F*ck Feelings Page 15

  Did You Know . . . About the Dark Side of Social Work?

  There’s an old country song called “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” and while it’s arguable that mamas should be more worried about their children becoming performance artists or senators than cattle rustlers, one occupation that parents should also be quite wary of is social worker. Believe it or not, your money’s better spent underwriting your child’s MFA in performance studies than an MSW of doom.

  Social work school will train your kids to be the ultimate helpers, and you might think that would make them really, really good kids. After all, they’ll listen carefully to what you have to say and show great interest in your feelings, and you’ll never have to ask them to take out the garbage, make curfew, or not mess around with drugs. Then again, they’ll give the same kind of care to people who are all kinds of messed up with drugs, since they’ll also feel obliged to help them—in addition to hustlers, criminals, the garbage man, etc.

  That’s because what social work school doesn’t do is prepare them to say no to bad people, be sensitive to bad instincts in good people, discipline their own giving instincts, and stand up for their own needs. Mostly, it encourages some of the worst habits that counselors of any kind (shrinks included) can have: listening nonjudgmentally, being empathetic, and caring deeply about those in your care. All skills that will set anyone up to get taken advantage of, feed others’ bad habits, and fall short of achieving the goals that sent them into social work in the first place.

  The sad irony is that social work often takes good people with the best of intentions, pairs them with bad people with terrible intentions, and best-case scenario, robs the good people of their faith in humanity as they realize they’ve been working very hard to help bad people do worse. The worst-case scenario is they don’t realize when they’re being suckered and feel angry at the world on behalf of their victim-clients. At least until they get laid off due to budget cuts (as the social workers are always the first to go).

  There are, of course, many counselors and social workers who are good at their jobs because they developed smart instincts through experience (not school). Even so, their jobs are often thankless, poorly paid, and grim. Being a social worker, like being a nun or a Walmart greeter, rewards sacrifice with more sacrifice (all three face poverty, crappy clothes, and periods of uncomfortable celibacy). Most of those who don’t quit end up with so much contempt for the people they were trying to help that they let off steam by beating children with rulers.

  Helping others is a noble pursuit that, without a strong set of independent and protective values, can do much more harm than good, and social work school rarely provides the preparation one needs. You may want your kid to want to help people, but not this way. Teach them to be cowboys instead, and at least you’ll get free steak.

  The wish to help others is a powerful motivator and source of self-esteem that can be realized on many different levels of human interaction, from helping a relative be happy to ending conflict between those we love to improving the world. At each level, the desire to help can easily backfire if what we wish isn’t realistic and if we don’t think carefully about risks and consequences. If you accept the fact that helping others is sometimes impossible, you’ll become more helpful, even if the most helpful thing you let yourself do, at times, is nothing. True helpfulness often isn’t satisfying, but if you’ve taken the time to evaluate what you’re doing, and your values put a higher premium on being helpful than feeling helpful, then you have a right to feel you’re living up to your ideals and doing the correct thing.

  chapter five

  fuck serenity

  For those not in the medical field, knowledge of what’s good and bad for our health can usually be found in the center of a Venn diagram involving “factual scientific knowledge,” “pop culture,” and “total bullshit.” That’s where you’ll find such statements as “kale is God’s personal salad,” “deodorant gives you Alzheimer’s (or something),” and in bold letters “stress KILLS.”

  Therefore, many people feel they should be able to reduce or eliminate stress, along with anger and fear, and achieve more serenity in their lives, both as an end in itself and to promote physical and mental wellness. They regard anger and fear as feelings that can be cleansed through meditation, or the practice of peaceful, giving philosophies, or sweaty yoga, or drinking vegetables, etc.

  Unfortunately, like all of life’s unpleasantries, stress, fear, and anger are unavoidable, at least sometimes. In some ways, they’re beneficial—fear and aggression are basic primal defenses—but whether stress is a force for good or bad in your life, or even both, trying to do away with it is futile, harmful, and a way to set yourself against your basic nature.

  If you really want to dedicate yourself to a serene existence, then accept a life absorbed in therapeutic and religious exercises while you either succeed in self-lobotomy or feel like a failure because you can’t. The model of such laid-back living is probably Jeffery “The Dude” Lebowski, the fictional character from the Coen brothers’ 1998 film, whose keys to a carefree lifestyle appear to be lots of weed, no self-awareness, and not bathing with marmots.

  Certainly, you can and should avoid stress if you’re not also avoiding your responsibilities; it’s good to avoid conflict when you can and hang out with people you get along with, rather than with those who set you on edge. We assume, however, that there are lots of conflicts and relationships that life dumps on you (or in your bathtub) without giving you a choice. Likewise, your temperament dumps feelings on you, like anger and anxiety, without asking your permission or necessarily responding to meditation, exercises, medication, and intensive psychotherapy.

  Remember that the actual Serenity Prayer, which is central to twelve-step methodology, isn’t a prayer to end stress and anger, but for the clarity of mind and the humility to deal with whatever life inevitably throws at you. You can usually tell when conflict, fear, and negative feelings are unavoidable; that’s when you’ve honestly tried everything, asked for advice, and still feel stuck. And when you start looking for your second therapy and third medication.

  Self magazine may tell you that stress is deadly, but dedicating yourself to eliminating it will make you feel like you’re not really living at all. Accept that peace of mind is rare, and that, without learning proper management of stress and fear, you can lose your mind entirely.

  Stop Hating the Ones You Love

  It’s easier than most people think not to fall in love with the wrong person; Woody Allen’s excuse was “the heart wants what it wants,” but so do toddlers, and you don’t give every four-year-old a pony.

  On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to stop loving someone, no matter how awful they are, when that someone is family, practically family, or a fellow survivor of hard times. They’re not just friends or partners; they’re part of your life.

  Certain connections and experiences bond you to a person, so your love isn’t a matter of choice and you can’t turn it off. Unfortunately, you may also find yourself hating them or hating yourself for the way you respond to them. That, too, is seldom deliberate or easy to stop.

  If you’re lucky, your reasons for hate are temporary or hinge on a grudge you can give up or neutralize by lowering your expectations; for example, you may hate your parents until you’re old enough to see their side of things or realize they couldn’t help many of their faults and mistakes. Occasionally, other realizations can also put an end to hatred, like seeing that you have the right to decline an impossible responsibility and thus no longer have to hate the person you formerly felt responsible for or to.

  These are the kind of hate-to-love transformations we celebrate and relive in stories because it feels so good to stop hating someone you love and stop feeling like a hateful person. Unfortunately, we also love to relive such moments because they are far too rare.

  Most often, it’s not in your power to stop hating someone you love, and your effor
ts to stop hating are likely to make hatred worse. You’ll try to talk out issues that can’t be resolved, or change character traits (yours and/or theirs), which is the best way to start a fight. You’ll feel like a failure, which will make your hatred more acute and harder to keep inside, where it belongs.

  If after much effort to resolve your negative feelings, you come to the conclusion that you can’t stop hating someone you love, don’t despair, because if it’s really not in your power to stop hating, there’s no point in blaming or hating yourself. Once you accept that anger is there to stay (and only bound to get worse the more you rage against it), you’re now ready to think of ways to manage your perma-hate.

  Please note, however, that accepting hate is not the same as accepting hateful behavior. It’s a sad fact of life that many people can’t help loving people they’re also bound to hate, but if you can live with hate without acting hateful, you’re doing a good job.

  Living with hate will never feel good, but anyone who knows how much combustible anger you’re currently storing in your brain recognizes how much respect you deserve for your decent behavior. The heart wants what it wants, but the hate wants everything, and if you hate someone you also care about, you need our advice.

  Here are some powers you’d like to have to take the hate out of love-hate, but lack:

  • A Jesus-like ability to love shitheads and bathe the feet of Assholes

  • A sweet temperament like your beloved kindergarten teacher, who never, ever got angry at anyone (but, in retrospect, was probably high)

  • The ability to just ignore people who should definitely shut the fuck up

  • Access to a family therapist whose judgment and direction are accepted by all as gospel (see: Jesus, above)

  Among the wishes people express are:

  • To feel less angry

  • To get loved ones to stop the behavior they hate

  • To figure out why they’re so angry

  • To discover the secret that allows them to love everyone, even the ones they love-hate

  Here are three examples:

  My seventeen-year-old kid is a fuckup, a liar, and generally an asshole, so even though I know it’s my job to support him, I can’t help but become infuriated by his bullshit, and then my anger helps no one. He’s gotten expelled from school and he’s not working, so you can guess where the money comes from when he buys drugs, which he’s obviously using. Not that he always uses the money I have to give him, because every now and then something disappears from the house. Of course, he admits to nothing and lies about everything. I yell at him, and he either looks defiant or scared, but it obviously does no good, and then my wife tells me it’s all my fault. My goal is to help my son grow up and get off drugs, but I can’t help him if I’m so angry—my wife is right about that—and that’s what I need to stop first.

  I hate the way my husband gets bossy with our kids. He’s not abusive, but he’s overbearing and it reminds me of what I disliked most about my father. He’s usually a reasonable, responsible guy, and we get along fine when the kids aren’t around, but alone time is rare and they won’t be leaving home for at least five years. I’ve tried getting him to change his style, but it doesn’t work and the kids don’t like to see us argue. So I sit there, feeling resentful, with a sour look on my face, always angry at the partner I have to live with. My goal is not to be so pissed at him all the time.

  I believe in honoring my parents, and I certainly love my mother, but she often gets very mean and is really nasty to my father, who is too old and hard of hearing to defend himself. He just gets on her nerves—partially understandable, since he can’t hear a word she says—and she lets him have it when he doesn’t even know what he did wrong. She is wonderful at justifying her actions to herself. I believe in accepting her, but I can’t stop being angry whenever I see her, and that’s not who I want to be. My goal is to be able to be around her and my father without always feeling nervous or enraged.

  Since the last thing anyone wants to do is hate someone they really care about, it’s important to recognize hate is often acquired only after a clusterfuck of bad behavior. If someone’s inability to stop doing wrong makes you furious, then feeling less anger may only be possible when she improves her behavior, which is to say, never.

  Even after analyzing the reasons for your anger, lowering your expectations, and trying to forgive, you’ll probably find your feelings unchanged. It’s a Clusterfuck-22, so if your goal is to stop hating and feeling guilty about your emotions, then you know where that leaves you.

  Your first job, in these situations, is to try to understand, forget, and forgive, but once that proves impossible, accept your feelings as unavoidable facts and use your common sense to limit the damage. Speak softly but use your big (Roosevelt, not phallic) stick, if you have one, to limit hateful behavior.

  Addicts are always selfish Assholes (see chapter 9), but if your son ever gets clean, he might return to his old, not-unbearable self. Until then, declare a list of bad behaviors—like stealing the TV or failing a store-bought drug test—that will require a young adult to spend a night or more elsewhere. You have to accept him as he is without anger, but if he can’t accept your rules, then it’s his turn to be angry, not yours.

  If parenting leaves you angry with your spouse’s style, split up your responsibilities, maximize the tasks you do separately, and schedule regular childless time together. If you express your anger, you will probably find it harder to set limits. If you set limits, you’ll often find yourself feeling less angry.

  If you can’t protect one of your parents from the other’s meanness, find ways to see them separately, e.g., lunch with mom and hog racing with dad. Whether you’re all together or one-on-one, keep the conversation light and steer away from contentious subjects. Withdraw from offensive conversation if you have a nearby locked bathroom you can retreat to and think it will help protect you and/or reduce the nastiness. Don’t discuss your feelings. Let your actions reflect your most constructive response to bad behavior.

  Never lament hateful behavior or hate-filled chemistry as unnecessary or evidence of a dysfunctional family. Instead, celebrate the success of your ability to manage difficult relationships while avoiding open conflict.

  You can’t help having hate in your close relationships, but you should respect your ability to make them work, even if it’s in a difficult, entirely fucked-up way.

  Quick Diagnosis

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

  • A heart untainted by hate

  • A family with no Assholes

  • A new temperament

  • A spouse with no traits you dislike

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

  • Control your mouth

  • Be confident in penalizing bad behavior

  • Live with hate without hating yourself

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • Use standard methods for chilling your anger

  • Accept managing love-hate as part of a good person’s job

  • Use all opportunities to stop bad behavior and/or reduce your exposure to it

  • Never get discouraged by having hateful people in your life or hate in your heart

  • Respect good hate management

  Your Script

  Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you’re tortured by hate for those you love.

  Dear [Me/Family Member/Intimate Enemy],

  I wish I wasn’t so angry at my [parent/spouse/kid] but I’ve tried [family therapy/exorcism/high colonics] and I can’t get rid of the [anger/filth/evil thoughts/inner tension]. I will not take responsibility for the [insert synonym of “excruciating psychic pain or those who cause it”] but I will become amazingly good at managing difficult people and keeping them working together.

  Accepting the Inescapably Annoying

  Unless you find yourself in Guantánamo or a North Korean labor camp, the worst kind of torture
you can expect is being obliged to spend time with someone, due to family, work, or just geography, whom you hate enough to murder with your bare hands. Even Dick Cheney would admit that the experience is more painful than an “enhanced interrogation technique.”

  It’s one thing if the person you’re stuck with is an Asshole (see chapter 9), but it’s even worse if you find yourself annoyed by someone’s harmless habits and wanting to do violent things to the perfectly innocent. That’s when you’ll feel like you’re locked in an interrogation room with Dick Cheney himself.

  You want to feel like a nice person who wishes people well, not a stressed, irritable, and hypertensive jerk, but when you’re around that special someone—and, alas, you often have to be—darkness fills your soul. You can’t change him, but you feel there should be a way to change yourself.

  It’s true, some kinds of intolerance and irritability may be resolved with insight or self-acceptance. If you find yourself irritable about everything, you may be depressed, and treatment can help you get the symptoms under control.

  At some point, however, you’ll have exposed yourself to all the insight your psyche can bear and found that most focused annoyances are both part of who you are and whom you’re forced to sit next to for long periods of your life. Trying to find a way to immunize yourself against petty or even grand annoyance is just one more way to force yourself into being someone you’re not.

  Asking people to be less annoying, of course, usually backfires, because they don’t believe they’re doing anything wrong. Asking people to change isn’t always futile, but if their annoying habits are part of their personality, it can be one of the best ways to start a bad fight and cause hurt feelings. Improving communication is good for cellular companies, not for people looking for a good technique for reducing irritation.