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

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 besides, 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 people 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.

Unleashing the Power of Persuasion

Of the many things you’re supposed to feel for yourself before others can follow suit—i.e., love, admiration, even lust—confidence is among the most misleading. The idea that if you believe in yourself, you can persuade others to follow your command, is sold to us near the end of many movies when the unlikely hero finally takes the crown. Sadly, what’s true for Luke Skywalker is rarely true for the rest of us.

People often believe that, with enough training, fitness, or self-hypnosis, they can gain the ability to influence others, sell goods, get clients, get votes, get laid, etc.—all of which depends on the strength of their self-belief. If anything interferes with that self-belief, they become obsessed with trying to figure out how to release the magic or undo the damage, a process that can become a self-critical, self-centered spiral into the dark side.

In reality, persuasiveness depends on, and can be harmed by, factors that are beyond your control, including anxiety, depression, and other illness. Just because you’re successfully persuasive today doesn’t mean you will be tomorrow, and believing that recovering or maintaining this ability is all up to you just worsens your feelings of failure.

In addition, many people just aren’t articulate and never will be. We love to see shy, ugly people transform into great, persuasive performers and politicians—in what other universe would The King’s Speech become a movie?—but the fact that we have to pay to see it at the movies, or get a personal intervention from God, tells you that most of us are who we are and have to work with what we’ve got.

Certainly, you should work hard, train well, and do what you can to build and rebuild your confidence. If, however, your influence is nevertheless waning or just wan and unimproved, don’t self-destruct on self-doubt. Be prepared to admit, after trying all the usual remedies, that maybe there’s nothing you can do to get it or get it back, so there’s no point in ruminating about what you did wrong. You can still believe in yourself, as long as you believe that your flaws and misfortunes are part of the package.

Don’t blame yourself for an accidental encounter with self-doubt, because there’s still much to be done. It may not be as easy or as much fun to win someone over as it would be if you were silver-tongued, but having a silver tongue is not the only way to be effective.

In any case, don’t try to control your confidence in your power of persuasion, as much as you would wish for it. Instead, use whatever other methods you can find, even if they’re not interesting or fun, to get the job done.

Here are signs that the Force of Persuasion is not with you:

✵ When you try to dress for success, people ask if you’re going to a costume party

✵ Your words come out as if you’re speaking a foreign language

✵ Your listeners respond as if you’re speaking a foreign language

✵ The harder you try to project confidence, the more you get treated like poop

Among the wishes people express when they yearn for the power to persuade:

✵ To find the confidence to release their inner persuader

✵ To move the world with the strength of their words and beliefs, or at least move a date, key family members, or important clients

✵ To stop overthinking and trying to defeat themselves

✵ To understand where their mojo’s gone

✵ To trick themselves into thinking they’re great so others will follow

Here are three examples:

I used to be able to hold my students spellbound, but ever since my stroke it’s hard to keep their attention. My speech is clear and my memory is solid, but my words don’t flow and sometimes I get nervous and blush, which never happened before. Then I doubt myself, which just gets me more off my rhythm, and I start to notice they’re fidgeting and bored, and it’s even harder to get back on track. My goal is to figure out how to get back my ability to lecture to my standards or let myself down and retire.

If I wasn’t her son (and only child), I bet I could get my mother to stop drinking. I’m always nervous about how she’s going to respond, so I’m always hesitant and apologetic, instead of telling her why she needs to quit. It’s depressing that I can’t get through to her, but with Dad long gone, I don’t know anyone else she’ll listen to. My goal is to get the confidence to speak to her effectively and get her sober.

There are three guys at the dealership I work at who know less about the cars than I do, but they sell them better because they really think they’re hotshots. I’ve studied the sales material carefully and know it cold, and I sell enough cars to keep my job, but I hate getting beat by guys who are just better at bullshitting than I am. My goal is to get the confidence to be a better bullshitter or get better at bullshit so I’ll have more confidence, get the bonuses, and never feel screwed over again.

Just because you lack persuasive abilities for one reason or another, or find them unequal to the task at hand, doesn’t mean that you should be able to be more persuasive and should keep trying until you are. There’s a certain point—let’s call it the desperation fulcrum—at which pushing yourself to be more articulate makes you repetitive, boring, and overeager, driving people further away from your point of view.

Unfortunately, practice doesn’t make perfect; at some point, after you’ve consulted advisers, tried exercises, and analyzed obstacles, it’s time to accept that the problem is what it is. If you keep on looking at improving persuasiveness as the goal of a failed quest, life will seem increasingly negative and hopeless, and the fulcrum point will move ever closer with each new negotiation.

If you accept your problem as an unfortunate dysfunction you’ve done your best to fix, then the failure isn’t personal. You’ve done a good job pushing your limits (even if they pushed right back) and it’s time to look for alternatives.

Remember, persuasiveness is one of those abilities that can do both good and harm. It can get you sales, votes, and deals, but it also gives you the power to take advantage of others or use negative emotions to get their support, and this may turn into mini-Wolf of Wall Street, damaging your reputation (and eternal soul) in the long run. Even if you get them to do things for you that they wouldn’t for someone else, their motivation will disappear if they think they don’t have your attention.

In any case, there are ways you can achieve your goal even if you don’t have the ability to persuade. One is to follow a commonsense procedure for weighing decisions as if you were the person you wish to persuade. Instead of pushing their emotional buttons, pretend you’re a coach or adviser responsible for reviewing all the reasons for or against a decision, taking into account consequences and your clients’ values.

Whether you’re trying to sell them a car or sobriety, use plainspoken expertise, not flash, to explain the risks and benefits you believe they face. Know the pros and cons well enough that your confidence in your knowledge shines through, and if you still can’t close on the sale, you won’t feel the urge to keep nudging, or to reproach your own unpersuasiveness, since you’ll know you did your best.

So don’t despair if you can’t summon persuasive powers. You may long for the unique pleasure and power of being a wheeler-dealer or orator, but assuming that your main interest is in getting the job done, there are other ways to do it and feel good about your accomplishments instead of desperate about what you just can’t do.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ To get people other than your mother to pay attention and take pleasure in listening to you

✵ To get people to do what you want for financial, sexual, or generally selfish benefit

✵ To win people over with the natural charisma you do not have

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

✵ Offer people a fair summary of the pros and cons of a possible decision

✵ Persuade people that you’re more interested in enhancing their choices than imposing your own opinion

✵ Be a knowledgeable, good listener

✵ Keep your emotions to yourself

✵ Take satisfaction in meeting your own standards rather than moving others

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Develop due diligence procedures for listing the risks and rewards of any decision, including purchases, partnerships, and partying

✵ Do your research and gather information about decisions you wish to influence

✵ Present yourself in terms of your interest in finding a good solution, rather than forming a close relationship or winning a contest

✵ Learn to present information accurately and concisely, even if you’re boring and not funny

✵ Judge yourself on whether you’ve followed your procedures, rather than on whether someone did what you wanted them to do

Your Script

Here’s what to say to yourself or a skeptical relative, client, or customer when you’re trying, and failing, to sell your point.

Dear [Me/Suspicious Client/Stubborn Relative],

Regardless of my own opinion, I’d like to help you [make a decision/spend a lot of money/pass an exam/get your head out of your ass] by giving you a brief rundown of the [pros and cons /fact and fiction/details I know backward and forward]. If you happen to have strong [insert emotional noun] about this situation, I hope you will weigh them objectively while considering their likelihood, and add them into your overall equation.

Good versus Bad Things upon Which to Base Your Self-Esteem

Standing Up to Bullies

Another big reason people put confidence on their wish list of missing and much-desired attributes is the wish to face down intimidation and humiliation in personal relationships, whether it’s from a boss, parent, or spouse. While calling such intimidators “bullies” seems like an awkward thing to do once you’ve graduated beyond the school bus and playground, the title still seems fitting even if in adulthood the wedgies and swirlies are strictly psychological.

No matter how old you are, when someone insults and intimidates you, you think long and hard, over and over, about what you could have said or done in response. Unless you can also think of how to make a time machine, however, this mental exercise just makes you feel more helpless and less prepared for next time.

Like any animal under attack, you may respond instinctively and say or do something before you have a chance to think. For instance, you may go out of your way not to show fear because it might expose weakness and encourage further attacks, or you feel responsible for defending yourself if you’re criticized for something you didn’t do. In any case, being bullied makes you yearn for strength, verbal ability, and … confidence! And probably a gym membership.

The fact is, however, that many people get relatively inarticulate when they’re anxious, and very few people are good at the art of speaking up in the face of authority without getting into trouble. Nevertheless, they imagine they could stand up for themselves if they had more self-esteem, like the movie hero responding with a condescending smile to the bad guy’s sneer and pointed gun.

In reality, standing up to intimidation and facing down bullies is a bad goal. It would feel delicious if you could do it (which is why we love to watch such scenes on TV), but retaliation carries all the risks of road rage: losing your original purpose and direction and risking injury, guilt, and punishment for the unintended harm you cause. You’ve got other goals and obligations to pursue, and fighting battles with people you don’t like and aren’t going to change seldom makes sense, even if they’re smaller than you.

The truth is, fighting back isn’t the antidote to humiliation and intimidation; it’s more often an accelerant. Instead, give thought to values and consequences.

Ask yourself whether the fight is worthwhile and winnable by considering risks and worst-case scenarios and keeping your mouth shut to give yourself time to think. Nobody likes to be bullied or humiliated, but once you’re out of the school yard, the consequences for standing up to bullies are much worse than detention and a black eye, like, say, fines and prison.

So strengthen your resolve, not your muscles, and learn to beat bullies by remembering what’s important, and that humiliation isn’t.

Here are signs that a face down is not a good idea:

✵ You’re not a black belt … or you are a black belt

✵ He’s richer, stronger, better connected, and has better lawyers

✵ You have better things to do, like get through the day and not ruin your life

✵ You know that your confrontation won’t change anything in the long run, except maybe your employment status or the shape of your nose

✵ You’re throwing around terms like “send a message,” “unfair,” “can’t let him think that,” etc., and you’re not a Blood or Crip

Among the wishes people express when they want to avoid or end humiliation are:

✵ To be as amusingly insulting as Dorothy Parker and Winston Churchill

✵ To be as good at verbal self-defense as their bully is at humiliation

✵ To control anxious or deferential feelings that cause helpless paralysis

✵ To get someone to back down

Here are three examples:

My neighborhood was a happy place for twenty years until a crazy guy moved next door and posted No Trespassing signs on the fence between us. He accused me of dumping leaves into his yard and glared at my kids, who are careful not to bother him. He would point a video camera at them and my wife whenever they played in the yard. At first I tried to reassure him, but recently I’ve told him he has to stop, and he’s gotten even weirder. The police tell me they can’t do anything unless he physically threatens us. My goal is to get him to back off and not have to worry about him all the time.

My boss is often nasty and demeaning, though he thinks he’s just being professional. He’ll call me out during a meeting because something wasn’t done, even though he either didn’t tell me he wanted it or didn’t give me enough time. If I protest, he treats it like I’m giving him excuses or he just changes the subject. When I’ve tried to discuss his leadership style with his boss, I get told that’s just his way and I shouldn’t be so sensitive. I feel trapped and intimidated. My goal is to stop my boss from being abusive.

My husband is a know-it-all who gets overbearing when he’s drinking, but never admits it when he’s sober. He’s a good provider, and I don’t want to break up our family, but we all tiptoe around him when he starts to drink, and it’s oppressive living with him. My goal is to figure out how to stand up to him so I don’t have to feel like a mouse.

Sadly, not all protest is effective, and if you’ve witnessed most recent American political protests, whether they involve hats with attached tea bags or giant puppets, you know that protest can have unintended consequences, like making you look ridiculous. If this were a fair world, a brave protest would expose every bully to appropriate ridicule and/or cause him/her to reexamine and correct bad behavior. In this world, however, protests often strengthen and empower your enemies, especially if somebody takes your picture.

Your goal then isn’t to stand up to trouble, but to determine what, if anything, you can say or do that won’t stir up trouble even more. Whether a bully is crazy or just touchy, criticism is more likely to trigger irrational attack rather than thoughtful dialogue.

In the case of a crazy bully, you may have no choice but to accept an ongoing risk of being humiliated, intimidated, harmed, and/or fired and knowing you can’t stop it. That said (and your tears wept, and chagrin spat out), think of your other options.

Knowing that you can’t reduce these risks should motivate you to look elsewhere to live, work, etc. If you try too hard to fight a battle you can’t win, you’ll be too worn-out to leave. Instead, if you know the battle is unwinnable, smile politely until you’re gone.

Of course, every now and then you’ll discover that you actually have more power than you think and the bully’s power rests on nothing but hot air and your own fears. Most times this happens, however, you can’t celebrate a simple victory by telling the bully to get lost because s/he is stuck in your orbit (close family, neighbor, etc.) and both your celebration and new power must be wielded quietly to encourage good behavior.

It’s not fair, but if you’ve been alive long enough to own books with “F*ck” in the title, you know that not much is. Besides, if it’s any consolation, a truly crazy bully doesn’t even know why he’s coming after you in the first place, because that’s the nature of crazy. You can always move on, but he’ll always be stuck in his own insanity.

Aside from considering departure options, the other way to protect yourself, especially if a bully is irrational, is to wall off your negative, helpless emotions and feel proud of your ability to make the best of tough situations. Whether you’re getting zapped by your boss at a job you can’t afford to leave or by a husband under comparable circumstances, stop sharing how you feel and start negotiating, beginning with whatever you’re accused of doing wrong.

Talk proudly about whatever you’ve done right and positively about whatever your bully, if he or she has flashes of reasonableness, does right. Regret disagreement, conflict, or disappointment and express hope that it will get better, without apology or blame. Look confident and stand proud, regardless of how you feel. Build a boundary that lets the bully know that you value his opinion, but still judge yourself by your own standards, which, in this case, you’ve met. As long as you haven’t let fear and anger compromise your behavior, you can disagree without having to defend, persuade, or continue conversations that you think are destructive.

Unfortunately, as you know, many bullies, due to some combination of physical, financial, and psychotic strength, can’t be stopped, in which case winning means doing what’s necessary to survive until you can get out. To others, it may appear as if you’re bowing to intimidation, compromising your principles, and giving in to weakness. What you know, however, is that you have more important priorities than avoiding humiliation and that you have the strength to tolerate humiliation whenever you think it’s necessary.

As long as you haven’t let fear and anger compromise your behavior, you can disagree without having to defend, persuade, or continue conversations that you think are destructive. Whether or not your protest is heard, you know where you stand, and you’ve kept your pride intact.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ Victory over unfair aggression

✵ A fair outcome (forgive me for using this horrible f-word)

✵ Freedom from undeserved criticism

✵ Control over your reputation

✵ R-E-S-P-E-C-T

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

✵ Keep your cool under fire

✵ Learn to choose your battles

✵ Respect yourself regardless of disrespect from others

✵ Find the least humiliating option that’s necessary to bear

✵ Take pride in your ability to eat shit when necessary and smile

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Shut up until you’re ready to speak; don’t yell or act out because you’re angry or tired

✵ Gather information about whether you can win

✵ Assess yourself and respect your self-assessment

✵ State everything positive you can about yourself, your persecutor, and whatever has been or could be good about your relationship

✵ Regret disagreement and conflict without expressing responsibility or apology for it

✵ Take action when you’ve decided it’s worthwhile, not because your feelings tell you to

✵ Until you can move on, bear the pain

Your Script

Here’s what to say to a bully/yourself when you feel falsely accused, mocked, or disrespected.

Dear [Me/Relative/Boss/Assailant],

I value our having a [insert positive adjective to describe kindness and nonviolence] relationship and am sorry you are [unhappy/angry/dissatisfied/threatening legal action/urging me to make painful physical moves]. I believe in the values of [hard work/good neighborliness/brushing after every meal] and have examined my own behavior to see if, as you’ve suggested, it needs [improvement/cranial-anal insertion/self-sexual engagement]. I can’t agree, but I believe we continue to have much to gain from working together and hope things will go better in the future.

Did You Know … That Prince Is an Inspiration to All?

You don’t have to enjoy Prince’s music (although you should) or agree with his political or religious views (you probably don’t want to know) or even want to quote his words in your own book (please look up the very-apt lyrics to “Let’s Go Crazy” since we can’t afford to reprint them) in order to appreciate the man who was born Prince Rogers Nelson.

That’s because Prince is so much more than a Lilliputian juggernaut of talent; he’s an icon to anyone who feels different, loser-like, or generally doomed to outsider/failure status. True, he has an outsized and admirable talent, but what’s most inspirational about the Purple One is not his musical success but his determination to make music and pursue other forms of self-expression (dance, wardrobe, articulating the sound of crying doves) simply because that’s his artistic mission, and in defiance of so much easy ridicule.

Despite being mixed race and of decidedly minimal height (five foot two), Prince believed in himself and his own talent so strongly that he began writing and performing his own songs as a teenager and put a shirtless portrait of himself on his second record. Admittedly, he had the talent to culturally dominate the 1980s, managing to do so from not-cultural-mecca Minneapolis and while wearing a pirate shirt with a bandmate dressed in surgical scrubs; but he also had the determination to do things his way, regardless of how or whether the public responded. Given that he was a tiny, bare-chested “not a woman, not a man” with a quasi-Jheri curl, that response could have been cruel indeed.

So if you’ve ever been tormented by self-doubt and wished you could be better looking, taller, or less inclined toward platform shoes so you could believe in yourself more and maybe accomplish something, look to Prince, and trust that you too can be a massive weirdo and stay true to your vision and mission without having to forgo your dreams of acceptance.

Overcoming the Stigma of Disability

Given the way we equate poor performance, damage, and abnormality with low self-esteem, it’s not surprising that the goal of people with disabilities, be they physical or mental, is to gain confidence by reducing their disabilities, keeping them hidden, and reclaiming normality as soon as possible. Sometimes, they seek out special challenges—some positive, like running a marathon, others less positive, like running away from treatment they’re sure they no longer need—to prove that they have the strength to overcome all obstacles and get their confidence back.

What’s dangerous, however, about taking too much responsibility for controlling a disability is that disabilities usually come with an even-higher-than-normal vulnerability to unforeseen shit, and thus prevent the less able from ever having full control. As a result, if your self-esteem depends on the state of your recovery, you will waste energy fearing and then feeling personally responsible for slips, setbacks, and relapses that even the most capable person doesn’t have a handle on.

You may stop treatment that might otherwise help, or hide symptoms in order to keep up appearances at home or at work. The state of your illness will dictate your self-esteem, which means you will become your illness, rather than a person who happens to have a disability. You won’t be someone living with a disability, but someone whose disability is their life.

Instead, accept what you’ve already learned: that your disability will come and go and you’ll never control it completely. Educate yourself about it, become an expert manager, and use treatment whenever you think it’s necessary and without regard to your yearnings to be normal. Fight the shame that comes with being ill by sharing as much with others as you think is appropriate according to your own standards of privacy, not the culture’s stigma.

Since you can’t rid yourself of your disability, fight to manage it so that it affects your life as little as possible. Don’t take pride in looking normal, but in how well you cope with abnormality, tolerate the burden of your illness, and get as much as you can out of life. Living with a disability is in itself a marathon, not a sprint, so take pride in the small accomplishments that make up your every day.

Here are signs that your disability is getting the better of you:

✵ No one knows you have it, and if you can help it, no one will

✵ You’re afraid of what will happen if it gets worse and you’re not prepared

✵ You can’t imagine feeling good if you don’t look and act normal

✵ You can’t imagine telling anyone about your disability unless you’re very sure of their support

Among the wishes people express when they feel stigmatized by disability:

✵ To be in control and look normal

✵ To not rely on medication and never go in the hospital again

✵ To avoid losing control

✵ To maintain performance in all areas of their lives

✵ To find treatment that will give them the above

Here are three examples:

I don’t want to tell anyone at work that the doctors think I’m bipolar because it would freak them out. I’m not even sure lithium is necessary anymore, because it’s been a long time since I was sick, and I know that people would think I was crazy if they knew I was on it. I’m not sure I know what bipolar means and I know the diagnosis spooks people. My goal is to keep quiet about the illness, gradually get off meds, and see if I can be normal.

I feel embarrassed going out after work and always being the designated driver who never drinks. They know I’m sober because I believe I’m an alcoholic and sometimes they make sly jokes about it. I’ve been sober for three years, I don’t feel like drinking, but I know I’d feel a lot more confident if I had an occasional drink. My goal is to get my confidence back and try to be a normal person instead of an alcoholic.

I look pretty well put together and I’m attractive, so I get asked out a lot, but I can never feel comfortable with guys. I was abused by my uncle, and it’s left me with tons of anxiety about guys and sex. I’m ashamed to talk about it because it makes me cry and I feel like a head case. My goal is to straighten myself out so I can date and have sex and lead a normal life.

Of the many twelve-step aphorisms we like to borrow in this book, “you’re only as sick as your secrets” seems most apt in this instance, or maybe something more like “you’re only as handicapped as your hidden issues.”

It’s human nature to want to hide your disabilities so you can protect your confidence, pretend you can count on steady performance, and prevent others from knowing or exploiting your weaknesses. Playing pretend, while fun for children and kinky adults, is usually self-destructive in everyday life.

Since hiding or undertreating a disability usually makes it worse, your job is to accept it, regardless of embarrassment or self-disappointment. That’s the only way to become realistic at assessing its impact on your life, one day at a time, and become expert at managing it. Learn when you need extra rest and when to tolerate the risks of treatment, then educate your boss and family about your problem so that they know how to help and understand your periods of relative dysfunction.

It’s true, some people may not accept your disability—especially if you don’t—and thus hold you responsible for underperforming; they’re the ones who will believe you’re lazy, exaggerating, or bothered by mental issues (and they don’t mean illness). As much as their opinion may matter to you, don’t waste time and energy hiding from their scrutiny or trying to change their opinion. Stand by what you’ve learned from your own experience, which is that your disability is real, you’re doing your best with it, and you don’t want to argue or spend too much time with anyone who doesn’t agree. The people who matter can forget about your handicap, and the people who don’t can go fuck themselves.

Yes, you may have to find another job or limit the acceptable topics you can discuss with a family member. The alternative, however, is worse, which is that you’re constantly hiding, explaining, and apologizing, all of which interferes with your ability to manage disability and respect yourself.

People can’t respect you for how you are managing your disability or help you deal with it until they know what it is, so if you don’t tell them, they’ll wonder what they’re doing wrong or why they can’t help you, and your fear and shame will infect them. Letting them know what’s wrong is never a confession; it’s a proud statement of achievement and intention, and if they care about you, they’ll have your back.

As usual, the self-respect that comes from believing you’re normal and can expect to stay so is a fragile illusion. Instead, build self-respect on accepting your abnormality and knowing you’re competent to make good decisions about it, regardless of what others think or how severely it limits you.

You may win no competitions, but you should take pride in the tougher task of getting something done when there’s lots of pain and no glory. So let go of your secrets, fight shame with twelve-step and other aphorisms, and give priority to your spiritual growth, whether you do it by steps, religion, specialized ramp, etc.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ The strength and recovery your hard work entitles you to

✵ Delicious, boring normalcy and averageness

✵ Outstanding accomplishments and reliable performance to offer your friends, family, and employer

✵ Confidence in a future when you can count on being in good shape

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

✵ Know how far you can push yourself without causing relapse

✵ Know whom to call and what treatments to try in case of relapse

✵ Take pride in your performance, regardless of how it compares with others’

✵ Accept no nonacceptance

✵ Assemble a circle of approving, helpful people

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Educate yourself about your disability and the risks and benefits of treatment

✵ Don’t let fear or shame stop you from doing what’s necessary to treat it and lead your life

✵ Educate people about your disability, your needs, and your standards for dealing with it

✵ Select friends and employers from the accepting

✵ Do not make it your responsibility to convert the nonaccepting

✵ Audit your performance regularly in terms of what’s possible, day by day

Your Script

Here’s what to say to a nonaccepting person who thinks you could do better.

Dear [Me/Relative/Boss/Disability Examiner],

I value your opinion about my [performance/efficiency/seemingly endless sick time], taking into account the [pain/unnerving tremor/fatigue/drooling] that my disability may impose [regularly/unpredictably/every St. Swithin’s Day]. I take pride in knowing the limits of my disability and using treatment well to keep myself as functional as possible. I’ve heard your concerns, but I believe I’m doing well, considering [do NOT insert explanatory details, it’s too defensive] problems I’ve experienced and discussed with my doctor, but wish to keep private. I expect to be able to do more as my recovery continues.

Did You Know … Life Is a Special Olympics?

Many people believe Olympic competition is particularly meaningful because it draws together the best of the best in the whole world and validates their excellence using the most advanced measurement techniques available. In their minds, there is no achievement equal to being an Olympic champion (at least until that year’s games are over and they forget that ice dancing ever existed).

The reason we often say, and truly believe, that life is a Special Olympics isn’t because we mean to degrade the achievements of those involved in the actual Special Olympics or those games in any way. It’s because the actual Olympic games aren’t really a fair fight; some countries have more money than others, some athletes get the better performance-enhancing drugs, and everybody cares a lot less about national glory than springboarding a win into a sneaker endorsement.

In real life, many losers work harder than winners, because there is much about winning or losing that is unfair. The competition that should attract more attention and respect, if we thought hard about what it meant, is not the Olympics but the Special Olympics. The person who chooses to compete, knowing their equipment is inferior and unreliable, deserves more respect than the lucky and gifted, and more medals.

Saving Your Kid’s Self-Esteem

If there’s one responsibility that parents take seriously, more than making their kids wear helmets just to breathe or considering a full hazmat suit to be the only suitable protection against the sun, it’s shielding their children’s self-esteem.

You may not be able to teach a child math, baseball, or music, but you haven’t really failed unless he or she comes out of childhood without good self-esteem. This overvaluation of self-esteem may be responsible for the ESE epidemic (see above), beginning with kids who actually believe they are the most perfectest special snowflakes who can be presidents of the universe and solve all the problems that exist with one smile from their precious, angel faces that were crafted by Jesus Himself in His heavenly garage/woodshop.

Unfortunately, your ability to control your child’s self-esteem is even worse than your control over your own. You can provide lots of love, good nutrition, a functional parenting partnership, and reasonable schooling and security, and still not be able to protect her from having a rough time academically or socially or from just being a very nervous, perfectionistic, self-hating little weirdo.

It’s scary to have kids, knowing how easily things can go wrong and how little your love can do to protect their self-esteem. We’d much rather watch movies about the redemptive powers of love, be they wielded by a parent or stern inner-city principal, to rescue a kid from misery and self-hate. Measuring your parenting effectiveness by your child’s lack of self-esteem can make you feel like a failure, which will probably make you an ineffective parent, even if you were pretty good to begin with. But at least now you and your kid can bond over feeling like shit.

The domino theory of good self-esteem would lead you to believe that if you can help your child become competent in math, sports, etc., self-confidence will follow, which will help social skills, which will cause success, wealth, happiness, and amazingly good luck, which will make you feel successful after all. On the other hand, if anything gets in the way of one of these dominoes that happens to lie outside of your control, the last domino will never tip into success, leaving your mission as a parent forever unfulfilled.

We know why parents impose this global responsibility on themselves; it hurts to watch your kid feel like a loser and not be able to help. Nevertheless, it’s part of the parenting job description for many unlucky parents. Sometimes, no matter how much you adore your kids, your love just doesn’t get through and they don’t like themselves. So your job, though it may sound heartless, is to do your best to build them up, remember you’ve done your best, and then go do something else. Otherwise, you’ll burn out and do your kid and yourself harm, instead of surviving to help another day.

What makes parents most awesome, however, is not the power of love, as wonderful as that is. It’s the power to love when love is doing no good, not take your kids’ suffering personally, survive, and keep on loving. It’s the loving parents of self-hating kids who are genuinely the most amazing, specialest snowflake parents of all.

Here are signs that you have little power over your kid’s self-esteem:

✵ Your threats have as little impact as your praise

✵ Finding a punishment or reward that matters is really hard

✵ You have trouble getting an answer, a laugh, or even a grunt to any invitation

✵ You can’t find a topic of common interest besides silence

✵ You can’t get a good suggestion from the kid’s shrink, who hasn’t heard so much as a grunt, either

Among the wishes people express when they want to protect their kids’ self-esteem are:

✵ To figure out what’s wrong

✵ To get through to their kids with their love and admiration

✵ To help her do better and/or get away from bad friends and drugs

✵ To find a treatment or therapist that will help

Here are three examples:

I know my fifteen-year-old daughter lies because she never wants to admit she hasn’t done her homework, even though it’s obvious she hasn’t. Still, she lies every goddamned time, even though her lying gets her into tons of trouble, and then she feels awful when teachers who have tried to help her just give up and tell her she’s let them down. I’ve punished her and I’ve been understanding, I go to meetings with the teachers and get her tutoring, but nothing works. My goal is to get her out of this cycle of doing poorly, lying, punishment, and feeling like a total failure.

My son has been a mess since his girlfriend dumped him a year ago when he was a high school sophomore, and we just can’t get him out of it. He’s seen a shrink, tried antidepressants, and nothing works. He stopped going to school for a month but he’s been going now; he just isn’t able to learn very much and he won’t answer the phone. I check with him to make sure he’s not suicidal, but beyond that I don’t know what to do. My goal is to help him recover.

Simply put, my daughter is big. My wife and I have tried everything to help her without making it worse—our house only has healthy food, we have her doing physical activities after school, we’ve talked to our pediatrician a million times—but even at her thinnest, she’s still both heavier and taller than the other girls in her class, and the teasing has been terrible from boys and girls alike. She cries all the time and we’re terrified that she’s going to hit puberty and start cutting or starving herself. My goal, with my wife, is to protect her from bullying by helping her become less bully-able.

The best way to help your kid with his self-esteem is to help him limit his responsibilities, just as you must limit your own. This seems like anathema to many parents, who feel the only way to develop their kids’ strengths and gifts is to load them so full of responsibilities and activities that they have to schedule pee breaks. Limiting responsibilities also seems overly permissive to parents and teachers who are trying to help kids manage inner monsters, outer peer pressure, or just hormones.

The fact is, however, that kids and adults often have limits to their self-control, and pushing responsibility across this limit breaks, not creates, confidence.

If you give yourself unlimited responsibility for your kid’s happiness, you can never be successful, and the same applies to him. If he takes full responsibility for finishing his work well, controlling his behavior, being a good kid, being happy, and not being judged or bullied, he may well wind up hating himself for flaws or just situations he can’t control, particularly considering how little it takes to mess up something on that list above.

Your mandate, to him as well as yourself, is to do as well as you can and certainly to recognize your flaws and work on them, but also to understand that certain problems may not be solvable and that doesn’t make you a failure. For kids in particular, certain problems that may not be solvable this year may be solvable in the future as their brains grow and mature. In any case, acknowledging limits is necessary for restricting the damage of caring too much about flaws and failures that can’t be helped.

So don’t look too hard for bad choices, either yours or his. Be careful to note the things he does well and the things you’ve done right as a parent. Don’t assume he’s unhappy or doing poorly because of something you didn’t notice or didn’t take care of. The only thing you may have done wrong is having unprotected sex with your spouse wherein the one wonky egg or gas-huffing sperm won the day, thus transmitting some difficult genes that are hard to live with.

Just because educators are there to help you on your quest to improve your child’s self-esteem doesn’t mean they don’t share your sense of overresponsibility and thus the need to search for what and who’s to blame for whatever’s wrong. Meetings start out friendly, but then get tense as everybody finds faults in the other guy’s performance. Don’t go down that road or react to teachers who are caught up in that negative process.

The best way to team up with teachers, instead of being sucked into polarizing discussions about what should or could have happened, is to note what they’re doing well for a problem that many people haven’t been able to solve. Give them the same protection from blame as you do your child and yourself.

Of course, embrace reasonable responsibility for trying to control whatever you think can be controlled; there are rules for bad behavior that you can enforce with incentives, even if no one knows how your child will respond, and there are procedures you can follow to track homework and provide extra help. There are also procedures for setting limits on bad impulses and eating disorders. If they don’t work, get advice and try something else. In any case, stop frequently to take pride in your efforts, your child’s efforts, and the strengths you take for granted when he’s doing well. For instance, notice what your child does well in spite of obesity, not just what goes wrong because of it.

By recognizing your efforts as a parent, regardless of results, you can prevent frustration and helplessness from poisoning your parenting and your hope for your child’s future. At least until he’s eighteen, when the law says your kid and his self-esteem are no longer your responsibility.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ Power to shore up your child’s confidence

✵ Confidence in your own ability to protect your child from depression and self-dislike

✵ Access to treatment resources that will do the above

✵ Knowledge that things won’t go sour tomorrow

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

✵ Get to be a pretty good parent

✵ Know what you can and can’t do for most problems

✵ Get reasonable professional help and judge whether it’s worthwhile

✵ Know when pretty good parenting and other help just aren’t enough

✵ Keep up morale when nothing is working

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Through reading, watching others, and/or your experience with your parents, create standards for being a pretty good parent that don’t depend on anyone’s being happy

✵ Using the same methods, develop reasonable procedures for managing tough problems

✵ Accept the notion that kids can suffer lots of misery, including not liking themselves, even though everyone is doing their best to do their job, including your kid

✵ Always remember the good things you and others are doing, despite a bad situation

✵ Never assume that a lack of progress means that someone has failed to do what they could have and should have done

✵ Never assume that your child’s lack of self-esteem is a personal failure or that it necessarily requires more work and attention on your part

Your Script

Here’s what to say to yourself or a worried third party who wonders why your kid is so unhappy and lacking in self-esteem.

Dear [Me/Relative/Teacher/Shrink/Angry Social Worker],

I share your concern about my child’s [misery/bad grades/bad behavior/status as a human black cloud] and have for some time. I think my spouse and I and [insert list of professional helpers] have come up with some good ideas about how to help him/her, and some have worked, but not enough. Right now we’re considering a new [psychotherapy/home-based care/change in meds/military school]. We see some positive signs, but it’s still touch and go. We appreciate the good help we’ve received.

No matter what popular psychology tells you, don’t pay too much attention to self-esteem, as nice as it is to have (and as often as the plea for you to like yourself comes with a pitch for a product to help you do just that). Develop your own objective methods for determining whether you or someone you care about is doing a good enough job and rely on the facts to tell you whether you should hold yourself responsible for whatever is going wrong. In almost every situation you can think of, there are commonsense procedures for defining a good-enough effort and seeing how you measure up, given whatever it is you don’t control. Then, regardless of whether your self-esteem is too low or too high, you can figure out how to make the best of bad situations, take pride in your effort, and have confidence in your ability to do the right thing. You can like what you do with your choices, even if you don’t love yourself.