F*ck Feelings (6 page)

• Judge your sobriety and self-control objectively

• Manage behaviors you want to change rather than attack yourself for having them

• Ignore shame, and respect yourself for what you're trying to achieve

• Value a good effort, regardless of results

Here's how you can do it:

• Define your standards for sober behavior

• Decide how much effort, shame, and frustration are worth enduring for the sake of change

• Accept the limits of your responsibility for having addictions so you can take more responsibility for managing them

• Get help from people who are doing the same thing but are further along, be they friends or fellow addicts at AA or NA meetings

Dear [Me/Family Member/Beloved Bartender/Anyone Affected by My Addiction],

I know you've urged me to get [help/lost/out of town] because of the effect my [insert addictive behavior, from booze to online poker] has had on your [car insurance/credit rating/reputation]. I assure you that, in addition to regretting the effect of my behavior, I'm also sorry about the [insert verb related to blatant dishonesty] that has worn out your trust. I cannot promise to stop the behavior that has made me act like such a [insert synonym for “dickhead”], but I will try to stop it and also be honest about it. Please let me know if you think I am [slipping/sounding sleazy/getting back that old self-absorption] and I will use your input to get stronger, one day at a time.

The urge to self-improve is universal and always carries a potential for dangerous self-destruction if we promise to change ourselves before taking into account what's fixed in stone and will remain so, regardless of the sincerity of our wishes or what well-intentioned friends, self-help books, and novelty mugs say. If we can learn to limit our responsibilities, and hopes, to what is actually under our control, then hard work will always pay off and we will always have a chance to succeed.

Use your experience and common sense to define the limits of what you can change, however unhappy that makes you feel. Then, when you define tasks for yourself, you can be confident they'll be realistic and achievable and that your effort will be meaningful. Put doing good over feeling good, and you will get good results.

People think self-esteem is the hallmark of good mental health, but, given the number of people who base their self-worth on having good looks, a positive outlook, money, or just luck, that assessment doesn't mean much. Donald Trump has more than enough self-esteem, but if what's going on on top of his head is a reflection of what's going on inside, then his mental health is in trouble.

Indeed, people who feel good because of something they really don't control are the first to feel like failures when their luck sours and they lose whatever they thought of as their claim to fame. Add to this the way advertisers encourage you to think their product will make you a winner—sexy, beautiful, fashionable—and you have reason to classify self-esteem, as it's usually experienced, as a dangerous drug that should have a black box warning.

Further proof of the risk of overvaluing self-esteem is offered by those people who have too much self-esteem and see themselves as superior and exceptional (see sidebar
here
). They're the ones
who have little awareness of their ability to act like jerks and cause unnecessary harm. They are proud of their ability to be honest and speak out about truths that others are too polite or timid to talk about; they believe in themselves to the point of self-worship, and, most important, they're usually Assholes (see chapter 9).

The Gospel of Self-Esteem would argue that you can't stand up for yourself until you love yourself enough, thus making self-esteem an essential vitamin to take before you can gain control of your life and do what you think is right without being overly influenced or intimidated by others. This gospel can be read in psalms of Oprah, Tony Robbins, and even the most holy, RuPaul.

If this were true, however, many people who are anxious, shy, or compulsively self-doubting would be doomed to a life of passivity and paralysis, and clearly they aren't. People who have done terrible things wouldn't be able to move forward until they found some way to redeem themselves, which if you've seen an MSNBC weekend
Lockup
-athon, is clearly not true. A lot of people would be stuck in a rut, lacking the self-esteem to do things that would make them like themselves and thus give them self-esteem.

Fortunately, you don't have to have self-esteem to value things in life apart from wealth, good luck, and good feelings. When shy people find the strength to deal with people because they're determined to make a living and support themselves, or when an ugly person socializes because of a wish to be positively involved with others, or when a mean-drunk alcoholic tries to get sober, they're acting according to their idea of what's good, and their actions build self-esteem, regardless of how bad they feel about themselves or whether they succeed.

Doing what you believe is worthwhile is the only source of real self-esteem, even if doing so makes you feel inferior, exposed, and ashamed in the short run. Loss of self-esteem in the service of good values is no sin; self-esteem arising from good feeling is no virtue.

That's why people who are extremely unlucky, like those in my practice with severe mental illness, need never feel excluded from the supposed healthiness of high self-esteem. They may be chronically disabled, preoccupied with voices in their heads, careless of their
appearance, and unable to work. If, however, they find a way to help one another, or do something useful with whatever abilities they have, they can and should have as much true confidence as people who are normal or gifted. Indeed, they should have more, because their challenge is greater and their achievement that much more awesome.

The funny thing about needing to feel better about yourself is that it often starts with feeling that you are worse off than someone else. You can take a look at your accomplishments and feel like you're on top of the world, but it only takes one guy who's doing better to bring you back down to earth and right into the dumps.

Like other mammals that live in packs, we note whether our status is more or less than that of our equals, with a default value-calculator that bases worth on attributes over which we have limited control, like physical attractiveness, happiness, intelligence, and strength. In other words, we are hardwired to grade ourselves by comparisons and qualities we can't actually do much about.

Meanwhile, you can have many other positive qualities—carefulness, loyalty, patience, etc.—that you
do
control and that are less superficial indicators of character and self-worth. Unfortunately, they're qualities that, according to your instinctive internal-value calculator, come up as a zero.

Calculator aside, many people can't take pride in the qualities they see in themselves because their standards are too high or their pond is too big and there are too many fish bigger than they are. Sometimes the qualities in their self-inventory, like intelligence, beauty, or strength, are substandard, weak, or obnoxious and, worst of all, limited. The horror.

It's natural, then, to wonder how you can possibly feel better about yourself when you don't like what you see, what you see may actually suck, and what you don't like is probably not going to get better.

Some people would answer that you should love yourself
unconditionally, either directly or by imagining yourself as loved by a deity or by your fellow deity-worshippers. Unfortunately, while boosting self-love in this way may make you feel better and act more confidently, it won't stop you from acting like a jerk or overdepending on the support of your congregation and its leader, so this method may lead to Koran burnings, Kool-Aid parties, and other bad behavior that feels good because you've disconnected your sense of value from your own ideas about good, bad, and common sense.

Other people argue that you can feel better about yourself by finding what you enjoy and/or are best at, and devoting yourself to it, which would be perfectly good advice if it was something everyone could do. The sad truth is that some people don't have any talent or interest, and sometimes life circumstances don't allow them to develop whatever life talent they have. So while it's certainly worthwhile to try to develop your talents and seek fulfillment, it's dangerous to say you should be able to make it happen and thus make yourself responsible for producing a solution you don't control.

Instead, accept the fact that sometimes you can't and won't feel good about yourself. That's no reason, however, for stopping yourself from doing good things and writing off your feelings of low self-esteem as an unimportant by-product of a hard life, perfectionism, or subpar personal equipment.

As long as you do your best to be independent, be decent, and live up to your values, you'll have more reason to respect yourself and actually feel good than if you were super smart, rich, and the fittest of the herd.

Among the wishes people express when they just can't like or respect themselves are:

• To change what they don't like about themselves

• To have therapy make them like themselves

• To figure out how to get their confidence back

• To purge themselves of self-hate

Here are three examples:

I've never liked myself or, to tell you the truth, been very likable. I know it just sounds like I'm putting myself down, but the fact is, I'm not especially good-looking, my grades in school were always average, and I'm a klutz who was always chosen last on any team and hates sports. Now I work at a boring job, live with roommates because I can't afford to live alone, and date occasionally. I'd actually become comfortable with my status in life, but as the years go by and nothing changes, I'm starting to get restless. My goal is to figure out how I will ever, ever be a winner when there's nothing about me or my life that seems interesting, attractive, or just plain worthwhile.

I'm glad my marriage has ended, but I just can't seem to get over my divorce. I miss having a husband and the greater financial security and support I had when there were the two of us. The kids are good and they're doing well, but I can't seem to recover my confidence; I'm over my husband, but I won't feel like I've moved on until I've found someone else and become a wife again, which won't be easy since I'm no longer young and good-looking, and most men my age are no longer single. The only guys who want to date me seem to be creeps who are actually already married or just want to be with an older woman. My goal is to find the confidence I used to have, so I don't drive people away and doom myself to a life of mediocrity.