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

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

chapter three

fuck fairness

Seeking justice and valuing fairness are supposed to be ideals worth pursuing, especially if you believe books by politicians, movies starring guys in capes, and shows involving law and/or order (not limited to Law & Order). Unfortunately, while justice makes for a good motivation in fiction, it’s a dangerous goal in real life.

Since movies, TV shows, and a politician’s ramblings are mostly fantasy, they can get away with depicting a world that is fundamentally just. The world we actually live in, however, is basically unfair, so seeking justice can become an excuse for pursuing unattainable dreams while ignoring important but much less satisfying obligations, like getting to work, making a living, and doing all the boring stuff, like taking out the garbage and paying the cable bill, for which capes are totally unnecessary.

Admittedly, experiencing personal injustice leaves lasting scars and a strong desire not just for revenge but for that better fantasy world where unfair acts aren’t allowed.

That’s why the need for justice and fairness is not just a philosophical notion but a deep craving that easily blinds us to consequences and the existence of other priorities. We spend our leisure hours watching criminal things happen to innocent people, just because it satisfies a deep need to see the bad guys get identified, kicked, and permanently trussed in the end.

A willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of justice is what turns you into a crusader and martyr, caped or not, but the fact that most cartoon crusaders often wear masks, uniforms, and generic faces points to another side effect of justice lust: it erases your individuality. Whatever your responsibility to friends, family, parenting, and self-protection, pursuing justice rationalizes self-endangerment and thus imposes a lower priority on all the other things that make you you.

Given the amount of evil you can cause by pursuing fairness, you should know better than to trust your instincts when you feel a strong need to right a wrong, nail a villain, or, worst of all, get closure.

At least force yourself to think of probable and unintended consequences, so you don’t wind up, say, hurting two of your children while punishing whoever hurt your third. Then redefine your goal, so that it’s not to pursue justice or punish unfairness but to accept the unfairness of the world, bear the humiliation and helplessness that go with it, and then seek to do the most good.

You need to know when to accept the fact that you’ve been fucked and know when fighting will get you further fucked and the only way to make life fair again is to move forward and treat others fairly yourself.

Defending Your Right to Live in Safety

There’s a certain kind of person—usually middle class, sometimes conservative, always in Florida—who feels that they have a right to live in safety, free from fear. This is an illusion not shared by less lucky people, many of whom are the very people who end up shot by the safety-entitled, often in Florida.

The danger of believing in your right to security, especially when faced with danger and lawlessness, is that it can draw you into either slow, unwinnable conflicts, or sudden, regrettable acts of rage. You’re safer knowing, from the beginning, that you can never count on safety, rather than having the illusion that it’s something you’re obligated to fight for. You’ll be much better at knowing when to suck it up, shut up, and/or duck and live for a better day.

The other risk in believing in your right to safety is that you feel you have a right to blame someone if you’re threatened or harmed. Sometimes, in the course of seeking help against your perceived threat, the called policeman arrives on time, the authorities place responsibility fairly, and you either wind up protected or compensated. Most times, however, the timing is wrong, the facts get distorted, and the process of pinning responsibility and getting restitution is prolonged, expensive, and possibly futile. Such ordeals also may then stimulate your tendency to ruminate over could-haves and should-haves and blame yourself. It’s better to avoid the issue of responsibility, get restitution when it’s available, and think of other things.

Instead of expecting to be safe, assume that every life can, with sufficient bad luck, turn into a war zone—your new neighbor could turn out to be a nut, you could park your car on a sinkhole, you could have a perfect bill of health and get hit by a rogue bus—and fighting to restore your safety may attract more danger and ruin your life.

If you can accept the fact that you live in a jungle, however, you may not sleep as well at night, but you’ll be more alert to danger. Then you’ll do what you can to preserve your safety, regardless of whether it requires retreat, humiliation, and victory for your enemies. And you’ll avoid blame, regardless of how frustrating it is to keep it inside, unless you’re really lucky (or at least have an excellent attorney).

You might like yourself better if you could enforce your safety with your own strength, or at least your own firearm (Florida). You deserve more respect, however, when you recognize things are beyond your control, and make whatever tough, humiliating, weaponless steps are necessary to minimize the danger.

Here’s the safety you should have as a right, but don’t:

✵ No fires, burglars, or dangerous intruders after you turn off the lights and lock the door (and set the alarm and motion-sensor lights and land mines)

✵ Safety from vengeful crazy people once the authorities are on the case

✵ Freedom from any/all car accidents as long as you drive carefully, change your oil, and obey the speed limit exactly

✵ Prompt assistance from friendly and professional cops if you’ve done nothing wrong and talk politely

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To figure out why they can’t make themselves safe without fleeing or otherwise putting their life at risk

✵ To get through to authorities who are either failing to protect them or siding with the person who is threatening them

✵ To figure out what they did wrong to let themselves be harmed

✵ To figure out how to get closure after an event that leaves them feeling violated and terrified

Here are three examples:

My husband’s ex is mentally ill and really can’t help herself, but ever since she had a breakdown after going off her meds a few months ago she’s been determined to kill him because voices in her head tell her he’s possessed by devils. The last time she was hospitalized, she was trying to burn down our house when I woke up and smelled smoke. No real damage, but now she’s about to get discharged, and she always stops her meds as soon as no one is watching. Right now she sounds perfectly sane, so the police tell me there’s nothing they can do. I know she’ll be crazy again within six months and no restraining order will stop her then. I have no intention of giving up my job or moving out of our home. My goal is to get someone to stop her and not have to give up the home we’ve built for ourselves and our kids.

My boyfriend is a sweet, loving person, but he gets violent when he’s drunk, and sometimes he hits me. I forgive him because I know he’s trying to stop, which is especially hard for him since both of his parents are alcoholics and his childhood was pure torture. My friends tell me I could get hurt if I don’t leave him, but I know they’re just saying that because they’re my friends and don’t know or understand my boyfriend like I do. My goal is to figure out a way to support him and get him help, so we’ll both be safe from his violence.

After getting mugged by a burglar I interrupted when I came home early, I changed the locks and installed an alarm, all of which should have made me feel strong and empowered and all that shit. Instead I have nightmares, I’m afraid to answer the doorbell, and every little noise makes me jump and hyperventilate. I’ve recovered physically but I can’t get over my fear; it’s so bad that sometimes I get anxiety attacks in the middle of the day and can barely do my job. My goal is to recover my sense of security and get back my old self.

Joan Didion famously said, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” but people don’t just tell their autobiographies; they’re prolific in their own fan fiction as well. Such fictions, also known as lies, are also integral to all of our lives, and one of the biggest lies we often tell ourselves is “everything is going to be okay.”

We nurture this illusion of safety so we don’t have to live in a constant state of panic, but sometimes wishful thinking makes us fool ourselves into believing we can reform either someone dangerous or our own dangerous thoughts after a random, overwhelming trauma.

The facts are, however, that we can’t count on safety even when we’re careful; neither can we stop feeling fear once it’s got hold of us, and sometimes we have to give up all we own and flee.

In any case, it takes careful thought to be realistic about safety, avoid exposure to danger for the wrong reasons, and stop blaming ourselves for the harm and losses that occur when safety is impossible.

When a relationship is unsafe and you don’t know when or how you might be attacked, a lawyer is usually your best therapist, because knowing your actual risks is the best antidote to both unreasonable fears and wishful thinking. Just don’t look for a lawyer who will listen, hold your hand, and sympathize with how unfair it is that the police and courts can’t really protect you. Lawyers charge too much for you to use them for sympathy alone, and besides, it would be a waste of time for everyone involved.

Instead, look for a lawyer who will tell you what will really happen; help you estimate your risk exposure after doing everything you can to preserve your home, relationships, etc.; and encourage you to do what’s necessary, however unfair it is that you have to do it, to protect yourself.

Don’t make the mistake of looking for a shrink who is well meaning and foolish enough to try to help you work out your relationship with a dangerous person, because pursuing such a goal can stir up and stimulate a psyche set to explode.

If you have a loved one who is dangerous but wants to control it, urge them to find a shrink who won’t waste time figuring out why they’re so angry, but will just help them put a lid on things and keep it there, regardless of the pain inside, while you stay out of it.

Even if you’ve done the right thing, don’t expect to feel good. No one controls their reaction to trauma, which may linger for years. Certainly, you should try standard PTSD treatments, like medication and cognitive therapies, which sometimes help. Remind yourself, however, that whether or not you continue to have anxiety attacks and phobias, you’ve done the right thing and you’re not to blame for your current condition.

Accepting the fact that you can’t protect yourself or your family from crazies or the fear they inspire doesn’t ever mean you’ve been defeated. It just means life is full of crazy dangers and you’re a success as long as you get the message and act accordingly, even if you have to cut off your right arm in doing so.

Indeed, every day that you venture out of your house, do your usual job, and endure fears and symptoms, you’re a hero, and in a nonfiction way.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ Safety, security, and control over same

✵ Guaranteed preservation of your closest relationships, job, home, etc.

✵ Exorcism of demons in those you love

✵ Restoration of your peace of mind

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

✵ Find the best compromise between safety and your other priorities in an unsafe world

✵ Reduce the risk of violence by walling yourself off from dangerous people, even those close to you

✵ Strengthen your survival skills and help your family survive

✵ Become strong enough to pursue your usual life in spite of humiliation, loss, anxiety, and fears that won’t go away

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Judge your risk by what is likely to happen, not by what you wish will change

✵ Gather information from experts about what you can actually do to reduce your risk

✵ Discard wishful thinking and do what’s necessary

✵ Manage the pain of loss and persistent fear without feeling like a failure

✵ Take pride in your survival efforts and what they require

Your Script

Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you’re feeling endangered.

Dear [Me/Family Member/Dangerous Family Member/Ex/Nut Job Who’s Forced His Way into Your Orbit],

I hate to think that the danger of violence means we can’t find a way to [work things out/avoid legal action/prevent an explosion], but that’s something you or I can’t control, regardless of what we do. I’m therefore going to [take whatever action is necessary/leave town/go into witness protection] to put an end to the risk and allow both of us to move on. I believe we should stop communicating and will not accept [insert any type of communication here, including carrier pigeon].

Did You Know … That Judge Judy Is an American Hero?*

Retired family-court judge Judith Sheindlin, aka Judge Judy, makes tens of millions of dollars every year for doing one of the least appreciated jobs in the world: going on television and telling foolish people that they are wrong, that they can’t get what they want just because they feel it’s owed to them, and that adult men cannot wear ripped dungarees.

Judge Judy has been broadcast in syndication for years, and even though her message and delivery haven’t changed much during her run, her worth and popularity only seem to increase. It might seem unclear why viewers can’t get enough of being reminded not to play house and sign a lease with someone if you’re not married, or that an oral contract is bullshit, or not to cross your arms because you’re in court, dummy, but the fact is, as humans, there is a part of us deep down that refuses to acknowledge how unfair life is.

That means every time Judy tells someone she can’t get back all the money she lent her baby daddy, or tells someone she doesn’t care how he feels because this is court, not therapy, it’s always a mini-revelation. She does more than settle small-claims cases; she is the oracle of the big truth. When you see the happenings in the courtroom of Judge Judith Sheindlin, you see a true hero at work.

*This book was completed before the release of Amy Poehler’s excellent memoir/call to arms, Yes Please, in which she also uses the phrase “Judge Judy, American Hero.” As such, the similar phrasing is due to a genuine, shared admiration for a legal heroine, not a theft, intentional or otherwise, and we hope Ms. Poehler understands (or just reads this book; she’s great).

Getting Closure After Childhood Abuse

Child abuse is a particularly heinous crime because kids are helpless and defenseless against it, the effects stretch on forever, and if you really care about helping kids grow and become strong, then watching them harmed is truly heartbreaking. Not only is it instinctive for us to punish child abuse; we want to eliminate abusers from our world, and in a most painful manner.

But sometimes, punishing an abuser may harm a victim more than it helps, while making it harder to reduce abuse in the world. For those abusers who are easy to manage—the drunken parent who never does it again once he’s outed—jail does no good while destroying the family’s financial security and, most important, making it more difficult for victims to recover. The prospect of punishment may also deter reporting by family members who fear its effect on the family.

Some would argue that it helps recovery to have victims confront their abuser, or at least see their abuser confronted by authority. In fact, a kid’s feelings of responsibility for the condition of his or her parents and other adults aren’t easily erased, even by validating the much greater responsibility of parents for kids.

Unfortunately, recovery from abuse usually requires long-term retraining rather than catharsis, and guilty feelings of responsibility and the destructive urges that go with them tend to linger long after kids have grown up and escaped the coercion of their past.

So don’t expect to overcome child abuse by gathering courage to confront your abuser. Feeling validated and knowing that he’s exposed and punished may not improve depression, despair, and loneliness. What does help, however, is to learn how to value yourself and fight self-destructive urges.

So the long-term symptoms that arise from child abuse—depression, anxiety, PTSD—may or may not be helped by confrontation, direct or indirect. Indeed, they may not be curable by any treatment. What is most important, however, is that the abuse victim understands that he is not responsible for causing or clearing up symptoms, but for living a meaningful life in spite of them. That’s the only sure way to stand up to child abuse: by living a full life in spite of it, not defined by it, as a healthy adult.

Here’s what should happen to the victims of child abuse but often doesn’t:

✵ Healing from anxiety, depression, and self-hate

✵ Reduction in feeling overly sensitive to and responsible for the feelings of others

✵ Comfort with close relationships, sexual and otherwise

✵ Confidence in the ability to protect oneself

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To stop anxiety, depression, and self-harmful urges

✵ To break the pattern and stop choosing friends and partners who are abusive

✵ To feel happy, confident, or normal

✵ To get closure on their experience

Here are three examples:

My father stopped abusing me after I told the school social worker, and now I’m seeing a therapist who is trying to help me with depression. The therapist thinks I don’t want to see my father punished because I’m trying to protect him, but I’m also worried about what will happen to the family if he’s in jail and we’re broke. My mother can’t work, and I have older siblings who were never hit and will have to drop out of school if my parents can’t help pay. My goal is to figure out what will be best for my recovery and how to find treatment that will help.

It turns out my daughter was abused by her stepfather when he was drinking and I didn’t know, and now I feel terrible. She was seeing a therapist because she was cutting herself, skipping curfew, and hanging out with a much older drug user who was clearly taking advantage of her. I’ve told her I’m sorry, and that I was so busy trying to keep things going that I was blind to what was really going on, but she’s as angry and depressed as ever and I just don’t know what to do. My goal is to help her recover from this horrible trauma, for which I feel responsible.

I was molested by a family friend whenever the two families spent a lot of time together when I was a child, and now, ten years later, treatment has helped me realize how inappropriate it was and how much I hated him for it. When I told my parents, they were shocked and very supportive, but they’re close to this man’s entire family and they don’t want to say anything, particularly now that he’s old and unwell. I’ve told them if they won’t, I will. My goal is to make sure this can’t happen again, strike a blow for honesty and openness, and help my own recovery.

There’s an all-or-nothing quality to the anger experienced by survivors of abuse that, while perfectly understandable, is very hard to change and manage. Whether you turn it on others or yourself, it leaves little room for trust, hope, or compromise and is pure poison for relationships with others and your desire to live. The anger is as powerful, destructive, and erratic as a natural disaster, except the cause is anything but.

Focusing that anger on the abuser seems like the obvious choice—he certainly deserves it—but doing so doesn’t make the pain go away. It may also hold false promise for relief and healing that, when broken, could make the pain worse.

You may feel comforted by a therapist who joins you in your anger against your abuser and other people in your life who treat you badly. As time goes by, however, you have to ask yourself whether it’s really helping. Your feelings may be validated, but your long-term goal is not to hate your enemies, regardless of how hateful they are, but to find friends who are basically trustworthy and learn how to manage extreme feelings, whether you’re trying too hard to be liked or getting too angry when you’re hurt. Make sure your therapy can provide you with tools and good coaching for that difficult task.

A good way to educate yourself about remedies that help you manage extreme feelings is to read the curriculum for a cognitive/behavioral treatment called DBT (dialectical behavior therapy). It provides ideas, exercises, and values for training yourself to respond constructively when you feel hate and despair. It doesn’t make those feelings go away, unfortunately, and frustrating them can temporarily make them worse. The fact that you’ve prevented yourself from doing something destructive, however, like hurting yourself or blowing off a friendship, can protect you from re-traumatizing yourself and, in the end, give you a better life.

If you’re the parent or friend of someone who happens to have the extremely negative feelings that result from abuse, advising her on how to manage feelings is much more helpful than trying to ease, or take responsibility for, her pain. If you feel responsible, think carefully about what you actually controlled and apologize, but don’t let guilt get you to blindly encourage and tolerate venting, accusations, and mean behavior.

Instead, remind yourself that neither you nor she deserves pain and that she has to learn to manage it, or it will cause more pain. Familiarize yourself with DBT or some other cognitive/behavioral approach to managing negativity, and encourage her to do likewise. Then remove yourself from negative conversations and try to focus her in a positive direction.

If you wonder whether disclosure to family will help, don’t do it for catharsis. Instead, add up the positive and negative consequences. Of course disclosure is necessary if it’s the only way to prevent further abuse (or if you’re a legally mandated reporter). Otherwise, it may stir up a hornet’s nest among friends and family who can’t tolerate the truth and can thus cause further isolation and conflict for the victim. What’s important is not airing the truth and punishing the criminal (especially if s/he can no longer hurt anyone else), but getting as much support and understanding as you can from those who have it to give.

Not all abuse victims are troubled by negative feelings, but most must carry some burden of pain, anxiety, and mistrust that doesn’t disappear, even with good therapy and loving friends. When they can endure those feelings and nevertheless find a reason to live, love, and restrain negative impulses, they’ve truly overcome their trauma. The negative emotions may still be powerful enough to linger, but positive actions are what matter.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ A world in which abuse doesn’t occur

✵ Freedom from pain, trauma, doubt, self-hate, and yearnings for bad people and bad substances

✵ Reliable healing through catharsis, intense support, or anything quick

✵ Healing through punishment and a slow and painful revenge

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

✵ Improve safety

✵ Get better at controlling self-destructive behavior

✵ Gain perspective that is less distorted by negative feelings and close relationships

✵ Gain hope in a better future

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Report and stop child abuse whenever you encounter it

✵ Discuss methods for evaluating how you’re doing and what’s important for you that are not reactive to intense negative feelings or the opinion of others

✵ Practice methods for staying in touch with your goals and values when you’re flooded with negative feelings

✵ Find coaches and supporters who can reinforce your progress

✵ Take pride in what you’ve accomplished, despite continuing pressure to despair and hurt yourself and your relationships

Your Script

Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you’re feeling abuse-related fear and despair.

Dear [Me/Abuser/Person Who Has Disappointed Me But May Not Be Abusive/Indifferent Jerk],

I feel as if life is [insert synonym for “bullshit”] and the people I care most about don’t really respect [what I have to give/me, since they’ve used me like a Wet-Nap at a clambake], but I know my childhood left me with horrible feelings and even more horrible taste in friends. I will continue to avoid [drinking/drugging/hanging out with Assholes], attend meetings with like-minded people, keep on working if I can, and review the exercises that remind me about what I value in life and myself.

Getting a Square Deal

Getting your due, in spite of most people’s inflated expectations of what they deserve, is a reasonable goal only if you’re under the age of seven. Children often use fairness as the main argument for both getting what they want and avoiding what they don’t want, and it’s also why their arguments often end in tears.

It would certainly be a better world if you could count on getting what you deserve if you stand up for yourself and appeal to the right authorities. But facts are often impossible to confirm, and authorities have the same weaknesses as everyone else, so it’s no wonder that fights about fairness escalate fast. When parents are the authority, they can just tell kids that life isn’t fair. When adults accuse other adults of unfair behavior, it implies they’re bad, and the nastiness that results is usually much worse than a time-out.

A righteous strike for fair wages may push your job overseas, or getting your spouse to understand your point may win you a cold shoulder and weeks of couples therapy. The amount of passion you feel for getting what you deserve, however, should tell you it’s a dangerous wish and force you to think twice before adopting it as a goal and making it a cause.

Instead, if you haven’t gotten anywhere after you’ve done your best to push your case, check out the attitudes and past actions of the people who stand in your way. Almost always, you’ll find their words and actions reflect values that are not likely to change and will not allow them to agree with you about what you believe is fair. If you argue that your ideas about fairness have greater moral weight than theirs, you can expect them to respond similarly. Ultimately, the more you’re right, the more they’ll hate you.

So instead of having a tantrum, stop damaging your case and discover whether it’s possible to make a deal using different incentives than guilt and fairness, or whether no deal is possible and you have to accept the pain of feeling screwed. Sure, the latter choice feels supremely unfair, but as grown-ups, we accept that that’s just the way life can be.

Life never guarantees you a square deal, but you can be a good, realistic dealer in an unfairly chaotic marketplace if you assume that no one necessarily sees things the way you do, no matter how obvious the truth appears, and that getting what you deserve is a lucky event, not a right. You might have good reason to feel badly treated, but you can’t be stopped from giving yourself a time-out to regroup, then making the best of a bad deal.

Here’s what should happen to you if you deserve a square deal but don’t get it:

✵ Eventual victory if you know your rights and express them with confidence

✵ Protection by higher authorities (Human Resources, courts, Jebus) from fuckups by lower authorities

✵ Satisfaction of wearing out your opponents by being persistent and right

✵ Confidence that comes from getting what you deserve, especially when it’s from the clenched fists of the undeserving

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To get a system they believe in to work for them

✵ To get no more than what they deserve, and no less

✵ To make the system work better for everyone

✵ To get the boss to see what’s fair

Here are three examples:

I was promised a promotion eighteen months ago, but it clearly hasn’t happened. Meanwhile, a guy who’s old buddies with the boss has moved ahead instead. I’ve had terrific performance reviews, though I think my boss was bothered when I raised an ethics concern that he didn’t think we should worry about. Now I’m wondering whether I should speak to HR or share my concerns first with my boss. My goal is just to get ahead and get the promotion he knows I deserve.

My husband says he needs to spend time with the guys every night because he works hard to support his family and will go crazy if he can’t blow off steam, but I work too, and he leaves me alone with the kids every night. When I tell him it isn’t fair, he tells me I’m nagging and that’s another reason he’s not home in the evening, because he doesn’t like my nagging or the pressure I put on him to be Superdad. My goal is to get him to see that he’s not doing his share as a husband or parent.

My parents treat my brother like he can do no wrong, and they’re always urging me to spend time with him and try to build him up. In truth, he’s an alcoholic and fuckup, but I love him and would like to see him get ahead. What drives me crazy, though, is the way my parents take my success for granted and give me a hard time whenever they think I’ve made my brother unhappy. Sometimes I’d really like to tell them all off. My goal is to have a relationship with my parents that isn’t unfairly distorted by my brother’s needs.

Unfair treatment is often paid forward; many times when you feel someone is treating you unfairly, that person feels she’s under unfair pressure herself, making tough decisions, asking you for something you should provide, and getting less than the understanding and respect she deserves. It should be a Chinese proverb that he who dishes out the most shit feels the most like the toilet of the world.

You may be right and have good reason to feel the way you do, but as long as the other person sees it her way—her feeling of moral entitlement is always bigger than yours—you’re not going to win. Plus, arguing about fairness will probably trigger bad feelings and a vicious cycle of nastiness that hurts everyone around, the weak more than the strong. Indeed, the more you’re right and the more she doubts herself, the nastier her response will be. That’s why expressing yourself about unfairness is a dangerous goal.

Once you know you’re not going to get someone else—your boss, wife, colleague—to go along with your idea about what’s fair, shut up and think. Stop lining up new arguments for why you’re right, even if you think of better punch lines. Instead, mend fences by finding legitimate ways to acknowledge the other person’s right to see things the way they do.

Regardless of how you really feel, don’t imply that her views reflect selfishness, laziness, or other bad values. Cite good values that, at least theoretically, may be driving her, so she no longer has to prove that she’s right and you’re wrong—you simply have different ways of adding things up.

At that point, there may or may not be other incentives you can use to make a deal. For instance, the boss who would ignore your dedication and find fault with your work might think twice if you told him how much you liked the job, appreciated his mentorship, and subtly pointed out how much you wanted to stay despite the rising market value for your services, as evidenced by a current job offer elsewhere.

When there’s no way to get a square deal, disengage from argument and decide whether you believe enough in your own point of view that you don’t need validation. If so, ask yourself what you wish to do about it. That’s when, without argument, you’re likely to look for a better job, tell a partner he can shape up or ship out, or decline pressure from friends or family by saying, simply, you’ll have to agree to disagree and let the subject drop. Believing in your standards for a square deal, even when there’s no way to get it, is what allows you to create boundaries and take independent action.

Knowing you can’t get what’s fair and then shutting up about it feels frustrating and demeaning, and may make you feel defeated. In reality, you’re simply butting up against the chaotic way good and bad people, using differently structured brains and coming from different cultures, come up with different ideas about fairness.

If you continue to believe in your values, sidestep conflict and shit and decide what you can do with the choices you have, then you’ll always get the fairest deal possible, from yourself.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ A square deal for everyone who deserves it

✵ A fair system of authority for correcting unfair actions by those who don’t know better

✵ Faith in the power of justice to do more good than harm

✵ The satisfaction of eventual vindication

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

✵ Build your strength and market value through hard work, if you’re lucky

✵ Find people who share your vision of fairness and have the ability to make decisions

✵ Treat yourself fairly, apart from what your feelings tell you

✵ Know when to keep your mouth shut

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Recognize when your idea of fairness has become threatening to others

✵ Ease the threat by spreading honest if limited moral approval like manure

✵ Make deals with whatever you’ve got to offer, other than a common understanding of what’s fair

✵ Never feel personally defeated by your inability to make things work fairly for yourself or others

✵ Never stop trying to make things work fairly in the tiny part of the world you control

Your Script

Here’s what to say when you’re feeling unfairly screwed.

Dear [Me/Ingrate/Promise Breaker/Manipulative User],

I feel as if I’m being screwed over by a [best friend/boss/parent/partner]’s idea of what’s fair, and it makes me want to [insert synonym for “have a tantrum” here]. I know now, however, that they actually believe in the fairness of what they say, which shouldn’t surprise me, but I didn’t think it was going to happen to me. If our relationship needs to continue for reasons of [love/kids/being unable to afford to leave town or hire a hit man or lawyer] I will mend fences, define fairness for myself, and do what’s necessary.

“That’s Not Fair!” Quote from a Politician, or from Jacob, the Elder Bennett Daughter’s Four-Year-Old Son?

1. Providing fairness to the American people … is all we’re asking for. My goodness.

2. It’s not fair that my brothers get to go and I don’t, and also you said I could have a grilled cheese.

3. I want what I want when I want it.

4. I’m presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow do a Jedi mind-meld [sic] with these folks and convince them to do what’s right.

5. That does not sound like a good plan. That’s not fair. That sounds like no plan.

1. Politician (John Boehner, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, 10/6/13); 2. Jacob; 3. Politician (Eric Cantor’s high school yearbook); 4. Politician (Barack Obama, 3/1/13); 5. Jacob

Clearing Your Name

If you’re at all familiar with science fiction or fantasy novels, or maybe blues ballads, or even just the autobiography I, Tina, then you know that names hold a special power. Mostly, names are a target for mortal attack, presumably because they stand for identity and reputation, and once someone knows your true identity, you’re exposed.

There’s little that can make you feel as helpless and violated as an attack on your name. Even though there are laws to protect you, it often takes a long time before you can defend yourself and, meanwhile, you’re very vulnerable. At least in this galaxy. Just ask Tina Turner.

Frequently, the person who has slandered you really believes what they say, even if facts have been distorted or don’t exist. If you haven’t checked in with your local anti-vaxxer lately, you might’ve forgotten that people believe something is true just because they believe it strongly. It’s often impossible to prove something didn’t happen after someone says, sincerely, that it did. Unless you’re lucky enough to have an all-seeing video cam at the right place, you can’t prove a negative, and arguing about it just increases the impression that you did something wrong.

If you protest your innocence with sincere anger, you sound like an angry person who might actually have done something scary. Meanwhile, false accusations may trigger investigation, charges, and legal actions that drag on for months or years. Or they may prevent you from seeing your kids or require you to pay for guardians, monitors, and other costly services. The more you make it your goal to clear your name, the higher your risk of widening the hurt.

Sometimes false accusations can cause you to doubt yourself; even though you know you didn’t do wrong, it’s hard not to feel you did something to make someone mad at you and to wonder what you could have done better, especially when the accuser is family or someone trusted. You wind up focusing on the accuser’s feelings and your continued interactions, rather than reassuring yourself that the distortions are his, not yours, and you have no reason to hold yourself accountable for wrongs you didn’t commit.

Knowing how helpless you are to feel better and control slander is not comforting, but it can help protect you from making things worse and direct you toward realistic hope, which depends on patience and a willingness to gather information. Most lies unravel in time if you survive long enough, keep good records, and believe in your own standards of right and wrong. To survive, however, you must accept the unfairness of what you’re up against and believe that it can happen to good people.

Enduring severe slander is like having cancer. It takes over a large part of your life for a long time and causes you great pain and weakness. Even so, that doesn’t mean you’ve made a mistake or failed to fight a good fight, because whether you have the illness or die from it says nothing about you as a person.

Your having the strength and will to fight, in spite of pain and humiliation, is what says something significant about who you are. And who you are goes far beyond your name and all that it entails.

Here’s what should happen to the victims of slander but often doesn’t:

✵ Vindication after a quick investigation, followed by a forgiveness sacrifice

✵ No devastating costs, literally or emotionally

✵ An opportunity to tell your side of things and be believed (by parties other than your dog and therapist)

✵ A chance to preserve your basic rights to have privacy and your business not minded by others

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To get through to their accuser, the police, the press, the judge, other relatives, tabloids, and everyone else whose opinion matters

✵ To prove their innocence without having to wait a long, long time for procedures to unfold and vindication to be achieved

✵ To not feel horribly punished when they feel they were the ones wronged in the first place

✵ To protect their kids from a total family meltdown/shit-flinging contest

Here are three examples:

I’ve always known my wife saw nothing good about me when she was in a bad mood, but I hung in there because I love the kids. Besides, everyone knows she’s vicious sometimes but gets over it, and I never thought she meant what she said. So I was shocked a month ago when she kicked me out, changed the locks, and got a restraining order after telling the judge I hit her. The fact is, she hit me and I never hit her, but I was so angry when I marched to the police station to get them to help me that I think they took her side. She won’t let me have my tools, I can’t work, and I don’t know how I’ll afford a lawyer. I can’t believe how fucked I am. My goal is to get out from under this mountain of lies and get to see my kids again.

My mother says she won’t talk to me because I lied to her and wouldn’t help her when she had cancer, but that’s just not true. She’s the kind of person who makes things up and then believes them, and my family should know that. Even so, no one will stand up to her, so she avoids me at family parties, if I’m invited at all, and the years go by. I’m worried that she’ll die before we ever have a chance to make up or say good-bye, and the estrangement hurts. I wish I could be sure my family knows that what she says isn’t true. My goal is to put an end to this crazy conflict before she dies.

I know my ex was bitter and our divorce dramatic (restraining orders were involved), but I thought he was out of my hair since our finances were settled by the court and he’s even remarried. Then I noticed someone was writing anonymous, negative comments about me as a Realtor on every website imaginable (Yelp, various listing sites, etc.). Now I’ve got prospective clients, referred by other clients, who seem to drop me once they google my name, and I know he’s doing it to me. My goal is to protect myself from a vicious attack that is destroying my professional reputation.

When you’re wounded by false allegations and unable to retaliate or set the record straight, the biggest mistake you can make is to decide that, because what’s happened to you is insane, undeserved, and agonizing, fighting back with truth and sanity is the “right thing to do.” Unfortunately, that’s like violating the laws of physics and creating order out of a nuclear meltdown, and it’s not going to work. You’ll double the amount of disorder, given how explosive the situation is to begin with.

Unfortunately, no one can really protect themselves from this kind of trauma. Expressing your outrage will add to the chaos by giving comfort, pleasure, and excitement to your enemy. As the Bennetts’ first law of insanity/energy dictates, attempting to force sanity on an insane situation just adds to insanity’s power and momentum.

So if possible, starch your upper lip and prepare to communicate calmly and only when necessary. Instead of pretending you don’t care, just show self-control and an ability to stay focused on business. Begin the process of documenting your transactions with whoever wants to take your words out of context or get you to say things you regret, so as to create a record of reality. Stay calm, act constructively, and demonstrate that you’re the opposite of who you’re alleged to be.

Be prepared to state your differences, if the opportunity arises, but not to argue, defend, or persuade. Those who are against you won’t listen, and when the need to argue arises, your lawyer understands the ground rules better than you do. Yes, keeping it all inside is hard, but it will be harder if you don’t.

If your relationship with your kids is at stake, don’t panic. Nothing could be more important, but you’ve got lots of time to put things back together and you’ll do better later on, when the big loyalty battle gets old and the usual divorce issues get settled. If nothing is on your side in the short run, your opportunities may get stronger as time goes by.

Your goal isn’t to prove your enemy wrong, but to avoid centering your life on your enemy and his allegations, no matter how aggravated you get or how much time and money you’re required to spend on a struggle. Fight to keep your focus on your usual values and to move past whoever is trying hard to hold on to you; it’s easy for them to get a grip on you in the beginning and much harder later on.

Remember, the nastiness of a slanderous attack proves how right you were to mistrust the character of someone you may have once been close to and how healthy it is for you to distance yourself. You used to think there was something screwy about him, and now you know he’s even worse than you thought. If a persistently strong attachment continues to make the relationship painful, accept the pain and take comfort in knowing that distancing is the right thing to do.

You can’t protect yourself from the immediate pain and helplessness of slander, but you can always win in the end by staying focused on your own goals, controlling what you do with your feelings, and working to restore the balance of your life, energy, and universe.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ Quick validation and vindication

✵ Protection from loss and damage to your finances, reputation, and family relationships

✵ Control over the damage by persuasion, negotiation, or retaliation

✵ Relief from outrage and general unbelievable bullshit

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

✵ Avoid making things worse

✵ Limit damage, gather allies, and fight if necessary

✵ Stay focused on your life, as opposed to your defense

✵ Strengthen your self-control

✵ Learn from your mistakes

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Don’t let your outrage take over

✵ Learn how to assert yourself in measured, careful speech

✵ Identify what’s worth fighting for and what you can win

✵ Don’t get panicked by outrage and fear

✵ Educate yourself about relevant laws and legal procedures and get the best help you can afford

✵ Take heart in your long-term goals and in your gradual ability to move beyond the reach of the Assholes who are out to get you

Your Script

Here’s what to say when you’re slandered.

Dear [Me/Unjust Accuser/Those Who Believe Said Accuser’s Shit],

I am aware of allegations stating that I [fool around/am a criminally bad parent/don’t bathe] and can assure you they aren’t true. I don’t intend to discuss them unless it’s necessary to protect my [livelihood/time with my kids/now fragile sense of sanity and reality—and even that, only with my lawyer]. Other than to deny them, I hope to avoid wasting time on old grievances and instead focus on the [insert positive noun describing anything but the rumors].

Instant Catharsis!

Unfair scenarios with some fictional justice, so you don’t try to find it on your own.

Frustrating Situation

Imagined Justice

Best-Case Scenario

After a few blissful months, the man of your dreams suddenly declares that it’s not you, it’s him, and dumps you like a sack of dirty towels. You never hear from him again.

Soon after his heartless dumping, he contracts a rare virus that attacks his genitals and gives him the first known case of chronic penis farts. He dies not long after, alone and exhausted, kept awake for days by his constant frontal flatulence.

You spend a couple of weeks sulking in front of Nora Ephron movies, then figure out better criteria for dating, like focusing less on dream guys and more on real-life decent men.

You have an interview for your dream job, kill it, leave totally satisfied/high-fiving all of your interviewers, but then never hear back. You find out later that they gave the job to a guy who’s less qualified who’s buddies with the boss’s son.

Turns out the boss’s kid and this new hire are more than buddies, and when they reveal their secret affair to the closed-minded daddy/CEO, he banishes both from the company, which leads to a boycott, which puts the company out of business. The couple marries anyway and opens a successful spa for small dogs in Jersey.

You remember that even though life is unfair and the job should have been yours, the reason you didn’t get the job had nothing to do with your skills, which are still kick-ass. You go on to work somewhere else less exciting but with fewer dickheads.

You and your sister have had a tumultuous relationship for as long as you can remember, but after she dies suddenly in a car accident, you realize how much you wish you’d made peace, and how much you’ll suffer knowing you’ll never have the chance.

While helping to clean up her things, you find a letter from her that says how much she actually loves you, even if she can’t stop bickering, and that letter is wrapped around several hundred thousand dollars. You build a large statue in her honor (after buying a big house and a pony).

You remind yourself that your sister wasn’t a bad person, and if she had the chance, she’d certainly want the same thing. Instead of focusing on what can’t be, you remember the good times you had and the good sister she could sometimes be.

Getting Justice and/or Closure

Sometimes it’s hard to get over a great disappointment or loss because of the longing, not just for what’s been lost, but for what could or should have been. That’s when the pain of mourning isn’t just hard to bear but is prolonged by shock over the unfairness of life and the need to seek closure, that great emotional unicorn.

You’ve been counting on the power of a shared set of moral beliefs, together with your record of good actions, to keep your life and the life of your family and community moving forward. The yearning for closure happens when your heart and your faith in the way society is supposed to work are both broken.

So when someone betrays you, or something bad happens and no one sets it straight, it feels like your world is undone and can’t be put back together. It feels like an open wound, which closure would protect from infection by restoring your world to its natural order.

In reality, of course, even people with the same beliefs often see the world differently, interpret the rules differently, and thus wind up betraying one another while feeling it’s the other guy’s fault. And bystanders and authorities, confused about the facts and having to listen to multiple arguments, can’t act decisively and often do more harm than good.

So it’s neither surprising nor unusual for things to fall apart in a way that undermines your faith in hard work, sacrifice, justice, and a fair society. What you want is for something to restore your faith, but what you need is a different kind of faith to begin with. You’re the one who forged the connection between doing good and getting good back from others and you’re the one who has to knock that crazy, dangerous idea out of your head, not keep pushing for relief and vindication that will never come.

It’s not just the lingering malaise that’s a problem; having faith in the commitment of others to your values is also dangerous because it blinds you to reality and makes you too reactive when something goes wrong. Feeling oppressed by whatever went wrong makes you seek out similar situations, looking for a do-over and a chance to make things right. You look for ways to get even or just to straighten things out instead of accepting what’s broken and moving ahead.

Instead, accept life’s painful lesson that some people you trust will betray you because, from their frame of reference, it’s the right thing to do, or just the only thing they feel they can do. Some people will let bad things happen without doing much to stop or punish them because it’s just so complicated. If anyone promised you otherwise, they were wrong and were just speaking for themselves, not the true powers that be.

So if you want to do good, make commitments and be part of a community, but don’t expect it to be easy. In fact, given how often your efforts will be undone or treated badly by life—how often your good deeds will get punished—you deserve all the more credit, assuming you do them knowing the shit you’re getting into.

And when you do get into shit—shit that you can’t help but feel shouldn’t have occurred—focus less on what could and should have been and more on what can happen from here on out. Remember, unfairness is very real, and closure is not.

Here’s what should happen to people who can’t get over something bad:

✵ Intervention by an angel

✵ Transformation into a superhero, or Superman using his powers to turn back time and make things right

✵ Confession on the part of the wrongdoer, followed by a dramatic making of amends for all unfair actions

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To get some official acknowledgment of what really happened in order to achieve catharsis

✵ To see some benefit, instead of endless harm

✵ To make sense of what went wrong so they can feel peace

✵ To see something bad happen to bad people so justice is done

Here are three examples:

My last job was almost ideal until the new boss came in; before that I was a happy member of the team. We all respected one another, the work suited me, and everyone knew I was doing a good job. I loved it. Then came the new boss, and it was subtle and unintentional, but he was buddies with the guys and was vaguely creepy with the girls, so he and I had zero chemistry. It was hell, but not in any way I could protest, so I let my contract run out and left. It bothers me though that I had it so good and lost it, and while my current job is okay but boring, I’m haunted by wondering what I could have done differently to hold on to something that was so right for me. My goal is to get over this feeling of not being able to stop thinking about what I had now that it’s gone.

After almost twenty years of marriage, my husband left me for his gold-digger secretary. It turned my life upside down because I thought we had a good marriage and were getting along well—I felt I worked hard and made big sacrifices for our family, which included both him and the kids, and to get rewarded by having him leave me for that tramp made the shock just too hard to bear. Now that my husband and I have been apart for longer than we were married, I want to hate him less, but can’t figure out how. The kids are fine with families of their own, and I found a career that I really enjoy, but I’ve barely dated since the divorce and still find it painful when my kids mention going to spend time with their dad and his trashy wife. I don’t care about remarrying, but I hate that my ex still has this hold on me after all these years. My goal is to find the closure I need to finally let go.

It took five years before the guy who killed my brother while driving drunk finally got a trial, but I know they got the right man. Unfortunately, this guy is from a rich family, so he’s got a good lawyer who, as it turns out, has gotten him off the hook several times over the years for everything from DUIs to assaults. I go to the trial every day and glare at this spoiled asshole, because I want the jury to know there won’t be any closure for me or the family until he’s convicted and put away, and there can’t be separate laws for rich people and working people like my brother. My goal is to get peace and know that justice was done for my brother.

After a loss that you feel shouldn’t have happened, you may well find yourself unable to move beyond grief until you find something to balance out its unfairness, or give it positive meaning. What you actually need, however, is to attack the ingrained assumption that unfair shit doesn’t happen.

Rationally, you know lots of bad things happen for no reason. On a subconscious level, your mind will tell you the opposite, and it’s your job to talk back instead of getting hung up on closure, which is about as likely as cold fusion or a Cubs World Series win.

Instead of mourning unfairness, improve your ability to do good in an unfair world. You may have lost a relationship that should have lasted, but you did a good job with your part of it (other than, perhaps, choosing the wrong person). You may have lost a great job, but you did well with it when you had the opportunity, and learned something about the kind of boss you should never work for. Challenge yourself to blot “should have” and “could have” from your vocabulary.

Whatever was good about what you lost, think about your contribution to that goodness, rather than trying to figure out what you did wrong to lose it. Whether it was a good job, a good relationship, or just a very happy time, focus on the good things you did to appreciate it while you had it, like making the most of a summer’s day, knowing you probably had little to do with the way it ended other than, perhaps, not bringing an umbrella. If someone dumped you when things seemed to be going well, it probably had much more to do with their character than anything you did wrong or had any influence over.

Death can be particularly meaningless and unfair, but don’t make it your job to give it significance. For most of us, death is what we have the least control over and it’s not what we want to be remembered for. What gives our lives meaning is what we do with our living days, not how they end, so attend to what was good about the life of someone you lost, and your relationship with him, not to what was horrible about his death and the relationship’s finish.

If you never stop feeling regret and a yearning for closure, consider it the price of experiencing something wonderful and having the kind of temperament that doesn’t let go. Your brain may hit you with should-haves whenever you have too much time to think. So keep busy, and build a philosophy for fighting regrets and yearnings for fairness in a world that just doesn’t have it.

Some people will always feel the need for closure, like an itch on a phantom limb, and if you’re one of them, learn how to live with the feeling without paying attention to what it tells you. It will have less power over your life if you remind yourself that even if you can’t have what it wants, other things are more important.

You haven’t lost your ability to do good things with life, even if it never loses its ability to do bad things to you.

Quick Diagnosis

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

✵ Restoration of your belief that things will eventually work out

✵ Faith that everything happens for a reason

✵ Justice, fairness, vindication, world peace, etc.

✵ Closure, or relief from its opposite, aka waiting for the other bad-luck shoe to drop

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

✵ To accept the loss of what you thought was yours

✵ To accept your lack of control over staying happy and keeping the good times rolling

✵ To develop tools for confronting false assumptions about a good person’s right to a good life

✵ To live with regret without considering it important

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Confront negative should-have and could-have thoughts

✵ Think about how you demonstrated your ability to do good things and enjoy good times

✵ Learn to tolerate regret and need without giving it value or allowing it to control what you do

✵ Confront yourself with the inevitability of unfair loss

✵ Reassure yourself of your lack of responsibility for losing what’s gone

Your Script

Here’s what to say to yourself and others when you yearn for closure.

Dear [Me/Fellow Closure-Seeker],

I know I can’t get it out of my mind that I once had a [respectable job/spouse/nice car/unshakable sense of safety] and now I need some way to restore my faith in life and myself. I also know that life [insert extremely negative verb here] and I’ve done nothing to deserve this. If I can’t [move to a better universe/get plastic surgery/find a mystic guru], I will try to accept that I can’t protect myself from major shit and learn to live with whatever bad feeling that leaves in my [head/gut/bones]. If I need closure, I’ll get a zip tie.

Some people extol the human yearning for a just and fair society; it’s certainly something everyone wishes for and many people adopt as a goal, without stopping to accept the many, many situations in which fairness, justice, etc., are impossible. Ironically, defying that reality is the surest way to increase pain, frustration, and injustice. Accept unfairness and injustice, without ever giving up on trying to be a fair and just human being, even if that acceptance may require you to face your vulnerability, and that of your family, to the chaotic nature of our world. On the other hand, it will also give you more power to deal with that chaos and impose your own (very) small measure of order and justice.