F*ck Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems (2015)

chapter one

fuck self-improvement

Buying a self-help book is usually the second-to-last step to surrendering to a crisis of self, the last step being therapy and the first step being a gym membership, or at least a Zumba DVD or a pamphlet for the Learning Annex.

Dedication to improving yourself is admirable—and if you’re Oprah, unbelievably lucrative—but what separates this book from your average work of Deepak Chopra is that we can tell you, up front, that being prepared to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to improve yourself doesn’t mean you can do it. You can’t somehow get taller once you’ve stopped growing; there are limits to your physical strength and intellectual ability, no matter how rigorously you train; and, odds are, you have done too many drugs to ever be president.

Eventually, striving to improve yourself brings diminishing returns and prevents you from accepting yourself and living with what you’ve got. That’s one reason self-improvement efforts have to take into account your limits and competing priorities. Otherwise, it’s less self-improvement, more self-sabotage.

The same principle applies to controlling bad habits and other weaknesses. The reason twelve-step programs urge people to accept the uncontrollable nature of addictions is not because they’re never controllable but because, given human weakness, they’re never fully controllable. There’s always something that can, at least temporarily, overwhelm human control and cause us to do things we’ll regret, and believing otherwise only makes us more foolishly vulnerable to that possibility and more self-critical when it occurs. Life sucks, our control sucks, but it’s not personal. There are limits to what you can do to change yourself, and recognizing these limits is essential to managing bad behaviors, bad pieces of your personality, even bad taste in shoes.

Indeed, the more you study dysfunctional behaviors, the more convinced you become that most of us have weird brains, and those who appear not to just haven’t exposed their own brains to the kinds of stress, relatives, or Japanese animation that will reveal their mental dysfunction. The prevalence of unique, genetically associated dysfunctions is certainly consistent with Darwin’s theory that individual differences, even dysfunctional ones, improve genetic diversity for the species and enhance its chances of surviving unforeseeable future threats. If genetic diversity is a good thing for the species, however, it’s often a disaster for the individual, who gets to carry all kinds of odd instincts and impulses in his DNA that cause trouble and are hard to bear.

Neuroscience seems to show that many emotional and behavioral problems we thought were caused by bad parents or trauma are also caused by wiring that isn’t reversible. This explains why self-improvement is hard and sometimes impossible, even when we’re strong-willed and well guided. In other words, we’re often fucked.

On the other hand, while there’s much pain in incurable dysfunction, the joys of self-improvement are overrated. Strength and confidence may give you a wonderful feeling and a license to walk around in a cape and tights, but big fuckin’ deal. Real confidence comes from knowing you’ve used what limited strength you have to do what’s important. If your strength isn’t great, and as a result you have to strain harder, you deserve even more credit, assuming you’ve got the values to do something worthwhile.

If you accept that self-improvement has its limits, then you can begin to discover the nature of these limits, which you need to know if you’re going to manage them well. So the goal of pushing your potential isn’t just to improve your performance but to improve it as much as you reasonably can, given your resources, while discovering what your limits are. That way, you’ll know how much help you need and how much to compromise when you can’t do everything yourself.

Addiction isn’t the only self-destructive behavior that seems like it should be controllable but isn’t. Eating disorders, hair picking, hoarding, and procrastination are similar in that they seem like bad habits that should improve with steady effort and strong willpower, but are actually very hard to change. It’s no one’s fault, not even your mother’s. The only conclusion to draw is that many people have less control over their basic behavior than they deserve, and that it’s often hard to know how much responsibility they should bear for their actions.

Of course, just because you can’t always make yourself stronger or even correct your weaknesses, you still have to try. If your goal is to be a good, decent person who carries out his responsibilities, you’re never off the hook. The fact that you’re flawed and have limits to how much you can improve or even control yourself means that you just have to work harder to get as close as you can to where you want to go. You should never hold yourself accountable for results you don’t control, but always for the strength of trying.

Many requests for help spring from an expectation for self-improvement and a denial of the fact that it hasn’t yet happened in spite of many failed previous efforts to get help. This chapter—and really, life—is about how to realistically assess your ability to get better, cope with the pain of accepting what you already know, and turn your knowledge of your limits into a useful plan of action. No matter what shape your life is in, what step of the ladder you’re on, or what drives you to buy this book.

Taking Back the Reins of Your Life (After a Stampede)

Since humans control very little besides their DVR queues and their opinions about Miley Cyrus, it’s not surprising that we often feel like our lives are slipping into chaos. Sometimes it’s because you’re actually losing control, sometimes because someone close to you is spinning out, and sometimes because whatever you don’t control feels far more important and overwhelming than what you do. In any case, the goals you wish for when you’re feeling out of control, as listed and described in the following three examples, are rarely realistic and will often make your helplessness worse.

The trouble is, of course, “out of control” usually means just that, and no amount of sweating, seeking, and therapizing is going to change the fact that life reserves the right to throw more shit at you than you can possibly handle. Accepting the way life sometimes becomes—or at least feels—uncontrollable, however, need never stop you from managing damage or speeding up recovery.

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: whatever 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 wish 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.

Becoming a More Positive Person

Negative feelings, particularly anger, self-pity, and envy, are painful to feel and also to hold back, since unleashing them makes you a jerk who’s a drag to be around. It’s like having to hold in a full bladder all the time, except it’s your mouth, and if you let it go, it could release things so hurtful, mean, and unjustified that you’d prefer having a wet crotch.

So when it comes to becoming more positive and less negative, many people would like to cleanse themselves of negative feelings, remove the temptation to act like a dick, and ease the strain of constant self-monitoring and self-restraint that often makes them tense and cranky and causes them to be dickish despite themselves.

Unfortunately, many things that promise relief from negative feelings aren’t good for you and won’t really make you a better person, even if they make you feel better. You can be justified in attacking someone, physically or verbally, but the satisfaction it brings is limited; it often leaves you with a bad feeling in the long run and gets you more involved with someone you’d like to stay away from.

You might also try to become more positive by withdrawing from whatever causes you to feel negative, but that’s not so hot if it requires you to shed responsibilities, abandon people who need you, or dull down your personality. You may wind up with a serene smile but you may also have betrayed your own standards of behavior.

That’s why your primary goal is not to get rid of negative feelings and feel better, but to block them from controlling your behavior while you continue to act like a decent person.

Don’t stigmatize negative feelings; even pacifists, yogis, and nursery school teachers get road rage under the wrong circumstances (e.g., in downtown Boston). Some people have bad tempers or are chronically grouchy while others are stuck in situations that happen to hit their weak spots and drive them nuts. Either way, if you chastise yourself for having nasty feelings when you really can’t help it, you usually make them worse. After kicking yourself, you’re that much more likely to kick someone else.

Besides, your nasty, demonic side may be part of the spark that makes you creative, funny, and energetic. While that side may not be easy to control or live with, you can try to use that negative energy in good ways. Becoming more positive doesn’t mean becoming sweetly angelic, but rather, decently demonic, or at least decent enough that your friends don’t all tell you to go back to hell.

Here are signs that your nasty side is taking over:

✵ Instead of driving with your hands at ten and two, you’ve always got one middle finger at twelve

✵ The glass isn’t half-empty or half-full, it’s just a toilet

✵ You think the “stand your ground” laws were invented just for you

✵ You often use the phrase “I’m just being honest,” then say something that just makes you sound like an asshole

Among the wishes people express when they want to improve themselves by reducing bad feelings are:

✵ To stop hating someone (spouse, child) who doesn’t deserve it

✵ To be less angry and more kind in general

✵ To stop pining for what’s lost and get over it

✵ To stop being controlled by fear

Here are three examples:

My father-in-law is not the worst person in the world, but I can’t get over the feeling that I hate to be in the same room with him, and I have to, because my family lives with him right now. We could never afford to live in a nice house otherwise, and it’s great for our kids, but in the meantime, he sits in the living room every night, watching his TV, bossing his wife around, spouting his hateful political rhetoric, and insulting me at every opportunity, and I want to kill him. Complaining to my wife doesn’t do any good because it just makes her feel helpless, and then she defends her dad’s behavior and I feel worse. I wish he were dead. My goal, if you don’t know a hit man, is to stop hating him.

It’s been two years, and I haven’t been able to get over my divorce. My ex was an asshole who betrayed me terribly and I know I’m better off without him, but for whatever reason, it still hurts. I really loved him for a while there, and I still can’t get over the memories or stop tearing up when I think about him. The kids, who are teens now, are doing better than I am and ask me when I’m going to start dating again, but I can’t imagine a time when I’ll ever be interested. My goal is to get over loving him and feel better.

I wish I wasn’t so insecure. I’m always shy and I get very nervous before networking events, which are a requirement for my work, and my least favorite part of a job I otherwise love. I shake and break out in hives. My brother has always been more confident, but I can’t really blame my parents, because they’ve always encouraged me. It’s my own fault. I thought it would go away as I got older, but I’m thirty, and it’s just as bad as ever, particularly when I get promoted and have to meet new people even more. My goal is to be less nervous and instead have some confidence in myself.

If people could control the way they feel, then persistent negative feelings would be a legitimate sign of failure and a target for self-improvement. Also, nobody would cheat on their spouses, enjoy scary movies, or eat their weight in frosting, but that’s neither here nor there.

Since negative feelings are just a fact of neurology and genetics, it’s what you do with them that counts. The people in these examples are more successful than they think, because success here is not measured by whether they feel better, more loving, less angry, etc. It’s measured by all the good things they are doing and have done in spite of the negative feelings they can’t get out of their heads.

There’s probably a positive, evolutionary reason for having negative feelings you can’t get rid of; they may warn you of danger, give an extra bite of sadness to your songs or poetry, or help you stay attached to your tribe. Whatever advantage they provide, it may have been more helpful in a jungle than in the big city, but either way, if it helps the species survive, it tends to persist, regardless of how much pain it causes you as an individual.

Assuming you’re going to have to live with negative feelings, develop standards for behaving well in spite of them. No, you shouldn’t expect yourself to force smiles so much that they break your face and scare children. You should, however, invite feedback about your behavior from those you trust, so you can be confident that your actions and words don’t hurt people or interfere with your positive strategic goals and, most important, make you act like an asshole.

If you’re self-critical about your negative feelings, you may be tempted to live with people who dislike you as much as you dislike yourself. Naturally, this could set off a vicious cycle that brings out your worst behavior and justifies continuous self-punishment. Instead, seek people who aren’t much bothered by your negativity and who appreciate your positive side. You may be frustrated by their lack of understanding and attention to your supposed worthlessness, but the results will be better for everyone in the long run.

Whether you are forced to live with hate, yearning, envy, or fear, respect what you do with your feelings, not what they do to you. Don’t let them distract you from your usual goals of avoiding unnecessary conflict at home, making a living, and being a good friend.

The more you remember your goals and respect your restraint, the less power your negative feelings will have to shape your actions and reduce your self-respect. You can’t control your negativity, but you can keep it from controlling you.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ An improved heart free of hate, envy, fear, and general ugliness

✵ A way of managing relationships that will prevent or resolve bad feelings

✵ A way to love the ugly feelings right out of yourself

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

✵ Build standards that are not distorted or compromised by negative feelings

✵ Act decently in spite of the way you really feel

✵ Respect the way you act decently when you feel malicious, bravely when you’re frightened, determined when you’re tired, etc.

✵ Bear the pain of living with ugly feelings rather than attacking yourself for having them or attacking others to escape them

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Get to know your inner asshole so as to reduce the likelihood it becomes outer

✵ Every time it gets control, emerge with new lessons about your standards and the triggers that get you to lose control

✵ Avoid those triggers as best you can, even if it means a longer drive to work that avoids the freeway

✵ Find accepting friends and an accepting coach

Your Script

Here’s what to tell someone or yourself when you have ugly, nasty thoughts and feelings.

Dear [Me/Family Member/Guy Who Cut Me Off],

I can’t deny that I have [angry/envious/completely vicious] feelings for [you/my child/my fuckhead boss], but I have other feelings as well, and my feelings don’t matter as much as doing the [work/taxes/college application/right thing] without [insert act of rage], and this I can do. I have doubts about my ability to use [yoga/psychoanalysis/watching Too Cute] to achieve more positive feelings, and I am not sure I would like to give up my list of hated [relatives/celebrities/salsas at Chipotle] or be more blissed out and less wrought up than I am. Let me know if you think I have acted badly. Otherwise, I believe my current method of managing my feelings is best for me.

Did You Know … That Trying Too Hard to Control Nasty Feelings Can Make You Even More Nasty?

Negative feelings, like the Mafia or LinkedIn, only increase their nagging pull the more you try to break free. If you try to eradicate them entirely by punishing yourself, doing penance through good deeds, and influencing others to do the same, you might think you’re on the path to salvation and that good is winning over evil.

The problem is that, to those who are truly obsessed with eradicating evil, it’s infuriating to meet people who won’t join the cause. You wind up filled with so much of that same ol’ familiar hatred that you want to tell them in a most strained, cheerful-yet-pissed, singsongy, scoldy manner that you would love to stab their faces with the foot of a bar stool.

So beware the excessively virtuous, who never raise their voices except in anger at bad people, whose oversized smiles give you the creeps and show too many teeth, and who use the same, overly cheerful, sugary-sweet tone to speak to adults and children. Helping others is the only thing it’s okay for them to talk about, and they’re ready to help everyone, especially the unappreciative, disgusting idiots who never appreciate their efforts, never heed their advice, and irritate them so much, they have to act even sweeter. So if they offer you help or advice, be a smart idiot and politely decline before running for your life.

Stop Fucking Up

There are few things as frustrating as feeling too disorganized, unmotivated, and/or unfocused to accomplish even the smallest task. You can blame a noisy work environment, the wrong colored pen, or the need to watch TV in a timely, spoiler-free manner as the source of your distraction for only so long until you start blaming yourself.

Procrastination, avoidance, and disorganization cause delays and failures that provoke shame, criticism, and even legal issues. If you’re at the point where you’re amazed you finished reading two whole paragraphs before watching Game of Thrones, then this section is for you.

Some people with these problems may act as if they don’t care, or take pleasure in creating expectations they can’t meet and then lying about them, but in reality, they usually care deeply but have become accustomed to cover-ups, apologies, and endless self-defense. They often hate themselves and declare themselves secret self-enemy number one, knowing they’re at fault even when they always seem good at blaming others.

The brighter and more capable they are, the more certain they are that their bad behaviors represent bad choices and a failure to accept and discharge responsibility, and that they could do better if they were better motivated, more reliable, and more honest. Often, their parents, teachers, and supervisors agree that accepting responsibility for their failures seems like the necessary first step toward recovery.

While accepting that you have a problem is in fact the universal first step, accepting responsibility for having it is not. Brain wiring can cause well-motivated, smart people to procrastinate and drop the ball, and nature gives them no choice. The fact that you’re not responsible for having a problem, however, never relieves you of responsibility for working with it and finding ways around it, and often requires you to overcome deeply ingrained bad habits and attitudes. It’s impossible to change your instincts or make distractedness, impulsivity, and scattered thinking go away; you can, however, become a good manager of the impulses to procrastinate, avoid, lie, and cover up.

Then again, most “faulty” brain wiring, like that which makes tracking and finishing tasks difficult, is probably helpful in terms of Darwinian survival in situations that don’t involve sitting in cubicles or writing term papers. Having a mind that shifts attention quickly or persistently stays off topic may actually help in chaotic situations where you need to spot someone sneaking up on you. It also seems to empower salesmen; in fact, it’s hard to find a salesman without ADD. Distractibility is not so hot, however, when you’re staring at a monitor, or really anywhere but in sales, the jungle, politics, the jungle, etc.

So don’t hold yourself responsible for irresponsibility when it comes to being a slacker, assuming you don’t really want to be one. Push aside the shame, assess yourself objectively, and learn what’s necessary for good management. You can’t change your brain, but with the right tricks, extra time, and determination, you can get stuff done, no matter what’s on TV.

Here’s how you can tell you’re not to blame for your brain:

✵ There are several “to do” lists in your pockets, more than one of which includes “organize ‘to do’ lists”

✵ You’re better at saying “I’m sorry” than a Canadian, and do it more often

✵ A lost schedule probably wouldn’t matter, as it was with the “to do” lists

✵ The only way to get you to a meeting on time is to tell you it’s an hour earlier than it really is, and then you need to be walked there with horse blinders on

Among the wishes people express about improving their disorganization and dysfunction are:

✵ To be more responsible

✵ To stop forgetting appointments

✵ To stop avoiding work

✵ To appease someone who wants them to stop avoiding work

✵ To figure out how to face the pile of shit on their desk before the boss sees it and shits on them

Here are some examples:

I don’t know why I’ve always been a fuckup, but I’m pretty sure the boss is going to fire me, even though he’s my dad. I underachieved in high school, even when teachers went out of their way to encourage me and offer extra help. Now I’m working for my dad and I don’t want people to think I’m there just because I’m his son, but they’re right, because I never get tasks done. I hate screwing up and apologizing so much that sometimes I can’t bring myself to come to work in the morning, which just makes things worse. My goal is to grow up and make better choices.

I hate to admit it—in fact, I never admit it—but I’m a liar and can’t stop myself. I started lying about my homework when I was little, even though I always got caught, but I just couldn’t control it, even after I was punished and publicly humiliated. In college I told my parents I was doing fine when I’d stopped going to classes, and it would have saved them a fortune in tuition if I’d just told them the truth and dropped out instead of waiting to get called out on my bullshit and kicked out of school. Now I’m living at home and I sometimes look for work, but I have no hope for the future. My goal is to be an honest person I wouldn’t despise.

I have no excuse for how little I’ve done with my life. Everything I’ve tried, I’m interested in for a year or two and then I stop being interested and, before long, find something newer and shinier that I’m sure I’ll want to make a better career out of. That, of course, lasts for a short while before something even newer and shinier appears to lure me away from my last job, and the cycle repeats itself. I should be motivated to follow through on one career path because I need the money and I’m not getting any younger, but when an idea gets into my head, there’s no room for logic, perspective, or anything else. My goal is to settle on one career path, any path, before I’m so old I should retire.

If you had a problem with, say, constant barfing, you wouldn’t settle for feeling like a loser while resigning yourself to a life spent within ten feet of a toilet or in reach of a paper bag; you’d see a specialist, quit gluten if you had to, or at least become a master of puke jokes. That’s why the first job as a chronic fuckup is to put aside shame and blame and find out if part of the trouble is a weakness in your mental equipment.

Most people avoid this step because it’s painful to know that something about you doesn’t work right, but doing so will save energy you’re wasting on self-blame and apology and will give you ideas about better things to do than kicking yourself.

Incidentally, the line between bad mental equipment and bad behavior is often blurred by the fact that bad mental equipment usually causes people to behave badly. This is either because they’re innately more angry and impulsive than they can manage, or because they become bitter about their inability to stop themselves from fucking up, which ups the anger factor even more. So the fact that some fuckups act like Assholes (see Chapter 9) doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve made worse choices than the better-behaved fuckups, or that they have more control over their choices. It just means they struggle more and their behavior may be even harder for them to change or control.

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 aren’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.

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.