Posted by fxckfeelings on February 16, 2012
More often than not, being nice isn’t. It can get you focused on doing good for other not-quite-so-nice people who will never be able to return the favor, or on cleaning up impossible messes, instead of focusing on the larger, more important goals that go beyond good gestures towards common sense. Be nice if you must, but remember that you have other goals, one of which is knowing when you have to be cruel to be kind.
-Dr. Lastname
I can’t stop thinking about my wife’s lack of support. I’ve supported her in everything she wanted to do, whether it was getting a professional degree or going away for a week to study photography, but now I’m the one who wants to go back to school part-time to get a special ed certificate, and she’s hemming and hawing about how we don’t have the money. I’ve done the budget, and we can get by while I’m in school, and the degree will pay off, but she’s very cool to the idea. I want her to see how unreasonable she’s being and how unfair this is after all I’ve done for her.
There’s nothing wrong with being a giving, loving partner, as long as you don’t expect the world to treat you fairly. And the world includes your wife.
Few people are nice and giving all the time. Even worse, no matter how nice you are to those around you, there are lots of people who don’t give a shit about your generosity, are teflon when it comes to good will, and are never going to be nice, period. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on February 9, 2012
The only thing worse than having negative feelings about someone or something for no good reason is having those feelings with every justification in the world. Either way, it’s usually better to keep those feelings to yourself, because no matter where the feelings come from, unleashing them sends them to the same place; to confuse, upset, and frustrate everyone around you. The truth about bottled-up feelings is that, with time, they don’t explode, they dissipate. Eventually, negative feelings go away, even if they don’t go quietly.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m in a very loving and healthy relationship with a divorced father of a 5-year-old. I feel we are deeply in love and we plan to marry, however, when he has his son I feel like nothing more than an outsider. Although he is very fond of me, I can’t help but be overcome with jealousy at the attention my boyfriend gives him and I distance myself in order to hide my feelings. I end up feeling isolated and alone which ends with tears if he asks me what’s wrong. I’ve tried to separate my feelings from reality, because his son deserves his attention and time. I see him light up when his kid’s around, but it’s hard for me to understand their relationship since my own father is a deadbeat and I’ve been dealing with abandonment issues my entire life. I don’t want him to feel guilty because he’s such a great dad and misses his kid and I don’t want his son to feel that I’m indifferent to him and ignore him, but I can’t help but feel like the jealous older sister. My goal is to remove myself from these emotions and learn to appreciate our unique family blend.
Don’t feel guilty for your thoughts or feelings, particularly when your actions don’t reflect those feelings. You can feel wrong as long as you do right.
And you must be doing a good job with managing your bad feelings, because, regardless of how jealous or bummed you feel when you behold your fiancé’s warm father-son relationship, you’ve done a great job of keeping them to yourself. You’ve succeeded in protecting your most important relationships from the negativity.
One definition of professionalism is behaving in a benevolent, job-oriented way without letting negative feelings show or interfere. You’re obviously a pro, particularly since you’re doing it while managing a shitload of pain. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 26, 2012
When it comes to marital autopsies, people look for bad decisions and bad behavior the way detectives look for foul play. Unfortunately for anyone hoping for a simple CSI: Divorce, the chief culprits for most marital rifts are personality factors that no one controls, like having an irritable temperament or a terrible interpersonal chemistry when things get tough. We can judge ourselves on how we manage these unfortunate traits, but not on whether or not we have them. So, after rendering your own judgment and making amends if necessary, waste no more time on apology or blame. After all, it’s not a crime scene, just a marriage.
-Dr. Lastname
My ex-wife became the victim from hell after our divorce, which she and the kids blamed on my messing around with another woman. The truth is, I’d been eager to get divorced for the past 10 years, particularly because my ex was so good at messing up and then acting like a victim. I didn’t have that or any affair until I had almost put the divorce in motion and the youngest was about ready for college, and my not-mistress has subsequently become my wife. I felt guilty, however, and the kids see me as guilty, so they punish me with silence, or worse, extend an invitation to have a talk so they can hit me with a blast of endless recrimination before returning to silence again. Needless to say, explaining doesn’t help—their anger is endless—so when they call me up, I wonder what to say. My goal is to help them with their pain and restore a normal relationship.
Most good people feel guilty about leaving a marriage, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. Guilt the emotion, as opposed to guilt the legal state, is never necessarily caused by bad behavior.
You feel guilty because those you love are hurt and disappointed, and happen to blame you. Given the fact that one of the most important reasons that people marry—perhaps the most important—is to have someone to blame, guilt is an unavoidable part of both marriage and divorce that should never, ever be considered proof of criminality.
As natural as your guilt is, it’s dangerous to let it guide you when you’re managing seriously angry kids (or adults, especially when they’re acting like kids). It’s like showing fear to a tiger, or blood to a vampire, or low-hanging comedic fruit to Ricky Gervais. They’ll just keep coming. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 12, 2012
People say that the most important factor in relationships is timing or chemistry, but you can’t have a relationship to begin with without luck, and you can’t be a loser in love if you don’t take your bad luck personally. A good match is hard to find and a not-good-enough match is hard to leave, but as long as you do a good job searching and, when necessary, leaving, you’ll never be a loser, regardless of whether you get “lucky.”
-Dr. Lastname
I am in the fourth year of a partnership with a great guy—smart, athletic, caring, fair, trustworthy, all of it—but I am bored out of my mind. Although he loves outdoor activities like biking and skiing by day, his only hobby in the evenings is watching TV. I am a musician, artist, craftsperson, not an outdoor whiz, and I feel like I am completely uninspired in this situation. I have talked with him about at least not watching TV every night, and we try for a while, but it always ends up back where we started, with him watching TV, and me in another room reading or doing something somewhat productive, or just giving in and watching with him (I hate TV, wish we didn’t have one). I want to do things together but he is not interested in any of the things that I am interested in. Maybe this is just the most a person can hope for in life and I’m spoiled for wanting more than loyalty and love from someone, but I feel guilty all the time for hiding these thoughts from him. Maybe he would be better off without me, too, you know? Maybe I should let him go so he can find a girl who is really IN LOVE with him.
How much you love someone depends, in part, on the effect of partnership on the necessities of your life, as well as your interests. In your case, however, you don’t seem to see partnership as necessary for the necessities, so the difference between what you two want may be be more than television.
If you’ve been struggling to make ends meet and/or raise kids and someone enters your life who’s decent and willing to share the load, you’re probably going to wind up loving him, even if you don’t love everything you do together.
On the other hand, if you’re a fairly self-sufficient person who doesn’t need a partner in order to have a decent standard of living and raise kids, then there’s no reason to live with anyone who doesn’t ring your bells or leave the couch. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on January 9, 2012
Horrible thoughts and feelings are supposed to make you feel as if there’s something horribly wrong, and there is, but it’s not necessarily with you. Even when your brain is giving you strange signals and your mood is in the pits, you’re the same old person with the same old values. Judge yourself by what you do with symptoms of mental illness, not by the way they make you feel or think, and you will never have reason to doubt yourself or despair.
-Dr. Lastname
I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and anorexia nervosa purging type a few years ago. Both of these issues had pretty much consumed my life during the years leading up to that diagnosis and have continued to be impairing ever since. I started cutting myself two years ago (it has become more frequent this past year), and I’ve had several panic attacks in the past several months. Fortunately, my overwhelming desire to commit suicide has subsided, although I still think of suicide and my death in general fairly often. In addition to my own issues, I have watched my mom slip into a state of psychosis during the past two years, triggered by the death of her father. She has become so depressed, delusional, and violent that my parents separated and sometimes I don’t even feel safe staying in the house with her—a few weeks ago my dad and I had to stop her from going through with a suicide attempt. The police were called, and I had to hold her arms down while she was clearly in a psychotic rage. At one point, she tried to stab my hand to make me let go. She was taken to a mental health facility where she stayed for a week, and now she’s furious at us for making her go there and hasn’t been much better since then. I feel like I never get anywhere with therapists because they just prescribe medicines that make me feel numb to any emotions or focus on my eating disorder so much that I never get to work through these other issues. I feel like my life is unraveling and it’s gotten so bad that, honestly, I don’t feel like I even want to fix it. My goal in telling you this is to figure out a way to help my mom and how to get through school while I’m dealing with this.
It may seem strange to hear this, for someone who suffers as much as you do from depression, anorexia, and the burdens of taking care of a very sick mother, but I think you’re doing an amazing job.
Yes, you’re chin-deep in shit, but you haven’t drowned, and that’s a remarkable accomplishment.
Your depression hasn’t made you hate people or blame them, and your anorexia hasn’t caused you to pretend you’re not sick, so you must have a solid hold on reality. There you are, with all your pain, finding the love to help your mother and the energy to go on with your studies. You’ve got good values and a big soul. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 29, 2011
Being thoughtful is good, but being thoughtful to the point of painful obsession is having OCD, with fearful thoughts that stick in your brain and won’t go away unless you do something sort-of-magical and sort-of-stupid that gives you a moment of relief (before your fears start again). The good news is that it happens to good people who learn how to manage and live with it, which can happen much more easily if you can abandon the worst obsession of all—finding a way to cure the OCD altogether.
-Dr. Lastname
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. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 12, 2011
Ideals often screw up priorities, because it’s much more attractive to go after something beautiful that you really, really want rather than take on whatever is do-able and necessary. It’s not a matter of killing your dreams, just being smart about them; the only antidote to faulty ideals is to exercise your common sense regularly, thinking about what’s likely to work, given your resources, rather than what you’d want the most in a fair, ideal world. You don’t need us to tell you that the world is not ideal, so beware reaching for the stars and falling on your face when the top shelf will do.
-Dr. Lastname
So I’m a 20-something girl who has been faced with a couple big problems in a short period of time, the first being that I am in my last semester of nursing school and I failed. This has been a very long hard stressful experience, and being faced with failure is devastating. I have to wait till September to try to get back into the program and that’s my last chance, so I’m having a hard time accepting that my very laid-out plan for my life is now in jeopardy. Also I am being faced with health issues, with myself and with my family, and finally, I have been in a mind-fuck of a relationship for three years with a person that shows me five different faces. I know all the ways he’s done me wrong but I cannot walk away because I have yet to conquer him, even tough I’m trying to accept the fact I cannot change him and need to stop being a doormat. In summary, I have obvious control issues, over-analyze everything, have anger that is uncontrollable if I don’t get what I want, and really need help to fix it.
Priorities are like dominos, and if you put the wrong one first, you lose your goals one by one. So, while this may look like a chaotic clusterfuck of issues, you probably already know that it’s actually a chain reaction caused by putting school behind this five-faced jerk.
After all, the main source of your strength is your desire to get stronger, pick up skills, and make a living, while the main source of weakness is, as usual for most people, your need for something/someone you can’t have.
Fortunately, you’re smart enough to recognize your effort to change your boyfriend is a compulsion that you just can’t stop, and you have the willpower and determination in your character to take on and pursue difficult goals.
Unfortunately, you’ve focused this strength on changing your boyfriend, thus throwing said smarts and willpower down the shitter. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 5, 2011
People often think of their workplace as a family, but what’s more true and less acknowledged is that a family is a workplace, albeit one in which you have a deeper investment and more casual Fridays. In any family, money is love and love is money, and you can’t disagree about money without its getting personal, so don’t let it. Maybe you can’t stop the hurt when you feel short-changed by someone you love, but you can keep it from spreading by keeping your feelings to yourself and remembering your most important priorities before you negotiate. You’ve got too much to lose to endanger your job security.
-Dr. Lastname
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. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 28, 2011
If you take any relationship wisdom from this site, it should probably be that good partnerships are not the same as relationships that feel good. That doesn’t mean they have to feel bad (although bad feelings are unavoidable sooner or later), just that they have to survive bad feelings and offer benefits to both parties that are worth the trouble. So relationships that grab your heart but show no signs of becoming good partnerships are dangerous to your health, and relationships that turn you off but have much to offer are worth putting up with. Ain’t love grand, and ain’t love gone wrong a royal pain in the ass.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m always a little annoyed at my boyfriend, even though we never really fight, because he always seems a little unavailable (you’d think at our age he’d be over playing games). If we spend lots of time together this weekend, then next weekend I can be sure he’ll call back late, find a reason we can’t meet early in the day, and leave me with an option for getting together briefly that doesn’t work well for either one of us. He used to say it was because he needed time for his son, but now that his son’s in college things haven’t changed. I don’t think he wants to date anyone else, and our friends think we’re great together, but I’d like to share my life with someone and our relationship is stuck.
Sometimes the worst thing about a relationship is that it’s too good to be bad, but too bad to be worth the effort.
Your boyfriend is almost a good match, good enough so that you look forward to seeing him every weekend, but it’s not mutual enough for him to feel the way you do. So you’re always chasing him, but never quite catching him.
If it were truly bad, then either he’d end it, or pride, fighting or the protests of friends might eventually help you break up, grieve and move on. Here, no such luck. You’re in relationship purgatory, but on the southern side. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 14, 2011
When you love someone who gets mentally ill and doesn’t recover, you may not only lose that part of their personality you loved the most, but also get stuck with a double dose of what you liked least. After all, it’s one thing to vow to be there in sickness and in health, but sickness and negativity and mania are usually more than most people bargain for. If your spouse’s mental illness makes your marriage unbearable, keep a lid on your negative feelings by respecting the burden life has put on both of you and refusing responsibility for putting things back the way they were. Once you can accept that sad reality, it’s time to figure out whether there’s room in your marriage for you, your spouse and the disease, or if your old vows no longer apply.
-Dr. Lastname
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. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
