F*ck Feelings

by Michael Bennett, MD

  If you’re lucky, your shrink isn’t talking about you as a first-date anecdote or to make another, even crazier patient feel better, but with her spouse, surrounded by her uninterested children—who are patiently waiting for her to clock out—in order to determine what treatment would suit your anonymous self best.

  The urge to self-improve is universal and always carries a potential for dangerous self-destruction if we promise to change ourselves before taking into account what’s fixed in stone and will remain so, regardless of the sincerity of our wishes or what well-intentioned friends, self-help books, and novelty mugs say. If we can learn to limit our responsibilities, and hopes, to what is actually under our control, then hard work will always pay off and we will always have a chance to succeed.

  Use your experience and common sense to define the limits of what you can change, however unhappy that makes you feel. Then, when you define tasks for yourself, you can be confident they’ll be realistic and achievable and that your effort will be meaningful. Put doing good over feeling good, and you will get good results.

  chapter two

  fuck self-esteem

  People think self-esteem is the hallmark of good mental health, but, given the number of people who base their self-worth on having good looks, a positive outlook, money, or just luck, that assessment doesn’t mean much. Donald Trump has more than enough self-esteem, but if what’s going on on top of his head is a reflection of what’s going on inside, then his mental health is in trouble.

  Indeed, people who feel good because of something they really don’t control are the first to feel like failures when their luck sours and they lose whatever they thought of as their claim to fame. Add to this the way advertisers encourage you to think their product will make you a winner—sexy, beautiful, fashionable—and you have reason to classify self-esteem, as it’s usually experienced, as a dangerous drug that should have a black box warning.

  Further proof of the risk of overvaluing self-esteem is offered by those people who have too much self-esteem and see themselves as superior and exceptional (see sidebar here). They’re the ones who have little awareness of their ability to act like jerks and cause unnecessary harm. They are proud of their ability to be honest and speak out about truths that others are too polite or timid to talk about; they believe in themselves to the point of self-worship, and, most important, they’re usually Assholes (see chapter 9).

  The Gospel of Self-Esteem would argue that you can’t stand up for yourself until you love yourself enough, thus making self-esteem an essential vitamin to take before you can gain control of your life and do what you think is right without being overly influenced or intimidated by others. This gospel can be read in psalms of Oprah, Tony Robbins, and even the most holy, RuPaul.

  If this were true, however, many people who are anxious, shy, or compulsively self-doubting would be doomed to a life of passivity and paralysis, and clearly they aren’t. People who have done terrible things wouldn’t be able to move forward until they found some way to redeem themselves, which if you’ve seen an MSNBC weekend Lockup-athon, is clearly not true. A lot of people would be stuck in a rut, lacking the self-esteem to do things that would make them like themselves and thus give them self-esteem.

  Fortunately, you don’t have to have self-esteem to value things in life apart from wealth, good luck, and good feelings. When shy people find the strength to deal with people because they’re determined to make a living and support themselves, or when an ugly person socializes because of a wish to be positively involved with others, or when a mean-drunk alcoholic tries to get sober, they’re acting according to their idea of what’s good, and their actions build self-esteem, regardless of how bad they feel about themselves or whether they succeed.

  Doing what you believe is worthwhile is the only source of real self-esteem, even if doing so makes you feel inferior, exposed, and ashamed in the short run. Loss of self-esteem in the service of good values is no sin; self-esteem arising from good feeling is no virtue.

  That’s why people who are extremely unlucky, like those in my practice with severe mental illness, need never feel excluded from the supposed healthiness of high self-esteem. They may be chronically disabled, preoccupied with voices in their heads, careless of their appearance, and unable to work. If, however, they find a way to help one another, or do something useful with whatever abilities they have, they can and should have as much true confidence as people who are normal or gifted. Indeed, they should have more, because their challenge is greater and their achievement that much more awesome.

  Fighting the Loser’s Curse

  The funny thing about needing to feel better about yourself is that it often starts with feeling that you are worse off than someone else. You can take a look at your accomplishments and feel like you’re on top of the world, but it only takes one guy who’s doing better to bring you back down to earth and right into the dumps.

  Like other mammals that live in packs, we note whether our status is more or less than that of our equals, with a default value-calculator that bases worth on attributes over which we have limited control, like physical attractiveness, happiness, intelligence, and strength. In other words, we are hardwired to grade ourselves by comparisons and qualities we can’t actually do much about.

  Meanwhile, you can have many other positive qualities—carefulness, loyalty, patience, etc.—that you do control and that are less superficial indicators of character and self-worth. Unfortunately, they’re qualities that, according to your instinctive internal-value calculator, come up as a zero.

  Calculator aside, many people can’t take pride in the qualities they see in themselves because their standards are too high or their pond is too big and there are too many fish bigger than they are. Sometimes the qualities in their self-inventory, like intelligence, beauty, or strength, are substandard, weak, or obnoxious and, worst of all, limited. The horror.

  It’s natural, then, to wonder how you can possibly feel better about yourself when you don’t like what you see, what you see may actually suck, and what you don’t like is probably not going to get better.

  Some people would answer that you should love yourself unconditionally, either directly or by imagining yourself as loved by a deity or by your fellow deity-worshippers. Unfortunately, while boosting self-love in this way may make you feel better and act more confidently, it won’t stop you from acting like a jerk or overdepending on the support of your congregation and its leader, so this method may lead to Koran burnings, Kool-Aid parties, and other bad behavior that feels good because you’ve disconnected your sense of value from your own ideas about good, bad, and common sense.

  Other people argue that you can feel better about yourself by finding what you enjoy and/or are best at, and devoting yourself to it, which would be perfectly good advice if it was something everyone could do. The sad truth is that some people don’t have any talent or interest, and sometimes life circumstances don’t allow them to develop whatever life talent they have. So while it’s certainly worthwhile to try to develop your talents and seek fulfillment, it’s dangerous to say you should be able to make it happen and thus make yourself responsible for producing a solution you don’t control.

  Instead, accept the fact that sometimes you can’t and won’t feel good about yourself. That’s no reason, however, for stopping yourself from doing good things and writing off your feelings of low self-esteem as an unimportant by-product of a hard life, perfectionism, or subpar personal equipment.

  As long as you do your best to be independent, be decent, and live up to your values, you’ll have more reason to respect yourself and actually feel good than if you were super smart, rich, and the fittest of the herd.

  Here are telltale signs that feeling better is not an option:

  • You’ve been doing a good job search every day, but you still can’t get an interview or afford to eat food that doesn’t come from a can

  • Plastic surgery is outside your budget, and beside
s, medical experts say your schnoz is beyond help

  • Your doctor talks about fibromyalgia and refers you to a pain specialist

  • RuPaul says you need to love yourself before you love someone else, but at this point, you’ve given up and just—gasp—hate RuPaul

  Among the wishes people express when they just can’t like or respect themselves are:

  • To change what they don’t like about themselves

  • To have therapy make them like themselves

  • To figure out how to get their confidence back

  • To purge themselves of self-hate

  Here are three examples:

  I’ve never liked myself or, to tell you the truth, been very likable. I know it just sounds like I’m putting myself down, but the fact is, I’m not especially good-looking, my grades in school were always average, and I’m a klutz who was always chosen last on any team and hates sports. Now I work at a boring job, live with roommates because I can’t afford to live alone, and date occasionally. I’d actually become comfortable with my status in life, but as the years go by and nothing changes, I’m starting to get restless. My goal is to figure out how I will ever, ever be a winner when there’s nothing about me or my life that seems interesting, attractive, or just plain worthwhile.

  I’m glad my marriage has ended, but I just can’t seem to get over my divorce. I miss having a husband and the greater financial security and support I had when there were the two of us. The kids are good and they’re doing well, but I can’t seem to recover my confidence; I’m over my husband, but I won’t feel like I’ve moved on until I’ve found someone else and become a wife again, which won’t be easy since I’m no longer young and good-looking, and most men my age are no longer single. The only guys who want to date me seem to be creeps who are actually already married or just want to be with an older woman. My goal is to find the confidence I used to have, so I don’t drive people away and doom myself to a life of mediocrity.

  In my twenties, I had confidence in myself and things were really going my way; I got a series of raises and promotions, girls were interested in me, and I was basically considered a hot property and likely to succeed. Then, a few years ago, I got a new boss who really didn’t like me, my career stalled, and I wound up having to take a dead-end job just to pay the bills. I know that if I were really competent I would find my way back to the fast track and get my career started again, but the economy has tanked and I just can’t make it happen. I’ve gone from star to peon in two years and it’s hard not to feel depressed. My goal is to get back my groove.

  It’s hard to feel like a winner if you’re poorer or less accomplished than your friends, making less money that you used to, and seeing no prospects for doing better in the near future. By this logic, if others are winning, that means the loser must be you.

  As a society and as individuals we buy into these measures of self-worth, in spite of knowing that bad luck is measured by being poor or alone or losing whatever you had, and that it happens to people who in no way deserve it. The nasty vicious cycle that threatens us all is that, if we let bad luck make us feel like losers, then feeling like a loser generates its own kind of bad luck. Either you protect yourself from taking bad luck personally, or taking it personally brings you down further.

  In reality, many people who feel their lives are going nowhere or sliding downhill are actually doing a good job with an unfair mess, trying to do honest work, take care of relatives, and be good friends. They feel like they’re failing life’s trials but, in fact, they’re not, nor have they let low self-esteem drive them into addiction, self-absorption, or bitterness. Indeed, soldiering on when you feel diminished, lonely, and out-competed takes great strengths and is one of life’s ultimate accomplishments.

  Having no hope of finding a partner is a major source of deep feelings of failure, yet it often happens to people who are not making social mistakes, neglecting their actual assets, or suffering from nothing other than a lack of confidence and decent selection procedures. It’s great when there’s a simple fix, but often there isn’t, because life is sometimes a social desert for people whose looks, age, skills, or other burdens put a wall between them and the society they’re stuck in and with. Plus, if they blame themselves and tolerate bad dates and nonaccepting friends, they wind up worse.

  If, on the other hand, they maintain a faith in their own capacity to connect, despite long periods of isolation and loneliness, and stick to their standards, they are more likely to get across the desert eventually and find the socially compatible oasis they deserve.

  So forget about the goal of feeling good about yourself. Enjoy bursts of confidence when you can and take credit for your hard work, but beware making confidence a goal, because that implies control, responsibility, and blame when you can’t make it happen, and it’s wrong and cruel to blame yourself when you’re stuck with a hard life, crap luck, or some deadly combination of the two.

  Instead, assume you’re stuck with shit and ask yourself what a good person should do in your situation. A good person is not someone who is trying to be happy, because that’s not possible, but someone who is trying to do right. Make your plans as concrete, realistic, and businesslike as possible, with numbers and timelines. Then monitor your progress, grading yourself according to how you do, not how you feel. You may seem to do little more in a month than get your work done, feed the kids, and make a few phone calls. If, however, you’re doing everything you can reasonably expect yourself to do, in spite of poverty, loss, social isolation, and all the other dispiriting feelings that can drag down your soul, you’re right on course for success.

  It’s hard not to compare yourself to others, but try instead to set your own standards, taking into account what you know you’re capable of, and refer to them often. You might not always feel like a winner, but you’ll never lose.

  Quick Diagnosis

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

  • Some ability that doesn’t suck

  • A friend or lover anytime before you die

  • Just one reason for confidence and optimism

  • Dreams that might actually happen

  • The ability to look in the mirror or back on your life without horror

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

  • Do your best to survive

  • Act as if you like yourself

  • Keep busy and distracted

  • Avoid adding to your troubles

  • Change your underwear in the hope that it will change your luck

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • Replace “should have” and “could have” with “just can’t” and “it is what it is”

  • List the daily activities you consider necessary for work, health, survival, and nurturing a personal life

  • Grade yourself daily, as if you were evaluating a friend

  • Give extra points every time you treat yourself or do something positive during times when you feel like a loser who deserves nothing

  • Get a dog (cats are an acceptable substitute, but it’s not exactly confidence building to have a box of shit in your house)

  Your Script

  Here’s what to say to someone/yourself when you feel trapped, stuck, and totally below average.

  Dear [Me/Beloved Pet/The Ceiling],

  I know I lack self-confidence, related to my lack of [skills/cash/education/good looks] and inability to [feel more self-confident after I see my therapist/take antidepressants/read self-help books]. However, I haven’t let it drive me to [insert illegal and/or addictive activity], at least not yet, and I’m still taking care of business. I’m still confident in my ability to ignore how confident I [don’t] feel while I wait for my luck to turn.

  Did You Know . . . About the Scourge of ESE (Excessive Self-Esteem)?

  If you’ve never heard of ESE, you’re not alone; this devastating but, until recently, unrecognized condition afflicts a large number of peo
ple who, until now, were thought to suffer from nothing more serious than bad hair and an inability to respond to humor.

  It was previously thought that LSE, more commonly known as “low self-esteem,” was the more dangerous condition, because it prevented people from developing the confidence required to make friends, influence people, and become a motivational speaker. Or at the very least, get laid.

  It turns out, however, that most LSEs learn how to function quite well in spite of persistent self-criticism and self-doubt, whereas those with ESE are unaware of their offensiveness and resulting broken relationships, and so don’t seek help. Their overconfidence in everything they do, from their terrible decisions involving relationships to their incomprehensible fashion choices, are, sadly, troubling only to those around them. They can continue in life with intricate facial topiary and numerous (mostly illegitimate) children they can’t support, still thinking they’re God’s gift and deserving of their own reality TV shows.

  Meanwhile, health care professionals who encounter a flood of clients traumatized by their relationships with ESEs have mistakenly thought the problem was their clients’ own low self-esteem. From a treatment standpoint, it helps a little to feel better about yourself, but it would help humanity a lot more if those suffering from ESE adjusted their self-admiration to more reasonable levels. Until this disorder gets the recognition it deserves by the medical and/or Oprah-centric communities, we all have to protect ourselves from this unfortunately-not-silent killer.