Posted by fxckfeelings on April 12, 2012
Strong feelings don’t make for good decisions, but they can’t force you to make bad decisions if you follow your usual procedures. First, figure out what’s unrealistic, knowing that it usually involves getting some much desired love and/or respect. Second, do a bit of healthy sulking with a lot of sad music, movies, and/or junk food. Finally, cut the sulking, summon your courage, and figure out how to make the best of things, respecting whatever you do next. What you decide might cause some strong, bad feelings, at least at first, but if you follow these instructions, you’ll always feel good about your choices in the long run.
-Dr. Lastname
I have been in love with this guy since the first year of high school, and now I’m 23 and still think I can’t get over him! We have been good friends and that made it harder for us to share our feelings (which, by his actions and behavior, I felt he had, too) and then we kissed two or three times when we were both drunk. The first kiss was last year and the second now after one year has passed, but we decided to let that pass us because he thought I’m far better than him, and that he is a loser, which I of course don’t agree with. Eventually I tried to move on and have a relationship with this other guy from work who is great and we have a great time together, but I feel that we connect only physically, and when I was with him and saw my first love all the feelings came back to me! I don’t know what to do. If I stay in a relationship with the guy from work I would feel that it isn’t fair to him, but I clearly see no future with the guy I’m in love with.
The first step in solving any problem is deciding what you can’t change, rather than pursuing what you have the strongest feelings about. For example, you might feel really strongly that you want to eat cake all day, but you’d probably resist pursuing it since you can’t change the fact you’d blow up like a deer tick.
Problems with love are no different; it may feel like you need to satisfy an emotion, but you really just have to be realistic about your options, make up your mind about the dude/dessert, and move forward.
Of course, problems of the heart have the added bonus of drama, which, to many people, is emotional crack, with a similar corrosive effect after prolonged exposure. That’s why people pay to see opera, soap and otherwise; the more painful the yearning and misunderstanding, the better. If there are vampires involved, forget about it. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 9, 2012
One of the great mysteries in human thinking is why we think pointing out a rude person’s rude behavior will lead to improvement, instead of just elicit a (way more logical) rude response. So, instead of drawing a rude friend or co-worker’s attention to their bad-manners, decide whether your relationship, personal or professional, is worth sustaining in spite of their overbearing behavior. If it is, respond politely to whatever you think needs attention and refuse to talk about anything you think does not; you can be firm if you know what your own standards are, without having to defend or retaliate. If it’s not worth it, then feel free to sever ties (politely and with the utmost tact).
-Dr. Lastname
I have a long time friend who has OCD about feet and cleanliness. Her OCD is so bad that whenever she sees someone’s bare foot touch the ground, they have to immediately wash their feet before entering her house. She recently accused me of having smelly feet when I’m in her car wearing clean socks and boots during winter. In addition, when I got a little irritated with her accusation she said, “I’m only helping you out because someday you will meet a man and he won’t like your smelly feet.” I don’t think I have smelly feet and have not gotten complaints from former boyfriends about it, nor have my other friends or co-workers complained about smelly feet. How do I tell her she’s being rude and that her OCD is getting out of control?
Wondering how to correct a friend’s rude behavior was the topic of many letters sent to the late, great Dear Abby. That said, I’m not sure she would like my answer.
Back in those days, calling friends and family on their rude behavior was the way civilized people policed the quality of social civility, like telling kids on the bus to give up their seat to an elderly person and expecting they would bow to public judgment (and not give you the finger).
The trouble is, unsolicited advice, no matter how tactful and well intentioned, is often a hard sell, even when presented to adults that aren’t naturally rude. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 5, 2012
When you’re close to someone, it’s hard not to take their actions personally, and the relationship becomes even harder if you do. If they draw back, you ask yourself what you did to make them stop caring and whether or not you deserve their punishment. In reality, however, their actions usually have less to do with you and everything to do with their personalities, for better or worse. It’s your job to protect yourself from undeserved rejections and let-downs, not pile on the punishment. There will still be suffering, but it’s not personally inflicted, and if you learn something from the whole deal, it’s not in vain.
-Dr. Lastname
I can’t believe my girlfriend dumped me after 5 years without even saying good-bye. I loved her deeply and we lived together for one of those years and we were dating right up to the end. It’s true, I got high and really belligerent at a party just before she stopped talking to me. I threw up all over her, but that happened just twice in our relationship, and I put up with worse from her, including the fact that she hated to work, never had any money, and dumped any of our friends who happened to irritate her. When I recovered from that last party, she wouldn’t answer my calls. My goal is to figure out how people can say they love you and then suddenly blow you off without caring enough to write a note.
The language of love, which you’re speaking, isn’t just sweet coos—it’s also bitter whines about broken promises and sudden reversals of feeling.
Switch back to your native tongue then, because speaking love-ese will teach you nothing but how to justify your victimhood and prolong your misery. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 2, 2012
When you’re overwhelmed with depressed or anxious feelings that don’t seem “justified” or connected to the usual events of your life, you first doubt whether you deserve to feel that bad, then doubt your sanity entirely. That’s because these intense, negative emotions tell you that you’re worthless and/or doomed when you’re not (at least, no more than anyone else), and most people assume their emotions must be at least a little right. In reality, symptoms pass and you’re never worthless or doomed as long as you can keep your perspective, so instead of jumping to dire conclusions when intensely negative feelings try to seize control of your brain, stand your ground.
-Dr. Lastname
I feel guilty for feeling like I might be depressed. I have no reason to feel sad (and that word makes me cringe because it doesn’t quite sum up the multitude of emotions that devastate me on a regular basis; desperate, useless, pathetic, oxygen thief, loser and plenty other perfectly good adjectives could cover it) and because I can’t justify it, I start to feel frustrated. I’m like an elastic band – one minute I’m the happiest person on earth and the next I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, ready to drop where I stand and content to never get back up again. I’m twenty and so it might just be that I’m walking the boundary line between physical maturity and teenagerdom, where angst haunts us all. I’ve had difficulties with this kind of thing in the past—my dad died when I was nine and I developed anorexia shortly after and while I’ve since ‘recovered’ (I hate that word), I still have issues with the way my body looks. I tried to kill myself when I was thirteen for no other reason that I can remember other than I had a rope and a bunk bed and fuck it, why not? Obviously I failed and I’ve never tried it again, but now and then I’ll look up at my ceiling fan and think, “Why not?” And then I’ll feel silly and awkward. But then I’ll be driving down the freeway and think “one jerk of the wheel and I’m out”. Or I have a headache and I’m staring at a very large bottle of aspirin and it’ll be there, in the back of my head, whispering away. It’s not normal to feel like that, is it? Even if they are just passing thoughts, it shouldn’t be like this. Does everyone think like this?
When you find yourself with frequent feelings of self-loathing and an urge to end it all, the question isn’t whether other people think like this (not usually), or whether you should have to feel like this (should or not, you do, and that’s the way it is), or why you feel like this (life is indisputably unfair and some people carry inexplicable pain).
The question you should instead be asking yourself is whether you can find a reason to live, knowing that you often don’t really want to. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 29, 2012
Before we discovered communication as the solution to family conflict and misunderstanding, we knew better. Back then, people thought before they spoke, believed silence was golden, and had to live without remote controls. Communication satisfies a yearning, but if you think first about your goal before opening your mouth, you’ll usually discover that it’s good to communicate a positive vision and bad to share feelings before remembering how your first-degree relative will almost certainly respond.
-Dr. Lastname
After my son left home, he became very distant and uncommunicative. Then last year, almost ten years later, he finally starting calling me regularly, then opened up and confessed he had a problem with drugs and alcohol. I was delighted by his openness and thought we were on the right track, but now, a year later, I’m starting to wonder. What now happens is, after he’s gotten wasted on one thing or another for a few days and run out of money, he calls me up to tell me how bad he feels, how sorry he is, and how much he hates himself. I try to be sympathetic, but I hate to hear his misery, I’m tired of telling him he’s really OK, and I’m angry that he doesn’t stay sober for very long and doesn’t do anything about it except dump the problem on me when he’s feeling low. My goal is to see him get better, so I don’t want to cut communication, but our talks are not working.
Shared feelings can be a good step forward if your son knows what he wants to do with himself, other than share feelings.
Hurray, he’s discovered you’re supportive and not mean, punitive or critical, and sharing with you feels good. Unfortunately, that’s his only goal. You’re not reconnecting, you’re becoming his favorite hangover cure. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 26, 2012
Cancer that doesn’t kill you can nevertheless leave you with permanent damage and fears, but if you feel it’s necessary to reverse that damage or stop the fear before life re-starts, you’re taking on a fight with cancer you can’t win. Instead, try to remember the values you care about that apply to anyone and don’t depend on mental state or performance—being kind, doing your work, balancing your commitments—and take pride in pursuing them regardless. Now that you’re lucky enough to have a life after cancer, don’t allow cancer to run it or ruin it.
-Dr. Lastname
I am a 55-year-old mother, grandmother and graphic designer who was so, so, so lucky to have survived lung cancer seven years ago! But somehow in the process it has frozen me and I seem to have forgotten how to live. I mean there are dim memories and quiet, inside voices that keep pointing out my life is passing me by but I am frozen from action and I don’t know why or how. A small voice keeps looping, “Let your light shine” but again, I don’t know how. I also have fairly active rheumatoid arthritis but it’s not a big deal in comparison to lung cancer. What it mostly has meant is that I haven’t worked full-time for a few years so money is extremely tight and I want many things; mostly to travel, to be able to help my family financially, get a small house of my own…I’ve always been told that I’m artistically very talented but in reality I produce nothing anymore. What is wrong with me? Can you give me any clues or even one small place to start from? I don’t want to be hopeless and I feel that I’m not. I do still have hope but I keep drawing a blank on how to begin.
Based on what you’ve said, I suspect that, like many artists, you never used to have a problem structuring your own time because your creativity always did it for you. Inspiration begets motivation begets organization, etc.
If that’s true, then what’s troubling you now may be that you’ve lost that capacity, either as a result of depression or chemotherapy or both. You can still be creative, you just can’t do something about it as easily as you used to. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 22, 2012
Regardless of what you hear on TV about the power of exercise, fish oil, and Xenu, none of us has much control over the way we or our loved ones die. We beat death, not by postponing the inevitable, but by sustaining our most important priorities—love and commitments—in the face of helplessness, pain, and impending loss. In other words, we beat death in so much as we don’t let it take over our lives.
-Dr. Lastname
I love my wife and we’ve had a great 30 years together but, since her cardiac arrest during a heart attack, she hasn’t been the same. What I really hate is that, as much as I want to help her recover and prevent her from slipping back, she doesn’t seem to want to get better. I know she has some memory problems and isn’t steady on her feet, but her physiotherapist gave her a good set of exercises. Instead of doing them, however, she’s happy to stay in our bedroom all day and watch TV, often blowing off important medical appointments. I get furious and find myself screaming at her, which does nothing but make me feel mean and cruel. My goal is to get her to do her best to recover, because I don’t want to punish her, but I can’t stand the idea that she’s making herself worse, and then I could lose her.
People don’t age and die because we lose our fight to live; we die because we die. Fighting is merely a protest demonstration and/or holding action. Understandably, you don’t want to lose your wife, but no amount of effort on her part will stave off death forever.
We’d all prefer to believe that love and determination could drive your wife to recover from her disability, and, under some circumstances, they could (most of those circumstances, as we’ve said many times, involve a screenwriter).
Unfortunately, they often can’t, and, if her disability is not treatable, persistent pushing could make you abusive and destroy the relationship that’s her most meaningful source of support. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 19, 2012
Everyone knows how hard it is to find someone to love who will love you back for who you really are, but few people acknowledge how much they’re willing to hide themselves in order to make a one-sided relationship seem reciprocal. If the person you’re with can’t deal with your faults, you shouldn’t make yourself deal with trying to be faultless. Better to end something with Mr. Right and be alone than stay with someone who thinks you’re just Ms. Meh.
-Dr. Lastname
I lost the love of my life by hanging on to her too hard, and now I’m trying to let go in order to get her back. We had a good relationship for 2 years and I was always able to ignore the fact that she didn’t love me the way I loved her, even though she sometimes shoved me to the periphery of her life. We spent lots of time together because we shared common interests, and I should have been content with that. Instead, I lost control one night and told her how angry I felt, and she said it’s over because she didn’t want more drama in her life. Now, when I run into her, I try to be friendly but distant, because I know that any reaching out will cause her to back off. My goal is to get her back, and I wonder whether there’s anything else I can do.
It’s relatively easy to get love started, but it’s much harder to sustain it, and even harder to survive it.
That’s because there are lots of ways to control initial attractiveness, from a slick haircut to an arsenal of clever pick-up lines. Once chemistry is established, however, no haircut can contain or control it. Even couples therapists have the same divorce rate as the rest of us. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 15, 2012
People often think the worst kind of craziness leaves you dazed, confused, and mumbling to yourself on the subway, but the truth is that there’s another kind of craziness that’s even worse. With that kind of crazy, you’re still aware of the date, can name the President, and keep a bank account, but you feel broken by the deliberate malice of those you should be able to trust. It feels like a legitimate reaction to life and individual people rather than an illness, but illness it is, and people who have it and those who love them must accept it as such if they’re to get any kind of protection at all from its corrosive effect on relationships and hope. Otherwise, everyone involved will end up feeling as isolated and scared as the ailing, mumbling subway-dwellers.
-Dr. Lastname
My psychiatrist recently told me he thought I was a borderline character disorder, which I know, from looking it up, means I’m an angry, destructive person who is probably not going to get better. What was also upsetting was the fact that the description of a borderline character disorder fit me, because I’ve always had trouble keeping relationships and I tend to cut myself and do other self-destructive things when I’m feeling low, which is most of the time. My goal is to feel better, and now I feel hopeless. The question is, am I really hopeless?
The fact that you’re asking that question, instead of hating the evil system of mental health clinicians for destroying your self-esteem by giving you a vicious label, shows that you’re not as hopeless as you think.
You have a good ability to see things positively and clearly, even when your feelings are entirely negative. That’s essential to managing the temperament and habits of a borderline personality (or almost any negative personality trait). That and admitting you have a problem in the first place. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 12, 2012
The problem with most of our methods for rating ourselves is their reliance on feelings; the pleasure of doing things perfectly, or the satisfaction of beating the other guy and pleasing your parents or the pain of being disrespected by the community because of who your parents are. Naturally, these feelings are often false, since we tend to feel good for the wrong reasons or can’t feel good because of reasons we don’t control. So, instead of letting emotions dictate when you’ve succeeded or failed, consult your values and judge yourself the way you’d judge anyone else. You can’t make feelings of failure go away, but when they try to lead you to negative conclusions, you don’t have to follow.
-Dr. Lastname
Compared to my father, I’ve failed to achieve much in life. He inherited a lot of money, doubled it, and was well respected as a banker and business consultant. Sure, he was also a jerk who was unbelievably nasty with everyone at home, but that’s another story. He still made sure I got a great education and went to business school, which he never did. I was fantastically lucky with my wife and kids and I worked hard, but I never came close to his success. Forty years later, I’ve barely got enough money to retire and I can’t help my grandchildren with graduate school. People think of me as a nice guy but not as an impressive businessman and I leave no great fortune to the next generation. How do I live with the fact that I’ve failed?
Somewhere in the human brain, somewhere near the mammal brain and the lizard brain, is the lesser-known marine brain. It’s the part that makes us, like fish in a school, define how we’re doing by where everyone else is.
There’s no shame in it, but there’s no reason to listen to it, either.
In the more advanced parts of your brain you’ll find your values, and they’re worth reviewing first, not just in order to be a good person, but to develop standards that protect you from being too fishy and comparing yourself to friends and family. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
