F*ck Feelings Page 12

  Resist the call to helpfulness and the rush that comes with it unless you’re willing to acknowledge its potential to do harm and evil. There are methods for managing this powerful emotion and the dangers it creates, so if you want to be helped to be a better helper, read on.

  Easing Others’ Sorrow

  If one end of the giving scale is donating a kidney, the other is that ol’ standby, “making someone smile.” After all, if you can’t help people in a material way, at least you can try to ease their pain and sorrow. The trouble starts, however, when it’s just not possible, and instead of making someone feel better, you make a bigger mess.

  Many of us feel compelled to accept responsibility for the happiness of our loved ones, without question or limit, either because we’re the responsible type or we instinctively feel guilty if we fail. Which means that when they aren’t smiling, we’re in tears.

  Or we may need to help people feel happy to make ourselves happy, meet a professional goal, give in to a guilt trip, or simply to satisfy altruistic urges. The sad fact of life, however, is that we’re often unable to help others feel better, regardless of our motivation, intimacy, and commitment.

  There are, for example, people who can’t help but always be in pain, whether from grief, physical or mental illness, or even self-destructive actions they can’t perceive or stop. If they, other loved ones, and professional helpers can’t improve their suffering, there’s little chance you will.

  The fact that you have accepted responsibility, even when it’s for a very good reason, does not mean you have more power to be helpful. It just means you might be making things tougher for everyone, since failing to help will hurt you as much or more than anyone else.

  We take on that blame because it’s human nature to find someone to blame for our unhappiness, beginning with loved ones—an uncaring mother and painful childhood, or a vengeful ex—and ending with the president or a local sports team. A major reason for marriage, of course, is having someone to blame. But that doesn’t actually mean there’s a person, be it a parent, political figure, or pitcher, who’s responsible for our unhappiness. More often, the real source may be our personalities, our genes, or a lot of shit luck.

  Knowing when you can’t make people happy, even when you want to with your whole heart, is essential to changing your goal to one that’s constructive and achievable instead of dangerous and exhausting. Accept that and you’ll end up doing less harm and feeling better, even if nobody else does.

  Here are some powers you’d like to have to ease suffering, but lack:

  • An ability to make people feel better about themselves, or at least look like they don’t want to die all the time

  • A list of therapists who are guaranteed to take everyone’s insurance and who never allow patients to leave their first session until they’re feeling better

  • The name of an antidepressant, psychotherapy, or inspirational video with a money-back guarantee

  • A knack for making people feel it’s someone else’s job to make them happy, and that someone isn’t you

  Among the wishes people express are:

  • To find the right words, action, or therapy to make someone feel better after everything has failed

  • To get an unhappy person to understand that they’ve done their best to help her and can’t do more, but that she needs to help herself

  • To get an unhappy person to change behavior that is causing her unhappiness

  • To feel less guilty and powerless about their inability to help

  Here are three examples:

  I hate how much my seventeen-year-old son is suffering from depression, and how there’s nothing I can do to help him. Helping him to feel better is the top priority for me and my wife, but nothing we’ve done has worked. His doctor says he’s depressed, but can’t seem to find a medication that will help him, and the therapist he sees says they can’t seem to get at the cause. My son weakly jokes that I look so miserable that he’s very, very sorry for making me depressed with his depression, but the fact is, I’m just endlessly worried. My goal is to do something, anything, to help my son.

  I had a wonderful relationship with my mother for many years, but she’s developing dementia, and now being around her makes me feel totally helpless. She’s convinced that people are breaking into her apartment and stealing from her and she complains that I’m unwilling to do anything to help her. Meanwhile, she’s had a couple bad falls but refuses to use a cane. She feels scared and abandoned and there’s nothing I can do. Her lawyer tells me I can’t force her to accept treatment or move into assisted living until she’s more obviously impaired. My goal is to ease my mother’s suffering and protect her from danger.

  I’m scared to death that my ex-boyfriend will kill himself and it will be my fault. I know he had periods of depression before we dated, but after I decided to end our relationship, he told me he was suicidal and couldn’t stop drinking every evening. I urged him to get help, but he says the only thing that makes him feel better is talking to me. I hate to see him suffer, but I don’t want to resume our relationship. I hoped I could use our phone calls to persuade him to stop drinking and get help, but he says they’re the only thing keeping him alive. My goal is not to be responsible for his suicide.

  If you can’t stop feeling responsible for making someone feel better, it can make him feel guilty for not getting better, make you feel guilty for not making it happen, and drain everyone’s resources until you and the sufferer are each other’s pain slaves in a misery death-spiral. At this point, assuming you aren’t in therapy, the only person you’ve helped is probably your local bartender.

  You’ll also wind up angry at the one you want to help, at yourself for being angry, and at everyone else for not being helpful enough. If you don’t know when to give up on your happiness-bringing goal, you can get locked into a vicious cycle of anger, guilt, and therapy, either the real or liquid kind. Whereupon you’ll find yourself the subject of an intervention as all of your friends try to help you, and then the world will implode.

  Before allowing yourself to take responsibility for other people’s painful feelings, ask yourself whether there’s something you can do that will actually help, that you can afford to do (given your other commitments), and that isn’t better done by someone else (including the person you’re trying to help).

  Using these standards, you’ll decide whether the person you want to help is doing a good job bearing chronic, incurable pain for which there may be no cure. Instead of feeling like a failure because you can’t help, or wondering why he can’t do better for himself, respect your joint efforts and the success of living a full life together in spite of chronic pain. Then you can focus more on enjoying your small victories than your greater defeat.

  Give yourself even more respect if the person you’re trying to help is needy, demanding, and impossible to satisfy. Even when you know that person can’t avoid it, you can’t help but want therapy yourself after being around them for any period of time. Once you decide on and meet your own standards for providing necessary care, you can protect yourself and your own needs, go about your other business, and then give yourself a medal.

  The biggest medal you can win is for trying to help a desperately unhappy person who tells you that you’re the only reason they’re still alive. Whether you’re his ex-lover, child, or therapist, accepting responsibility for saving someone from despair can enslave you if you let it. Unfortunately, the only person who can save the life of a desperately needy person is that person, and releasing his death grip on the ones he loves is the first step toward recovery.

  As long as you don’t take or give responsibility for life’s incurable misery, you’re free to evaluate and respect what’s more important: whether everyone is doing what they can actually do about it, assuming unhappiness really is unavoidable. Don’t be surprised that unhappiness continually promotes negative thinking and self-blame in all involved.

  If, however, you
remember how much you respect what this person does despite his unhappiness, you can show him how to fight negative thinking and urge him to seek coaches who can build pride by focusing on what he does with his pain, rather than on whether or not he has it.

  You may not be able to make him happy, but you can show him powerful tools for preserving his pride, and save yourself and them from the dark, powerful forces that can turn helplessness into pure (sometimes boozy) hell.

  Quick Diagnosis

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

  • A happy smile on the face of the one you love, like, or are otherwise related to

  • Confidence in your ability to make someone feel better

  • Belief in the power of the right treatment to solve any problem

  • Faith in everyone’s ability to feel good as long as they take care of themselves and practice meditation, yoga, a gluten-free life, etc.

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

  • Know that you’ve done what you can to make someone happy

  • Tolerate unhappiness without flinching or blaming

  • Respect how well people pursue their values in spite of unhappiness

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • Find out what can be done to help and do your proper share

  • If behavior change is necessary, be objective about whether it’s possible

  • Urge treatment only if you think it has something to offer

  • Stop treatments that haven’t proven useful

  • Encourage suffering people to do what matters in life, to the extent that symptoms will allow

  • Coach people on methods for fighting negative thinking, using the above values

  Your Script

  Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you’re seized by urges to help the unhappy.

  Dear [Me/Family Member/Poor, Miserable Sonofabitch],

  I can’t watch someone I care about [suffering/weeping/flunking out/drown in hurt] without feeling there’s always something that can help and I should be able to find by [trying harder/visiting Lourdes/finding money for a psychoanalysis], but I know that’s not true. I will try to ease your suffering, if possible, by [being a friend/wearing a rainbow Afro wig/farting repeatedly], but if my efforts don’t work, I will not judge you or me as failures. I will respect you for continuing to [shower/take out the garbage/face another day].

  Dumb Things We Say to Try to “Cheer Up” the Depressed, and Their More Helpful Alternatives

  Dumb

  Why It’s Dumb

  Helpful

  C’mon, pull yourself together. Where’s your willpower?

  Depression is a disease, like cancer, and nobody’d assume you should will away a tumor. Offer sympathy, not blame.

  How bad is it today?

  How come we don’t know what’s causing this?

  Trying to find the source of the pain won’t reveal the cure, just create more blame. Focus on the burdens of enduring pain, not the source.

  Are you safe?

  It kills me to see you like this.

  Making a depressed person feel guilty for your suffering is about as helpful as a punch in the dick. Don’t point fingers, offer a hand.

  Is there anything you want me to do?

  Are you sure you’re getting the right help?

  Again, this makes their suffering their fault somehow, like they can’t even choose doctors right.

  Is anything helping much?

  You shouldn’t have to live with so much suffering.

  A really depressed person finishes this sentence with “so I should kill myself.” Be positive by accepting, not highlighting, the unfairness of suffering.

  It’s a big deal to get through a bad day.

  Rescuing the Addicted

  We all want what’s best for those we love, which is why our first instinct when we see signs of alcoholism or drug addiction is to express worry, argue about whether or not a problem exists, and push for treatment. Rehab is not just, as the interventionists call it, “a gift” but the gift; it’s the Tickle Me Elmo on every addict’s Christmas list.

  If we argue too much, or if the addict tends to behave badly while under the influence, we get angry and then feel guilty about that. Everyone can agree that the one thing that can cure both her addiction and our discomfort is the aforementioned treatment, which, like that ointment for the rash you got from a regrettable sexual encounter, will clear everything up right quick.

  Unfortunately, however, given the way people usually react to other people’s advice, and the fact that treatment often doesn’t work, especially when agreed to only to placate others, urging addicts into treatment often backfires.

  For one thing, intense urgings usually wind up making the addict (and nonaddicts) feel the problem isn’t addiction, it’s your feelings, and her goal isn’t to evaluate or improve herself, but to make you happy or change your mind. She feels responsible for your feelings, you feel responsible for her rescue, and her responsibility for her own well-being and self-control gets lost in between.

  If she agrees to get treatment in order to make you happy, not only is treatment less likely to help but blame for failure of said treatment is more likely to land on your doorstep, leaving you angrier and more helpless than before. In other words, you can start a dangerous vicious cycle by intervening the addict into treatment that often promotes more conflict and drug use than sobriety.

  Fortunately, however, there is a better way to discuss sobriety with an addict (or to determine whether someone’s drug use is dangerous) than by creating an emotional, or any other, mandate for treatment. It begins with accepting your inability to rescue someone from addiction, an acceptance that is as hard as an addict’s accepting his or her inability to control addiction.

  It requires you to keep intense feelings, including fear and anger, to yourself. It allows you to be potentially helpful with less risk of doing harm or being harmed. So if you’re called on by love or bad luck to rescue an addict, slap yourself and get help right away.

  Enroll in Al-Anon or get a good counselor to coach you on how to manage your rescue instincts. Yes, there are probably some good, helpful things you can do, but not until you’ve learned how to protect yourself from being drained, over- or underdiagnosing addiction, and inadvertently encouraging addictive behavior. Then you can put aside accusations and fears and instead use the dispassionate language of business to describe the problems that need to be improved and what will happen if they aren’t.

  Control your urge to help and you’ll be better able to help someone control their urge to use and give them a truly useful gift: the power to help themselves.

  Here are the rescuing powers you wish you had but don’t:

  • Denial-busting insight that will show the blindest, dumbest addict the extent of his/her poisonous bullshit

  • Love that will draw the addict into trusting your vision and getting help for the sake of your future, legendary relationship

  • The name of the ultimate intervention clinician with the ultimate power of denial-busting insight (i.e., the bald guy from Intervention, although Candy Finnigan would also do)

  • The name of a clinic, guru, or spell that, given enough time and money, can guarantee good results

  Among the wishes would-be rescuers express are:

  • To fill whatever need causes the addict’s addiction, but in a healthy way

  • To help the addict understand feelings that cause addiction, and thus improve control

  • To get the addict effective treatment

  • To get the addict to see the need for treatment

  • To figure out where everyone went wrong

  Here are three examples:

  My boyfriend is a great guy and would do anything for me, but I can’t get him to stop drinking. I know he had a miserable childhood, and I respect the way he basically raised himself, but he gets tipsy every night to get to sleep, has a glass in his ha
nd after 3 p.m. on weekends, and doesn’t realize how angry and scary he can sometimes get when he’s had one too many. He’s never hurt me, and he never misses work—as he points out to me over and over again whenever I bring up the issue—but I see trouble ahead. I don’t think he’s ever had a serious relationship before, and I have confidence he’ll listen to me if I can get him to see it’s important and I love him. My goal is to help him get into treatment.

  My brother was always my best friend, but he’s been different since he got back from Iraq. He was discharged for using drugs and alcohol, which made him bitter because he’s got PTSD (and was probably self-medicating in the first place). Since then he’s been in and out of rehab, but it’s always a revolving door and he never really gets the help he needs. I’d do anything to see him get better, so I’d like to spend my savings on getting him into a private thirty-day program and then maybe have him come to live with me and my husband, who, as you might imagine, is not crazy about the idea, particularly since my brother stole from us the last time he was here. My goal is to help the big brother who always helped me, no matter what it takes.

  My wife nags me to stop drinking, and I know I like to have a couple glasses of wine with dinner, but I’m confident that I never go over my limit and there hasn’t been a time in the last ten years when I had a hangover or put myself over the limit when I had to drive. She’s pretty sensitive about drinking because she grew up with alcoholic parents, and I don’t like to make her unhappy, but I work hard, I love good wine at the end of the day, and it’s not something I want to give up just to make her happy. My goal is to get her to see that I’m not an alcoholic so she can feel better and I can keep enjoying the finer things.