F*ck Feelings

by Michael Bennett, MD

  If you can tolerate the humiliation and helplessness and admit that you’re an out-of-control fuckup, it frees you from expectations you can’t possibly meet, promises you can’t keep, and appearances you can’t maintain; it liberates you from the ensuing cycle of endless failure. It doesn’t free you, of course, from your standards or your determination to be as least fucked-up as possible given your new, self-acknowledged fuckup status.

  As soon as you accept who you are, think hard about the standards you want to live up to and less about looking normal, pleasing authorities, or competing with others. Use those standards to manage your inner fuckup by redoubling your efforts to learn whatever you really care about and manage bad behavior.

  Rely on your own standards for defining hard work, reliability, and self-reliance, and use your gifts to achieve them in your own way. If your career happens to lack prestige or follows an unconventional, restless path, don’t criticize yourself. Respect yourself all the more for having found a way to meet standards using equipment you didn’t choose and given habits that are hard to break.

  Remember, fucking up doesn’t mean getting bad results; it means not doing your best with what you’ve got. As long as you’ve developed values you believe in, and have reason to think you’re doing your best to work at living up to them, you’ll always be a success, even if learning you’ve got a wacky brain is hard to swallow.

  Quick Diagnosis

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

  • On-demand concentration and focus

  • Not acting stupid

  • Good results whenever you work hard and deserve them

  • Not feeling scared shitless before you can start working

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

  • Define for yourself what’s necessary to get done

  • Find your own ways for doing and delegating what’s necessary

  • Know you’ve done your best, regardless of result

  • Take pride in your ability to work with what you’ve got

  Here’s what you can do:

  • Test yourself, or get tested by a neuropsychologist, on information-processing problems, and give yourself a Myers-Briggs test to gain a feel for your permanent personality traits and the strengths and weaknesses that go with them

  • Get help from whatever teachers and coaches are most positive about you and have the best tricks for helping you perform better

  • Avoid friends who understand you but nevertheless overreact to your fuckups because they’re too much like you, and embrace friends who, even if they don’t understand your fuckups, aren’t terribly bothered by them

  • Try medication if nonmedical methods aren’t enough

  • Find a spouse who’s good at doing your taxes

  Your Script

  Dear [Me/Family Member/Guy I’ve Disappointed, Let Down, or Royally Screwed],

  I know you feel I’ve [fucked up/dropped the ball/ignored my deadline/deserve my trial date and possible jail time]. Let me assure you, however, that nothing is more important to me than [doing a good job/keeping my commitments/not disappointing you/staying off MSNBC’s Lockup] and that I am now doing my best to [figure out what happened/make amends if possible/never screw up this bad again]. I know that one reason for the problem is that I cannot [insert basic skill, like time-telling or direction-following], but I’m aware of that weakness and have developed systems for preventing it from interfering with the job. I will learn from this experience and continue to try to fulfill my commitments. [Insert long, sincere string of apologetic words, followed by silent prayer.]

  Curing Yourself of Addiction

  No matter how much evidence accumulates that our potential for addictions of all kinds (controlled substances, sex, edible substances, Internet, horrible people) owes more to causes we don’t control, like our genes, than those we do, we continue to experience addictions as moral failures and respond accordingly. Usually, that response means hiding the addiction and condemning others who have it—at least if you’re in politics.

  We don’t control the genetic factors that make some people more vulnerable than others to chemical dependence, or the ADD that makes some people more impulsive, or the childhood experiences that make us yearn for bad relationships and avoid the unfamiliarity of good ones. It’s just easier to act like we do so we have someone to blame, instead of admitting we’re all helpless specks in the universe.

  Once you can accept that life, in fact, sucks, and the tons of bad stuff to be born and/or stuck with is distributed unevenly, unfairly, and undeservedly, recovery from addiction becomes much less impossible.

  In other words, getting unaddicted, or even just less addicted, does not begin with self-criticism, punishment, or hoping that urges to do bad things will ever go away, but with acceptance of the fact that they’re there, you need all your strength to deal with them, and you can’t waste it on self-blame, false hope, or despair and self-pity.

  Some people believe your best opportunity for change comes after an addiction causes you to “hit bottom” and lose everything you value. The trouble is, there’s a vicious cycle to addiction that increases your dependence on bad things as you lose your hold on what you value. The worse you feel about life and yourself, the more you think of nothing but immediate relief or pleasure. Addiction can be a bottomless pit that sucks you down harder the farther you fall, leaving you with an addiction as bottomless, and as appetizing, as a salad bowl at Olive Garden.

  Some people believe that conquering addiction starts with your becoming aware of the anger and pain your addiction causes loved ones, and if you’ve been unaware, of course this knowledge helps. Often, however, an intervention doesn’t teach anyone anything new, and the best way to get rid of the guilt your addiction causes others is to get even more fucked-up. Then you find yourself getting sober for others instead of for yourself, which allows you to hold them responsible for keeping you sober, and justifies getting high again when they disappoint you.

  Trying to make bad impulses go away, or to scare or cry or communicate them into submission, usually doesn’t work and may actually increase your neediness and drive you back to your addictions. Long story short, most of what you’ve seen on Intervention doesn’t fly in real life.

  Instead, improvement begins with acceptance of the permanence of what’s wrong and a realization that there are, nevertheless, good reasons for pushing yourself to manage flaws that will never stop being a painful burden.

  As everyone in recovery knows, there’s no moment of victory and absolute, eternal sobriety. Success over addiction means knowing why being unaddicted is worthwhile, and trying as hard as you can to stay that way, no matter how harsh the truth of your past, present, or future may be.

  Here are the signs that you’re addicted and stuck:

  • You want to understand the root of your addiction (see above)

  • You feel constant shame from always letting others down

  • You refuse to see your addiction as a problem, even though it’s gotten you fired, dumped, arrested, etc.

  Among the wishes people express when they need to stop an addictive behavior are:

  • To end their substance abuse and/or self-abuse, period

  • To get others to understand that they don’t have a drinking problem, it’s everyone else who’s got a thinking problem

  • To figure out whether they’re really addicted or just a big fan

  • To find the elusive middle ground of use between sobriety and addiction

  Here are some examples:

  I’ve gone through detox three times and I just can’t stay sober. The only place I can go after treatment is back to my family and a marriage from hell, but my kids need me. I start out with lots of determination and a list of meetings, and I just get absorbed by the stress of conflict with my wife and caring for the kids, and by the end of the day I’m grabbing for the hidden bottles. I don’t have time to go to meetings and there a
ren’t any near where I live. My goal is to find the strength I just don’t have and no one has been able to give me.

  My husband tells me he doesn’t have a problem with addiction because he never has a hangover or misses a day of work, but he’s quietly plastered by dinner and useless after, which is when the kids really want to spend time with him. It’s true, he’s a quiet, mellow drunk, but he’s just not good for much after the second glass. He says he’s better than his own father, he’s a good provider, he works hard—and so he has a right to relax at night, so I’m just making trouble by giving him a hard time. My goal is to figure out whether he’s addicted and how to get him some help.

  My wife was angry when she found out that I spend hours every evening looking at porn and playing video games online, but I don’t see what’s wrong. We have a good sex life, I’m not unfaithful, and there’s no harm in it. She says I can’t see how much of my life I’m wasting online, how it’s taking away from other areas of my life, and that I need help. I think the only thing wrong is that she’s mad at me because she’s overreacting to my looking at sex on the Internet. My goal is to get her to see that there’s nothing wrong.

  Before even attempting to decide whether you’re addicted to a substance or destructive behavior, define for yourself what those things mean. You know what your family says, and what AA pamphlets say, and even what your dealer says, but unless you take time to define addiction for yourself, everyone else’s opinion is bullshit (especially your dealer’s).

  In fact, most people who struggle with addiction don’t necessarily have medical withdrawal symptoms (although, if you do, that’s significant), or get arrested, or become the subject of an intervention. So aside from the major signs of addiction, your definition should include all the ways a behavior or substance prevents you from doing your job, being a decent person, and avoiding unnecessary risks.

  What you want to examine then, even by asking friends and family when necessary, is the impact your possible addiction has on just those factors: quality of work/security of employment; your own definition of being a good friend or partner; and your physical health (safe driving, safe sex, safe liver, etc.).

  Most important, consider whether your possible addiction is getting in the way of being a decent person (with “decent person” defined as someone who does their work, doesn’t drive drunk, isn’t an insufferable idiot, etc.).

  You can even pull a Hasselhoff and ask for a video recording of what you’re like under the influence if you don’t remember or doubt the objectivity of feedback. Weigh in the opinions of others but ignore their feelings, because this isn’t about changing their minds, arguing with them, or pleasing them. It’s about whether your behavior compromises your ability to live up to your standards.

  If you remain in doubt, gather more information by trying to stop using whatever substance or behavior you may be addicted to, observing yourself for a month while abstaining, and seeing what the difference is. Don’t talk yourself into or out of recognizing an addiction because of the way you or anyone else feels about it, just gather facts and measure your behavior against your own standards.

  If you decide you need to change an addictive behavior and can’t do it with willpower alone, finding the right AA meeting can connect you with a huge resource. AA tells you that you become stronger the moment you admit you can’t overcome addiction on your own, an admission that, among its twelve steps to recovery, is the first. It also encourages you to disown responsibility for what you don’t control, so that undeserved guilt won’t prevent you from improving your management of what you do control (see: the Serenity Prayer). AA isn’t a perfect fit for everyone—some find it too rigid or even cultlike—but because it’s free, easily accessible, and pragmatic, it’s always worth trying first. If meetings alone don’t stop your addictive behavior, seek out a more time- and activity-encompassing treatment, like four hours per day of therapy with professionals (called an intensive outpatient program) or all-day therapy (called day or partial hospital treatment) or all-day therapy while living at an institution (residential rehabilitation).

  If you believe that your responsibility for taking care of others prevents you from stopping an addictive behavior, think again. Yes, some people carry huge responsibilities, but what makes it hard for them to help themselves is their help-aholism, or inability to put a boundary on their obligations. They can’t help others and think of their own needs at the same time, which means they give too much, get tired and empty, and lose control. As they get better at managing addiction, however, they also get better at managing other needs, including the need to give, so sobriety pays extra dividends for the person who can’t stop giving.

  If you’re trying to get help for someone who doesn’t yet want it, keep in mind that such help seldom is effective, because it doesn’t work when someone is attending treatment for you rather than for themselves. Instead of taking responsibility for another person’s recovery, give them tools for auditing themselves, as above, and challenge them to use those tools to decide for themselves whether they need sobriety and help.

  Don’t give priority to their happiness or lack of it. Ask them whether they have priorities that are more important than happiness, like safety, health, and the quality of their relationships. If so, then they must ignore happiness and control behaviors that are doing them harm.

  The spirituality that helps people help one another to manage addiction does not require a belief in God. It requires a belief that there’s more value in doing good, and being the kind of person you can respect, than there is in feeling good.

  Addictive behaviors make it very hard for you to control all impulsive actions aimed at pleasure and quick relief of pain, and they prevent you from getting strong. Good management helps you build your own values and gives you the strength to ignore pain and do what, after much reflection, you’ve decided is right.

  Quick Diagnosis

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

  • Happiness/relief when you deserve it

  • Freedom from fear about life’s dangers and the responsibility to protect yourself

  • The ability to rescue others from addictions

  • Sometimes, the ability to stop your own addictions, at least without tons of struggle

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

  • Judge your sobriety and self-control objectively

  • Manage behaviors you want to change rather than attack yourself for having them

  • Ignore shame, and respect yourself for what you’re trying to achieve

  • Value a good effort, regardless of results

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • Define your standards for sober behavior

  • Decide how much effort, shame, and frustration are worth enduring for the sake of change

  • Accept the limits of your responsibility for having addictions so you can take more responsibility for managing them

  • Get help from people who are doing the same thing but are further along, be they friends or fellow addicts at AA or NA meetings

  Your Script

  Dear [Me/Family Member/Beloved Bartender/Anyone Affected by My Addiction],

  I know you’ve urged me to get [help/lost/out of town] because of the effect my [insert addictive behavior, from booze to online poker] has had on your [car insurance/credit rating/reputation]. I assure you that, in addition to regretting the effect of my behavior, I’m also sorry about the [insert verb related to blatant dishonesty] that has worn out your trust. I cannot promise to stop the behavior that has made me act like such a [insert synonym for “dickhead”], but I will try to stop it and also be honest about it. Please let me know if you think I am [slipping/sounding sleazy/getting back that old self-absorption] and I will use your input to get stronger, one day at a time.

  Did You Know . . . That Your Shrink Talks about You?

  Like so many of those born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts—the home to
2 percent of the world’s psychiatrists, which is a factoid I’m almost positive my mother didn’t make up—I am the product of two shrink parents. Upon discovering this fact, most people ask me questions I can’t answer or take seriously; I can’t tell you if my childhood was weird, because I didn’t spend time with another set of parents to compare it to, and I won’t tell you if it means I’m crazy, just as I wouldn’t ask the child of two lawyers if that means he’s an argumentative Asshole stereotype.

  Nobody seems to ask me the one question I can answer rather definitively, which is, yes, your shrink talks about you, and not just to her shrink, who is Peter Bogdanovich, because The Sopranos isn’t universally accurate. If the fact that your shrink shares feels like a violation, it isn’t, neither literally nor technically; it’s perfectly aboveboard for any medical professional to discuss their patients as long as they don’t disclose any identifying specifics (name, address, etc.). Your secrets may not be safe with your shrink, but your identity is.

  That might sound contradictory, but the people my parents would discuss over family-style takeout from Caffe Luna—from the severely mentally ill patients they treated while working in a public hospital to the anonymous people that would walk up the back stairs to my father’s home office—were not discussed simply as people. This is not just because their names were never mentioned but because my parents would discuss their patients’ problems and diseases, not their lives, and there’s a world of difference between trying to suss out a diagnosis and dishing juicy gossip (for one, the latter is fun to overhear and the former is boring, even if you’re not a child just waiting for dinner to end so you can get your homework done before must-see TV).

  Because mental illness is a less tangible disease than diabetes or cancer, people forget that psychiatrists, or at least the ones who raised me, approach your problems the way any other good medical doctor would their patients’ ailments; unemotionally, efficiently, and passionately enough to get a second opinion, even if that colleague is also a spouse. People also fail to realize that their problems are like snowflakes; not because theirs are unique, but because, aside from a few nearly imperceptible details, theirs are akin to millions of other ones just like it that, during February in New England, at least, are fucking everywhere.