F*ck Feelings (4 page)

If people could control the way they feel, then persistent negative feelings would be a legitimate sign of failure and a target for self-improvement. Also, nobody would cheat on their spouses, enjoy scary movies, or eat their weight in frosting, but that's neither here nor there.

Since negative feelings are just a fact of neurology and genetics, it's what you do
with
them that counts. The people in these examples are more successful than they think, because success here is not measured by whether they feel better, more loving, less angry, etc. It's measured by all the good things they are doing and have done in spite of the negative feelings they can't get out of their heads.

There's probably a positive, evolutionary reason for having negative feelings you can't get rid of; they may warn you of danger, give an extra bite of sadness to your songs or poetry, or help you stay attached to your tribe. Whatever advantage they provide, it may have been more helpful in a jungle than in the big city, but either way, if it helps the species survive, it tends to persist, regardless of how much pain it causes you as an individual.

Assuming you're going to have to live with negative feelings, develop standards for behaving well in spite of them. No, you shouldn't
expect yourself to force smiles so much that they break your face and scare children. You should, however, invite feedback about your behavior from those you trust, so you can be confident that your actions and words don't hurt people or interfere with your positive strategic goals and, most important, make you act like an asshole.

If you're self-critical about your negative feelings, you may be tempted to live with people who dislike you as much as you dislike yourself. Naturally, this could set off a vicious cycle that brings out your worst behavior and justifies continuous self-punishment. Instead, seek people who aren't much bothered by your negativity and who appreciate your positive side. You may be frustrated by their lack of understanding and attention to your supposed worthlessness, but the results will be better for everyone in the long run.

Whether you are forced to live with hate, yearning, envy, or fear, respect what you do with your feelings, not what they do to you. Don't let them distract you from your usual goals of avoiding unnecessary conflict at home, making a living, and being a good friend.

The more you remember your goals and respect your restraint, the less power your negative feelings will have to shape your actions and reduce your self-respect. You can't control your negativity, but you can keep it from controlling you.

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

• An improved heart free of hate, envy, fear, and general ugliness

• A way of managing relationships that will prevent or resolve bad feelings

• A way to love the ugly feelings right out of yourself

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

• Build standards that are not distorted or compromised by negative feelings

• Act decently in spite of the way you really feel

• Respect the way you act decently when you feel malicious, bravely when you're frightened, determined when you're tired, etc.

• Bear the pain of living with ugly feelings rather than attacking yourself for having them or attacking others to escape them

Here's how you can do it:

• Get to know your inner asshole so as to reduce the likelihood it becomes outer

• Every time it gets control, emerge with new lessons about your standards and the triggers that get you to lose control

• Avoid those triggers as best you can, even if it means a longer drive to work that avoids the freeway

• Find accepting friends and an accepting coach

Here's what to tell someone or yourself when you have ugly, nasty thoughts and feelings.

Dear [Me/Family Member/Guy Who Cut Me Off],

I can't deny that I have [angry/envious/completely vicious] feelings for [you/my child/my fuckhead boss], but I have other feelings as well, and my feelings don't matter as much as doing the [work/taxes/college application/right thing] without [insert act of rage], and this I can do. I have doubts about my ability to use [yoga/psychoanalysis/watching
Too Cute
] to achieve more positive feelings, and I am not sure I would like to give up my list of hated [relatives/celebrities/salsas at Chipotle] or be more blissed out and less wrought up than I am. Let me know if you think I have acted badly. Otherwise, I believe my current method of managing my feelings is best for me.

There are few things as frustrating as feeling too disorganized, unmotivated, and/or unfocused to accomplish even the smallest task. You can blame a noisy work environment, the wrong colored pen, or the need to watch TV in a timely, spoiler-free manner as the source of your distraction for only so long until you start blaming yourself.

Procrastination, avoidance, and disorganization cause delays and failures that provoke shame, criticism, and even legal issues. If you're at the point where you're amazed you finished reading two whole paragraphs before watching
Game of Thrones
, then this section is for you.

Some people with these problems may act as if they don't care, or take pleasure in creating expectations they can't meet and then lying about them, but in reality, they usually care deeply but have become accustomed to cover-ups, apologies, and endless self-defense. They often hate themselves and declare themselves secret self-enemy number one, knowing they're at fault even when they always seem good at blaming others.

The brighter and more capable they are, the more certain they are that their bad behaviors represent bad choices and a failure to accept and discharge responsibility, and that they could do better if they were better motivated, more reliable, and more honest. Often, their parents, teachers, and supervisors agree that accepting responsibility for their failures seems like the necessary first step toward recovery.

While accepting that you
have
a problem is in fact the universal first step, accepting
responsibility
for having it is not. Brain wiring can cause well-motivated, smart people to procrastinate and drop the ball, and nature gives them no choice. The fact that you're not responsible for having a problem, however, never relieves you of responsibility for working with it and finding ways around it, and often requires you to overcome deeply ingrained bad habits and attitudes. It's impossible to change your instincts or make distractedness, impulsivity, and scattered thinking go away; you can, however, become a good manager of the impulses to procrastinate, avoid, lie, and cover up.

Then again, most “faulty” brain wiring, like that which makes tracking and finishing tasks difficult, is probably helpful in terms of Darwinian survival in situations that don't involve sitting in cubicles or writing term papers. Having a mind that shifts attention quickly or persistently stays off topic may actually help in chaotic situations where you need to spot someone sneaking up on you. It also seems to empower salesmen; in fact, it's hard to find a salesman without ADD. Distractibility is not so hot, however, when you're staring at a monitor, or really anywhere but in sales, the jungle, politics, the jungle, etc.

So don't hold yourself responsible for irresponsibility when it comes to being a slacker, assuming you don't really want to be one. Push aside the shame, assess yourself objectively, and learn what's
necessary for good management. You can't change your brain, but with the right tricks, extra time, and determination, you can get stuff done, no matter what's on TV.

Among the wishes people express about improving their disorganization and dysfunction are:

• To be more responsible

• To stop forgetting appointments

• To stop avoiding work

• To appease someone who wants them to stop avoiding work

• To figure out how to face the pile of shit on their desk before the boss sees it and shits on them

Here are some examples:

I don't know why I've always been a fuckup, but I'm pretty sure the boss is going to fire me, even though he's my dad. I underachieved in high school, even when teachers went out of their way to encourage me and offer extra help. Now I'm working for my dad and I don't want people to think I'm there just because I'm his son, but they're right, because I never get tasks done. I hate screwing up and apologizing so much that sometimes I can't bring myself to come to work in
the morning, which just makes things worse. My goal is to grow up and make better choices.

I hate to admit it—in fact, I never admit it—but I'm a liar and can't stop myself. I started lying about my homework when I was little, even though I always got caught, but I just couldn't control it, even after I was punished and publicly humiliated. In college I told my parents I was doing fine when I'd stopped going to classes, and it would have saved them a fortune in tuition if I'd just told them the truth and dropped out instead of waiting to get called out on my bullshit and kicked out of school. Now I'm living at home and I sometimes look for work, but I have no hope for the future. My goal is to be an honest person I wouldn't despise.

I have no excuse for how little I've done with my life. Everything I've tried, I'm interested in for a year or two and then I stop being interested and, before long, find something newer and shinier that I'm sure I'll want to make a better career out of. That, of course, lasts for a short while before something even newer and shinier appears to lure me away from my last job, and the cycle repeats itself. I should be motivated to follow through on one career path because I need the money and I'm not getting any younger, but when an idea gets into my head, there's no room for logic, perspective, or anything else. My goal is to settle on one career path, any path, before I'm so old I should retire.

If you had a problem with, say, constant barfing, you wouldn't settle for feeling like a loser while resigning yourself to a life spent within ten feet of a toilet or in reach of a paper bag; you'd see a specialist, quit gluten if you had to, or at least become a master of puke jokes. That's why the first job as a chronic fuckup is to put aside shame and blame and find out if part of the trouble is a weakness in your mental equipment.

Most people avoid this step because it's painful to know that something about you doesn't work right, but doing so will save energy you're wasting on self-blame and apology and will give you ideas about better things to do than kicking yourself.

Incidentally, the line between bad mental equipment and bad behavior is often blurred by the fact that bad mental equipment usually causes people to behave badly. This is either because they're innately more angry and impulsive than they can manage, or because they become bitter about their inability to stop themselves from fucking up, which ups the anger factor even more. So the fact that some fuckups act like Assholes (see Chapter 9) doesn't necessarily mean they've made worse choices than the better-behaved fuckups, or that they have more control over their choices. It just means they struggle more and their behavior may be even harder for them to change or control.

If you can tolerate the humiliation and helplessness and admit that you're an out-of-control fuckup, it frees you from expectations you can't possibly meet, promises you can't keep, and appearances you can't maintain; it liberates you from the ensuing cycle of endless failure. It doesn't free you, of course, from your standards or your determination to be as least fucked-up as possible given your new, self-acknowledged fuckup status.

As soon as you accept who you are, think hard about the standards you want to live up to and less about looking normal, pleasing authorities, or competing with others. Use those standards to manage your inner fuckup by redoubling your efforts to learn whatever you really care about and manage bad behavior.