F*ck Feelings Read online

  If facing a life-threatening illness triggers obsessive ruminations about death, you may find yourself stuck with them for a long time, like with PTSD; once an external event triggers repeated symptoms, they tend to last. It’s as if fear has worn a path in a brain that was a bit soggy to begin with.

  Yes, it’s tough to be terrified of dying and have people trying to comfort you by reminding you that we’re all going to die, because they don’t have the burden of knowing exactly how and feeling like they should be able to do something about it. That said, talking about your fear repeatedly and thinking about medical solutions will only make you worse.

  So stop focusing on the importance of a clean or not-so-clean bill of health, and instead block behaviors that make fear stronger, like oversharing and giving up regular life activities that might otherwise distract you. Look at a fear of death as a bizarre brain symptom, not evidence that you’re a deep admirer of Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman.

  It may help you to hang out with other people living with MS who share your fears and nevertheless live fully, much as it helps an alcoholic to spend time with those who are in recovery but still feel vulnerable. The need for reassurance, like the need for alcohol, however, is simply a drive for unhealthy behavior that you’re not responsible for having, just for blocking.

  If you get terrified in anticipation of a social or work situation or performance, your anxiety will get better, to some degree, if you do the same scary thing over and over, but it won’t necessarily disappear. It’s amplified by thoughts about being afraid “for no good reason” and wondering if fear will cause you to stutter, blush, fart, and thus embarrass yourself further. Fear is amazingly good at causing fear; it’s the mind’s best perpetual motion machine.

  A cognitive technique that helps with fear of embarrassment is to spend time every day defining your own goal for pushing yourself into the danger zone. Keep reminding yourself that you’re at work because you’re there to make a living, and you have your own definition of a good presentation. Then define goals that derive from your own standards and needs, not the response of others, and applaud yourself for pursuing those goals in spite of persistent fears.

  What’s most important, assuming you accept the unfairness of having to live with fear, is respecting what you do every day to limit its reach. Challenge fear-driven thoughts about what you should have done to avoid anxiety, or about the horrible effect it will have on your life and relationships. Every time you stop yourself from seeking relief in avoidance, substances, or other behavior that interferes with your goals, give yourself a cheer.

  Although relaxation may be good for your blood pressure, remember, it’s that good ol’ fear reflex that made your life possible, since it kept your ancestors alive long enough to have kids. Like your pelt-wearing forebears, you’re never going to relax for very long, so take pride in what you do with your fear. If you can tolerate it without letting it take over your life entirely, use it for self-protection so you, too, can stay alive.

  Quick Diagnosis

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

  • A cure for attacks of irrational fear

  • Total, quick control of fear without risk, side effects, or possible relapse

  • Elimination of the stupid, irrational fear-inducing thoughts you get when you’re afraid

  • Freedom from urges to do unhealthy things when you’re afraid

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

  • Develop an ability to assess realistic risk

  • Form habits and procedures for doing what you intended to do, in spite of persistent symptoms

  • Find treatments that provide partial relief some of the time

  • Control fear-driven behaviors

  • Respect what it requires to live with fear

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • When common methods for fear relief fail, accept that you’re fucked

  • Learn how to tell when a negative thought is lying to you and how to challenge it

  • Survey the many treatments for fear management and try out any that seem helpful

  • Don’t avoid treatments that carry risks if your risk of not doing them is greater

  • Remember alcohol is a treatment with high risk and brief benefit that breeds dependency and could make you into an Asshole

  • Learn to talk calmly and humorously about fearful things so that other people won’t get spooked by your fear

  • Respect yourself as a fear manager

  Your Script

  Here’s what to say when you’re fed up with being afraid.

  Dear [Self/Quivering Wimp/Fragile Phobic],

  I hate living in [fear/dread/retreat], but so far I haven’t been able to figure out [why I’m scared of nothing/can’t get the help I need/have these weird moments where I’m fine one second and the next can’t breathe and feel like my heart’s going to explode]. Having failed to find happiness, I will now [give up the chase/learn meditation/get back to business] and ignore thoughts about getting relief from [insert illegal controlled substance here] or [avoiding people/discussing my anxiety constantly so that people avoid me/seeking a magic cure]. I will run my life as if I wasn’t scared, no matter how much work it takes.

  Realistic Mantras to Try If You Feel an Anxiety Attack Coming On

  This too shall pass, and shall pass quicker if I take the special pill I always carry in my pocket

  Life is a journey, not a destination, and anxiety isn’t fatal according to the Internet

  Remember to breathe (although if breathing didn’t come naturally, I’d be in deep trouble since I often don’t remember where my keys are)

  I can find my center and endure this day, or I can find my boss, tell him I have diarrhea, and deal with this at home

  I am a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar, listening to anything but my brain

  Healing Heartache

  It’s hard to discuss heartache without sounding sappy or using purple prose, but the fact is, if your heart gets attached to something or someone, and you take that something away, the heart responds to the loss of the loved person with pain.

  If you want to know what depression feels like, or even what being an actual zombie feels like, have your heart broken; it’s the same rare, poisonous cocktail of grief and sadness accompanied by hopelessness, anger, self-reproach, and an inability to experience pleasure or feel engaged in life. With grief, though, you know why you’re sad, can expect an eventual full recovery, and don’t crave brains.

  In most cases, people recover by accepting support from friends, keeping busy with work and friendships, and taking good care of themselves. Like depression, however, the grief of heartbreak can be destructive, even fatally so.

  If you believe that healing from loss is always possible—as do many therapists, most owners of scented candles, and all screenwriters—then you’re sure to feel like a loser if your grieving doesn’t end. It means you didn’t succeed in moving on, letting go, getting help, facing your feelings, or whatever.

  Unfortunately, some people don’t recover from loss, even when they get lots of support and work hard to move on. It may be that loss triggers an innate vulnerability to depression, their personalities are unusually loss-sensitive, or they lack the ability to control destructive impulses. Again, it sounds sappy, but not every broken bone or heart is guaranteed to mend.

  If you are living with a broken heart, your pain doesn’t go away, and neither does your hopelessness about life’s ever having meaning again or your anger at anyone whose behavior might have prevented the loss, including yourself.

  If you recognize the sad truth that some people never stop hurting from a loss, then you’re ready to find ways to live a meaningful life, even when grieving seems like it’s never going away, and perhaps never will.

  Since getting over loss is not always within our power, living with grief is a failure only if you let it prevent you from living a good, productive life. Liv
ing with a broken heart is hard, but it can never doom you to be a broken person.

  Here are some heart-healing abilities you’d like to have but don’t:

  • The gift to weep so intensely that you purge yourself of grief even if you become dangerously dehydrated

  • The kind of faith that allows you to believe that every loss, betrayal, and disappointment is part of God’s/Xenu’s/Satan’s greater plan

  • A surgery that removes the grief-affected part of your brain while leaving the part that knows song lyrics and how to walk

  • An insight into persistent grieving that actually makes a difference, like “time heals all wounds,” but helpful

  Among the wishes people express are:

  • To stop hurting and feel like living again

  • To stop obsessing about why they weren’t there and what they didn’t do to help

  • To get back to where they were before

  • To find something to care about again

  Here are three examples:

  I loved my wife and family, so when she said it was over, I hadn’t seen the divorce coming. She said I hadn’t done anything wrong; she just stopped loving me. We’ve remained friendly and we co-parent well, but I felt like home was where we lived and now I’m in exile, getting a glimpse of the woman I loved as she’s moved on to her next husband, who, of course, my son really likes. I can’t stop pining for someone who is no longer attached to me. When I see her and we chat briefly every two weeks when I pick him up, my heart still breaks. My goal is to get over her.

  My mother died after a long illness, so I’m glad she’s no longer in pain and that I got so many wonderful years with her, but she was the best friend I had and I still miss her so much. Every day I miss talking to her on the phone, and every time I see a good movie or hear a funny joke, I can’t enjoy it because I realize I can’t tell her about it. There’s almost nothing that doesn’t remind me of her or something we used to talk about. It’s been two years, and I can’t seem to stop crying. She would never want me to be unhappy, but I can’t help myself. My goal is to get over my grief.

  After so many years of putting up with my wife’s drinking and untreated depression, I’d had enough (and couldn’t put the kids through any more), so I filed for divorce. As I feared, she went downhill after that and unfortunately never really recovered. A few months after the divorce was final, she started calling me when she was drunk and suicidal to tell me the divorce had killed her and there was no point in living. After I stopped answering her calls, she overdosed and was taken to the hospital. After that I got full custody of the kids, so I still hear from her regularly because of them, and she always sounds reproachful. My goal is to stop having to worry about her and feel tortured by guilt over this unending misery.

  When grief seems to go on forever, you want to ask your friends, your cat, and your god why the suffering won’t end. Instead, ask yourself (and maybe a therapist) whether you’re doing something to prevent yourself from recovering.

  When it comes to endless heartache, there’s a good chance you’re not doomed, just doing it wrong. Pain-driven behaviors, like drug using, stalking, or immersing yourself in the past, may all set you back.

  If you’re not doing anything wrong, however, the bad news is that persistent grieving is not under your control, recovery is not a sure thing, and your cat has no healing powers. The good news is that there are lots of ways to help yourself once you stop looking everywhere for a cure and start looking at how to live life under new, less-than-ideal circumstances.

  Continuing to stay in contact with someone you’ve loved and actually lost, while necessary in a co-parenting or workplace situation, may be misused to prolong the pain of grief; the more you seek a connection, the more powerful it gets. You may even fool yourself into thinking there’s nothing wrong with being friendly, chatting, and making lots of eye contact when you drop by your ex’s for visitation. What you need to do to break the connection is avoid direct contact and instead communicate by any of the cold, twenty-first-century methods—email, text, emoji, whatever.

  Like an alcoholic, you may think you don’t need to stop reaching out until the pain’s lessened enough that it no longer requires drowning, but in truth, the pain will stop only when you dry out. Test this assumption by breaking off face-to-face contact and see what happens; if you find yourself jonesing for some eye contact, you know you’re on the right track. Then perhaps you’ll find the strength to examine and control your grief-stalling behavior.

  When sorrow doesn’t stop and you’re sure you’ve done nothing to hang on to the past and everything to live in the present, then get the kinds of treatment that help chronic depression, such as cognitive therapy, exercise, and medication. Get help from friends and therapists who can tolerate your pain, not be overly affected by it, and continue to give positive encouragement.

  Don’t tell yourself that time heals all wounds or that all things pass, because somebody has to be the exception to those truths, and alas, it’s you. Instead, continue to look for positive meanings in your loss, using ideas you glean from books, religion, therapists, and friends. Avoid therapists who are interested in talking about your feelings of loss if you’ve already gone that route and it hasn’t worked. Instead, look for a positive coach who honors your relationship with your late parent, regardless of how empty its loss has left you, and respects your efforts to keep moving in spite of feelings of emptiness.

  Sometimes you can get as paralyzed by someone else’s grief as by your own. If your ex can’t get over you and tells you she’ll die if you don’t take her back, don’t feel guilty until you’ve decided for yourself whether you tried hard to make the relationship work and whether you can ever, ever accept responsibility for the life of someone else who isn’t a minor, a soldier in your platoon, or a patient on whom you’re doing open-heart surgery.

  Certain people are very vulnerable to rejection, and if you didn’t know it before you got together, you sure know it now. You probably know that this isn’t her first rejection, and if you don’t, ten seconds of googling will make it clear.

  Don’t bend over backward and offer support, or you may find yourself intensifying contact that needs to stop. Get advice from a therapist or moral adviser for your right to end the relationship and do what will cause the least pain in the long run. Then declare your intentions without showing guilt or fear, keep your distance, and hope that your ex can find a way to survive.

  Just because loss precedes a long period of misery doesn’t mean that you or another person or pet have it in their power to stop the pain, and even when your behavior is part of the problem, you may not have the vision or strength to control it. What you can do in the face of endless grief is to accept that fact and respect whatever efforts you make to go on with life instead of waiting for heartache to end.

  Quick Diagnosis

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

  • An end to heartache, daily sadness, and negative thoughts

  • An ability to control your heart

  • A time machine

  • Certainty that you’ll feel better

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

  • Stop grief-prolonging behaviors

  • Challenge despairing thoughts

  • Don’t link grief and responsibility without careful thought

  • Live a meaningful life

  Here’s how you can do it:

  • Don’t hurt yourself to flee grief

  • Seek ideas, friends, and advisers that fight despair

  • Try treatments for symptoms

  • Don’t hold others responsible for your grief or accept responsibility for theirs

  • Continue to do what’s meaningful, regardless of how you feel

  Your Script

  Here’s what to say about grief that doesn’t heal.

  Dear [Grieving Self/Frustrated Friend/Long-Aggrieved Other],

  I don’t know why
I can’t seem to get over this [loss/death/divorce/playoff defeat] but I’m proud I’ve stopped [insert bad, health-endangering, money-losing habit] and have started [keeping busy/working hard to think positively/compulsively checking Petfinder for a high-maintenance animal to adopt and take over my life]. I’m ready to accept that I may never feel [insert adjective for “not-shitty”], but that won’t change my approach to life or my belief in what’s important.

  Accepting Enmity

  There are people who seem to thrive on being hated, but besides assorted YouTube commenters, professional wrestlers, and one Donald Trump, most people in the world hate being hated, especially when the person who’s angrily cut you off is somebody you were once close to.

  Usually, the hate is not active and violent, but more silent and passive-aggressive. Still, it’s hard to find inner peace when someone you care about is shunning you, as happens in families and small communities. It’s harder still when there’s nothing you can do about it, including apologizing, humbling yourself, accepting doctrine, or kissing the ring/something else.

  If you’re an introspective self-doubter, you keep wondering what you could have done differently to head off or mend trouble. You’re not afraid of admitting you did something wrong; you either can’t figure out what it was or what’s wrong with your apology.

  It doesn’t help to be assertive, silver-tongued, or sorry. You can be a great defense lawyer who makes juries weep, and you’ve got no one to plead your case to. You get the feeling that, the louder your protests, the more satisfaction you may be giving to your enemies.

  When you hear false rumors about your alleged wrongdoing, you can protest sincerely, but the more time you give it, the more attention it gets; it’s often impossible to prove that you didn’t do something negative. As was famously asserted at the 15th International Conference on Agile Software Development, “The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”