F*ck Feelings Read Free Page A

feelings without doubting your capacity to ignore them when necessary. In the end, you’ll have more respect for the times you kept trucking through a meltdown than the times you were confidently cruising along because everything was going your way.
Quick Diagnosis
    Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:
    â€¢Â The praise, salary, or family you deserve
    â€¢Â Peace, love, and happiness (aka, financial security)
    â€¢Â The knowledge that your present is right on track
    â€¢Â Confidence in your ability to keep it there
    Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:
    â€¢Â Create reasonable standards for what you can actually do, given your Muggle status
    â€¢Â Respect yourself for meeting your standards
    â€¢Â Survive pain, fear, and distress and give yourself credit for doing so
    â€¢Â Not let pain change your values, basic course, or determination
    Here’s how you can do it:
    â€¢Â Look for pre-meltdown red flags that might have warned you in the past and could warn you next time
    â€¢Â Ask yourself whether you could reasonably be expected to do anything different
    â€¢Â Rate yourself for work effort, honesty, and the value of your priorities
    â€¢Â Assuming you deserve better, find a friend or therapist who can remind you that you’ve lived up to your values and that the helplessness and humiliations have nothing to do with you, regardless of how you feel
    â€¢Â Check with a psychiatrist or therapist to see whether there are behavioral techniques and/or medications that might reduce anxiety or depression, if they’re extreme
Your Script
    Here’s what to tell someone or yourself while you’re feeling hopelessly fucked-up.
    Dear [Me/Family Member/Fuckup I Can’t Help But Care About],
    I know you feel like [the royal “we”/you/our fuckup son] is on the verge of [insert mistake or potential tragic experience], and life feels like an unholy disaster. The truth is, however, that life often sucks and sometimes I can’t expect to feel other than [insert classier, more dire synonym for “shitty”], especially given issues in the past regarding [bad luck/anxiety/your many addictions and world-record unemployment]. So don’t take it personally and do take credit for whatever good things you were doing, even if they were totally ineffective at fending off this mess. Take pride in doing a good job, regardless of bad [luck/genes/associates/mental pain] and don’t stop.
    Did You Know . . . What Is the Real Secret of The Secret ?
    The Secret , by Rhonda Byrne, is a self-help tome in which the essential thesis is: if you put your desires “out into the universe” (which is to say, if you think about what you want), then the universe will give you what you want.
    The Secret says, if you’re fat and poor, it’s not because you have a crappy job in a terrible economy, or because, after another day working a job you hate, you treat yourself to a deluxe cheeseburger with an extra side of Crisco. It’s because when you stand on the scale in your efficiency apartment, you’re thinking, This sucks, I am fat and poor , not, Hey, universe, I am thin, rich, and wonderful. Oprah’s a huge fan of The Secret , as are those out there who credit it for doing everything from getting them better jobs to ridding them of cancer.
    In reality, notions like the one put forth in The Secret have come up over and over through the ages, often claiming to be extensions of spiritual ideas that are exactly the opposite. The real secret, of course, is one that you don’t want to hear and would never shell out your money to learn because it doesn’t feel good, which is exactly why you’re better off hearing it: whatever good or focused thoughts, wishes, or prayers you put out there, shit happens and it won’t be fair, no matter how many collages you make.
    The more you project your wishes, the