F*ck Feelings (46 page)

• Warn about the power of depression to cause negative thoughts about the value of treatment

• Hand responsibility to crisis responders if you think someone's at risk of harm

Here's what to say about a suffering person's refusal to accept treatment.

Dear Miserable [Relative/Partner/Guy on the Rail of the Golden Gate Bridge],

I hate to see you [suffering/drinking/sleeping all day] and would love to see you get [help/medication/therapy/your ass kicked/a much better attitude], but I know you won't. From what I know about your past treatment and treatment in general, there are treatments that [might help/won't help/couldn't hurt], and I think that, after considering the benefit-to-risk ratio, you [do/don't/could] owe it to yourself to try them. I will always respect the fact that you have [synonym for “heavy bullshit”] to deal with, but will [say nothing more/doubt your ability to make smart decisions/call the cops] if you don't get more help for yourself.

If you equate treatment with a cure, you're bound to be shocked, helpless, and dismayed when it underperforms. If you take the trouble to find out everything you can about what's available, what it can do and can't, and who can do it to your liking, you'll find yourself making better use of treatment and managing your problems well on your own when treatment has nothing more to offer.

Ultimately, there's no perfect way to find
the
professional who will be the ideal ear. Personally, I think two important qualities to look for in any clinician are a sense of humor and, while this might seem unbelievable given my tone in the previous pages, a touch of humility.

If you're supposed to embrace the uncontrollable nature of life and human suffering, your doctor should be able to do the same, and some MD/PhD who acts like a master of the universe probably has too much hubris to understand that sometimes we are simply life's bitch.

While I have two Harvard degrees (“the deuce”), a loving family, and a job that allows me to spend my days telling patients when they're being stupid, I've also had to eat a fair number of shit sandwiches in my time. Not long after I turned forty, my father died after years of suffering from dementia that continued during my years in high school and college (a place where, I admit, I was often struggling to keep up with my classmates). For years he had been
the wise, calm rock of our family. His dementia, together with an injury that thwarted my mother's musical career, transformed my parents' marriage from ideal to, in a word, unpleasant.

I know now there was no helping them, because many people tried, including, of course, my sister and me (a dysfunctional family is the usual reason for wanting to become a therapist). For many years, I searched for the right words or an illuminating insight that would allow me to alleviate their pain. Finally, as I realized there was nothing I could do, I began to appreciate what they had really achieved.

During all those conflicts, my father never lost his temper, and despite her frequent frustration and anger, my mother never abandoned her family. Their unhappiness never induced them to forget what was important. My respect for them knows no bounds, nor does my appreciation of how un-fucking-fair life can be.

This book is not truly complete until I make one more thing as clear to you as I do to my patients: that I am as prone as anyone to the stupidity of wishful thinking and the humiliation of owning various permanent emotional and behavioral handicaps. I enjoy adopting a scathing and condescending tone when addressing you, and them, because I take great pride in being, myself, the sometime king of stupid. Like all human beings, I am fucked, but I am proud.

So no matter what you plan to do—who you plan to seek treatment with, or if you don't seek treatment at all—remember that there's no such thing as “fair,” feelings are stupid, life is hard . . . and you're going to be relatively okay, even if you won't be happy, because your goals are realistic and your efforts to reach those goals will make you proud. Then, the next time life gives you a shit sandwich, slather that puppy in ketchup and enjoy. They're on everyone's menu. Even at the fine dining halls at Harvard.

—Dr. Bennett

We owe special thanks to our agent, Anthony Mattero at Foundry, who immediately got what we were trying to say (as well as our sense of humor), then got us to say it so everyone could understand, then got us a book deal.

Thanks to Liz Gallagher, who introduced us to Anthony, and Quinn Heraty, our lawyer, who has nothing to do with Anthony, but is still great.

We are also grateful to Trish Todd, our editor at Simon & Schuster, who is so smart, kind, and insightful, we spent a long time thinking we had dreamed her. And she let us keep the title, which was also a total fucking dream come true. Thanks also to the rest of the Simon & Schuster team: Kaitlin Olson, Stephanie Evans, Navorn Johnson, Andrea DeWerd, Amanda Lang, and Jon Karp.

In the book, we often refer to the rules for choosing friends that you can accept as family, and these are the friends/families who occupy that special position in our lives: thank you Cottons, Steins (and Kelders, and Carmels), and Nadelsons (and Glebas). Thanks also to
actual family who are nevertheless friends, some of whom (Peter Bleiberg, Naomi Bennett, Vicki Semel, and Dee Robinson) were willing to talk with us at great length and help us work out the ideas in this book.

Thank you, Eudora Prescod, for helping to raise the younger Bennett and keep the elder Bennett on his toes.

Here's where we lovingly acknowledge the other Bennett offspring, Rebecca, who has not written a book, but has done one better by carrying on the family traditions of becoming a skilled doctor and, with her amazingly good-natured husband, Aaron, having a family. We also want to thank their brood of boys, none of whom are currently old enough to look at the cover of this book, let alone read it.

The biggest thanks goes to Mona Bennett, MD, mother/wife, who is not only the head and heart of the family but this book's spiritual adviser and unofficial third author. This book would not exist without her, period (nor would one of the authors). Her expertise—in psychiatry, poetry, rustic furniture building, small-dog wrangling, campfire songs from Camp Navarac, etc.—is too vast to be contained in any book. In short, M, we love you, and we thank you, for this and everything else.

Do we have to thank each other? That seems tacky. Never mind.

I thank my college mentor, Professor Robert Kiely, for encouraging me to see a moral force in the magic of a work of art that, however powerful, could be constructive, destructive, or both.

I thank Joseph Conrad, who taught us that every therapist and idealist must beware his inner Kurtz.

I thank my Beth Israel hospital therapy supervisors, whose well-coached scripts helped us shrinks-in-training to respond to a patient's deeper needs while side-stepping expected feelings and conversations: Ted and Carol Nadelson, Paul Russell, John Backman, Alicia Gavalya, Malkah Notman, and Joan Zilbach. Without being overly optimistic about treatment, they believed strongly in the value of
trying
to make
your life better, even when it sucked and was likely to stay that way. Particular thanks to Carol, my mentor and matchmaker, who insisted that I had a book to write if I had something I really wanted to say.

I thank my old Upper Canada College buddies, Bill Johnston, George Biggar, Jim Arthur, and Brian Watson, for warm friendship, and my newer Toronto buddy Gail Robinson, who assures me that Canada is much more sensible about psychiatry than the U.S.

I thank my colleagues and friends at the old Massachusetts Mental Health Center who aided, abetted, and debated the views in this book when they ran against the prevailing culture: Jon Gudeman, Laura Rood, Steven Kingsbury, John Vara, Annette Kawecki, Robert Goisman, Dan Pershonek, Paul Riccardi, Barbara Dickey, Sondra Hellman, and Josephine Nazzaro.

I thank my patients who, by and large, give me the benefit of the doubt when I seem offensive and take it on faith that my intentions are good. Although we have taken great pains to remove any and all specific, personal information, the spirit and energy from their part of our conversations is what makes this book a dialogue.

Thank you to the following people I don't know, but admire, and whose work I found especially encouraging and cathartic during the writing process: Joss Whedon, Jason Isbell, David Ortiz, Jill Soloway, Maria Bamford, Roxane Gay, Rob Delaney, and Amy Sherman-Palladino.

In addition to the family co-thanked above, extra thanks to the cousins Mitchell—Mary-Jane, Eyan, the Mitchell brothers (yes, just like on
EastEnders
)—my caring local family in Fort Greene, and Eilene and Bill Russell and Sherry Lee, my devoted local (unofficial) family in NH.

Thanks to these excellent friends, in order of seniority, because that seems fair: the five-ish-year club is small, because women over thirty rarely make new friends unless they have kids or join a cult. So
thanks Mary Lordes and Tabitha D. Lee, and thanks again to Liz Gallagher, the rare hippie with a good sense of humor, for her generosity, positivity, and occasional futon use.

The ten-to-twenty-year club: Angela Boatwright, Lizzy Castruccio Kim (and the
familia
Castruccio) and Jimmy Kim, Jon Hart, Ashrita Reddy, Melissa Ragsly, S.D. Gottlieb, Simon Goetz, Ali Chenitz, Paisley Strellis, Amanda Nazario, and Kesone Phimmasone. Never did I think I'd have such long friendships with people I'd originally baited with mixtapes.

Thanks to even more friends of various vintages: Molly Templeton and Steve Shodin, Tobias Carroll, Alex Eben Meyer, Sarah Bridger, Diana Rupp, Quinn Heraty (again! Never too many times!), and Ben Strawbridge, who get their own special grouping because they haven't just logged many friendship years but helped with this book specifically, whether they know it or not.

Amy Baker helped so much with the proposal, plus she ran a hockey league with me and has an unofficial medical degree, so she knows she's hot shit (or at least she does now).

The twenty-plus club; i.e., those ladies with whom I survived high school: Elanor Starmer, Julia Turner, Dr. Rebecca Onion, and Dr. Cristie Ellis. I did many, many stupid things between the ages of twelve and fourteen that would have made anyone think twice about starting a friendship with me, yet these ladies did and we've since had the privilege of doing many stupid (and not-stupid) things together. I thank them (and their families, old and new) for their love and support in this and everything else.

For her friendship, love, and generosity, Emma Forrest is filed under “timeless.” She's the goddess of chutzpah, the lady of the canyon, the woman who originated the phrase “Seth Green is so short that Prince uses him as a vibrator.” I love her and her family, both in the UK and in LA, and she is one of the funniest people in the world.

Maysan Haydar is the kind of friend who will never ignore your call, surprise you with tickets to see Soul Side, and load her husband and three genius, exquisite young children into a minivan to drive
from Ohio to New Hampshire to visit you, and during that visit, she will bake a spinach pie, and it will be
excellent
. Maybe she'll just do all that for me, along with so much more I can't repay, which is why my last acknowledgment, to her and the thousands of Haydars everywhere, will have to do.

DR. MICHAEL I. BENNETT
, educated at both Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, is a board-certified psychiatrist, a Canadian, and a Red Sox fan. While he's worked in every aspect of his field from hospital administration to managed care, his major interest is his private practice, which he's been running for almost thirty years. The author of
F*ck Feelings
with his daughter Sarah Bennett, he lives with his wife in Boston.

SARAH BENNETT
has written for magazines, the Internet, television, and books. She also spent two years writing for a monthly sketch comedy show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York. When not living by her philosophy of “will write for food,” Sarah walks her dog, watches Red Sox games, and avoids eye contact with other humans. Somehow, she lives in New Hampshire and works in New York.
F*ck Feelings
, written with her father, Dr. Michael I. Bennett, is her first book.

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(The following works were not cited directly in this text, but contain ideas or inspiration that informed this book.)

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Pride and Prejudice.
London: Random House UK, 2014.

Burns, David.
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Conrad, Joseph.
Heart of Darkness
. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1990. New edition.

Crews, Frederick.
The Pooh Perplex.
Chicago: University of Chicago Books, 1964.

Hallowell, Edward M., and John J. Ratey
. Driven to Distraction.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Kushner, Harold.
When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
New York: Knopf Doubleday, 1987.

Linehan, Marsha.
Skills Training Manual for Treating Borderline Personality Disorders.
New York: The Guilford Press, 1993.