A question! A veritable question! From someone I don't know! Or at least, from someone I haven't known for that long! At least, not for longer than ten years! Or so.
Your friend has published a novel. It is, of course, terrible. In fact, it's worse than terrible: reading more than one sentence actually makes you nauseous. And now your friend is asking if you've "had a chance to read it yet". What should a good Catastrophyte do?
1) Feel violently jealous and allow yourself to be seized by a devastating sense of personal failure. The book may be execrable, but it is also now published and it is well known that many consumers lack the gag reflex.
2) Good catastrophytes desperately fear conflict of any kind because it will undoubtedly bring about the end of a friendship or, possibly, yelling. So the first response to this situation should be: stalling. You've been busy at work. You've been sick. You've been sick at work. You've really been feeling down. Pull them all out. If your friend persists, and some strong souls will, proceed to 3).
3) Clearly you cannot tell the truth. That would be both foolhardy and brave. And totally unnecessary. If you told the truth, your friendship would obviously either be finished or irrevocably damaged. If you've been passive-aggressively attempting to extricate yourself from this friendship for years, by all means, be honest. But if there's still something to be gained for you from this relationship, there's only one thing you can do: lie.
4) Lie. I cannot say this enough. LIE. Don't compromise your principles entirely; just lie a little bit. Let's try it. I loved your chapter transitions. The font choice was very believable. I always thought you'd be capable of writing such a book. Or, simply gaze at them, clasp your hands together earnestly and make low, keening noises. That can be interpreted in any number of ways.
5) This is yet another truly delicious catastrophizing scenario because it gives rise to a larger question. Why are you friends with someone who writes nauseating prose? How's your prose?
6) What's so beautiful about this is that it will have a lasting impact on you. If you are really convincing when you lie ever so slightly to your friend, you will learn never to believe any compliments paid to you ever again.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
The New York Times's Social Q's missed the boat on this answer, so I will catch the boat and then pilot it. Badly. The Enemy Next Door
A longtime neighbor responds to my greetings with stony silence. I suspect this has something to do with a noise dispute I had with an upstairs neighbor who was then her employer. But that was a decade ago! Now, she avoids taking the elevator if I'm on it. Should I confront her and clear the air?
H.S. Answering letters of this kind is really one of the most irresponsible things one can do, as one is provided with so little context. One, however, will proceed.
1) What are those greetings that are greeted in return with a stony silence? Do you say, "A pleasant morning to you," or do you, say, drop your pants and say, "What would have happened if the Nazis had won the war?"
2) In terms of the noise dispute - who was responsible for the noise ten years ago? Was it you? Is it possible you're still creating a stupefying amount of noise and she's too shy to reprimand you? At what level do you play Poison's Unskinny Bop repeatedly?
3) I find your dilemma to be delicious in a catastrophic sense because there is more than one right answer. Whatever you decide, you will most likely spread interpersonal poison. If you do not confront her, you will stew and brood and your elevator rides will be exercises in quiet resentment and tension. If you do confront her, there's a good chance that you will manage to alienate and upset her and that your elevator rides will become exercises in quiet resentment and tension. If she manages to avoid riding the elevator with you, try to dawdle near her front door or parking space so that you can cultivate that quiet resentment and tension. At least then, you'll know the feelings are mutual. Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
I have received my second reader question! From someone who is not in the least related to me! Read on:
Let's say you're the parent of a very successful catastrophizer--should you feel pride, because so much of you lives on in a new generation? Or sadness and regret because your offspring has arguably been infected by your own congenital and over-arching pessimism?
- Anonynomous Individual Not
Responsible for Fathering the
Catastrophizer
Before going any further with this answer, I should make one thing very clear: you should always feel sadness and regret. Very occasionally, you may allow yourself to feel pride, or joy, or elation, but only because those sensations will add a certain piquancy to your subsequent feelings of sadness and regret. Don't be concerned about having to force the return of the sadness and regret; they will come back without much prodding because life is full of things that cause them.
Feeling pride that part of you lives on in the next generation can quite easily be made to result in profound depression (although all things, obviously, can be made to result in profound depression). First of all, that pride is necessarily bound up in the fact that you yourself will die, a fact which is likely to be interpreted as a downer. The individual in whom your qualities (fine ones, I will admit) will live on will also die, possibly without issue. Even if that individual were to produce offspring, those offspring would eventually die, and so on. Even if you belonged to a family that regularly produced progeny, all of whom inherited your qualities, remember that the world itself will most likely shrivel up and disappear at some point in the vast expanse of future time. Your pride will, one way or another, be short-lived.
You should absolutely believe that it is because of your style of parenting/doomed genetic bequest that your child has developed catastrophizing tendencies, because as you've indicated, that line of thought will undoubtedly produce more sadness and regret. However, if you were lucky/unfortunate enough to produce an even vaguely observant child, that child, one way or another, would have grown up catastrophically. The beige and brown Ford Fairmont had nothing to do with it.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
The question I will be considering today is the following:
Are there telltale signs a man isn't happy in his marriage?
I am including a link to the original answer from the New York Post, not because I think you should read the original answer, but because the link itself is instructive:
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/spitzer_babe_answers
If you were unfamiliar with the name "Ashley Dupre", never fear: the New York Post refers to her here only as "Eliot Spitzer Babe." That's right: readers of this paper can get love advice from none other than the call-girl who brought down the once untouchable governor of New York.
Unfortunately, she has not updated her advice column since mid-December. I choose simply to believe she has been deliberating ponderously over her next pieces of advice.
But on to the telltale signs. Yes, there are many telltale signs of unhappiness in a relationship or marriage.
1) Detachment. He may sidestep questions, avoid glances, fake sleep to get out of conversations.
2) Forced intimacy. He may enfold you in embraces constantly to prove to himself he still loves you.
3) A strange seesawing between detachment and forced intimacy. Not knowing yet whether he will force himself to stay and rekindle the feeble flame of love or allow himself to leave and have some sex with people, he behaves erratically, one minute clutching at you, the next, talking about having some sex with people.
4) Anything else. You see, catastrophytes, anyone you're involved with can already, right now, this very second, be planning to leave you. Anything can really be a sign of this intention, if you're looking for it. Or you're just paranoid, in which case, that's the tendency in you that will ultimately make him leave you.
4) He's having sex with Ashley Dupre.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
Years ago, I read, in a book I can no longer remember the name of, that hundreds of years ago (or so) in Egypt, it was culturally verboten to compliment someone else's child. Instead of saying: "Oh, what a beautiful baby! How adorable! Not at all ugly or shriveled!" one would exclaim: "My GOD, what a dismally unattractive child! I sympathize with you for having to look at such a hideous boil for the rest of its life!"
Why, you probably aren't but I will pretend you are wondering, would friends and strangers subject a child who might well be ugly but still not deserving of such treatment to such treatment?
Because complimenting a child, according to my specialist-level understanding of olden days Egyptian culture, would draw the malevolent eyes of some malevolent gods upon him or her. Someone who is high will be brought low; someone who is already low can only go up (and then down again, inevitably).
This haunting, yet exhaustively informative tale should inform your future, catastrophytes. If you are feeling peppy, immediate cleanse the palate with some wrenching fear, because clearly that enthusiasm will only bring disaster upon you. You do not have to believe in malevolent gods, only the general malevolence of life.
But remember, though, that avoiding a sense of well-being will not help you, either. As life's malevolence is general and disinterested (so it's not really malevolence, per se, but I enjoy the meatiness of that word and so will use it despite its total inappropriateness), you can be struck by almost laughably unfortunate misfortune when you've already been punched in the neck by life.
So did their rhetorical cunning help the Egyptians, or more to the point, their babies? Probably not. Because as I've already said, life can smite you terribly at random times, and not just when you're lookin' good.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
When should you introduce your child to catastrophizing? Is there a "right time"? Can a young brain effectively contend with the complexities of this dark art?
Dither no longer: It's never too early to learn how to catastrophize.
Children are like sponges. Selfish, vicious sponges. They are poised to soak up the fruits of your own knowledge of catastrophizing. My understanding is that sponges soak up fruit. Amazing creatures.
Their attitude and environment should already incline them toward catastrophizing. They can't have more treats. They can't not eat disgusting foods forced on them by their parents. They can't wake their parents up quickly enough during the night. Once they reach school age, they'll almost immediately either become a bully, in which case they'll be preoccupied with the flaws of others, or a bully's victim, in which case they'll be preoccupied with their own flaws.
All it takes to rear a catastrophizer, really, is a firm hand and a consistently negative attitude. "Is that a blemish? Oh, my mistake, I forgot you had a disfiguring birthmark there." "You did well on this multiplication test! There are so many professions you'll be able to choose from and be disappointed with!" "You failed your multiplication test! Not that it matters. You'll end up working in an office and feeling as though your talents are underutilized no matter what you score on some totally inconsequential quiz."
"Your teacher has THAT on her wall? What kind of educator finds inspiration in the hardships of an adorable cat? That cat is in TROUBLE, damn it! I think it would prefer a hand down to a totally useless piece of motivational advice!"
Whatever your concerns about catastrophic child-rearing, take heart: even if you somehow fail to instill in your child an affinity for catastrophizing, life will.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
In the last post, I discussed once again the perils of interpersonal relationships. But what of strictly personal relations of the purely cerebral variety?
It's not just other people you shouldn't trust. You should never trust yourself.
I don't mean to imply that you are or will be dishonest or degrading, degenerate or doltish, only that you'll never really know. Some well-meaning upbeats would say: "If you'll never really know, why worry about it?" If you never worry about it, I say to them, you are doomed to be an upbeat and therefore barred from the more exclusive parties and welcome only at mountain-biking expeditions.
It's not just other people who hide things from you; it's also you who hide things from you. The problem is, even if you figure out what you're hiding from yourself, you might never know why.
Take this entirely fictional scenario, for example: you hate your job. You find it unbearable. You hate everyone there. You hate yourself because of it and understand why everyone else there might hate you. But why?
Maybe you've always been a little bit lazy. You never liked your summer jobs. In fact, you've never liked work of any kind. You've always preferred watching hour-long crime dramas and "journaling."
Also, maybe you're inclined to exaggerate. Maybe your job isn't all that awful. Maybe you just dramatize situations to get attention or to prove that just because you have a totally sucky job doesn't mean you're incapable of telling a decent story. So maybe it's not totally sucky at all, in which case you have nothing to compensate for except for your own lack of self-discipline...
Maybe this job actually presents you with an exciting and honourable challenge and you're terrified of failing. In which case this job represents the pinnacle of all you could achieve and you'll never get anything better or more satisfying. So you have to work out whether you're in fact afraid of succeeding at the Best Thing That's Ever Happened to You.
Or, finally, there's the possibility that your job sucks. That everyone there sucks. And that everyone there really does hate you. You're not rationalizing anything away. In fact, worrying that you're actually happy there and can't accept it is actually a means of keeping you there even though you hate it. Because you're afraid you'll hate you next job even more? Absolutely. And you're probably right. Or are you? Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
Beware, gentle catastrophyte. Actually, that sentence could and should stand on its own, but I would like to use it now to lead into another topic: thinking about death can swallow up so many good catastrophizing hours that you can forget to contemplate more immediate living disasters.
Consider interpersonal relationships once again. I make a point of regularly identifying, enumerating, and then brooding upon all of the flaws within myself. And therein lies the problem. It is possible I have irritating, off-putting, frankly repulsive characteristics of which I am unaware.
Those personal defects of which I remain ignorant are very likely obvious to those around me, indeed have beyond any doubt been discussed by those around me when I am not present. Perhaps at first my faults were seen as mere quirks; day by day, however, they became more conspicuous, more intrusive.
Most friends, wary of conflict, will not address the issue immediately, will perhaps never confront it. In that case, you will never be told how and to what degree you are irritating or offensive. Secretly, your friends will pull back from you, your relationships forever blighted by the tendencies you are blind to in yourself.
Cultivating paranoia regarding the drawbacks other people perceive in their friendships with you leads to a dizzying array of catastrophizing opportunities. Each time you sit down with a friend, remain feverishly aware of your words, your actions, your gestures. Any one of them, even the one you find the most innocuous, could be the thing about you that bothers them the most. And for all you know, that thing has been bothering them more and more, has become to them totally unbearable. Any next moment could be the moment they decide to caution you about your behaviour or sever their connection to you.
And no matter how much you have brooded, how much you have agonized, about yourself and your behaviour in the world, you could not possibly have anticipated the straw in you that broke the camel of your friendship.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
Today we will discuss the manner in which watching films can instruct catastrophytes in the art of cultivating fearful anticipation.
You know The Moment Before. A woman comes home from work. She drops her keys on the table. She changes into more comfortable clothes and starts preparing dinner. LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW (actually, that's another possible name for what I'm talking about: LITTLE DID THEY KNOW) that in her closet, determined and evil, is a psychotic killer. But WE know. The audience knows. We know that there is someone waiting, lurking, planning. And we know that she has absolutely no idea what life has in store for her.
There is another kind of Moment Before that has more to do with sudden and unexpected tragedy than it does with a psychotic individual bent on murder. A family sits down together at dinner. They are laughing, making fun of one another, waiting for the older brother to get there. They make fun of him, too, because they are a relaxed and happy family who know how to have a little fun. Then there is a knock on the door, the policeman at the door, the horror on their faces, etc... The audience knows what is going to happen, either because the film has cut to scenes of the older brother driving on a slick, icy road, or because the film has been marketed as a tear-jerker primarily to female movie-goers .
Watch as many of these kinds of film as is possible, eager catastrophyte. If you watch enough of them, and watch them in a responsive enough state, your life will be forever changed. Terribly, wonderfully changed.
Every time you get home, take off your shoes, throw your keys on the table, you will suspect that there is someone in your closet.
Every time you have a delightful meal with your family (which should be an impossibility, because your constant catastrophizing should be a blight on all such get-togethers), even if you have no older brother, you should be waiting for The Phone Call. Or the Knock on the Door. Anything really that sounds as though it could begin with capital letters.
If you learn to dread The Moment Before, you will in effect become both the character in one of these films (because you are the one who will be attacked and/or emotionally devastated) and the viewer of one of these films (because you, like the viewer, possess the knowledge that an attack and/or emotionally devastating revelation is imminent).
You will never arrive home or eat a meal the same way again.
Knowing that something is about to happen changes this from a LITTLE DID I KNOW moment to a I TOTALLY DID KNOW moment, which will be something to hold on to when that man bursts from the closet or the knock comes on your door.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
If death were an encounter with an aquatic creature, which one would it be? I tend to think it would have something to do with a member of the cephalopod family, but for the purposes of this post, I am providing myself and you with only two choices: shark or dolphin.
I'm not going to do anything original or creative with these options. As such, the shark is the Bad (BLOOD IN THE WATER) One, and the Dolphin is the Good ("Pardon me, but does your ship need saving?") One.
So which one will you meet when death Comes For You? Obviously, it depends on whom you're going about asking. Those without belief will unerringly go for the shark. It's vicious. It's unerring. It's kind of cool. It will eat you without compunction and then go off to find a momentarily unguarded cephalopod and eat that as well. When death is an encounter with a shark, it means nothingness, extinction, no one being able to hear you scream if you were able to scream anymore which you emphatically are not.
And then you have the dolphin. Ah, the dolphin. Super-intelligent, but somehow not cool because of all the tween girls and "spiritual" adults with dolphin tattoos and necklaces. The dolphin death people are those with a belief in some kind of benevolent post-death experience. You run into the dolphin (death, in this analogy - follow closely, won't you?) and it greets you with smiles (really not a smile, just a physiological characteristic, but in this analogy, it's a smile) and friendly guidance. "Come with me," it says. "I'm like the boats at the end of Lord of the Rings. I will take you to another country. I will not eat you up like that son of a bitch Shark."
So which death scenario is correct? Do we believe in the cool, sharky atheists, or the friendly pious dolphins?
I believe in neither. Because both are based on some kind of faith. If we have a problem in mathematics, we can go and see the best mathematician and he (field still largely dominated by men, alas) will either give you the answer or tell you to get the hell out of his cramped bungalow. Ditto business (except for a far larger house)...English literature (although all answers will be provisional and totally unhelpful)...medicine (actually, still many advances to be made, but my point is that advances CAN be made)...but have a question about death, and where can you go? Whom can you ask?
"Oh, see a priest," someone would undoubtedly say. And the priest would tell you what he (field still largely dominated by men) really BELIEVES will happen. "Oh, see an atheist with a book on the New York Times bestseller list," someone else would undoubtedly say. And the atheist would tell you what he (it's either Hitchens or Dawkins) really BELIEVES will happen. They don't know anything. Both belief systems are BELIEF systems. There is not an expert in the world who can give you any real insight into death. The smartest people who have ever lived would be unable to help us because they are either alive and therefore cannot research the subject, or they are dead and can't publish the research.
So choose: shark or dolphin. You have a 50/50 chance of being something close to correct. Or do what I do and choose neither. That way, you can spend the rest of your life haunted by your own ignorance and the malign mysteries of the world.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
|
RSS Feed