It doesn't matter why, just fix it. - "'F*ck Feelings' Book Argues That Emotions Are Overrated."

Your inner child doesn't need a hug.  You need concrete, practical alternative thought processes and behaviors.  Cognitve Behavior Therapy 101. 

'F*ck Feelings' Book Argues That Emotions Are Overrated - The Atlantic: "Put down the talking stick. Stop fruitlessly seeking "closure" with your peevish co-worker. And please, don't bother telling your spouse how annoying you find their tongue-clicking habit—sometimes honesty is less like a breath of fresh air and more like a fart. That’s the argument of Michael Bennett and Sarah Bennett, the father-daughter duo behind the new self-help book F*ck Feelings. The elder Bennett is a psychiatrist and American Psychiatric Association distinguished fellow. His daughter is a comedy writer. Together, they provide a tough-love, irreverent take on “life's impossible problems.” The crux of their approach is that life is hard and negative emotions are part of it. The key is to see your “bullshit wishes” for just what they are (bullshit), and instead to pursue real, achievable goals. Stop trying to forgive your bad parents, they advise. Jerks are capable of having as many kids as anyone else...  If you happen to be the child of a jerk, that's just another obstacle to overcome...

Olga Khazan: Do you call this approach something? This idea that you’re going to not obsess about closure, or the roots of your problems, and focus more on solutions—is that a certain branch of psychology? 

Michael Bennett: The important thing is not what therapy you follow but that you stay grounded in common sense, and whatever therapy or therapies you're pursuing, you ask yourself repeatedly, have I reached my limit? Has this taken me as far as I’m going to go? So that you don't get stuck in the “if I did it better” or “if I did it longer” or “if I found a better therapist.” And it’s more, “Has this taken me as far as I’m going to go, and what am I going to do now?”

...The idea that there's so much life you don't control, and to accept that and still be a person, is still very hard. I think there's a core of that in Judaism and Christ parables, and in Buddhism. So there's nothing new about this. Sometimes it sounds very 19th century when we’re saying [that] sometimes when you feel strongly and you need to communicate, you're still going to do better to shut the fuck up.

Khazan: How would you sum up your approach to life’s problems, whether it’s love or childhood issues, or work? 

Sarah Bennett: The first step is accepting what you can't control. So many people who come to my father—they want something they can't have. They want a happy relationship that’s never going to be happy, or they want opportunities that are not easy to come by.  So it's going into accepting what you can't control, the factors that are out of your hands, and seeing what you can do with what you can control. And learning to be proud of yourself not just for accomplishing what you can, and not beating yourself up for what you can't. Not seeing yourself as a failure, when you haven’t really failed because it’s not something that you could have controlled in the first place. And admiring your ability to withstand a feeling of rejection, and the frustration and the pain, and keep going on towards a more reasonable goal while being a good person. That’s also what’s emphasized so heavily. Figuring out your own values and sticking to them. 

Michael: A big part of this—and it’s so hard to capture—is being able to laugh at how much life sucks. If you can laugh at it, you don’t take it as personally. That moment when you can laugh at how much life sucks and open your mind to the idea that, there you are. What are you gonna do?

We always try and make sure that people know that we don’t hate feelings in general. That we aren’t total Vulcans. But this is more of a book about solving problems. It’s to not make feelings the most important factor in how you would approach a problem. In terms of getting to the source of problems, the issue with that is a lot of people think about it like, “If I can remember where I last saw my keys, then I can get them and everything will be okay.” If you can get to where you last or where you first saw this issue, that doesn’t make the issue go away. Sometimes the search for the source of a problem can be a distraction, and it can also be a disappointment. A lot of the time, knowing why, for example, you pathologically cheat on partners, and you can say, “Aha, it’s because my dad was a jerk and he cheated on my mom.” That isn’t immediately going to flip a switch in your brain and make you monogamous.

We know … getting at what you really feel can be liberating, and important. There’s nothing against having that emotional catharsis two or three times and seeing where it gets you, but there’s some point where you’re still often left with some really severe limitations and have to deal with them. And if you don't get past the emotions, if you don’t stop seeking emotional resolution or improvement, you really get stuck.

...It’s sort of an axiom of cognitive therapy that when you're unhappy, your thoughts are going to be negative and self-critical. You're going to wonder what you did wrong, what you could have done and should have done. Part of it is going through a cognitive exercise and really trying to determine, “Did I do a good enough job?” Because if I did, I'm going to shut this investigation down. I know I will never be fully satisfied with how I behaved, but if I go through an investigation and try to look at it rationally, and with friends and be open about it, and I think I’ve done a good enough job, I'm going to try to take a stand on that. Much as I would have if I just went through either a legal or workplace investigation of something that didn’t go right. You assume that your feelings are going to tell you, since you’re unhappy, that you did something wrong. But that if you can do an inventory based on your own values, you're really doing a good job. And you’re doing a good job in spite of the fact that you’re miserable. That deserves higher praise. I think that’s sort of a basic paradox—that to live with pain and still be a decent person and make a living is a much higher achievement. It’s what you do when you’re not happy that’s so telling.

The other litmus test, too, that’s extremely helpful for me—I can be very self-critical—is when I think things like “I could have done that better” [or] “that was so stupid,” would I say that to a friend if they came to me? No! I would be encouraging, I would point out the positives. It’s always good to take yourself out of the situation and ask yourself, would I judge someone else I care about in this way?

Khazan: One thing that surprised me—at one point you say, if you have an asshole parent, that as an adult you shouldn’t worry so much about forgiving them if you were traumatized by your childhood. Could you explain the thinking behind that?"

Michael: If you find that your parent is one of those people who is really just a jerk, it's sort of like forgiving a cockroach for being a cockroach, or a snake for being a snake. Forgiveness tends to assume that people had a choice and made a bad choice...

Sarah: What people seem to conflate forgiveness with is getting someone to admit what they did, and to beg for forgiveness. When you’re dealing with someone who’s an asshole, that’s never going to happen. Let it go in a way that you don't feel compelled to [wait] for them to have that revelation. Because waiting for that is probably going to be painful or disappointing."