I have suffered from anxiety and depression much of my life. My most recent (and most devastating) bout was a couple of years ago, when I worked with a therapist and managed to heave myself out of it without the use of antidepressants (which I had been on in the past and want to learn to live without.) Now I find myself slipping back in. My biggest issue seems to be that I put too much stock in what others think of me or might think of me (I’m really good at fabricating things people might be saying about me.) I also had a baby last year, which has prevented me from pursuing my career fully, so when I hear of the successes of others (or see them on Facebook) I get very anxious and feel that the universe is unjust. I want to be a good mom, and I want to be good at my job, but I feel I am failing at both and resenting others who are great at either. I was made fun of a lot when I was a kid and I think I still carry some of this baggage around, like whatever decision I make is the wrong one because I’m basically a loser. How can I focus on myself and my own life without worrying about what everyone else is up to or what they may think about me?

While you already have a good idea of what to do about your negative thinking, you still need to protect yourself from two bad ideas that you express here. Unfortunately, those two ideas are also your “goals.”

First, disavow yourself of the notions that you should be able to stop depression without using medication and that you should find a way to be less, for lack of a better word, insecure. In doing so, you won’t be giving up—you’ll be giving yourself some relief.

The good idea, and better goal, is to train yourself to fight negative thinking, and there are lots of ways to do that. A therapist can help, but so can the right kind of friends, readings, church, and/or spouse. Though you can’t make the negative thoughts go away, you can assemble a strategy (and maybe team) to help you handle them.

Develop a routine for reminding yourself that you’re the one who’s managing your life and working with your unique gifts and disabilities, and that you’re the only one who can judge whether you’re doing your best. Then, when you start to compare yourself to the better gifted, give yourself a dose of positive reality. Nobody else can judge you, not even Facebook.

The sad truth is that depression could sweep you away, regardless of what treatment you use and how motivated you are in pursuing it. It’s scary, but it’s also liberating; you’re responsible for doing your best with depression, not making it go away. Cancer patients don’t set performance goals, and neither should you.

Instead, set your goals in terms of the process of managing, rather than the outcome, of recovery, using non-medical and other minimal risk treatments whenever possible. Then go ahead and choose riskier treatments if and only if you think they’re necessary. Don’t let fear or guilt prevent you from choosing what’s best for you.

Don’t always listen to your doctor, because your doctor doesn’t know how much pain your depression is causing or how much it has disrupted your work and relationships, so it’s your tough decision. All the doctor can do is tell you the relative risk of the treatment, compared to your symptoms, and what he or she would do in your place.

Embrace the fact that every parent with a career has to contend with bad feelings about difficult compromises. The challenge for you is to accept those bad feelings and the fact that there’s always someone out there who can do things better than you, then learn how to manage yourself positively and tell Facebook to go fuck itself.

STATEMENT:
“I don’t often feel good about my performance at home or at work, but that’s my nature. I’m proud I’ve taken on parenthood and that I’m doing OK, whatever my insecurities tell me. I know I try hard and that I’ve made good decisions and I will use those facts to lift myself up when depression tries to tear me down.”

I shouldn’t be writing you about my depression because I have no reason to be depressed. I’m a lucky person with a good job and great boyfriend. I eat a healthy diet, exercise every day, and work hard to stay healthy, mentally as much as physically. I had a severe depression as a teenager but I worked hard in therapy (and still do all I can to keep those negative thoughts at bay), took my medications as directed, and have been much better since. So now, 10 years later, there’s no reason I should be unhappy, tearful, and unmotivated to do anything but go back to bed, but no matter how much I exercise or try to stay positive, I can’t get ahead of this thing. I must have missed something. My goal is to figure out what.

The one big thing you’ve failed to understand is that depression, like most illnesses, can’t be controlled. You can be careful, do everything right, avoid giving into negative thoughts and actions, but still feel like shit. It’s not fair, but it’s the nature of the beast.

Just in case this sad fact depresses you, think about how, just like the person above, you’re depressing yourself even more by holding yourself responsible for staying healthy. Maybe you want to assume that awesome responsibility because you wish you had the power to stay healthy, but you don’t, because nobody does. Even those people who follow all the rules and work their butts off.

Luckily, staying healthy is not part of your job description; coping with illness is, so stop telling yourself you shouldn’t be depressed. What you should be doing is reviewing what you need to do to cope with depression, and realizing that you’re probably doing most of those things.

You sound like the kind of person who tries hard to keep working, relating, and parenting regardless of how you feel. If that’s true, you’re doing most of what you need to do already. You’ve probably talked things over and tried to figure out whether something’s getting you down that you don’t know about, which takes care of another basic self-management task.

Decide whether to try any new medications (see above case), using the same procedure you would use for weighing the risks and management of any treatment. Don’t be a sissy about your dislike for treatment—no one likes treatment—so just add up the risks and benefits, and don’t let fear make your decision for you.

Finally, keep working on how to think positively, beginning with the most positive statement of all: you aren’t responsible for your illness, and despite bad results, you’re doing your best. You’ll quickly discover you’re doing a much better job of coping with depression than you realize, and while the situation may still seem unfair, your efforts are all that matter.

STATEMENT:
“I never expected to get depressed again, but I realize now that I didn’t fail to prevent depression, I failed to give myself reasonable expectations and responsibilities. Now that I know what to do, I have little to fault myself for and I can be legitimately hopeful about finding new tools for managing depression.”

I was sexually abused quite a bit by my dad (and am de-repressing memories right now, fun-fun). I am realizing that I am very fearful of the people I love, and avoid them. Honestly, if I didn’t need to bond to keep from going insane, I would never have a close relationship, because anyone I care about enough can destroy me. But I’m in a lot of pain from loneliness as it is.

Many people believe there are tons of benefits to confronting your past, namely that it will teach you something that will bring catharsis to your present. The common notion being that if you can figure out what went wrong then you can avoid being victimized again.

The problem here is that reviving memories of sexual abuse by your dad will also bring back the old feelings of helplessness and having no choice, which, of course, is the opposite of your situation as an adult, so the lessons are the opposite of useful to your life now.

You’re not examining the past to drown yourself in feelings of helplessness, but to assure yourself that you can protect yourself from abuse.

Also, as an adult, your love for your dad may leave you with a dangerous sense of comfort and familiarity with low-boundary, exploitative sleazebags. In other words, your dad may have given you a tendency to be drawn to people who aren’t trustworthy, and who are worth being fearful of. I’m sure there are people in your life who aren’t scumbags, but your history makes you especially vulnerable to them.

It’s hardly surprising then that your world, as you see it as an adult, will seem full of both loneliness and dangerous people who can’t be trusted. Don’t criticize yourself then for being fearful of relationships or lonely; fear is a good protector, until you get strong enough to protect yourself.

So, as you examine your past, a therapist’s support for your pain and trauma may not be enough to counterbalance an ingrained conviction of helplessness. You may need an additional shield against that conviction before awakening the sleeping dragon of your memories.

One way to get stronger is to approach your past with less feeling and more thought. Develop specific standards for screening potential friends and lovers and use them to override any instincts to get together with, or over-involved with, the wrong people. In other words, if you want to remember your father’s worst traits, look for those traits in people before you decide whether or not they’re worthy of your friendship. Once you convince yourself that you’re a reasonably good self-protector, you can approach your memories with less fear of being swept away.

Find a therapist who’s a good relationship coach, or a therapy group whose members have some wisdom with difficult or exploitative relationships. Don’t force yourself to re-experience memories of abuse until you know how you’d manage it as an adult.

Don’t assume, because you’re fearful of the ones you love, that you’re bad at relationships or that they’ll turn out badly. You’re right, relationships are potentially dangerous, but your awareness of that fact and willingness to get some coaching and training can protect you and eventually help you find friends and lovers who deserve your trust.

Learning from/dealing with the past can be helpful, but beware of the risks, particularly if you (and a therapist) focus exclusively on painful emotions for which you still haven’t developed defenses.

If you want to look back, don’t lose sight of your present ability to spot and avoid guys like dear old dad; then you can learn from and use your memories, instead of being haunted by them.

STATEMENT:
“Because of the past, I may never feel secure about relationships. Once I learn how to detect abuse and avoid abusers, however, I can find friends I can trust, even if my fears remain.”

My friends can’t stand my girlfriend because they say she steals from me to feed her habit, but we’ve been together for 3 years and I can’t help feeling she’s the best friend I have. It’s true, she has a drug habit that she can’t control, and money sometimes disappears from my wallet, but it’s an illness and it’s no good to blame her for it. It doesn’t change the fact that we love one another. Aside from her habit, I know I can trust her. I truly believe our love is a positive factor in helping keep her habit from getting worse. My goal is to help her, of course, while getting my friends to see that she’s a real person, not a drug addict.

Relationships can always be dangerous if you focus too much on the other person’s feelings, or your own, without stopping to think about your other priorities in life. She might make you feel like a hero, feel like you’re a healing saint, feel guilty if you can’t do what she asks, etc. If you focus on that instead of whether or not this relationship is ruining your life, you’re doing it wrong. The more sweet, sensitive and generous your temperament, the worse your peril.

The opposite of caring too much for someone isn’t, of course, to be selfish; it’s to be responsible for your other goals, the ones that arise from your values, interests, and other obligations, including your job to take good care of yourself. You need money for your own education or rainy day fund or, simply, survival during hard times. You deserve to be loved for more than your ability to give.

Go back to basics and think about your own standards for a good relationship, as if you were advising a friend. Yes, you’d say, you need love and good chemistry, but you also need someone who can cover your back, take care of things when you’re disabled, help you on your way, and work well with you in a crisis. You’d have to agree that, without those standards, you’ll team up with someone who can suck you dry and undermine your stability in a very unstable world.

Love is a drug and it can addict and ruin your life and other relationships in a way that puts meth to shame. That’s why, rather than getting into a discussion of how wonderful it feels, you’d urge your friend to think about what he wants a relationship for and how it will help him do what matters.

Forget about what your friends think and put aside your desire to help your girlfriend; instead, focus on what you want to make of your own life and trying to be a good person in a crazy world. Remember who you are and then see where this relationship fits. You’re not a saint, you’re a boyfriend, and if you want to do what’s best for both of you, you won’t even be that much longer.

STATEMENT:
“I love my girlfriend and want to save her from drug addiction and I don’t mind her faults, but what comes first are my own standards for being a strong and self-reliant person that are not dependent on any one person’s love or approval.”

My wife suffers from non-medication responsive depression (we’ve done ECT’s, every med in the book, and she has a psychiatrist). She’s bitter and short to family; she goes off on the kids and then can turn around and be nice. I do all the work around the house, get the kids to activities, etc., and I’m wearing out. She comes home from work and just logs on her lap top and sits in front of the TV while I get dinner and clean up. She shows no affection towards me and I feel like a servant. When I complain or push her, she talks about killing herself and putting herself out of our misery (she’s been hospitalized several times) or just hurting herself (sometimes she cuts on her arms and legs). I’m getting to the point where I don’t like her anymore. She just seems to have given up. Nothing interests her, nothing tastes good…she gets no enjoyment from anything. What can I do? She’s in her forties, now, but she struggled with depression in her twenties and this current bout has been going on for 5 years. Her doctor and therapist are really committed to her, but it seems like she doesn’t care, like she enjoys being miserable. Sometimes I feel like I’m spiraling down with her, but I’m not going to give up. If I just stand by, she seems to just sink lower, but I can’t leave, because she’s said that the kids and I are the only reason she’s still alive.

If you’re like most married people, you become dependent on your spouse for a positive response, no matter how independent you are as an individual. You married her because you respect her opinion and take pleasure in her approval. You make her happy, everyone feels good. You see the problem here.

So it’s normal to feel bitterly disappointed and deflated when depression turns her into a grouchy, nasty, unappreciative, unaffectionate black hole who threatens suicide if you criticize her and never does her share.

It’s not just the lack of approval from her that’s bothering you, it’s the overabundance of disapproval, of you and everything else.

Unfortunately, the bitterness you feel in response to your unmet needs adds to her self-hate, creating a vicious circle of negative emotion that demoralizes everyone. Controlling that bitterness is the one thing you can do to improve what is an otherwise impossible situation.

First, pretend that she’s had a stroke that zapped the part of her personality that was warm, active, and responsive; your loss isn’t personal or preventable, and your needs are no longer plausible. Acknowledging these difficult truths now prepares you to assess, without hurt or a sense of failure, whether your family is better off with the two of you together or apart.

There are positive aspects to your marriage, like the fact that she contributes financially, and that, by staying alive, she helps the kids, and hopefully she does some parenting from time to time. She’s showing courage, whether she knows it or not. Maybe the advantages of staying together outweigh the many disadvantages you’ve listed above.

Whatever you decide is best, present it to her positively; tell her you know she’s trying and there’s probably love and affection in there somewhere, if the depression would only lighten up. Remember the person she was and talk to that person as if she’s still there but, like Sleeping Beauty, can’t wake up.

If you feel separation is for the best, let her know that you value and support her role with the kids and that what you are separating from is not her, but her illness. And if she threatens suicide, tell her that her threats are a factor in the separation.

When depression takes over your personality, it makes you do bad things, like putting your life in other people’s hands. If she could control that side of herself, she might improve her parenting and your partnership, even if her depression does not improve. Recommend DBT, a kind of therapy I often recommend, that helps people who feel terrible protect themselves from acting terribly.

Decide what’s for the best, don’t be a victim, and ignore blackmail. You may be a victim of her illness, but you’re also the man in charge who’s doing a wonderful job of soldiering on. If you do what’s best for you and your kids, then it doesn’t matter what she says now; the healthy part of her approves, even if it can’t be heard.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’m taking it from all sides and that all the love and nurturing I give my sick wife comes back as shit. I know, however, that her response is not her, but her illness. I have assumed a huge load as a single parent who must now go on alone without the love and support of a partner. I will make hard choices that she may see very negatively, as she sees everything. I will hold fast to my own vision of what’s best for the family.”

I’m writing because my husband wants me to. He thinks there’s something wrong with me, but I like being a little manic, so I haven’t taken my mood-stabilizer medication in 10 years. It’s true, I talk fast, I can’t hold a job, I’m irritable, and he’s had to put me in the hospital a couple times. On the other hand, I don’t hurt anyone and I like the way I feel, most of the time, except for one thing: he wants me to be the way I used to be and he’s always unhappy with me. I hate sleeping in the same bed, but he’ll give me a hard time if I move to another room. My goal is to get him off my back, so I agreed to write.

As noted above, when you’re married, you can’t help depending on your spouse’s approval, in some deep, hard-wired way, which means that, if you never seem to get it, you become a permanent rebel who cares too much to leave but feels better every time you do the opposite of what he wants. In the process, you lose track of your own priorities.

On the other hand, you know your priorities about your hypomanic mood. Keeping it natural and un-medicated is more important to you than holding a job, staying out of hospitals, and keeping your husband happy. That’s where you stand.

The problem is, you wish your husband would get used to the new (10-year-old) you, but that’s not going to happen. There’s no point in talking about whether he should accept you, just like there’s no point in talking about whether you should damp down your hypomania. He can’t help where he stands and neither can you.

So instead of writing to someone who’s supposed to persuade you to take your medication, face the sad fall-out from your decision. Don’t blame yourself; just ask whether the marriage is worth it, because clearly, your old marriage and the mania can’t co-exist.

On the one side, you’ve shared a lot of years together and your standard of living is probably better with him than without him, given that you’re on disability. On the other hand, there’s the mutual non-acceptance, which is hard for both of you to live with.

Whatever you decide, stop whining. You’re not to blame for a bad decision, and you aren’t a victim of bipolar disease, so don’t make yourself a victim of your husband’s non-acceptance.

If you want to continue to live with him, have the balls to stand by your decision. Tell him you’re sticking with the temperament you’ve got, you still want to live with him, you won’t talk to shrinks, and you’ll sleep where you sleep. If he wants to throw you out when he realizes, after 10 years, that you aren’t going to change, so be it. You don’t blame yourself for choosing to live with your hypomanic mood, and you don’t blame him if he wants to leave his life with you behind.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve ruined my marriage by deciding to do what’s right for me, but the decision has been costly in so many ways that I know I didn’t do it lightly or to spite my husband, so I respect my decision. Now I need to ignore feelings of guilt or wishes that he could accept me the way I am and instead accept him the way he is. Whatever I decide to do about our marriage, I’ll do what I think is best for us and never be a victim.”

My girlfriend is a good person, and we get along well, except when her ex-husband and spoiled son come into the picture. She’s the bread-winner, so her ex is always sending her bills for extra expenses and he messes with the visitation schedule whenever he wishes (their son lives with him because she’s often traveling on business). What seems to get to my girlfriend is when her ex shows signs of having a new live-in partner, and he’s nastier with her when he thinks I’m around. With her son, my girlfriend’s biggest fear is that he’ll get mad and not want to visit, so she gives him whatever he asks for. The whole situation creeps me out and puts me on the periphery. When I push her to set limits, she reacts as if I’m burdening her with one more demand. My goal is to make our relationship work.

The most devotedly pleasing girl in the world isn’t going to do you much good if she can’t carve out enough space and time for your relationship. After all, her devotion and drive to please have a waiting list.

If there’s a problem, as there is here, it’s often not a measure of how much she loves you, but of how well she can respond to other demands in her life. Without priorities or limits, she’s not going to please anyone.

Most divorced mothers become embroiled with their exes due to guilt and worrying too much about what will make the kids happy. Those are tough feelings to fight, because they arise, in part, from good values and intentions, and fighting them can stir up more guilt and guilt-provoking remarks from others.

Here, however, your girlfriend is also driven by jealousy from persistent attachment to her ex, as well as fear of being rejected by her son. She seems relatively unaware that it’s her job to fight those feelings for the sake of higher values, namely, burying their old love so both can move on, and letting her son know that she stands for good behavior and isn’t afraid to put limits on him if he gets out of line.

There’s a chance she’ll hear you when you explain why she should re-consider her priorities, but it’s more probable that if she changes her behavior, it’s to please you rather than because she understands what you mean. She’ll go back to her old ways as soon as you seem less upset/sufficiently pleased. Then it’s back to pleasing the rest of her brood.

So assume for the moment that your girlfriend doesn’t have the values to see why she needs to change, other than for your sake, and ask yourself whether you would still want her as a partner if she behaved better. If so, specify to yourself exactly what behaviors would need to change.

Maybe you’d be satisfied if she could stifle her emotional repartee with her ex and agree to respond with neutral-toned emails (someday this website will offer assorted templates for such emails for all occasions). You might be contented if she could endorse some rules, with consequences, for her son. Whatever you think is absolutely necessary, reasonable, and within her control, spell it out.

Avoid long talks, particularly if they involve blame or anguish. If your requirements are business-like, reasonable, and steer away from controlling her emotions or expressing anger or blame, then you’ll have no reason to argue, defend, or offer long explanations.

Advance a plan for changes you believe are fair and that you can’t do without. The only fix that will please you is permanent, even if that means ending things altogether. Hopefully, you can work out a plan where your priorities, and her best interests, come first.

STATEMENT:
“I wish my girlfriend could see what she’s doing wrong, and I wish it didn’t feel so personal when she puts me last when she’s upset about everyone else in her life. Still, I want this to work. If she buys into my plan, maybe it will. Otherwise, I’ll know I’ve done my best and that it wasn’t my anger or disappointment that drove us apart.”

I’m afraid of the way I’m feeling about my girlfriend, whom I’ve lived with for the last 6 years. I’m a widower, pretty easy-going, and I had a wonderful relationship with my late wife, and also with our kids, and now my girlfriend’s kids, but she’s pretty overbearing and nasty sometimes, and is always sure she’s right, and it’s slowly getting to me. I always avoid conflict, but gradually I’ve gotten depressed and accustomed to walking on eggshells. Recently, I gave her a letter detailing my unhappiness and saying we had to talk. It took a lot of courage, because I hate conflict. Since then, she’s behaved a little better, but she has nothing to say. From her point of view, there’s nothing wrong and I’m over-sensitive. I don’t want to lose her, but I can’t go on like this. My goal is to find a way we can talk this out.

If you’re talking to someone who doesn’t share your values or perceptions, you have nothing to gain and lots to lose. Talking can get you frustrated and tired, or make you doubt yourself as you encounter your girlfriend’s conviction that either she did nothing wrong or that, if she did, you’re over-reacting. On the other hand, avoiding conflict and lying low won’t help you either, because that’s where you’re at right now.

It’s good you wrote her a letter in order to make her understand, spark communication, etc., but odds are, you probably knew better. Now that you’ve confirmed the death of that false hope, ask yourself whether you want to live with her as she is and, if the answer is no, whether there is some realistic change in her behavior that would make your relationship acceptable.

That’s right, sometimes people will behave better if you provide them with house rules, even if they don’t understand why the rules exist or entirely agree with them. (Sometimes, of course, they can’t behave better and rules can’t help them, but a few limits can often go a long way).

Draw up the rules you believe are absolutely necessary. Run them past your trusted advisors, so you’re sure they’re fair and untainted by anger or blame (see above). Don’t open the door on conflict, debate, or discussion about who does what wrong. Stick to your vision for a better future. Sure, your girlfriend may always believe she’s right and you may be more the doubting sort, but you should take courage from your track record of strong, successful relationships, so that you can act with conviction.

Make it clear that you will stop the conversation if she uses a certain tone of voice, repetition will clear the room, and a third repetition means one of you leaves the house. Be prepared to make it stick and act quickly and decisively, before you get too angry or feel you have to explain yourself.

Assuming you decide she’s worth the extra effort and that you don’t mind living with someone whose self-control and values aren’t what you’d wish, then you may find she’s more flexible than you thought. If she’s not, then you know you shouldn’t be conflicted about ending the relationship.

STATEMENT:
“I love my girlfriend, but I can’t get her to understand why she needs to back off when I ask her to. I know it won’t work unless she does better. I’ll let her know what’s required and show her I mean it. Then we’ll see.”

I have been wrestling with depression for years now and my maternal side of the family has a history of depression and suicide. I don’t feel that I can do this on my own anymore and need help. I don’t want to just take a medical cocktail of antidepressants. My question to you is how do I go about finding a therapist and/or doctor that will be most helpful to me.

The first step for getting treatment for your depression seems simple– don’t get depressed about treatment for depression. After all, depression’s just another form of pain unless it twists your thoughts into thinking that not getting rid of it is a kind of failure that marks a meaningless life.

As long as you realize depression is a persistent ailment, just like persistent back pain or diabetes, you’ll have an easy time making treatment decisions because you won’t regard using treatment as evidence of weakness.

The fact that your family has had depression and suicides doesn’t indicate weakness or failure on the part of anything but your genes. Suicide is terrible, but it often happens to good people who’ve lived meaningful lives and been good friends in spite of lots of depression, which doesn’t make them failures—it makes them heroes.

If depression causes you a lot of pain or makes a noticeable difference at home or work, the very least you should do is get help in fighting the negative thinking. While using therapy to find the cause of your depression and get rid of it is usually useless when the depression is long-lasting and familial, using many therapies to protect yourself from feelings of weakness and failure is often a necessity.

A therapist is like a thesis adviser for an academic; you have a topic you want to explore, and you’re looking for someone who both understands that topic and supports your approach. If you start treatment with someone and it doesn’t gel, chalk it up to bad chemistry, not your own failures, and continue your search.

Whether a therapy helps you to keep a positive perspective is easy for you to evaluate; you can tell whether a particular therapist is a good coach or has good ideas, or when you’ve got little more to learn from someone and need a fresh point of view.

Yes, a sustaining therapeutic relationship helps, but not if you come to feel it’s necessary for fighting negative beliefs. Sometime that special therapist won’t be there, or your insurance will change and you won’t be able to afford to see him/her, and then you won’t have the tools to manage your depression on your own. Your goal in talking to a nice, warm therapist is to pick up positive ideas, practice using them, and report back on how you’ve done. Don’t cling to the warmth or the need for their approval.

Make sure you try behavioral treatments, including exercise, which at the very least can distract you from depressed thinking (but don’t punish yourself if your depression makes you too tired or listless to exercise regularly). If, as often happens, the non-medical treatments can only help so much, it’s time to consider medical options. Usually, medical options have a higher risk, but they should be considered if and only if you think the alternative is worse.

If you use a sound risk management methodology to make your decision, respect yourself. Never call antidepressant treatment a “medical cocktail” unless you would say the same about chemotherapy for cancer or pills for high blood pressure.

In addition to having a greater (although not terribly high) risk, antidepressants are a pain because they take weeks to work and often (30% of the time) don’t. So after becoming a risk-manager in order to make the decision to use or not use them, embrace your inner scientist and prepare to conduct an experiment—on yourself. It’s hard, risky work, but if you feel it’s necessary, it’s worth taking on.

In the end, do everything you think is reasonable and required. Use the low risk treatments first, the higher risk treatments when needed, and be prepared for mixed results at a slow pace (that in no way reflect on you or your effort). Needing help or medication doesn’t make you weak; it makes you sick, but strong enough to do something about it.

STATEMENT:
“If I found a medication that relieved my depressive pain, it would be hard not to feel that I’ve taken an illegitimate shortcut. I know from experience, however, that there’s nothing illegitimate about treatment that reduces depressive pain as long as it doesn’t create risks that are worse than the pain itself and that the only illegitimate way to treat depression is to regard it as a weakness.”

I’d like your advice in helping my sister, who is starting to act crazy again, but she won’t accept anyone’s help. She was in the hospital several years ago for hearing voices telling her she was a friend of the Virgin Mary. Now she’s starting to talk fast again and calling the company that I think she was fired from, saying she believes they’ve sent her on a special project and she needs to report back. She sometimes sounds ludicrous, and I can’t help laughing, but I’m afraid where this will end. How can I get her help?

It’s tough to respect an illness that makes people act silly and ridiculous, and tougher still to believe you can’t get through to someone who seems, in many ways, to be in control of herself and able to care about you in the way she usually does. If only mental illness came with a rash or flu that made it easier to recognize and accept.

You’re right, however. Your sister’s illness is serious, it could get her into big trouble, and, in spite of her apparent lucidity, it can be very, very hard to help her. Especially if she’s too sick to know she needs help in the first place.

As hard as it is to be depressed (see above) and to respect yourself when you have depressive symptoms, depressed people usually know they’re sick and are ready to accept help, even if it feels humiliating. With mania, however, people often can’t see themselves as being ill. If respect were measured in nothing but feelings, you could say they respect themselves too much.

If you push your sister too hard, you may provoke a fight, which does no one any good. Manic people are often irritable and ready to fight or flee (often on motorcycles, cars and airplanes, and in the middle of night, and often while underdressed). Don’t let your concern for her become an impassioned plea that triggers her great (naked) escape.

Persuade her, if you can, with calm reason, emphasizing the positive. You think she’ll feel better and calmer if she sees a doctor, and you’ll be happy to drive her to an emergency room and wait with her while she gets an evaluation. Don’t argue about what’s wrong with her, just express confidence in your belief that there’s good help available and that you can lead her there, if she’ll let you.

If persuasion fails, be aware that your ability to intervene depends entirely on her demonstrating dangerous behavior. The moment she says or does something that shows, in an obvious way, that she could hurt herself, put herself into danger, or hurt someone else, you have acquired the critical information that allows police to take her to an emergency room and emergency room clinicians to commit her. At that point, the hope is she becomes lucid enough to want treatment herself.

Until that day comes, it takes great patience and restraint to live with a manic person. Respect yourself for your kindness and tolerance, be patient, and remember, no matter how unreasonable or naked she becomes, you’re doing the right thing.

STATEMENT:
“It’s agonizing to watch my sister act crazy and feel like I’m doing nothing, but I’m really doing a great deal by waiting, caring for her, trying to steer her towards help, preparing to intervene if she gets worse, and tolerating the helplessness.”

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 can’t seem to recover from my wife’s infidelity. Six months ago, when I found out, it nearly destroyed me. I stopped sleeping, and started eating compulsively, and felt depressed and anxious all day. I have a demanding job and we have a 2-year-old son and I simply had to keep going. Now, after months of couples therapy and my wife’s promising to stop drinking and then starting up again, I’ve gotten strangely detached. I don’t think our marriage is going to make it and, on some level, I don’t care. I can’t lose the 20 pounds I gained, I don’t exercise the way I used to, and I can’t seem to get my confidence or happiness back. What more should I be doing?

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you, not for losing a horrible spouse (that seems both insensitive and obvious), but for becoming a fat, lazy mope. Most people consider “letting themselves go” to be a bad thing, but in this instance, it’s a positive side-effect of recovery at work.

After all, the best measurement of how well you’ve recovered from trauma is not how good you feel. This Sunday marks a rather grim anniversary for many Americans, and after 10 years, some of those people still hurt, and some of those in pain are also in shape. Trauma doesn’t factor into it.

Depending on the trauma and what it means to you, there may be no way to feel good for aa long, long time, no matter what you say or do. What counts is how well you cope with it, and coping well doesn’t necessarily make you feel good or hit the treadmill.

For instance, you’re telling me that you’ve continued to co-manage a growing business and parent a 2-year-old boy despite a severe emotional shock. At any size, that’s amazing. You’ve also accepted the fact that your wife has resumed drinking and is unlikely to get control of other behavior. It’s sad, but you’re not obsessing about what you did wrong or what you should do to change her.

This is the kind of pain you need to have. Not that you deserve it, but life sucks, and it’s far better than the pain that would come with denial, holding on to what you can’t have, or assuming responsibility for things you don’t control.

Indeed, the fact that your weight and appearance come last is also a strength. You’re absolutely right in acting like what comes first is parenting your son, making a living, and accepting what happened. Dieting should never be your top priority.

Exercising would help if you have time for it, but there are times when you don’t, and shouldn’t, have time for it. When the chaos subsides a bit, you can renew your gym membership. For now, be proud that you’ve got your priorities straight, even if you feel rotten and sluggish and look large.

You’ve done the right thing under difficult circumstances for both yourself and your son, so stop mourning how far you’ve let yourself go and instead admire how far you’ve come.

STATEMENT:
“My heart remains broken and I don’t have the energy I used to have, but I’m doing what really needs to be done and I’m realistic about my options, so I know I’m doing the right thing, even if I feel far from confident about myself and life in general.”

I’ve think I’ve gotten over my last boyfriend, but my friends tell me I still need help. They know that my ex had a fidelity problem and a way of borrowing money from me and not paying it back, but I didn’t tell them about how worried I was that the loan sharks would hurt him (and I knew he wanted to pay me back), so it was more complicated than my friends realized. In any case, I eventually realized he was getting money from someone else and, when I confronted him, he said he couldn’t stand my nagging and that he needed someone who would give him more respect. I was shattered, but I’m OK now, and I don’t know why my friends don’t believe in my recovery.

Once again, the point of getting over a bad relationship isn’t to feel better; as nice as it would be, your top priority in “getting over” something isn’t to land in the sweet valley of bliss (and weight loss). Instead, you get through it in order to learn what went wrong so you can do better next time or, at least, figure out whether there was any way you could have seen the bad stuff coming.

If you feel better without learning something, you won’t feel better for long; there’s always more trouble coming, and no valley in sight.

Don’t try to forget him before first trying to remember what went wrong and searching for warning signs. No matter how shocking a boyfriend’s bad behavior can seem, most guys who have fidelity problems don’t develop them the moment they meet you. They’ve had them for a long time and the behavior problem isn’t invisible if you know where to look (and aren’t blinded entirely by the good feelings that come with a budding romance).

Usually, it’s just a matter of asking straightforward questions about past relationships and getting corroboration from friends and family—the same methods a dumb cop would use. Ask yourself whether your love of romance caused you to turn off not just your inner detective, but your brain entirely.

Trying to protect loved ones from behavior they show no signs of stopping is another red flag, announcing that you have a weakness for your own nurturing instincts. It’s a good thing to protect babies and children, and a terrible idea to protect grown babies from behavior that can take you both down. I suppose he doesn’t see himself as having a problem, and that’s his cross to bear. That you also don’t see it is a big problem for you, and that’s what worries your friends.

Of course, there are smooth-talking-but-bad boyfriends whom no one can see coming—those polished psychopaths who fool everyone because they believe in their own lies and are good at hiding their pasts. If your inquest doesn’t uncover that kind of nutjob, then you have less to worry about, because you didn’t make any mistake other than to have bad luck.

So before you insist he’s in the rearview and you’re feeling great, figure out exactly what you’re putting behind you; do your homework, figure out what went wrong, and then it’s OK to forget about him. As the old saying goes, you don’t know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been. If you push through the pain and figure out what your last relationship was really about, you’ll be able to go forward without getting over quite so much.

STATEMENT:
“I’d prefer to put the past behind me, particularly because I’m much more attractive and fun to be with when I’m feeling happy, but I’ve learned more from my mistakes than from the relationships that went well, and I take pride in being a good learner.”

My boyfriend went through hell from chemotherapy, but I don’t know what to do with his depression and irritability. We’d been dating about a year and planning to get married when he found out he had a nasty kind of cancer and, since then, he’s been brave about chemo and going on with his life, which has meant working when he’s feeling OK, and our moving in together and being partners. Usually, we get along well, but lately he’s been depressed and telling me he knows he’s a burden, he can’t get much done, and he just wants to be alone. I want him to get help for his depression and stop the negative thinking but I don’t want to attack him or make him feel I don’t respect the fact that he has cancer.

One of the things you always hear from people in pain is that you, the lucky one, “just don’t understand.” It’s the rallying cry of the suffering, whether they’re coping with cancer, or just being between the ages of 10 and 18.

What sick people often fail to realize, at least at first, is that people who aren’t in their position understand things that they can’t; after all, you might have the good luck not know what it’s like to have cancer, but you know what your boyfriend’s like when he’s not depressed, and you know this isn’t it.

If you want to get through to him, put aside your guilt about his bad luck and your fear about hurting him when he’s down. You believe his negative thinking is doing more damage right now than his cancer, and that he needs a better perspective. You’re right, so guilt-be-gone.

Then, remind him about the way he and you usually think of your life together. He’s had the worst kind of bad luck, but you admire the way he’s managed it and continued with his life and you’re happy to share his fight.

After all, you’re not with him because you pity him for having cancer, but because you love his courage and find it gives you strength, and because you hope for the best and are happy to share as much time as possible.

Maybe his cancer, chemo or pain tells him he’s a useless burden, but you don’t accept that and you know he wouldn’t if he were in his right mind, because those things are mean and disrespectful. What he should be saying is that he’s fighting a good fight, respects what he’s doing, and is proud of the way the two of you have created love and closeness in the midst of chaos.

Maybe he needs therapy or medication to put a lid on the negative thinking, but in any case, reminding him about what he values and challenging him to protect his self-respect is good therapy in itself, and you can do it. You don’t need to fully understand his experience with illness in order to help him through.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t rescue my boyfriend from attacks of hopelessness about his cancer, but we’re together because we share the belief that life is worth the pain he’s gone through and, so far, nothing has changed my mind. Sickness has made him forget his beliefs and accomplishments, so it’s my job to stand up for them until he’s ready to reclaim them.”

I don’t know how to tell my wife that we can’t afford for her to continue her present business because she’s losing too much money. She used to be good at it, but cancer and chemo had a bad effect on her brain 2 years ago, and now she gets too distracted and drops the ball. I admire her courage, and I owe her for supporting the family all these years while I raised the kids and taught painting. Now I’m making more money and have taken over the finances, but it’s not enough. I’ve tried to help her keep her business organized, but it just doesn’t work. I feel angry and guilty. I can’t get her to see that she needs to find a new job that doesn’t require her old attention span and can make us some money.

It’s hard to confront your wife about about a new, cancer-related, permanent disability without feeling you’re destroying her hope and confidence and adding to her pain. On the other hand, if she doesn’t accept her disability, you’re all sunk and she’ll never have a chance to make the best of what she has.

Remember, you’re not inflicting her pain—the real cause is life and cancer—and the only reason you think she needs to face her disability is that the alternative is worse. That’s your decision as her partner and someone who’s stepped up to assume a greater share of responsibility for the family’s welfare and survival.

After all, you’ve risen to the occasion. You’re not preparing to confront her because you’re angry about the way cancer has robbed you of her strength and old personality (although you may certainly have such a feeling). If you confront her, it’s because you’ve done your homework, weighed the alternatives, and decided it’s necessary.

Begin by accepting her disability yourself; don’t see it as a treatment failure, or as a problem the two of you have failed to solve, just as a wound imposed by the sucky side of life. Respect the way she’s tried hard to return to a normal life, and respect the way you’ve picked up the load, because you both did the right thing. You needed to know the limits of her abilities, and now you do, but you just got a bad result.

Once you accept her disability without shame, you’re prepared to put it in a positive context. Tell her, without guilt, how much you respect her efforts, and that, though most of her mental equipment is functioning beautifully, there’s something wrong with her attention span that won’t let her make money at her old job.

Don’t sound as if your mind isn’t made up or as if you’re waiting for her to agree; her ability to perceive a business plan realistically may be included in the brain damage, or she may not be emotionally ready to accept it. In either case, sound like someone who has made up his mind.

In your opinion, she shouldn’t continue her old job and, if it’s up to you, you won’t support her doing it. You will, on the other hand, support her in finding something new to fit her current limitations.

STATEMENT:
“I miss my wife’s old strengths, and so does she, (or she would if she was in her right mind), but our idea of partnership was that one of us would take over if the other was injured, and that’s what I’m doing. I will raise painful topics if I think it’s necessary and respect myself for doing so.”

I have been in therapy for 8 years, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly or less, depending on life events and finances. My goal has always been to find some peace or grace in being me. I told this psychiatrist the first time I met with her that I “pattern like a duck,” meaning that I form strong and sometimes obsessive attachments. My attachment to her started that day and, this many years later, is still fierce and often painful. She is appropriately nonjudgmental and vacillates between thinking that the work for us is in this attachment and suspecting it’s a form of resistance. I can’t seem to focus on anything else for more than a couple sessions. I have read (obsessively) about attachments in therapy..,either to luxuriate in my own, or to get some understanding of what it is that has a hold of me and what it would take to get past it. Am I supposed to “work through it”? What does that look like? Am I supposed to ignore it? The only positive thing about this unspecified longing for her is that I have attached less to other “marks” during this time. Otherwise, I feel stuck. I think about just leaving therapy to get some distance from her and this dynamic, but I would rather just get over it. HELP (and thank you).

If you approach therapy with the goal of finding “some peace or grace in being me,” you’re in for a long, dependent journey with your therapist, mainly because, with a goal as loose as that, your journey has no real end.

This is the point, of course, where we say your goal is actually a wish, an ambiguous feeling not necessarily connected with your priorities or values. It’s a nice notion, but it’s not necessarily something you can control, and not something tangible enough for your therapist–or this therapist—to help you figure out.

Unless you connect your wish to something concrete, I can’t tell whether your duck-patterned tendency to get over-attached to people prevents you from finding good friends or a partner, or just causes you embarrassment and pain that interrupts your desired peace.

Sometimes people in psychodynamic therapy—shrinks and patients both—forget about this connection because the treatment process is interesting and feels fraught with significance. It’s dangerous, however, to lose your way.

Instead of transferring some of your feelings about others onto your therapist in a way that allows you to examine them, you’ll wind up transferring your energy, attention, and engagement, whereupon therapy becomes more important than life. Remember, your shrink is a hired hand, not a life partner; treatment is supposed to help you manage your life problems, not provide a sheltered alternative.

By now, you should also know that a tendency to get over-attached is part of your personality and unlikely to change. After all, if it hasn’t changed in 8 years of therapy, or in all the years of your life up to now, it’s probably yours for life.

So, putting aside your wish to be a different person, ask yourself whether your urge to over-attach is really screwing up your work or relationships, and use that as your new therapy starting point.

For example, if you’re over-attached to someone who is not a good friend, then use your therapy to figure out how to get free. Don’t waste time figuring out why you choose the wrong friends or get over-attached, because that’s just a way of avoiding the pain of doing what you gotta do. Suck it up, do it, and be proud that, whatever your feelings, they don’t control your choice in friends.

On the other hand, if you’re managing your life fairly well in spite of over-attached feelings, give yourself credit for that achievement, declare your therapy a victory, and withdraw your troops.

You might not find your desired peace, but most people don’t. Instead, you’ll have found something much more useful; the point of therapy, or, even better, therapy’s end.

STATEMENT:
“I may never know why I attach like a duck, but I won’t let my feelings prevent me from breaking up with bad friends, finding good friends, and being a good friend.”

I don’t know why I couldn’t stand living with my ex-wife. We married young, but she’s a nice person and we raised a good family for 15 years before I pulled the plug. I think it was something about us both being, well, very attractive people—we were also attracted physically—that made the relationship feel wrong after years went by and I felt I was living with a stranger. Now I’ve got an amicable divorce and am dating a woman I really like, but the other day I got panicked by the idea that the same thing will happen again, and I’ll wind up feeling smothered by having to live with someone I don’t really know. My goal is not to screw up another relationship if I’m really incapable of having one.

Too much love and not enough friendship may have done in your Romeo-and-Juliet marriage, but that doesn’t mean you can’t love or do better the second time around. You’re not telling me that you repeatedly get close to girls and then run away; you’re just afraid it will repeat one more time.

It’s ironic that winning someone you really, really long for is dangerous because, if you want someone that badly, you probably don’t really know them. The fairy-tales rarely cover this part, but if you win your true love, that’s when your troubles begin.

You don’t usually yearn for someone because of who they are, but because something about them triggers your needs. They’re rich or beautiful or make you feel very, very good. Friends, on the other hand, are usually great to be with because they don’t trigger strong needs, so you feel comfortable being yourself. The fact that you’re not feeling too needy allows you to relax and makes the relationship more real.

First, consider your own definition of friendship, and ask yourself whether you can accept this girl when she’s being a jerk and whether she accepts you under similar conditions. Ask whether she’s solid and trustworthy, and whether those qualities are confirmed by what you know about her past, her family, her other friends, and reports from your private detective.

Then see what happens when you have your next closeness-panic. If she doesn’t over-react and you still want to hang out with her after you’ve calmed down, you’ve proven to yourself that she’s good with nervous Nellies and that your attraction to her is stronger than your fear.

If she does freak out, then you’re just a pair of beautiful strangers, and it’s time to look for a new partner whom you like more than you need.

STATEMENT:
“It’s horrible to pull apart a not-so-bad marriage with a decent partner, but I tried hard and didn’t give up easily. Now I’ll do my best not to make the same mistake, and hope that I can find the one additional ingredient I need in a relationship to make it comfortable and lasting.”

I struggle not to fall for any man who isn’t already involved with a woman. Dating, engaged, married, I don’t care, so long as they’ve got someone who’s done the groundwork and has given them the tick of approval. I’m refusing to buy into the fact that there are no eligible men left in my city, but I need to know why it is I’m so sadistically falling for men I just can’t have.

The idea that we are all powerless to control love isn’t so much a romantic notion as it is an excuse. Obviously, we’re not all powerless to control hate, because the body count would be unreal (although it would make the competition on most reality shows more interesting).

In other words, just because you fall for someone doesn’t mean you should select them, or that falling needs to precede the selection process. You have control over your emotions, not vice versa.

The average guy tends to fall for girls for such crucial characteristics as big tits and/or advanced flattery skills, but it usually doesn’t take too many mistakes before the big-busted, complimentary façade fades and he learns to stop touching the proverbial hot stove.

Some guys, like Clinton, Kennedy, or even Weiner, have the power to touch the stove as often as they like and avoid getting burned (or so they think). In reality, their risks are high, and while they have the political intelligence to calculate those risks to the fifth decimal place, the intoxication of sexual adventure turns them into idiots.

As such, asking why you’re attracted to pre-attached guys is about as dangerous as asking why you love Martinis; it allows you to study and indulge your predilection until you find an answer that will make it easy to stop, which won’t happen, and in the meantime, all your research is just fodder for rehab.

Accept the fact that the answer will never come or, if it does, it will change nothing, and it will never be easy to stop. The question then isn’t why you do it, but if you want to stop doing it, period.

Put aside your feelings and consider the pros and cons of getting involved with pre-involved guys. If they’re strongly attached and you pull them away, you’ve proven they’re weak and can’t be trusted, which means you’ve won the heart of a loser, a sad prize as prizes go. I assume, when you use the word “sadistic,” you mean you’re being mean to yourself, and I agree.

The alternative is to accept the fact that a good man, and a good match, are had to find, regardless of how easily you attract or are attracted to people. If you accept that fact, you’ll become much more skilled at avoiding relationships that go nowhere while you remain available for that rare, eligible candidate. Remember, catching the fish you want takes patience, and the main reason for failure is being distracted by the wrong fish.

Accept that finding a real partner requires patience and discipline; it’s better to find someone truly worthy than give in to the powerful pull of someone who makes you fall both for them and flat on your face.

STATEMENT:
“It’s discouragingly hard to find a possible partner who is available, reliable, and interesting, but that’s what I’m after because the alternative simply doesn’t work. Wasting time with the wrong person is the best way to ensure I won’t be available when a genuine opportunity comes along.”

I wish I could be more assertive about my design fees when clients realize that they can’t afford all the landscaping ideas they were dreaming of and decide to cut their plans in half. That’s the point when they expect me to down-size my design without its costing them more money. Unfortunately, that’s never easy to do, and it takes lots of time that wasn’t budgeted into my original estimate. There are always major elements I have to re-design from scratch and, by the time I’m finished, I’ve lost my potential profit unless I get clients to pay for the additional time. I wish I could get myself to be more aggressive and ask for the money, but then I’m also worried they’d just say no to the added costs and stop the project. My goal is to be a better salesman.

There are several professions, from taxi driving to psychiatry, where the rules are best laid out up front, e.g., the flat rate to the airport or the requirement that appointments must be cancelled with at least 24 hours notice (which the ADHD patients never seem to fully grasp). Your profession is no different.

Don’t persuade yourself that you need to be a better persuader; sadly, you’ll probably never become a great salesman and explaining the cost of a project will never be easy. On the other hand, if you develop a system of charging for your services that you believe is fair and ethical, you can probably shape your clients’ expectations from the beginning, and salesmanship becomes unnecessary. After all, reasonable requests are rarely a hard sell.

Ask yourself why you think it’s right to charge more for a project at a time when your clients are feeling frustrated by the realization that they don’t have enough money. The answer, of course, is that you’re not responsible for their unrealistic expectations and you deserve to be paid for your time.

Now, instead of apologizing, gently assert, before beginning a project, that your clients are responsible for their choices while emphasizing your ability to create a cost-efficient design. Remind them that, to use you most cost-effectively, they must be realistic about what they can afford before you commit their dreams to paper.

That’s because, if they are not realistic before you do your first design, and the cost of the final project is either much more or much less than what was initially proposed, your design time doubles and so do your costs and their fees.

Take courage from stating what you think is fair. Then incorporate your standards into your procedures. If anyone should apologize in this scenario, it shouldn’t be you for wanting to get paid to do your job.

STATEMENT:
“I’d like to persuade my clients that I can satisfy their dreams, but it makes more sense to let them know that I can give them more dream for their buck if and only if we squeeze those dreams into an affordable budget before we go to the drawing board.”