• 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
Your Script
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.
Did You Know . . . That Your Shrink Talks about You?
Like so many of those born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts—the home to 2 percent of the world’s psychiatrists, which is a factoid I’m almost positive my mother didn’t make up—I am the product of two shrink parents. Upon discovering this fact, most people ask me questions I can’t answer or take seriously; I can’t tell you if my childhood was weird, because I didn’t spend time with another set of parents to compare it to, and I won’t tell you if it means I’m crazy, just as I wouldn’t ask the child of two lawyers if that means he’s an argumentative Asshole stereotype.
Nobody seems to ask me the one question I can answer rather definitively, which is, yes, your shrink talks about you, and not just to her shrink, who is Peter Bogdanovich, because The Sopranos isn’t universally accurate. If the fact that your shrink shares feels like a violation, it isn’t, 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.
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 on 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,