My wife and I liked to party when we first met (nothing too crazy, we just went out a lot), but we just had our first kid, so we now spend a lot more time at home. My wife used to be a fun, bubbly person, and she still sort of is, but ever since the baby was born she’s been really stressed out, worrying that something bad will happen and the baby will die. Not stuff she could possibly prevent, just a random act that would kill our child, and the stress is so bad she is haunted by visions of our son in a casket. I think she’s dealing with this stress by drinking a bunch of wine with dinner and getting a little more than tipsy. I’ve told her to relax about stuff she can’t prevent, but she says she can’t help it, and I don’t like that she’s drinking too much, and where that’s going to go. I want to see my wife get some treatment that will relieve her stress so she can stop drinking too much.

You might wonder how wanting to help someone could be bad, and it’s because, as goals go, it’s often one you can’t reach. If you don’t accept that fact before making your plans, you’ll make things worse.

Here, for instance, there’s a good chance she’s too busy drinking and/or avoiding her problem to heed your good advice and, at least at first, she may not be able to stop herself (and if she could stop herself, you probably wouldn’t be writing me in the first place).

If you sound frustrated, frightened or critical when you talk to her, it will make her worse. Your goal is to see if you can help her, not force her into help. You can bring a wife away from wine, but you can’t force her not to (fret and) drink.

Once people get into the habit of using alcohol to treat anxiety, they often can’t stop, particularly if they’re waiting to feel better before stopping. All the while, alcohol makes anxiety worse (as well as depression, mania…the only things it doesn’t worsen are weddings and sporting events).

So, your goal for her drinking isn’t to reduce her anxiety so she won’t feel like drinking, but to provide her with reasons for stopping drinking, now, regardless of whether it makes her anxiety worse, (which it will), while she also searches for tools to feel better. You can’t make any of that fear go away, but you can give her good reasons to find ways to ignore it and focus more calmly on your baby’s bottle than her own.

Sure, remind her about the availability of treatments; but don’t be surprised if she just wants you to leave her alone because treatment makes her think about her fears, and she’d rather not/would rather open another bottle of red.

Don’t tell her that going to treatment will be enough to make you happy, because treatment is not always effective and it’s useful only if she undertakes it for her own reasons, rather than to get you off her back. Don’t tell her treatment will definitely make her happy, either, because if it doesn’t, you’re a liar and the fault is still yours.

Encourage her to consider her options, including cognitive therapies with ideas and mental exercises to counteract negative thoughts, behavioral therapies with physical exercises to reduce anxiety, and medical treatments that might ease both anxiety and the intensity of her visions.

Her biggest danger is not the pain of anxiety, but that her fear will drive her to give up doing what matters and stop her from being a good mother and wife. The fear scares her, but it’s her fear of that fear that drives her to drink, and that’s where you need to start.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that gives her positives alternative and encourages choice, not compliance. “You’re a strong woman and great mother, and I’m sorry that you’re tortured by fearful thoughts, but I’m more worried about the way your efforts to avoid those thoughts are interfering with your life. Instead of figuring out whether there’s a treatment worth trying, you’re panicking and using alcohol for relief. I know for a fact that alcohol makes anxiety symptoms worse, while it also undermines your ability to make tough decisions about treatment. You’re good at decisions. Don’t let fear make them for you.”

My daughter likes to bring her young son to our house on weekends (she’s a single mom) so he can see his grandparents and she can relax. Of course, my wife and I love to see him, but he’s getting to the age where he can walk and likes to grab everything he can get his hands on, and she doesn’t seem to notice. He’s knocked books off of shelves, broken some plates, and I recently wrenched my bottle of Lipitor out of his hands just as he was getting the lid off. I’ve told my daughter that she needs to watch him more closely, and she assures me she has a mother’s intuition and always stops him before he does anything wrong. She’s wrong, and my wife and I are too old to keep up with him. My goal is to get through to her, and protect our grandson, without getting her pissed off.

Forgive me for saying so, but I’m guessing your daughter’s obliviousness isn’t new. That and a lack of condoms is probably one of the main reasons she’s become a single mother.

If you’ve been wrestling with her obliviousness for years, now is the time to stop. She’s been your daughter a long time, and if you (and having a kid!) haven’t gotten through to her by now, it’s time to raise the white flag.

It’s sad and scary to admit that her obliviousness is not going to go away and will always force you to bear an extra burden of parental worry, but if you don’t accept this fact, you’ll clash, drive her away, and reduce your chance to make things safer and hang out with your grandchildren, even after they can control their limbs.

Your goal then isn’t to get through to her, but to do what you can to improve your grandson’s safety. Do what you can afford, be it toddler-proofing your house or hiring a teen babysitter/child-chaser who can walk around for hours bent over at 90 degrees.

For your sake, hide your worry and resentment. If your negative feelings show, she’ll feel you don’t trust her (which you don’t) and then avoid you. With luck, however (and given her track record), she’ll be too oblivious to notice how you feel.

Expect problems and look for dangers, while at the same time conveying pleasure and confidence. Behind closed doors, you can share your fear and resentment with your wife, but in front of your daughter, keep a poker face.

In the long run, maybe you can teach your grandson to watch out for himself, but resist the urge to follow him with nanny cams. The hardest thing you need to do, after you’ve done what’s reasonable, is let it be. Enjoy being grandparents and lock up your Lipitor.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to keep your fears in check. “We did a reasonable job teaching our daughter about safety and responsibility (as did others), but she just doesn’t get it. Now we watch out for her and our grandson, when we get a chance. Our biggest achievement, however, is not solving the problem, because we can’t. It’s bearing our worries, keeping quiet about them, and not letting them spoil our relationship with her or our ability to get on with life.”

I’ve worked hard at managing my temper—I can’t help it, I can always find something to be mad about, even when my family is behaving perfectly—and I’ve become really good at not snapping at my husband and kids. The kids are great, but my husband doesn’t seem to give me credit for how much better I’ve gotten, and he hasn’t gotten any nicer himself. He still treats me all defensively, as if I’m Godzillette, and it’s starting to get me mad. My goal is to get some credit for the progress I’ve made and achieve more marital peace.

If you want credit, here you go; One million space bucks worth of reward for your good deeds and strong effort. Now go in marital peace.

While you deserve marital credit from your husband, too, making it a goal to get what’s fair from anyone, especially a spouse, is usually a bad idea.

The search for justice, marital or otherwise, leads to your telling your spouse why it would be fair for him to be more appreciative, and then he explains to you how he’s been very, very appreciative and you haven’t been appreciative of his efforts, and you’ll wish you never started.

Then perhaps you two go to a marriage counselor who tries to make you both feel appreciated, which feels much better . . . during the treatment session and for a short time thereafter.

Once things go back to normal, which they inevitably do, you’re both more disappointed and resentful because, after you’ve invested all this time and money in treatment, you both still feel unappreciated, and now you’ve blown all your entertainment money on therapy and you’re stuck in the house together even more.

So, as much as you might wish and deserve for him to appreciate your new temper-control muscles, (and as much as it would serve his interests as well), it’s dangerous to make it your goal. Your goal is to accept the fact that, for some reason that has little to do with you, he doesn’t notice your efforts and/or is too negative to be appreciative. And they say opposites attract.

Come to think of it, you probably have some reason to believe that that’s the way he is. It’s not a matter of his loving you more or less; it may be depression, or being overwhelmed by other things, or he’s color blind and you’re explaining red.

You’re aware of your temper, and kudos for that. Your husband, however, is not aware of his negativity, and trying to get him to see the light will do the opposite. You do the work, he doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean you’re doomed.

Assuming he’s still a good partner, ask yourself how to make the best of things. Your main job is to give yourself credit and lower your expectations for his judgment and appreciation.

Keep up the good fight, which is the fight to keep your temper from getting the best of you. Give up the bad fight, which is the one for a deserved pat on the back.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to counteract the inner protest to the life fairness referee. “I’m proud of how well I’ve been managing my temper, and I’m even prouder since I realized that I’ve been tolerating my husband’s infuriating inability to understand what gets me mad and give me credit for dealing with it constructively 99% of the time. We’d both be a lot happier if he wasn’t so dense; but he is, and I deal with it amazingly well.”

I’m really not a good friend, because I don’t like to call people regularly or bring them food when they’re sick, and I think it’s because I’ve never been able to grieve my father’s death. He was a warm, kind person who drove me crazy by wanting to know why I was unhappy and telling me what I should do, and I couldn’t stop fighting with him and then he died before we could make up. Now, I’ve got some good people in my life whom I’ve known for years, but I don’t have the kind of closeness with them my dad could create with a stranger. My goal, if I could do it, would be to get over my father’s death and become a better friend.

It’s hard to have a father who lives up to your values better than you do, but it’s a mistake to try to fit into his shoes when they’re just the wrong size.

Yes, it’s possible that grief has blocked your ability to be a better friend and that psychotherapy could release your potential. If you’ve had a good try at psychotherapy before, however, a connection between grief and your friendship deficit is less likely. Aside from the fact grief and friendship share a few letters, the connection isn’t immediately clear.

The bad news then is that, unlike your father, you’re a more guarded person, which likely won’t change. The good news is that you haven’t failed to live up to your father; you’re simply a different person, and not necessarily a worse one.

Being a little warmth-deprived does not need to stop you from being a good guy and a good friend. You just have to work harder, which is hard to do if you blame yourself for poor friendship performance, which makes you more isolated and less energetic, which makes you withdrawn, which makes you more self-critical, and around it goes. Self-blame and shame are probably your biggest obstacles to being a better friend.

Once you give up believing that your basic approach to friendship can, and should, change, and accept the fact that you’re not like your father, then you’re free to examine the obstacles to your being as good a friend as you can be, given your own style and personality.

The problem may be one of distraction, disorganization, or not being able to keep track of non-crisis priorities. If you examine what interferes with your friendship-homework, you’ll probably find some ways to be a better friend. Even if you aren’t just like you’re dad, your efforts honor his legacy.

STATEMENT:
Meanwhile, you need a statement to fight the paralysis of self-blame. “My loneliness is not a result of, or punishment for, my inability to live up to my father’s friendship achievements; it’s just a fact of life that happens sometimes for someone with my personality. I honor his values by trying to be the best friend I can be with the personality I’ve got, and I talk to him, in my mind, with respect and gratitude and without reason for guilt.”

My biggest frustration on a daily basis is having someone ask me a question and then either get angry in response to the answer or the fact that a decision has already been made and then ignore the answer they asked for. My wife will ask “do you mind if I do/go/be “x,” and if I answer “yes I mind” then she’s angry and usually proceeds with what she’d already scheduled anyway. Just today my sister asked if the coffee I was holding was warm enough. I said yes, and she then proceeded to take the cup from my hand and run to the microwave with it. OK, so maybe her intentions were good…but why the hell did she ask me, when my answer didn’t matter? Because this seems to happen to me ALL the time, by MANY different people, I’m getting to the point that I don’t even want to be around other people. Should I just shut up and quit even answering questions, or start answering with what I know they want to hear? Giving honest answers is clearly NOT working for me. Can you shed some light on what I’m doing wrong here? And more importantly, what do I do about it?

Nobody likes to feel ignored—at least by people we like and particularly by the ones we love—but some people are particularly sensitive to it.

They feel it as a kind of peace-destroying personal injury that injects them with a festering dislike of their fellow human beings. This leads to a desire to learn wilderness skills or get a solo gig on a space station.

You’re the kind of person whom being ignored gets to, and if I asked you to change, you couldn’t help but ignore my request, even if you tried not to.

Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, people ignore one another all the time because that’s the way they are. They ask your opinion when what they really want is your OK, they ask how you’re doing when they really want nothing more than to avoid enmity, and they don’t actually care if you drive safe.

Some people who ignore you are, nevertheless, nice and reasonably respectful when they aren’t tired, distracted or irritable. If you’re lucky, and that’s whom you’ve got in your family, then you don’t want to fight over an irritation you can’t possibly change. Even if you’re rich and powerful or order a third-world wife, your family will always, eventually, tend to treat you like chopped liver.

Trying to eliminate the irritation of being ignored usually makes things worse, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Make a fuss, and they’ll consider you a temperamental grump or autocrat. You’ll get more irritated and feel less respected, they’ll see it as your problem, and everything will get worse.

So don’t make it your goal, like the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, to get respect. The only way to avoid feeling disrespect is to become mean, insanely rich, and/or live in total quarantine from the human race.

Instead, make it your goal to do and be a person you can respect. If you’re not getting respect when you feel it’s deserved, do your best to, you guessed it, ignore it.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for motivating yourself to eat the shit of feeling ignored and proclaim its tastiness when necessary. “I’ll never like being ignored, but I know when it’s an unavoidable part of a worthwhile relationship, so I’m proud of the way I tolerate it when I have to.”

I’m a pretty miserable person sometimes because I get mired in regret. For example, my biggest hang-up to this day is the “traditional” college experience (good friends, staying up all night studying or watching movies with members of the opposite sex, getting top-/transformative academic experiences). I graduated college three years ago and still wonder why things hadn’t gone, well, my way. Whining and pining over past/imaginary circumstances keeps me focused on my own perceived setbacks and flaws instead of moving forward. How do I stop sighing and lamenting, and start valuing and appreciating what I do have? Also, how can I identify what I really want to do in life? Should I learn to be content with doing something, anything, rather than searching for that something? I’m sure I must possess some innate fear of something, as implicit in this message.

Some people tend to ruminate about the contenders they could have been, just as some dogs tend to chase their tails. If your goal is to be happy—which is never a good goal in the first place—stop now, because, like those determined dogs, your tail will always remain out of reach.

Unfortunately, like many people, you’re not the happy type. Of course I don’t mean that you can’t be happy—bring a chocolate cake out after dinner, and everybody’s ecstatic—but anyone who obsesses as much about the difference between what was and what might have been is always going to have a shitload of unhappiness on his plate, which will cause more rumination about what a bad state of mind that is, in infinite regression.

Begin then by accepting the fact that, as a person, you’re a happiness-impaired ruminator. Unlike most shrinks, I don’t want you to ask yourself why you’re a ruminator, not just because I don’t care, but because I don’t think it’s good for you. Figuring out why will ignite yet more rumination and delay the day when you decide you just have to ignore yourself.

Now that you know you ruminate excessively, try to block off the ruminative chatter in your head and prevent it from influencing your actions. In other words, instead of sitting and thinking and fretting, keep doing.

If that seems easier said than done, therapy is an option. Good therapy will help you ignore your ruminations, focus on the here-and-now of your life, and keep moving (or they’ll gain on you). On the other hand, bad therapy will help you ruminate about why you ruminate and keep you so firmly ensconced in your navel you’ll forget what daylight looks like.

Yes, it can be helpful to identify the shortcomings or weaknesses that prevented you from being a college all-star, but the point in knowing your shortcomings is to do the best with them. If college was a bust, then fuck it, and thank goodness you don’t have to stay in college; there’s a world out there where your strengths may serve you well.

So, once you accept that you over-think/under-enjoy, stop over-analyzing your past and start focusing on making a living and creating a social life. It’s not easy, and you might not end up happy, but at least you’ll stop spinning in circles and start moving in a straight line.

STATEMENT:
Meanwhile, here’s a positive way of thinking of college that will protect you from ruminative “might-have-beens.” “I’ve always had ideals and dreams about the college guy I wish I could have been, and the tough side of those perfect superhero dreams is feeling how often and in how many ways I fell short. I did my best and, despite having had no great social or academic triumphs, I learned enough to get my money’s worth and was a decent guy (to whatever dweebs wanted to be my friend). I believe life can get better if I find my niche; meanwhile, I’m proud of what I did with what I had.”

I’ve been depressed for some time and could use some treatment, but my insurance has a big deductible, so I’ll be paying everything out of my pocket, which isn’t deep. My goal is to get treated for the least amount of money.

I’ll assume from your tone that depression isn’t making you suicidal or putting you at immediate danger of losing your job and/or family because, if it is, you need to forget about the cost of treatment and value the cost of your survival.

If depression is putting your life/work/family in danger, get a psychiatric evaluation, in an emergency room if necessary. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 (no matter how much you need it).

If that isn’t the case, there’s lots you can do to reduce the amount of money you spend on treatment…if you’re willing to spend some time, do some research, and use your common sense.

While the above question is quite short, the answer is anything but; looking for a treatment on any budget is a serious, involved process, so we have an involved, serious answer. Behold, our five step process that will help you with your depression without hurting your wallet.

Step one is telling your primary care physician (during a brief visit or even email) that A, you’re feeling low, B, you don’t have any physical symptoms (no fever, no weight loss), and C, you’d like to get some tests to rule out a physical cause of depression, like thyroid disease.

Tests will reveal if you’re feeling low because your glands, not your brain, are problematic.

Assuming your glands are good and your brain isn’t, step two is considering the options other than antidepressant medication, which, because it’s medication, always has a higher risk than non-medical therapies.

I’m guessing that medication is probably the last thing on your mind. It’s important to think about it upfront, however, because sometimes depression doesn’t wait for psychotherapy to work before causing severe pain and/or damage to your life, and medication always increases the odds for a better and faster (and sometimes cheaper) recovery.

Step two then, (postponing the issue of possible pills), is considering psychotherapies, including the how-do-you-really-feel-about-that kind. Many people assume this is the only kind since it gets lots of airtime on TV, where it uncovers exciting and unexpected changes of heart and inspires tears and plot reversals.

Despite what TV tells you, however, not everyone with depression needs psychotherapy. Psychotherapies are better at helping you manage depression than cure it, so it’s not surprising that many people with depression have had a number of psychotherapies.

Before considering a feelings-focused therapy, ask yourself and the people who know you whether there’s an issue you need to talk about. Remember, sharing your feelings with a professional is most effective if you haven’t done it before or your confidantes are unsupportive bozos and bartenders.

So, while the bad news is that psychotherapy is not a cure, the good news is that you don’t have to pay for it unless you think there’s a kind that’s worth trying. Either way, you save!

Your job is to figure out whether you (still) need one or more of them. If you want to save money, do your homework. It’s that, or pay a professional to do it for you.

If you decide that a feelings-focused psychotherapy is necessary, you may get a bargain at a state-subsidized community mental health center or a psychotherapy teaching institution. Don’t assume you should see a therapist every week, because you may get just as much bang for your buck by making the meetings less frequent.

You haven’t completed step two, however, until you consider other psychotherapies, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy or “CBT”, which is a good option if your negative thinking (caused by depression or being human) is making you more depressed.

Read books on the negative thinking caused by depression and anxiety (like The Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns) and decide whether you need to do thought exercises to stop your negative feelings from becoming negative beliefs or actions. If you find it useful, look for a therapist who “does CBT” or “DBT”, a form of CBT that focuses on thoughts of self-worthlessness and the desire to injure oneself.

Please note: we’re not recommending all kinds of self-help. In fact, if you see a self-help book about “healing the inner hurt,” run the other way as if it were on fire. If Dr. Phil recommends a book, we forbid it.

Step three is taking a break from the books and tuning up your diet and lifestyle. Exercise is a powerful antidepressant (the way you feel afterwards, not during, anyway). Vitamins and omega three fatty acids help, and, despite what most people think, drinking and drugs don’t, so learn to abstain.

Finally, read up on antidepressants while ignoring the eye-witness accounts of horrors and miracles. Consider the risks (fairly low, despite what Scientology says) and possible benefits (positive, but delayed and very iffy). Then, if you decide that the risks of staying depressed are worse than the medication risks you’ve read about, ask your primary care physician for an “antidepressant medication trial.”

Remember, you’re conducting a trial, not taking a cure. Note, quantify and record your symptoms and possible side effects over the next few weeks. (There are programs on Google that can help you do this). You’re the one who decides whether the new medication is doing more good than harm.

If a couple medication trials haven’t worked, the very last possible step, number five, is to get a referral to a psychiatrist and give him/her a list of the medications you’ve tried, the doses, how long you took them, and the good and bad things you noticed. You can find a psychiatrist on the cheap at the same clinics we sent the feelings-focused types to.

Follow these steps, and you’re on the road to dealing with/managing your depression. It’s not a cure or an easy answer, but it’s a start, and hopefully this is all the information you need to start on a good path to treatment without paying a pretty penny.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement of purpose that will counteract depressive helplessness and pessimism. “I don’t know why I’ve been feeling depressed and I may never know, but I know how to find any causes that are worth finding and to try the cheapest treatments first. I expect to run into a lot of dumb ideas about depression because many people want to believe they have the answer and an easy way to control it. Whether or not I can control it, I know that, by doing the research myself and using professional help whenever I think it’s necessary, I can do a good job of taking care of myself.”

My parents have decided to retire, sell the big house I grew up in and move into a smaller condo closer to my sister and me. The move makes sense—my sister and I are adults with our own families—but it’s brought up a sort of taboo issue for my parents, which is my mother’s attachment to stuff. She’s not a hoarder, but if my dad wasn’t around to put his foot down, I sometimes worry it could be, because my mother has trouble throwing anything away. She says that moving all the time as a child has given her a different appreciation of objects, and that it’s better to regret having too much stuff than to miss something you threw away and can’t get back. Problem is, there’s no room for this stuff in the new condo, they won’t have the budget for storage, and my sister and I aren’t able to put all of her old work files, souvenir spoons, and elementary school textbooks (seriously) in our basements. What I’m afraid will happen is that my father, who has always taken responsibility for managing their money, will try to get my mother to agree that they can’t afford to move and store her stuff when they move, she’ll keep complaining, and he’ll get nasty. How can we get my mother to learn to let go?

I know you and your father want to make your mother happy and have harmony, but it looks like she’s not eager to adapt a sparse, Zen lifestyle.

The problem is, trying to make someone happy when it’s just not possible usually causes more unhappiness. False hope is dangerous, no good deed goes unpunished, and stuff happens (sometimes in great quantities).

There’s no way you can spare your mother the pang of parting from her horde. Trying to do so, while well intentioned, makes your father assume responsibility for her pain and its relief. In reality, life imposes the problem, not your father or any other member of your family, and it’s your mother’s job to deal with it, because no one else can.

Ask yourself (and your father) why he takes responsibility for a problem that isn’t really his. By managing the budget, carrying out spending decisions, and insisting on making your mother happy, he assumes total responsibility, infantilizes her, and garners himself a shitload of blame.

Tell him to accept that, while he might have failed as family manager/mom’s #1 cheerleader, he can succeed in not being responsible for any unhappiness caused by the stuff-alanche.

Seriously, you can tell him he’s done a wonderful job managing the household and your mother’s angst, but there are limits to what he can do, and that he’ll do better if he presents the situation to your mother and invites her to come up with a better solution.

In other words, instead of your father telling your mother it all has to go and your mother saying she can’t bear to part with any of it until the whole dispute becomes a clusterfuck, your father should instead do some math.

After he prices storage, figures out their fixed income budget, and sees that the two don’t mix, he can present that evidence to mom, explain how he can’t make it work, and give her the chance to find a solution.

At that point, the future of mom’s stuff collection is nobody’s fault. Hopefully, she’ll find an option that works for her, but in the meantime, you, your father, and your sister have avoided a stuff-load of aggravation.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a positive statement your dad could make to protect the family from blame while requiring his wife to share responsibility for a painful but necessary decision. “I’m glad we’ve been able to retain our family memorabilia until now, but I’ve looked at the cost of moving and storage, given that our new condo has no basement, and it doesn’t fit our budget. Please review the numbers and see if you can come up with a better answer and we’ll talk about it. One way or the other, it looks like we’re facing a painful compromise.”

I don’t know why my 10-year-old kid is so selfish and materialistic, because her mother and I aren’t. I can’t take her past a toy store without her having a tantrum if I don’t get her what she wants, and by tantrum, I mean she just keeps yelling and crying, even after I’ve dragged her out of the store and put her in the car. It’s not like we deprive her, either, because we do buy her toys occasionally for no reason, but she’s furious when she can’t get them on demand, which is all the time. She sees a shrink because she throws tantrums in school whenever the teacher wants her to stop doing what she’s doing and start something else. I’m afraid she’s spoiled and I don’t know how to undo the harm.

If the main cause of tantrums and other bad behavior in children was poor moral values like selfishness and materialism, then we’d know how to correct it by teaching better values, as forcefully and loudly as necessary.

All we’d need to rectify bad behavior is a Sunday school nun with a metal ruler.

You’ve got evidence, however, that whatever triggers your daughter’s tantrums is not simply a matter of her being spoiled, because she also has tantrums in school over the non-materialistic issue of being asked to stop what she’s doing and transition from one activity to another, sans toys of any kind.

What you’ve got here isn’t a bad set of values, but a problem in her nervous system that you don’t know how to correct. It’s understandable that you’d focus on the toys instead; you’d rather blame her and yourselves rather than face something you can’t control.

Once you face the sad fact that you’re helpless (but good) parents, you’re free to consider ways to help an unavoidably irritable kid improve her self-control.

At first, of course, try behavioral tricks you learn from teachers and therapists, because they’re less risky than medications. You learn to give her more “structure,” which means keeping her busy, providing her with clear rules, and imposing immediate time-outs when she starts to tantrum. It also means avoiding toy stores.

Therapy seldom helps if it focuses on your faults, but can be very helpful if it teaches you new child management techniques, and protects you from feeling responsible for your child’s (bad) behavior.

If non-medical treatment isn’t enough, and you think her behavior is seriously interfering with her schoolwork, friendship, and self-esteem, find out whether medications are safe enough to be worth a try.

As I’ve said many times, meds are never a cure, they sometimes don’t work, and they can often come with less-than-desirable side-effects. They’re worth a try, however, if you think the risk of her behavior is worse than the risk of the medication.

You and your daughter are in this together, and you have a lot of options for ways to manage and cope. One day, she might have a peaceful relationship with the toy store, but in the meantime, do your research, stay calm, and avoid women in habits.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a way to announce your new policy that conveys acceptance and hope. “I know that seeing new toys gives you very strong feelings that make it hard to walk away without them. We’ll help you by staying away from toy stores until you’re old enough and strong enough to manage those feelings. If you get those feelings anyway, we’ll try to find you a quiet place where you can be alone until you no longer want to scream or hit people. You’re not the only kid who’s had this problem, and we’ll get through it until you grow out of it.”

My son’s a good kid, very smart, and he does pretty well in school, although they’ve diagnosed him as having attention deficit disorder. Anyway, he’s so busy I rarely get to see him, so I thought we should spend more time together, and I made a deal that I’d give him some extra money for video games if he’d put aside some time for the two of us, and he agreed very willingly, but then he kept on forgetting about our scheduled times and blowing me off. Now, I feel I can’t give him the money without giving him the message that it’s OK to be irresponsible and disrespectful. Frankly, I’m hurt. My goal is to get him to be a good kid.

People often assume that hurtful actions by others are a personal affront. In fact, often when people get shat on, it’s totally thoughtless—they’ve been blown off because everything gets blown off, and nobody’s special. Feel better?

In terms of ending that behavior, however, you’ve got a bad plan; by putting a personal, moral spin on accidental fuckups, you’re making it harder, not easier, to make them better.

Yes, telling the kid you’re offended and he’s let you down will catch his attention and make him think twice before blowing you off again. The reason you’re writing, however, is that thinking twice wasn’t enough (although he’s probably too ADD and “in the moment” to do much thinking at all).

Now that you’ve given your warning in vain, you’re more hurt and reacting to his behavior as an insult and/or deliberate stubbornness. In turn, your efforts to get together are pushing you apart.

I’m not sure why you had to offer him a reward to spend time together—I should think that finding something pleasant to do together would be reward enough—but let’s go with what we’ve got.

Your goal now is to help him get that reward—and the good feeling that goes with keeping his commitments and having a good time with you—in spite of the distractive influences of his social life and ADD.

Remember, it’s your job to help him manage his ADD and not got caught up in reacting to it, and ADD often prompts a mixed reaction from friends and family. It often gives people attractive spontaneity and “in the moment” energy while blocking them from following-through, so they accumulate a circle of disappointed ex-friends about whom they feel guilty, which makes them more avoidant, worsens the problem, and widens the circle.

Don’t try to reform him from being a selfish kid who doesn’t care about his dad, because that’s not the kid you’ve got. Swallow your hurt and abandon the need to seek amends.

He’s probably a good kid who loves his dad but isn’t good at managing his schedule, just like you’re a good dad who loves his kid but isn’t good at not taking his ADD personally.

STATEMENT:
“It’s good that you’re busy, but now we’ve got to work harder to make sure we get time together. I’ll help you plan ahead, we’ll set up a system of reminders, and I’ll devise incentives for remembering. Sooner or later, my person will talk to your person and we’ll figure out a way to make it happen.”

I don’t hate my sister, but we have this odd relationship where we have a fight about once a year (my kids tease me about it). We live pretty close to each other, but we’re both busy and maybe a little disorganized, so we don’t call each other that much; but whenever I give her a call, she says she wants to get together and then does nothing, so I get pissed off and stop calling, until she feels bent out of shape by the fact I haven’t called, and then a holiday rolls around and that gives her the excuse to let me have it. My goal is for us to have a better relationship.

You can’t have a better relationship with your sister if you keep on doing things the natural way and rely on her to be active and organized in a way she never is or was.

The only way to have that relationship is to have another sister, and your parents are probably a little too old for that.

Also, like the father above, you can’t have a better relationship if you’re going to take her unresponsiveness personally and feel hurt by it. You both are who you are, and yearly blow-ups won’t change anything but your kids’ annual jokes.

Yes, it’s normal to feel hurt when someone doesn’t follow through on a plan to get together; but you’ve known her a long time and have good reason to think that she cares (especially if you have an annual make-up).

As such, your hurt feelings are a reflex that will make things worse if you let yourself express them, either actively or passively (if you stop calling/hang up on her). The ADD father would reward his son fruitlessly, and you’re punishing your sister in the same manner. Ultimately, you both end up punished, and the only result is a new round of punch-lines from your kids.

Assume she’s disorganized and that you need to do more than hint if you want to get together. It’s annoying that you have to do more of the work, but it’s better than the alternative (less of the work, none of your sister).

If you put in the extra effort and it doesn’t work, the knowledge that you’ve done your best can help you avoid a fight in case she accuses you once more. Still, you need to edit out your hurt and retribution.

An occasional-albeit-peaceful relationship is better than no relationship, and family is important, even when they’re unwillingly ignoring or willingly mocking you.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to keep your efforts positive and safely protected from the vicious circle of hurt. “I value our relationship and wish we saw more of one another. I’ve tried to arrange get-togethers, but they don’t happen easily because your life is busy and it’s hard to juggle priorities. Whatever the problem, I know you love me and we’ll get together whenever it’s possible, and no one is at fault. Maybe it will get easier when we get older.”

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.

Any time you let hateful feelings shape your goals, however, you’ll make life more hateful (after a brief burst of genuine satisfaction) and destroy what’s left of your self-esteem.

Yes, taking your hate out on yourself may give you the satisfaction of protesting life’s unfairness and heaping guilt and contempt on your so-called friends. What it also does, if you think about it or survive to see what happens next, is define your life as a reaction to your hurts and the people you value least. It both fuels and destroys, hateful little fucker that it is.

What you really want (and what your survivors will try to do) is to remember the times you did better things and followed your own values. It’s not as exhilarating as being a nihilist, but exhilaration is, by its nature, short-lived. You shouldn’t be.

During its short run, hate is a lot more attractive and satisfying than reminding yourself about what you stand for and thinking about values and consequences. That’s why you need to work on building a philosophy and preparing for hate before it arrives, instead of boarding the hate train and then finding the will to get off.

You can do that by going to the right church or temple (one that doesn’t waste too much time on holy this or ecstatic that), hanging out or reading about people who’ve made the same journey, or getting the right kind of therapy. DBT (dialectic behavioral therapy), which borrows heavily from Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and 12-step ideas about living with anger, can be particularly helpful.

Therapy or no, you can find ways to keep your hate (and my hate for your hate) under control.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for taking pride in good hate management. “I know what it’s like to hate life, but I won’t let myself forget what I value about life and my own ability to make it better. I can’t escape hate; but I will make myself strong enough to protect myself from its destructiveness and use its energy for my own goals.”

I feel like it’s finally time to confront a serious problem I’ve had for years; when I drive, I become filled with rage. My mother was the same way, and it was scary. She was never violent and neither am I, but the amount of anger I feel can’t be healthy, and I don’t want my daughter to do the same thing. I want to feel less furious.

I hope you’re not expecting therapy, a pill, or some Tibetan meditative experience to take away your anger, because it probably won’t.

Whatever causes anger—mommy’s genes, bullying by your older brother, or one rotation too many around a Boston-style rotary—it’s usually yours for life by the time you’re old enough to write me a letter.

Sure, psychotherapy may help, but my rule of therapy thumb is, if it hasn’t helped in a few months, move on. Therapy just isn’t that powerful (not even in my Harvard hands), and sticking with it when you’ve got anger to control delays your acceptance of the red-hazed reality you need to start managing.

What I’m really advocating isn’t to give up on therapy, but to give up on the idea that it will make you feel better by taking your anger away. Instead, use therapy (like DBT, see above) to help you manage anger.

I know you’ve probably seen kung fu monks master their anger by thinking pacifist thoughts while smashing bricks, and maybe you think channeling your rage into big muscles and loud thuds will improve your control while intimidating your tormentors into not cutting you off you in the first place.

Wrong, young grasshopper. The only reason martial monks don’t get sued for everything they own by everyone they lay a finger on is that they’re monks and own nothing. For the rest of us, the slightest adult physical altercation, combined with martial training, is as bad as a car-crash without insurance or witnesses: an endless goldmine for lawyers (and shrinks) at your expense.

So now that you’ve abandoned all hope of ever getting rid of your anger, you’re ready to improve your ability to manage it. Instead of tailgating those who dare offend your road-warrior sensibilities, learn to shut up and back off until you have a chance to think and decide whether a battle is worth fighting (almost never) and, if so, how to do it most effectively (by never appearing angry).

Feeling angry is unhealthy because it raises your blood pressure, but expressing it is even more unhealthy because it causes you endless misery that raises your blood pressure higher for longer.

You can’t control the former, but you can learn to get a handle on the latter (even if you can’t break a brick with your fist).

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for taking pride in frustrated rage. “I hate the way other drivers ignore the road rules, put my life in danger, and never get punished. Teaching them a lesson would make them think twice about driving like assholes. My goal in driving, however, is to get from one place to another as safely as possible, without being endangered or diverted by people whom I least respect. I’m proud of my ability to eat my anger and never, ever fight.”

‘Til then, enjoy the long weekend, and we look forward to hearing from you about how, even in this great country, your lives suck.
-Dr. Lastname

My husband quit drinking four years ago. I supported his decision to get sober, but I’m disappointed with the result. He used to be a fun goofball, but now he’s a dull grump, and I don’t like his company (and he doesn’t seem to like mine, either). We’ve started to go our separate ways but he’s not interested in talking about it. My goal is to restore the chemistry of our marriage and the good parts of his character without driving him back to drink.

Having fun with your husband is not your top measure of a partner. If you want fun, go out and have a drink.

Acceptance, rather than fun or passion, is the most essential requirement for a long-term relationship, and now you know it. Oh, first marriages have so much to teach you.

To find out whether you can accept a prospective partner, don’t go on a bar crawl; spend time together sober, tired, stressed, hungry, and short of money.

You’ll find out whether you can work together and trust the guy to do his share, shut up about the things he doesn’t like, and not irritate you too much by what he says when he’s dumb. That’s a better measure of true love than the tingle you get from laughing at one another’s sloshed jokes.

You have two choices at this point in your marriage. One possibility is to accept your husband the way he is and try to put aside the understandable anger and sadness about what you’ve lost. You can’t have the happy guy back unless you also want his alcoholism, and you don’t.

By the way, if your goal is to communicate with him before you’ve decided whether you can accept him, you’ll probably give him an earful of your sorrow, disappointment, and anger, and that will drive him away, but not before giving you an earful in return. Your best bet is to shut up until you’ve made up your mind.

The other choice, if you can’t accept your husband the way he is, is to stop being married. It’s not pretty, but the fact is, you can’t talk him into being the guy you want. Talk instead to yourself about whether you can accept the sober guy he now is.

Having finished your most important conversation—with yourself—you’re now ready to let him know which direction you want to go in. Either you can make it work with your dry husband, or take your newly acquired wisdom to marriage #2.

STATEMENTS:
Here are two alternate statements that avoid negative statements about who he isn’t and say positive things about what you want to do.

If you think you can accept him: “I want us to spend more time together. I’ve been hung over from the indirect effect of alcohol on our relationship; but I respect what you’ve done and I want to try new, sober ways for us to have fun, find common interests, and work together.”

If you know you can’t accept him: “I admire your sobriety, but alcohol interfered with my ability to get to know you, and, now that I know you better, I respect what you’ve done but think that we’re not meant for one another.”

I’ve been working for the same company for almost twenty years. I started at the very bottom and have worked my way up to a respectable position in middle management. I’ve never gotten a poor review, never had a dispute with a superior, never let my responsibilities slide. That’s why I’m totally bewildered by my new boss’ persistent criticism of my performance. I haven’t changed a thing, but he’s constantly telling me he thinks I’m slow on my projects, even though he can’t pin down anything I’m doing wrong. My goal is to get him to see that it’s his judgment, not my ability, that’s flawed.

The trouble with telling your boss he’s wrong is that it pushes him to find more fault with you. The chance of changing his mind, if he’s really down on you, is zip.

If anything, he’s more likely to prove he’s right by making it his project to get you fired. If you can’t convince him he’s wrong with your stellar performance, a talking-to won’t help. Sadly, you’re now employee of the month at Fucked Industries.

If you pay too much attention to his response, you’ll get angry at his lack of respect or appreciation for your good work, which will cause you to scowl, lose your motivation, and do less work, which will prove him right and make your actions and self-respect reactive to his stupidity. Don’t talk to him, and don’t react to him more than absolutely necessary.

Instead, assess your own work and be sure it meets your own standards; if you have two decades of positive reviews, that’s tons of evidence that it does. Then move forward, knowing that your work is OK, you’re probably not going to change your boss’s mind, and you need to make a living.

If it’s safe, see if you’ve got enough support from other higher-ups to counteract your boss’ influence. Warm up your résumé, and start looking at other options (e.g., if there’s an opening at It’s A Living And Co.)

Now you’re ready to talk to him. Give him a prepared, positive response that edits out all anger, attack, or defense, and pose for your “employee of the month” picture with a shit-eating grin.

STATEMENT:
“I greatly regret that you have not been satisfied with my work. I paid close attention to your comments, reviewed my work habits, and considered ways of either improving my work, if I thought it was deficient, and/or presenting it to better advantage if I thought communication was the problem. I’ve reviewed supervisory input from the past 20 years—all of it positive, I’m happy to say—requested additional input from current colleagues, and compared current with past performance. My conclusion is that I’ve been doing good work and that your dissatisfaction results from a difference in our styles. I will continue to listen carefully to your input and hope to win your satisfaction.”

I’ve been getting increasingly nervous about my aging parents, particularly because my mother, who’s a very vigorous near-90, likes to ignore the real risks of continuing to vacation in their old, 2 story, roughing-it country home. She loves to garden, take vigorous walks, build fires, and keep to the same routine she had when she was 40. I know I’m a nervous person—I’m a nurse, and I’ve had to deal with an injured leg since childhood—but I’m haunted about what could happen to her if she fell down and it’s no place for my dad, who’s very frail after a stroke. When I said something to her yesterday about how she should hold onto my father’s arm when he walks, she told me to mind my own business. I’m the only one of the kids who lives nearby, so their safety is my business. How do I get her to understand she needs to be more careful?

It’s understandable that you worry about your parents, but even if they were both freakishly healthy and lived in a hermetically sealed bubble, the sad fact is, they’re both going to die.

[Moment to process.]

Yes, your aging parents are lucky to have a caring child nearby, particularly someone who’s medically educated, as you are. You also know, however, as someone who’s lived with a crippled leg, how necessary it is to take risks if you want to live a full life and how important it is to make those risk-management decisions yourself.

Your goal isn’t to breathe easy, knowing that your parents are safe as can be, or make yourself responsible for their safety. As much as you’d like them to be safe, they can’t be, so those goals would drive you and them crazy (and provide me with a steady income).

Now that you know you can’t make them safe or ease your own fears, you’re ready to think creatively about realistic risk management, knowing that bad things (like death, but lesser things, too) will happen.

Your goal isn’t to prevent those bad things from happening, but to help your parents do whatever they’re willing to do to prevent them, then forget about them, and live their lives (and let you live yours).

Instead of nagging them to be more careful, offer to get them professional advice on how to manage risks from slips, falls, fainting spells, medication mistakes, and assorted worst-case scenarios.

If that doesn’t work, leave their doctor a message encouraging him/her to do the same and if that doesn’t work, take a course yourself and do what you can. Then, you’re finished and enjoy the veggies from the garden.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for keeping your responsibilities in check. “As much as it would hurt to see my parents injured and as much as it scares me to think about it, I respect their determination to live independently as long as possible, despite the risks. I can do more for them by offering good advice than by inducing guilt. I will take pride in doing this job well, regardless of whether they accept my advice. Indeed, the less I can do and the more helpless I feel, the more pride I’ll take in not letting my management interfere with their choices.”

Two years ago, my wife was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. We’re both overweight, but she also used to be a smoker, so her health’s always been more of an issue than mine. We were both warned that if we didn’t get better eating and exercise habits, we’d be in trouble, and now she knows her diabetes puts her at much higher risk of heart disease, hypertension, infections, and kidney disease. Well, two years later, and I’ve started taking the dogs on long walks, stopped eating from the vending machine at work, and lost some weight. My wife, on the other hand, hasn’t really changed her habits at all. She says she’s eating less crap at work, but at night she’s making the same unhealthy (delicious) stuff we’ve always eaten, and she always says she’s too tired to walk with me. I don’t know what I can do aside from nagging her, and that’s not working, so I’m really worried that she’s going to go downhill fast and that I’ll lose her. My goal is to get save my wife from herself.

As much as you’d like to keep your wife around as long as possible, you know that your influence over her health habits is limited, and trying to control her health will cause you more conflict and probably drive both of you to an earlier grave…which contradicts your purpose.

Unlike the concerned daughter above, you don’t have the luxury of ignoring the inevitable; she can’t make her parents immortal, but theoretically, you can help your wife to change her habits. If you’ve ever tried to change any of your own habits, however, you know it’s never really that easy.

Weight control, for example, should be easy because putting food in your mouth and swallowing are supposedly voluntary actions. In reality, people don’t have that much control over their habits or their health. Ask anyone who’s eaten at Cinnabon.

It takes great effort, not everyone can do it, and other legitimate priorities, like raising kids and making a living, get in the way. Biology is powerful, and our bodies are designed to survive famine, not taste-bud seduction.

Accept that she has a chronic, incurable illness and you’ll start to be more helpful. Instead of nagging, offer advice on impulse management and eating better (but don’t force that advice, because then you’re back to square one).

If that doesn’t work, ask her doctor to do the same, and if that doesn’t work, learn CPR, read up on living with a diabetic, and enjoy your time together. After all, you don’t want to ruin the quality of your relationship for the sake of a little more quantity.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a nagging-restraint statement. “It’s hard to watch my wife’s unhealthy habits, but I’ll do more for her by keeping my feelings to myself, offering advice if she wants it, and enjoying her while I’ve got her. A good marriage always requires tolerating the pain of traits you can’t change, and this is more of the same.”