what the circumstances. You don’t protect them from death by protecting them from death, but by bearing the sorrow of their memories.
-Dr. Lastname
My father, a Holocaust survivor, is dying of cancer. I’m his only child, and while my mother is doing the best she can, I feel overwhelmed with responsibility and grief. I don’t know how to stop feeling so helpless, not just because I love him and can’t save him, but because he overcame so much to make life possible for me, and now all I can do is watch him die. My goal is to figure out what I can do for him since he’s done so much for me.
Don’t fall for the common misconception that you fulfill your duty to your parents by taking care of them and keeping them safe when they’re old. As a genuine geezer, Dr. Lastname can tell you with authority: you can’t, and it’s not your duty anyway.
No, I’m not telling you to push your dad out on an ice flow or forget about him, not for a moment. I am telling you to think about two things: what your goal will be for your kids when you get old and need their help, and how little you can do for anyone when they’re suffering from old age.
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