I think my girlfriend is basically committed to me (after 4 years of our having a steady relationship, despite living in different cities). After much backing-and-filling and hemming-and-hawing, she introduced me to her 3 kids and her ex. The problem, I think, is that her ex-husband is an evil drama-monster who bludgeoned her with tantrums, legal threats, and ultimatums until she would do anything to appease him. It makes her a total wuss with the kids and interferes with her availability for our relationship. That makes me push her sometimes, which makes her jump like she’s been scalded and trapped between two powerful, demanding masters. I don’t think she’s into dominant men any more (at least, I don’t see myself as one), but my goal is to help her resist her evil ex without making her feel she’s doing it to appease me.

No matter how nice your girlfriend is, if she’s over-reactive to an evil ex, you can find yourself getting irritated, worried, and sometimes outraged. You’re sorry she has trouble setting limits with the guy, but you sure don’t want him to control your life.

If she doesn’t learn how to manage him and the feelings he stirs up in her, however, that’s what will happen, and your relationship will be riddled with the drama you’re both trying to avoid (and also become very crowded).

That doesn’t mean, of course, that she loves him more than you; he just has the power to make her more frightened or guilty than you do, because he isn’t as “nice”, and she doesn’t know what to do with those feelings other than appease him.

Of course, that may tempt you to fight back by showing her that you’re just as good at making her feel bad, which would turn you into a chair-slinger in someone else’s soap opera (as well as something of a jerk), and it’s clear you’re not letting that happen. That doesn’t mean you’re doomed to a relationship with him if you want a relationship with her.

Your best weapon is the same one we use as shrinks (and the one you seem to be using now); coach her to see a better, though not comfortable, alternative, urging her to use a lawyer to figure out when she can say “no” and what to say to her ex and kids if they attack her for being mean or unreasonable. Support her in doing what she believes is right and what will work out better, rather than in doing what will make you happy or her less stressed. Odds are, if an action is right and reasonable, it’s guaranteed to make her ex pounce.

Continue to offer her your positive perspective; she’s a good woman who has done her job as a mother and can do a better job by learning to say no. In doing so, her best therapist is her lawyer (used not for venting feelings, but for information about standards and consequences).

If she can’t make progress with that approach, then the package is what it is, and you’ll need to take it or leave it. What seems to be happening, however, is that she’s getting tougher, in part because you know how to keep a lid on your negative feelings while giving good advice. Her ex puts a burden on your life, but he doesn’t control it, and he doesn’t have to ruin the life you and your girlfriend share.

STATEMENT:
“My girlfriend’s wussiness about her ex drives me crazy, but I know she’s a good, responsible person who’s come a long way in learning how to take a stand. It’s been frustrating, and often feels like work, but I’ve done a good job managing my anger, she’s doing better at managing her fear, and we both continue to feel the relationship is worth it.”

My ex-husband has the divorce court judge in his pocket and it’s driving me crazy. Regardless of our divorce agreement, he takes me back to court every year for additional money for our daughter’s residential treatment (she has as addiction problems), and the judge buys his story in spite of its being full of lies and bullshit. He says I have money I don’t have—I can no longer afford a lawyer. He wants me to pay for a fancy, private facility that won’t take our insurance when there’s a good one in our insurance company’s network. As a recovering alcoholic myself, I want my daughter to get treatment as much as my husband does, but what I really want is for that judge to know how wrong he is to think I’m a skinflint and allow my ex to torture me year after year.

Unless you grew up with parents who were always fair and unbiased, you know there’s a real danger in expecting justice. The more justified you are in feeling screwed by the judge/parent, the bigger the danger.

Yes, you’d hope that expressions of injured innocence would get him/her to reconsider and, in a fair world, that’s what would happen. In this world, however, expressing negative feelings about a judge’s judgment usually makes the judge feel attacked and insecure, particularly if you’re angry and right. Not only does justice does not ensue, your hole gets deeper, as does your injury, anger, and tendency to make more trouble for yourself.

If your ex-husband is an Asshole (readers of this blog understand that I use this term diagnostically, and not pejoratively), he truly believes he’s a righteous defender of the weak, so it’s not hard to see why a judge who doesn’t know him would be taken in. If you then attack him, you’ll look like the angry girl your ex says you are.

So put the same lid on venting outrage as you do on alcohol; stay sober, and stay quiet. Remember, keeping negative feelings inside is not nearly as bad as letting them out in front of the wrong audience.

Now that you’re ready to eat your shit sandwich—cry if you must, but please don’t bring it up again—you’re ready to say something positive about your own plan for your daughter. Namely, that you want her to get help as much as your ex does, but you expect her to need help for a long time and you’re trying to save money now, because she’ll need it later. That’s why you’re trying to save on legal bills and don’t want to pay for the best intervention program when the difference between best and good is not worth it.

Don’t get distracted by the judge’s willingness to believe you’re a bad, stingy parent and don’t defend yourself by attacking his judgment or the unfairness of being dragged back into court. Stay on message: talk about your concern for your daughter and your belief in the advantages of your plan.

Given time and no attacks from you, the judge will probably catch on to your Asshole husband’s bullshit, particularly if you stick to your agenda and don’t push his buttons. You might not get perfect justice, but you’ll get a good feeling of pride for having expressed yourself as a caring mother, without getting screwed by him and your old negative feelings.

STATEMENT:
“It’s horrible to feel I can be dragged back into court at any time, to be judged by someone who believes I’m an asshole no matter what I say or do, but that’s life. I know I’m ready to do right by my daughter and that I’ve got a good plan. Beyond that, I don’t control.”

Like a lot of artists, I don’t think I’m good at anything else. I’ve been “the arty one” since I can remember, I went to art school on a scholarship, and I’ve gotten illustration work pretty steadily since then. Ever since my last job, however, I’ve started to wonder if I’ve lost it somehow. I got a steady gig in a graphic design department, and at first, I totally got along with my co-workers and we seemed to share a sensibility. Then, for some reason—maybe it’s my age (I was the youngest one), the new department head, an off-the-mark project I completed, I don’t know—the group consensus turned on me and I was treated like an untalented hack for the first time in my life. I’ve never dealt with this before, and I still don’t get it, because the higher-ups were still pleased with my work even if my peers decided it sucked, and I was always nice to everyone. The only thing that did happen was that I started to doubt my ideas more, because every time I’d come up with something I’d immediately think of all the reasons my co-workers would hate it. After a few months of this, I couldn’t take it anymore, so when a college friend told me there was an opening at his work, I jumped on it. The problem is that I still can’t get that negativity and doubt out of my head—maybe I am a hack, after all—and I’m terrified of starting this new job and either not coming up with anything good or not coming up with anything period until eventually I can’t get a job at all. I’m not good at anything else, but what if I’m not good at design anymore, either? My goal is to get my mojo back (or at least get these assholes out of my brain).

One of the curses of being talented, in arts or sports, is that talent becomes the heart of your self-esteem. Talent and ego have a flawed-yet-symbiotic relationship.

It’s particularly true if, like many talented people, you’re actually not so hot at doing other things. It’s as if your talent takes up extra brain-space, crowding out room for the basics and leaving you both gifted and klutzy, brilliant and ADD, hyper-capable and totally incompetent.

Other people might tell you that you’re good at other things, but those other people are wrong; they don’t have or understand an artistic mind. They had to decide on a career, whereas you probably felt like you didn’t have a choice. They also probably have health insurance.

What you’re “good at” is what you and others respect until you come to believe that nothing but hard work stands between you, success, and being a somebody. That’s when ego starts to assume you’ve got control over your artistic career when, in truth, no one controls art.

Even with all the hard work in the world, art is outside of your control. Sooner or later, you’ll perform poorly, perform well but meet an unresponsive audience, and/or get ill, injured, or misunderstood. And that’s when, if you rate yourself by performance, you’ll start to fear failure, and then fear the fear of failure, which is the fear of losing your mojo.

The feelings are awful and there’s no avoiding them. You can sense the rejection and feel your creative juices drying up, like you’ve lost your gift and can’t get it back. Meanwhile, you feel like there’s nothing good you’re good at. Without talent, ego feels like a total failure.

So here’s the hard part for people who want to do well at what they’re good at (and everyone else): develop a deeper set of values. You’ve already got the hard-work ethic for managing the controllable part of your gift—no need for improvement there. Now, learn to respect yourself for dealing with shit, which is just a technical term for that part of life that you don’t control.

Counter those fucked-up feelings with your beliefs; that you’ve done your best, and if you can’t do what you’re good at, you’ll do your best with other things. You’ll try to make a living and be a good friend. You’ll do what matters with what you’ve got.

Remember, what you admire most in others is not their ability to do great things, but to eat shit and still be a good person (unless, of course, you’re one of those shallow people who admire nothing but good performance, and then you don’t really have any friends and you’re probably an entertainment executive). Suck up the pain and remember who you are.

That’s the antidote to losing your mojo: redefining what you value. When you decide that mojo doesn’t matter, it comes back. When you care more about trying and less about results, results improve.

No one can stop the agony of unfulfilled talents, but the real challenge is to bear that pain, remember what you’re here for, and do what you can with what you’ve got until your ego’s healthy enough for talent to return.

That’s not easy to do—it’s a lot harder than being lucky and performing well—but it’s an art in itself, and a much higher achievement.

STATEMENT:
“I’m stuck with excruciating feelings of failure and self-doubt, but I have no doubts about my hard work or my ability to do whatever is necessary when I think it’s worth doing. I have no doubts about my ability to be a good friend. I will not let my feelings touch my self-respect.”

I can’t deny that I’ve had success as a musician—I’m well known in the area—but fashions have changed over the last few years and now gigs are far from plentiful. Financially, though I have a day job, I’m just getting by. I do my best to schmooze and talk up producers, but I’m basically a shy person who’s happiest to be alone, practicing. I know the economy is bad and every performing artist is having a hard time, but I can name at least 3 other musicians of my generation who are doing much better than I am because they’re more energetic and sociable and maybe more talented. I feel like a failure who’s wasted his life and watched his professional reputation ebb away and now I’m facing a sad end in a lonely rooming house. My goal is to turn this situation around.

As noted above, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve proven yourself as an artist; sooner or later, the pursuit of an artistic career exposes you to an unusual amount of shit you don’t control and, when that happens, it feels personal.

Fortunately, you’re too old and well-established to worry about the negative impact of your feelings on your music, and thus on your career, and thus on your music, etc. It’s good not to worry about the losing-your-mojo whirlpool.

It’s not much better, however, to fear that no one cares about your mojo, you’re facing a sad and lonely decline, and you’re sure it’s your own fault, as proven by the fact that your peers are doing better.

That kind of proof, however, is one of the nastier tricks the human mind plays on itself in the name of so-called reason. You know you’ve managed a good career for many years, in spite of a shy temperament, and you’ve never neglected the business side of music-making. You also know that other people’s gifts, both musical and non-, are different than yours. So real logic tells you that the only thing that deserves criticism is your luck.

If you believe in making music, you also know it’s a meaningful thing to do with your life, whether or not it pays. Remind yourself that no artist in his or her right mind expects to get rich and that living with poverty is part of your job description (though one you hope to escape).

Be proud of your choices and the good music that resulted. Keep with your successful formula, playing when you can and paying your bills when you’re able. Don’t doubt that you chose a tough life…and did well with it.

STATEMENT:
“When I’m poor, old, and gig-less, it’s hard not to feel miserable; but music is important, I worked hard at it, and I will not regret past or future sacrifices. Life is hard, but good music is forever.”

Please Note: Monday is also a fxckfeelings.com holiday. Happy New Year (and again, if/when it’s unhappy, you know the drill).

I’m a current student and I’ve sort of self-diagnosed myself as having an unusual kind of OCD. It started out four years ago when I was studying for an upcoming major exam. I had always been one of the few top students, but at one point in time in the midst of hours of straight studying, I couldn’t absorb any more info, and in a fit of frustration, a ball of emotions welled up and I actually said harshly in my mind to myself, “you shall FAIL!”, even though I’ve always tried to avoid such negative thinking. What came next was an unshakable, unexplainable, and annoying-yet-scary series of feelings, thoughts and emotions for the next few days and weeks. After that episode, I developed an irrational apprehension about me having “ruined” myself and my academic ability. To get myself back to my normal, anxiety-free mind when studying or doing anything related to studies, I imagined “transferring” the whole chunk of this mental mess on other stuff, whether it is the faces of people who did badly in academics in my field, to those I don’t like, etc. Still, my mind would automatically be inclined to have these random obsessions appear in my mind while studying, and it’s really prevented me from fully unleashing my full academic ability in subsequent grades. I really felt restrained and trapped by this, and my goal is to eliminate this strong-rooted (it’s been 4 years) mental condition that happens whenever I study and then makes it almost impossible.

Some OCD thoughts are crippling but come out of nowhere, like fear of contamination or making a mistake. While they often lead to compulsive rituals, like repeated hand-washing and fact-checking, you manage to keep studying. So, while you’re suffering, you’re still lucky.

The fact that your obsessive fears are tied to school may make them easier to deal with, because, unlike germs, school (usually) doesn’t go on forever.

School is built on mental constructs that attract obsessions like lint to a dryer vent; it’s got grades, grade-points, and exams that hinge on a word or the instructor’s interpretation of same. It invites obsession and obsessive argument, which can be torture, but at least it has an end date.

After school is over, you can find branches of almost every major profession that thrive on obsessional thinking, but you can also avoid them if you want; you’ll have choices beyond what courses you can take and how much to put on your meal card.

Also, the mental activity that sticks words in your mind as if they’re big, significant boulders is probably good for certain kinds of learning, and it’s not uncommon. Respected psychiatrist John Nemiah liked to point out that Martin Luther had a similar problem, and went on to start Protestantism (although his Catholic colleagues might not see this as a success).

The bad news, I guess, is that you’ll probably never “eliminate” your fear of certain intrusive thoughts. What you can do, however, apart from putting school behind you, is develop techniques for breaking into the vicious circle that enhances the power of whatever you’re afraid of.

In other words, if you’re afraid to think about something, you’ll think about it, and your fear will probably have a small negative effect on your performance, which will prove you’re right to fear the intrusive thoughts, which scares you even more. What a good cognitive therapist can offer you is a bunch of mental and physical exercises that either distract you from the vicious circle or remind you of your ability to deal with fearful events as they occur.

Get used to the idea that, like many people for whom ideas and words have a life of their own, you can be troubled by obsessive thoughts. You can’t get rid of them, or always prevent them from distracting you, but you can always stop them from changing your goals or failing to try your best and reach the finish line of graduation.

STATEMENT:
“I’m afraid that intrusive thoughts will prevent me from ever living up to my potential, but, if I have to live with them, I can do it. I will regard them as just one more weakness that I can learn to deal with as I go about pursuing my interests and trying to graduate and make a living.”

I do pretty well as project director at work, but I’ve always been troubled by thoughts that get in my head and just won’t quit. During the last year, I’d get haunted over and over again by the thought that I’d said the wrong thing to one of my colleagues and offended them. What I’d want to do was ask them if I had in fact offended them, but if they said no, I’d probably worry that my asking them had offended them, and I’d want reassurance about that, thus making it worse. Instead, I ask my wife, who listens carefully and reassures me…but then I think of something I left out of the story and ask her again, and make it worse at home instead of at the job. She’s a kind woman and understands I can’t help it, but, after a while, her patience wears thin, and then I worry about my marriage. My goal is to figure a way out of this trap.

A couple good things about your obsessive thoughts are that you’re used to them and they haven’t stopped you from succeeding at a tough, challenging job. The bad thing is that your technique for diminishing painful self-doubts has gained a hold on you and, if unchecked, could trap you in a dangerous vicious circle. Instead of washing your hands, you’re using the Purell of reassurance to wash your mind of guilt.

If you read up on obsessive compulsive disorder, you’ll learn that the behaviors for reducing painful thoughts (like your reassurance technique) are called “rituals” and they can get out of hand. The treatments for controlling them are a lot like the one invented by Mel Brooks’ comic alter ego, Dr. Haldanish, who cured a young boy of a paper-tearing habit by yelling at him not to tear paper. Which is to say, an absurd-seeming disorder has a similar therapeutic approach.

The goal of these treatments is, simply, to help you stop the ritual, even if this causes more short-term pain and doubt. The therapist may give you reassuring thoughts to repeat or exercises you can use to distract or calm yourself. In extreme cases, the therapist may actually accompany you and directly encourage you to refrain from the ritual (alas, Mr. Brooks doesn’t do house calls).

If you think there’s an element of truth in your concerns and that your speech with colleagues is too negative when you’re stressed or find yourself worried, angry, or unhappy, coaching would also be helpful. You may discover new ways to keep your statements positive, while being direct about tasks and responsibilities.

If you were really offensive, however, you’d be getting more criticism at work and at home, and you aren’t. On a professional level, that’s really your standard and it’s one you want to think about and reinforce as much as possible.

Your goal isn’t to make your doubts go away, though that would be nice; it’s to have respectful conversations at work, even when you’re stressed, and feel confident about your ability to have those conversations. And to keep all paper intact.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard not to ask for reassurance when I’m haunted by doubts, but I have my own good standards for professional behavior and, so far, I know I’m meeting them. My job is to make them stronger while I tolerate the doubt that seems to be part of my brain chemistry.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have been struggling with performance anxiety for years. It was particularly difficult during university, where I saw three psychologists, including a campus counselor, who, while supportive, weren’t helpful. It got much better though when I was able to take control of a treatment group I was facilitating, where I could design the program and run it the way I wanted to. I enjoyed being the therapist who helps others, and the experience gave me confidence. Still, the anxiety has not been extinguished in all situations—when teaching and presenting at conferences, the anxiety in these two areas is just as high as it was previously. I have been managing this for a long time and I do not feel motivated to continue to place myself in situations where my anxiety is raised again so high that I experience nausea, stomach pains, dry mouth, etc., not to mention the exhaustion I feel after the anxious-provoking event has finished. I do have some mild/moderate social anxiety—I don’t like socializing in big groups unless I know the people, and this prevents me from making new social contacts and networking for my profession. I am well versed in exposure therapies and ACT and have used these to get me to the point I am at now, and I continue to use them. However, I don’t think my anxiety will ever improve beyond where it is now and I am too exhausted to continue to try. I guess I’m stuck and don’t know if I should try to find a specialist to help me to continue to force myself to network, push myself to present at conferences, and become an academic psychologist or move into working as a clinical psychologist in a private practice, where I would work more on my own and I would be happier and more relaxed but also know that I am avoiding the events that are anxiety-provoking.

Maybe being in the mental health business makes you feel more responsible for controlling symptoms of anxiety and becoming a role model for good mental health. It’s ironic, given that most people in our field are the worst role models for mental health. If we were totally sane, we’d just go into dermatology and rake it in.

If you are driven to perfection, it’s causing you to forget that certain symptoms, like anxiety, tend to be incurable, and that, if you’ve reached the point where you can’t make them better, it’s because you’ve done an amazing job of managing them and pushing yourself to the limit of what you can bear.

That you’ve pushed yourself so hard during a long educational process may have caused you to become academically institutionalized, i.e., to rate your progress by where you stand in the institution (not the other, less fun kind).

You’ve become the very model of an up and coming academic psychologist, but now that the institutional phase of your life is no longer a requirement, you have a wider array of options and no easy reference points. You don’t have to present papers or schmooze colleagues if you don’t want to; that’s not avoidance, unless presenting papers and schmoozing colleagues are part of the life you want to lead going forward.

You know what they call the PhD who came in last in his class? Doctor. Sure, it’s a nasty MD joke, but the fact remains that your degree sets you free, offering you many different career options and you’re now familiar with most of them. Ask yourself how much money you need and then rate your options according to how well they pay, and how much you might enjoy them. Then, when you consider the amount of anxiety each will require you to bear, you’ll know whether it’s worth it.

Remember, like its first cousin, depression, anxiety causes your brain to focus on helplessness and failure rather than achievement and courage. It will tell you that treatment has failed and that you’re a failure if you don’t act normal, but wisdom tells you that you’ve already accomplished your biggest academic goals, in spite of great obstacles, and reached the point where you can finally put your own spin on life.

Be proud of what you’ve done, and don’t mistake anxiety and fatigue for discouragement; they’re challenging you to recognize what you don’t enjoy doing, and there’s no shame in choosing the career path of least (torturous) resistance.

It’s up to you, however, to decide what’s meaningful enough to be worth the pain. If you can maintain a practice despite your own struggles, you’ll be a role model, with or without symptoms (or an MD).

STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’ve failed to conquer my anxiety, but in reality I’ve done everything I set out to do, other than get rid of my symptoms. Now I’m in good position to decide what I want to do next and confident that I can bear whatever unavoidable anxiety goes with that choice.”

Whenever I screw up at work, it causes a chain reaction of even more fuck-ups until fate mercifully intervenes. The most recent incident started when I miscalculated the logistics of a project and ended up forcing another department to work overtime to make up for it. The department head was understanding, but I was so pissed off at myself that I actually couldn’t sleep at night, and that made me late enough for work to miss at least one really important meeting, so now I’m of course thinking that this time I won’t get lucky and will actually lose my job. There’s got to be a way to fix this myself.

It’s certainly unpleasant to make mistakes (that make mistakes that make mistakes), but don’t lynch yourself before you conduct a proper trial. It’s possible that your pain is torturing you to confess to crimes you didn’t commit, just because confession makes you feel better and provides a cheap sort of redemption.

You don’t need a judge and jury to conduct a proper trial on your own conduct, just rules that you believe in (i.e., that you’d apply to a friend) and an ability to review your behavior.

You’d expect a friend to take reasonable precautions to avoid making the same mistake twice; your standards, after all, are for his conduct to be good enough, not perfect. So you wouldn’t assume his miscalculation, the overtime, or his missed meeting were easily avoidable unless he hadn’t followed procedures that he should have known about. At least, those are the rules I think you’d use, but you be the judge. It’s your trial.

Then ask yourself what you should do if the verdict from your trial is “not so bad” but your heart still proclaims you a loser who should embroider a scarlet L in your shirts. That’s when you have to give yourself some good coaching and dismiss your heart’s request for an appeal.

Remind yourself that challenging projects always expose you to the unforeseen and congratulate yourself for taking responsibility and working hard, and give credit to your boss and co-workers. Apologize, but only once.

Be aware that frustration and humiliation, like anxiety (see above), make you think of the should-haves and could-haves without regard to actual, reasonable responsibility. They trigger a lynch mob in your head, but you’re not just the law, but order, and justice will overcome.

STATEMENT:
“I feel frantic when things go wrong and I’m sure I could have or should have prevented it, but I’m also capable of deciding what my real responsibilities should be and standing by that decision.”

I trust that my sister will be a fair executrix for my father’s will, but I often feel out of the communication loop because she’s closer to my other sister, and I’m often the last to know about her decisions. When I’ve shared my feelings about this in the past, she’s just gotten testy. Recently, I wondered why his will had not put in a special bequest for my daughter, because he’d once expressed that intention, so I asked my sister whether she could get hold of an earlier will and see whether the bequest had been there before and then taken out. She blew up at me about how I didn’t trust her, and couldn’t see why it was such a big deal. My goal is to get her to see that my request was legitimate and to keep me informed.

Nothing has more potential to damage a family dynamic—not a long car trip, adultery, a coming out here or there—like a dispute over a will.

If somebody feels screwed, cheated, or in any way shortchanged, blood ties will get bloody.

Luckily, you trust your sister, so that eliminates the most common source of conflict. Unfortunately, you’re now creating conflict in an extremely fragile situation where it doesn’t need to exist.

When it comes to wills, you have broader goals than getting inside the loop or having your feelings understood. For one thing, you can’t get inside the loop; it’s an old loop, and if you’re not inside by now, just trying to get into it will turn it into a noose.

For another, you haven’t stopped to ask yourself whether there’s any point in being inside the loop. If your sisters are closer with one another than with you, then so be it. Even if you don’t have a loop of your own, theirs doesn’t seem so inviting.

Ultimately, it’s more important for you to consider what your goals should be at the time of your father’s death. It’s natural for the pain of his loss, or impending loss, to make both you and your sisters testy. Given how the situation is an emotional landmine, choose your priorities carefully.

Unless you’re mercenary, which I assume you’re not, a few dollars doesn’t matter. And, however much you were deprived of love by one family member or another, your bigger interest now is in keeping things peaceful. If you need love, get a dog, and if you’re still desperate for that loop, take up crochet. If you want to keep your life free from sib-wars that will enrich lawyers and therapists and cause years of pain, however, your goal is to keep the peace (and keep your mouth shut) while helping your sister settle the estate.

Accept the fact that your father’s death may leave you with feelings of emptiness and perhaps resentment at decisions that should have been made differently. Death forces acceptance, or else, and acceptance is necessary if you’re going to pick up the mantle of leadership and help your family survive this trial intact.

STATEMENT:
“In addition to mourning my father, I can’t get over the feeling that I’ve been unfairly pushed aside in my family. I’m confident, however, that I haven’t deserved such treatment and my job, therefore, is not to react to family feelings, but to take pride in my own identity and make the best of a transition that passes leadership and responsibility to me and my sisters.”

I love my husband and he’s a great father, but I can’t stand the way he wants to mess with our house. It’s an architectural masterpiece that got left to me by my parents, along with their collection of old American antiques, and I want to pass them on intact to the next generation. My husband doesn’t have the same reverence for the place that I do, and wants to put in some of his own furniture and repaint rooms that really don’t need it. I want him to be comfortable but I’m not going to get rid of beautiful antiques or waste money on repainting rooms that were recently painted. My goal is to get him to understand how I feel about the place and to back off of unreasonable demands.

It’s hard to accommodate two loves, your home and your family, without someone taking it personally. It’s like a strange love triangle between you, your husband, and interior design.

So long before you get to talk about specific compromises, your husband is going to resent playing second fiddle to a sofa and you’re going to feel he doesn’t care enough about you to support your love of architecture and your family’s traditions.

Try to fight those feelings by presenting the problem less personally. Sure, it’s normal to feel under-loved and misunderstood, but that discussion will go nowhere, as you already know, and communication on that theme is a bad idea.

Instead, ask your husband for a list of specific changes that would allow him to feel at home. If you can’t stand listening to his ideas, and are too likely to blurt out your opposition, then ask a decorator to serve as your intermediary/mediator. As any decorator would tell you, their real job is often family therapy.

If you like, make a list of what is most important for you to preserve, and then sit down when you’re not feeling too tired or stressed and take a look at your husband’s ideas. Don’t think of them as demands or impositions or threats to the family legacy, just ideas. And while you’re at it, cost out the alternative of living separately. Some people can afford such arrangements, and the exercise gives you a concrete Plan B instead of an unthinkable insult.

Or you can pass your priorities, together with your husband’s, to the designated decorator/family therapist and charge him/her with the job of preparing compromises that might allow both of you to feel at home. At least, if that doesn’t work, you would both hate the decorator.

Remember, people can love one another very much and still not find a way to be at home with one another. In retrospect, that would become a key criteria for you in any future partner search, as it should be for everyone. One reason you move in together is to find out whether you can both feel at home in the same (historic) house.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help feeling my love for my husband threatens my tie to the old family home, but I’ll try to keep my fears and needs in check, and my mouth closed, while I try to find a compromise. Then I’ll know I’ve done my best.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

When my wife is feeling fine, she’s a reasonable, hard-working, dedicated woman who believes in helping others, but then she gets into this grim, obsessed mood and knocks herself out and then gets mad about how people don’t respect or appreciate her and she just doesn’t care any more. Yesterday, she told the boss she didn’t care if he fired her, because she didn’t care. If he fired her, it would damage a career she really cares about and, besides, we need the money, but when I tried to tell her she needed to shut up, she told me she didn’t care about our marriage or about living any longer, particularly if I didn’t support her. What do I do to stop her from hurting herself?

As we’ve said before, there are a lot of people out there who either don’t believe in mental illness, or do believe it exists but don’t really understand what it is. The former usually believe in Xenu, the latter are baffled by “Hoarders.”

Either way, the easiest way to explain mental illness to those types is to describe the disease as a demon, and yes, it’s a sad fact that people are quicker to understand satanic possession over an actual illness, but such is the biz.

As for your wife, some good people get into very black, destructive moods that are hard to describe, even though most of us have felt it at some time in our lives. It’s the kind of mood when you’re ready to cut off your nose to spite your face (and then turn to a loved one, telling them they made you do it and you hope they’re satisfied).

Those good people have the demon, and, if it’s bad enough, it’s a kind of mental illness that can be sudden, random, and completely out of their hands.

Some people are more vulnerable to those moods because they’re particularly sensitive or perfectionistic; they forget their own priorities and lose themselves in doing a good job or caring for others or making someone else happy. If they can’t succeed, they get exhausted and flip out. It’s worse in the afternoon, or when they’re tired and haven’t eaten.

If you send them to their room, they’ll trash it, beginning with whatever they value most, to show you how little they care and how bad they feel—this is the cutting-off-your-nose business described above. There’s not much you can do to help someone who’s sick/possessed in this way except to try not to not make it worse.

Start with not trying to confront her; otherwise you’ll just become a target and foil for her negative emotions. Instead, let her know you appreciate her hard work, know how upset she is and share the feeling that life can suck. Offer her some hot chocolate and/or a foot massage.

Then tell her you support her quitting, but you want her to do it when she’s feeling better and can do it properly. If she hates you for saying that, tell her you’re happy to give her some alone time and take a walk. Then hope you come home to an intact living room.

Later is when you’ll discover whether she’s the kind of relatively normal demon-possessed person who has perspective most of the time and wants to work with you and/or a therapist to gain better self-control, or whether she’s a permanent victim who can’t get past her anger and is sure you’re responsible for it.

In the shrink trade, we call that kind of person a “bad borderline” or “severe character disorder.” We can’t help them, because that demon/disorder problem started when they were young, took over, and convinced them it’s always someone else’s fault.

From what you said, however, she’s got values and priorities that aren’t totally reactive to her anger, most of the time, and she doesn’t always blame it on you or the boss, so there are lots of things she can do to strengthen her rage-management. Medication sometimes helps, but in my experience, what always helps is “DBT”, a behavioral treatment that is a lot like AA, as explained in the book Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorder, by Marsha Linehan.

Read what you can, talk to experts, whatever it takes to help you understand what’s going on. If you can see her illness as something she can’t help instead of Biblically evil or self-indulgent, you will feel less obliged to stop her attacks and better able to suggest management tools for keeping her demon/disease under control.

STATEMENT:
“I hate watching my wife self-destruct when she’s tired and enraged, but there’s only so much I can do without making it worse. I know the problem isn’t me and I’m sure it’s here to stay, so I’ll encourage her to work on managing it, particularly when she’s feeling better.”

My wife gets paranoid sometimes, in spite of the fact that, after every episode, she agrees she won’t let it happen again. She promises she’ll see her therapist and take her medication but then, for some reason, she decides the side-effects are unbearable and stops them without telling anyone. A couple weeks later, she tells me she can’t stand living with me and moves out. She also tells me they’re plotting against her at work and planting microphones in her desk and she’s going to go to her boss and, by the way, she thinks her psychiatrist has been talking with him about her so she won’t see him any more. She gets loony, and she sort-of knows it when she’s her usual self, but not when the madness is on her. My goal is to get through to her and prevent her from losing her job or leaving me for good.

Paranoia is hard to prepare for or prevent; it’s one of those disorders that makes you wish that it came with a rash or ache, because some very sane-looking people have paranoid ideas that are very plausible until you realize they’re talking about the aliens, FBI and/or Virgin Mary.

It sounds like your wife keeps her paranoia buried well enough for her to be a good partner most of the time, so treat her that way, despite the weird fears lurking behind her eyeballs. She’s a regular person whose “possessed” brain is whispering bad things in the background which you and she know aren’t real and aren’t her.

Of course, your feelings about the matter are strong–her relapses put you through hell—but if you push or infantilize her, you may trigger the paranoia, and you’ll be the target. So keep your intense feelings to yourself while making it easy for her to take her medications and see her shrink.

Have a plan B for the times when she loses it, so that you don’t lose it yourself; the calmer you are, the better you’ll be able to help her. Prepare yourself for the bad times when you have to go against all your spousal instincts and back off.

As you know from the times when she’s taking her meds, they’re not a cure and, so far, nothing prevents relapses. There’s no reason, however, to think that the relapses will get worse; and at some point, treatments will get better.

When relapses occur, however, don’t blame her or yourself. Treasure the times you have together when she’s herself and hope that her crazy spells will be brief and leave her career and relationships relatively undamaged.

Being a borderline and being paranoid are two very different things, but the rules for caring bystanders is the same; if you can’t avoid the illness, just do your best not to be a target.

STATEMENT:
“It’s awful to have my wife’s personality taken over by someone who fundamentally mistrusts me, but I know it’s not personal and we’re a good team when she’s herself. I can’t protect her, but I know the difference between her and her paranoia and maybe that knowledge will help her find her way home.”

I think I’ve been very patient and restrained in responding to my 18-year-old daughter, who left college after her first month because she felt she wasn’t welcome there. It’s really not the college’s fault—they asked her to move off-campus because she violated dorm rules several times within her first 2 weeks there (she didn’t tell me how) and being kicked out of the dorms made her feel so rejected and upset that she packed her things and came home without trying to live off campus and without telling me first. She’s a good kid and needs my support now more than ever, so I’m trying to forget the $19K she flushed down the drain and help her think about what she’s going to do next. Do you agree that my goal is to be patient and not get into a fight with her?

It’s impossible to be an effective parent, or a leader of any kind, if you equate naming problems with hurting people. If you’re in charge and you’re not a little lonely, you’re not doing it right.

Admittedly, if you’re angry when you identify a problem and you express that anger, you will probably hurt the person you want to reach and the discussion will bog down in conflict and guilt. In that case, you’re not just unsupportive, but ineffective, and that’s a lose/lose.

Fortunately, however, you sound like you have a warm and accepting relationship with your daughter, and that your angry impulses are not about to seize control. Since you’re particularly well equipped to discuss her problem, perhaps the feeling you need to control isn’t anger, but guilt and false responsibility.

Again, a good leader is responsible, as long as that responsibility has limits. After all, you’re not responsible for making her happy or restoring her sense of confidence, but for giving her a path for gaining the self-control she must acquire before she can become confident, and to do that, you must schedule an unhappy, come-to-Jesus talk.

You know she (and you) shouldn’t risk another $19K on college until she gets control of feelings and behaviors that, right now, are making her decisions for her. I presume she didn’t want to break dorm rules, but that she couldn’t manage her feelings, whatever they were—a need to drink, be accepted, or take risks. Similarly, she couldn’t fight her feelings of hurt and rejection and save the $19K investment by staying at school. She can’t afford to waste money like that again until the two of you have reason to think she’s got more control.

Your goal, hers and yours, is not to find a place she’ll be happier or a way to make her feel better. No matter what college she goes to, she’s going to feel unhappy, rejected and disrespected and encounter the feelings that beat her this time. Your goal is to prepare her to tolerate and manage those feelings, regardless of how strong they are.

Tell her you’ve identified her problem, and that she’ll be taking a semester at Mom U, majoring in Feelings Management. You’re confident she will get stronger, and you have ideas for building her strength that probably require her to get a job, do her share of household tasks, and save most of her wages in a college fund. You’ll let her know how she’s doing and graduate her when she’s ready.

You’re not interested in discussing her hurt or burdened by resentments of your own. You know where she needs to go and you have no reason to feel guilty about calling a fuck-up a fuck-up, especially since you’re mindful of her strengths and willing to offer a good way forward.

She might not like you at first, but, as with any good leader, you’ll find redemption in the history books (or at least in your checkbook).

STATEMENT:
“I wonder what went wrong to get my daughter bounced out of college and I wish I could protect her from the pain and get things back on track, but I see a problem that she’s got to deal with first, and it’s not one I can solve for her or that will be solved by helping her feel better. I will tell her what she needs to do and give her a schedule with payoffs for sticking to her tasks regardless of her feelings and impulses. I won’t hurt her feelings and I won’t feel responsible if she feels hurt. I’ll take comfort from the fact that I know when I’m doing my job.”

I’m the principal of a private school that is running pretty well—better than ever, given the staff we’ve been able to recruit—but it isn’t as popular as our nearby rival, and our enrollment hasn’t been growing as much as theirs. We’re not doing badly, given the economy, and we really have a great bunch of kids, but, honestly, I can’t help admitting feelings of failure, which I think my staff also feel, given the fact that we aren’t as popular as our rival, perhaps because its charismatic principal exudes confidence. I exude worry. Sometimes I wonder how I can shake this feeling, given that it’s rooted in reality.

There’s nothing wrong with worrying or wondering how to make your school better—that’s what a principal is supposed to do—but it’s always dangerous to compare your performance to the more successful school next door, because then you’re always a loser. That’s the worst trick that your feelings can do to you when you try to become better; convince you that you’ve fallen short and it’s your own damn fault.

It’s your job, as a leader, to keep those dangerous thoughts from dragging people down, beginning with yourself. Do that by accepting what you’ve got, regardless of how it compares to your neighbors, and this includes the personality that God gave you, along with whatever load of charisma you happen to have.

Sportswriters, coaches, and other idiot moralists would argue that acceptance is an excuse for defeat. What you’ll find, if you try it, is that it allows you to take pride in what you’re doing with what you’ve got, rather than getting morose and then more morose about looking morose. Worshiping performance is what gets the sportswriters nasty when the Red Sox lose, and it doesn’t work any better in sports than it does in real life.

Begin with your strengths. It sounds like your school is well run, with good kids and a good staff, and you’re good enough also, if not the greatest. Now do for yourself what you routinely do for your students (after all, they aren’t all above average); celebrate your strengths and figure out, realistically, what you can do with them.

Try to improve your performance wherever possible. If you want to acknowledge doubts and feelings of failure, do so, but only after making it clear that your feelings have nothing to do with your observations or values and that, when you think of whom you work with and what you’ve done together, you see good accomplishments and good ways to move forward.

There’s nothing inherently honest about your true feelings, particularly when they’re a reaction to high standards and impossible comparisons. What’s always truer is to apply your values and experience to the reality in front of you and decide, without any comparisons, whether you’ve done your best. Instead of seeing a loss, see the truth.

STATEMENT:
“I wish my school and I were doing better but, when I look hard at our strengths and weaknesses, I see many strengths and significant achievements. If we compare our weaknesses to others’ strengths, we’ll wind up kicking ourselves for being losers and thinking like losers. If we treat those feelings as unwelcome and unworthy intruders and compare ourselves to nothing other than our own standards for doing our best, we’ll do fine. “