F*ck Feelings by MD Michael Bennett Read Free Book Online Page B

neither literally nor technically; it’s perfectly aboveboard for any medical professional to discuss their patients as long as they don’t disclose any identifying specifics (name, address, etc.). Your secrets may not be safe with your shrink, but your identity is.
    That might sound contradictory, but the people my parents would discuss over family-style takeout from Caffe Luna—from the severely mentally ill patients they treated while working in a public hospital to the anonymous people that would walk up the back stairs to my father’s home office—were not discussed simply as people. This is not just because their names were never mentioned but because my parents would discuss their patients’ problems and diseases, not their lives, and there’s a world of difference between trying to suss out a diagnosis and dishing juicy gossip (for one, the latter is fun to overhear and the former is boring, even if you’re not a child just waiting for dinner to end so you can get your homework done before must-see TV).
    Because mental illness is a less tangible disease than diabetes or cancer,people forget that psychiatrists, or at least the ones who raised me, approach your problems the way any other good medical doctor would their patients’ ailments; unemotionally, efficiently, and passionately enough to get a second opinion, even if that colleague is also a spouse. People also fail to realize that their problems are like snowflakes; not because theirs are unique, but because, aside from a few nearly imperceptible details, theirs are akin to millions of other ones just like it that, during February in New England, at least, are fucking everywhere.
    If you’re lucky, your shrink isn’t talking about you as a first-date anecdote or to make another, even crazier patient feel better, but with her spouse, surrounded by her uninterested children—who are patiently waiting for her to clock out—in order to determine what treatment would suit your anonymous self best.
    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.

chapter two
fuck self-esteem
    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 oneswho have little