F*ck Feelings

by Michael Bennett, MD

  Feeling helpless doesn’t mean that everything is going to turn out badly or that you’re doing a poor job with your life. If you can ignore the terrible meltdown feeling and take credit for how you’re handling the problem, rather than getting carried away or feeling too responsible, you’ll have much to be proud of and many more options to consider.

  Here’s what you can’t really control but feel you should:

  • Income (or lack thereof)

  • Relationship status (or lack thereof)

  • How other people feel about you, without magic or the power of hypnosis

  • Your offspring, after they’ve exited your body

  • Your ability to refuse the gravitational pull of a “party-sized” bag of pretzel M&M’s/any and all booze/your phone after all that eating and/or drinking when your deadbeat ex is still a text away

  Among the wishes people express are:

  • To regain control they thought they once had

  • To figure out how to get close family members to control themselves

  • To stop feeling helpless all the time

  Here are three examples:

  I’ve always been hardworking and good at doing sales, and I married someone whose love I thought I could count on, so I really don’t understand why my life seems to be coming apart. After getting laid off from my old job when the company was sold, I had to take a lower-paying job with a new boss who hates me. Meanwhile, my wife decided her feelings for me were gone and that she couldn’t stay married to someone she doesn’t love, even though I thought we had built a really nice life together. Now every day feels like a death march and I can’t stop crying. I’m the biggest loser I know, and the pain won’t go away. My goal is to regain control of my life.

  My son has always been a nice kid, but he’s always been too good at finding trouble, and even now that he’s twenty-five, he just can’t seem to get his life together. We tried hard to get him extra help when he was in school, but he never did homework and quit college after a year. We think he drinks too much, but he won’t admit it, and the girl he hangs out with has no job, too many rings in her face, and an ex-boyfriend in jail. My husband and I dread the day when she announces she’s pregnant with our grandchild. My goal is to finally find out what’s the matter with our son so we can empower him to get control of his life.

  I’m the world’s biggest phony. People at work think I’ve got it together but they don’t know that I’m a nervous wreck who has trouble holding down lunch, can’t sleep for three days before every presentation, and is always obsessing about the stupid things I just said and wish I could take back. I’m a mental case who just pretends to have it together, which makes me feel even more out of control. My goal is to have a life that doesn’t feel like a train wreck.

  It’s hard to believe there are ways to classify chaos, but when it comes to losing control of your life, there are different kinds of feeling fucked. Some people get sucked into a bad-luck, no-fault meltdown that, if taken personally, can destroy a good person’s belief in his values and motivation. Other people become helpless by proxy, usually by watching a loved one who’s unable to get themselves straight, while others feel like they’re living on the verge of a meltdown without realizing just how effective they are at staying away from the edge.

  In any case, just because you feel out of control doesn’t mean you should have been able to prevent it. Instead of searching for mistakes or weaknesses, judge yourself realistically, in terms of what a good person can actually do in a bad situation. Even if your situation is due to a foolish mistake, learn from it and stop blaming yourself for bad results you don’t control, whether they involve your job, kids, or mental condition.

  If you do blame yourself for the mess you’re in, simply because it happened on your watch, you’ll weaken and distract yourself at a time you need to be stronger. If you dwell on second-guessing yourself and believing you deserve punishment, you’ll have more trouble figuring out the smart thing to do, giving strength to others, and tolerating painful feelings without panicking.

  Once you’ve separated your overwhelmed feelings from a realistic assessment of your own performance, however, you can build self-respect and get to work on managing life. You’ll have more strength for rebuilding your work and relationships, setting limits on out-of-control kids, and tolerating anxious feelings without doubting your capacity to ignore them when necessary. In the end, you’ll have more respect for the times you kept trucking through a meltdown than the times you were confidently cruising along because everything was going your way.

  Quick Diagnosis

  Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

  • The praise, salary, or family you deserve

  • Peace, love, and happiness (aka, financial security)

  • The knowledge that your present is right on track

  • Confidence in your ability to keep it there

  Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

  • Create reasonable standards for what you can actually do, given your Muggle status

  • Respect yourself for meeting your standards

  • Survive pain, fear, and distress and give yourself credit for doing so

  • Not let pain change your values, basic course, or determination

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • Look for pre-meltdown red flags that might have warned you in the past and could warn you next time

  • Ask yourself whether you could reasonably be expected to do anything different

  • Rate yourself for work effort, honesty, and the value of your priorities

  • Assuming you deserve better, find a friend or therapist who can remind you that you’ve lived up to your values and that the helplessness and humiliations have nothing to do with you, regardless of how you feel

  • Check with a psychiatrist or therapist to see whether there are behavioral techniques and/or medications that might reduce anxiety or depression, if they’re extreme

  Your Script

  Here’s what to tell someone or yourself while you’re feeling hopelessly fucked-up.

  Dear [Me/Family Member/Fuckup I Can’t Help But Care About],

  I know you feel like [the royal “we”/you/our fuckup son] is on the verge of [insert mistake or potential tragic experience], and life feels like an unholy disaster. The truth is, however, that life often sucks and sometimes I can’t expect to feel other than [insert classier, more dire synonym for “shitty”], especially given issues in the past regarding [bad luck/anxiety/your many addictions and world-record unemployment]. So don’t take it personally and do take credit for whatever good things you were doing, even if they were totally ineffective at fending off this mess. Take pride in doing a good job, regardless of bad [luck/genes/associates/mental pain] and don’t stop.

  Did You Know . . . What Is the Real Secret of The Secret?

  The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, is a self-help tome in which the essential thesis is: if you put your desires “out into the universe” (which is to say, if you think about what you want), then the universe will give you what you want.

  The Secret says, if you’re fat and poor, it’s not because you have a crappy job in a terrible economy, or because, after another day working a job you hate, you treat yourself to a deluxe cheeseburger with an extra side of Crisco. It’s because when you stand on the scale in your efficiency apartment, you’re thinking, This sucks, I am fat and poor, not, Hey, universe, I am thin, rich, and wonderful. Oprah’s a huge fan of The Secret, as are those out there who credit it for doing everything from getting them better jobs to ridding them of cancer.

  In reality, notions like the one put forth in The Secret have come up over and over through the ages, often claiming to be extensions of spiritual ideas that are exactly the opposite. The real secret, of course, is one that you don’t want to hear and would never shell out your money to learn because it doesn’t feel good, which is exactly why you’re better off hearing it: whateve
r good or focused thoughts, wishes, or prayers you put out there, shit happens and it won’t be fair, no matter how many collages you make.

  The more you project your wishes, the more futile life seems while you continue to wait. The worst thing that can happen is that your wish actually comes true, because that’s when you think you’ve discovered The Secret, but haven’t. Then, since it’s your nature to have more wishes, it’s only a matter of time until you run into a brick wall of disappointment, which is now your fault, because you’ve failed to do The Secret properly. No matter how much you deserve it, you can’t always get what you want, and that’s life (unless you’re Oprah).

  Go ahead and wish, pray, and focus—they help you to know what you want, particularly if it guides you toward keeping your priorities straight and working hard—just don’t take it personally when you don’t get your reward. And watch your Crisco intake.

  Getting to the Root of Your Problem . . . and Tearing It Out

  It’s not clear when people started equating solving emotional issues with retracing your steps in order to find your car keys, but if you retrace your steps to uncover the ultimate source of your problems, you won’t usually find it. On the plus side, you might find your sunglasses.

  What people hate to consider, even after root seeking has been getting them nowhere for some time, is that, sometimes, it just doesn’t work. There are lots of problems we’ll never know the answer to. There’s nothing wrong with looking for answers that might actually exist, but, when the search isn’t bearing fruit, there’s a strong possibility that answers aren’t to be had, and obsessing about finding them is a distraction to figuring out where the real keys are—and what you’re going to do next.

  People prefer to believe that, with enough fact gathering, insight, and the heart-to-heart sharing of honest, heretofore suppressed, and probably embarrassing emotion, any problem can be sourced and solved. In fact, knowing why you’ve got a bad habit usually gives you no ability to stop it, and the search for deeper knowledge sometimes serves as an excuse for waiting until it’s easier to stop, which it never is. So getting to the root of your problem is often antitherapeutic, and, at worst, a giant waste of time.

  Or, if therapy hasn’t solved a problem, you wonder whether it’s been intense and long-lasting enough, or if you’ve been sincere enough, or if your therapist is skilled enough. If the problem involves a relationship, you wonder if you’ve worked hard enough to express painful and negative feelings—which again, surprise, often makes things worse.

  Here are telltale signs that your quest for a deep solution—or Holy Grail—must end:

  • The amount of searching you put in is inverse to the amount you have been able to change your problem

  • Your friends, kids, and pets have made it clear that the subject of your past/problems/bullshit is closed

  • Your therapist has been less blunt than your friends, kids, and pets, but is clearly falling asleep

  • You’ve revised the past so many times, your déjà vu has déjà vu

  Among the wishes people express when they feel there must be an answer to an unsolvable problem are:

  • To figure out what happened that caused them to lose the control they once had

  • To find out why they can’t do something when they’ve always been good at doing something similar

  • To understand why they can’t stop being drawn to doing something bad

  Here are three examples:

  I don’t understand why I started drinking again after ten years of sobriety. I had no desire to drink—going to bars didn’t bother me, nor did having liquor in the house or being around friends who were drinking. Then suddenly I was tense over a problem at work, and I figured I should be able to control myself after all these years, so I had a drink. It was fine, I had only one, and kept to a one-per-day limit until a week later, and now, three months later, I have no control over my drinking and I’m back to square one. My goal is to figure out what happened to me and why.

  I don’t know why I avoid finishing certain tasks at work. If something involves talking to people, and I can get it done quickly, I’ll work hard until I’m finished, but if I’ve got to fill out a lot of forms and no one is looking over my shoulder, I let things slide until I’m really in trouble. I’ve always been like that and my desk is piled high with papers that I’m afraid to look at. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m afraid to succeed or afraid that I’m living out my father’s prediction that I’d be a fuckup, but it’s crippling my life. My goal is to figure out whether I’m lazy or have a psychological issue that prevents me from succeeding.

  I’m always attracted to the wrong kind of guys, and it always ends poorly, mostly with me getting dumped, sometimes with me getting either physically or verbally abused along the way. A therapist told me I choose men who remind me of my father, who was a charismatic sweet-talker who dumped my mother when she was pregnant with me. I think that’s a fair assessment, and it’s time for me to find a better sort of person, but no matter how hard I try, I keep on dating assholes. My goal is to figure out why I’m so attracted to Mr. Wrong and how to get more attracted to someone nice.

  Whenever we’re perplexed by weaknesses that don’t make sense, questioning why is as helpful from the mouth of an adult as it is from a four-year-old. If you can’t understand why you’ve started drinking again after ten years, or can’t get work done when you’ve done it before, or can’t find a better guy when you know what you’re doing wrong, you have a right to wonder why. Asking the question more than once or twice, however, is a Job-like move that may help you express frustration, but will not help you overcome it.

  What neurobiology has taught us is that every action we take depends on multiple unique subcapacities, and all it takes is for one of those subcapacities to be weak or broken, and our ability to function is compromised.

  If you resume drinking, it’s not because you’re a weak person, but because drinking triggers something in your brain that says, “I’ve got to do that again.” If you have trouble with paperwork, it may be because your brain has trouble translating or using written symbols in a specific way (numbers, maps, English). If you can’t change whom you’re attracted to, you may be directed by a part of your brain that, whether it was programmed before birth or a few years later, can’t be changed now.

  So the answer you’ll get from your maker, when you finally meet Him or Her and get to ask why, is the same one you got from your mother when she didn’t know the answer and didn’t want to waste time— “Because I said so, now go make yourself useful.”

  Of course, knowing there’s no root answer, or that, at the very least, it’s unobtainable, doesn’t relieve you of responsibility for dealing with a problem; it just spares you having to take an exam on its origins. Depending on how obsessed you are with a Faustian quest for knowledge or how avoidant you are of messy, painful tasks, you will or won’t like putting the quest aside, accepting the uncertainty of not understanding a problem’s roots, and nevertheless dedicating yourself to managing it.

  Having given up on the false hope that deep understanding would make it possible to solve your problem, gather motivation by reviewing your reasons for imposing change on yourself and your life. Doing it to please someone or to look better are not motivations that tend to last; instead, decide for yourself whether change is necessary for you to be the kind of person you want to be. Then, if you find good reasons rooted in your values, remind yourself frequently what they are so that you can ignore pain, frustration, and humiliation while seeking to strengthen your management of yourself.

  Instead of trying to figure out your problem, use your best tools for managing it, be they finding a rehab program, an organizational coach, or a group of girlfriends whose opinions on jerks you trust. Having given up the quest for a deep solution and the urge to ask questions, find the motivations that matter and learn how to take action.

  Quick Diagnosis

  Here’s what you w
ish for and can’t have:

  • A clear understanding of what’s wrong

  • Complete control over your problem

  • An easier way of dealing with your problem, now that you know its origins

  • A reliable way of treating and preventing it

  Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

  • Know as much as anyone knows about a problem while accepting your inability to know more

  • Accept the pain and confusion of having to deal with a problem you don’t understand

  • Find deep motivation for not letting a problem change your priorities or values

  • Not let confusion or humiliation interfere with your determination to manage it

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • If you don’t figure out the answer after checking the Internet plus two experts, stop trying

  • Don’t reopen your efforts unless today’s headline proclaims new knowledge of your issues specifically

  • Stop asking why and start asking how

  • Prepare a plan of action contingent on your knowing nothing but what you know now

  Your Script

  Here’s what to tell someone or yourself while you’re totally unable to understand the reason for or source of a problem.

  Dear [Me/Family Member/Spouse/Overly Logical Friend]:

  I know it’s hard to understand why a [positive adjectives] person like me should have a problem with [addiction/politics/attraction to morons] but I do, and, to date, treatment with [three analysts/kabbalah/Judge Judy] hasn’t given me an answer that makes a difference. I’ve decided that ignorance is okay, but my problem isn’t, and that from now on I need to do everything I can to improve and manage my behavior, just to be the person I want to be. So I will be open about my problem [in meetings/press releases/tweets], welcome observations about my behavior [with/without retaliating], and track my progress over time [in my computer/Facebook/a secret journal that you should burn if I die]. And I will not give up.