What to Do When You’re Fed Up

Reading Time: 15 minutes

Are you resentful, angry, afraid and fed up? Welcome to the club! You are not alone.

Across the world, and certainly across the US, fed-up-ness is rampant. Fed-up-ness takes many forms, is experienced at many different levels of severity, and lasts for varying amounts of time. Almost everyone got fed up during the pandemic. And the pandemic is only one of a number of alarming problems the world has faced and is facing in the wondrous 21st century.

Fed-up-ness is easier to deal with when you are economically secure, but a relatively small portion of the population is all that economically secure these days. Even people who are, objectively speaking, rich in comparison to most of the world feel economically insecure because – untrammeled capitalism breeds insecurity. It’s designed to do that – to encourage productivity and greed and growth and all that wonderful stuff we’ve been told are the reasons modern life is so so great compared to non-modern life.

Whatever you think about the economic system you were born into, let’s talk about being fed up and what to do when that feeling takes hold.

What to Do When You are Fed Up Step One: Pitch a Fit

Pitching a fit is easy and natural when the thing that pushes you into fed-up-ness seems temporary and minor. A spouse or child is snarky and with the mood you’re in, you’re just plain fed up with it. So you yell at them. A co-worker has been driving you nuts for months and finally the time seems right to pitch a minor fit about their annoying habit(s). You’re hassling with an airline or a store employee and now seems like a good moment to just lose all patience and unload. Sometimes you feel better after your fit; sometimes you feel embarrassed or guilty.

But the reason you pitch a fit, even when you feel like you shouldn’t, is because pitching a fit is good for you. This seems nonsensical when the thing you want to pitch a fit about seems intractable or insoluble or hopeless or that pitching a fit would do no good whatsoever.

When you’re so chronically angry or sad or depressed and fed up with your marriage that it seems like nothing will make it better. When you are so over your job but think you can’t quit. When your life feels empty, but you don’t know why and feel doubtful that things will ever change. When you’re stuck. When you are generally unhappy. When you’re sick and tired of being sick and poor. When you think the world is going to hell in a handbasket and there’s nothing you can do about it.

These are the times when pitching a fit is the most important. It’s exactly when pitching a fit seems useless that you need to pitch a fit. But there are ways to pitch a fit that are helpful, so we need to break down the pitching-a-fit process. It’s possible that you’ve been regularly pitching fits that don’t fit the purpose of pitching a fit in the first place. I see people pitching fits on social media or the comments section of whatever that are wildly off the mark in terms of fit-pitching best practices. So….

Pitching a Fit, Step 1a: Identify Your Ideal

Every person’s brain carts around at least 3 pictures or ideas at all times. Picture #1 is their picture of what is ideal or desirable or how things ought to be. Picture #2 is what they think their reality is right now. Picture #3 is how they think things are trending. Is the Reality Picture becoming more or less like the Ideal Picture?

Brains are obsessed with Trend, which is why stock market graphs and almost every website or social media platform has some mention of what is trending. Brains are convinced that Trend is important and that current trends are a good predictor of the future. Brains are frequently wrong about this, but it saves them from analyzing things more deeply and brains love to save themselves from extra work.

This is one reason why faith is an important component of religions and spiritual practices worldwide. Part of the utility of faith is that is says to us, very explicitly, ‘current trends suck but things can turn around at any moment. Have faith!’ Faith says this to us because it is right. Trends don’t last forever, things do change, and they frequently, and sometimes frighteningly, change really fast.

So – to pitch a fit, we are going to ignore Trend for the moment, even if the Trend is that things never seem to change. We are going to focus instead on looking at the picture of our Ideal, whatever that might be. The Ideal job. The Ideal level of education, financial security, number of children. The Ideal partner. The Ideal lifestyle. The Ideal emotional state. The Ideal social status. The Ideal world, political system, society, whatever. The Ideal you.

Just take a look at your picture of how you think things ought to be, how you want them to be, what would be ideal. E.g., the perfect partner drops into your life. You never have to work again. Everybody does what you say all the time. Everyone agrees with you. You are way richer and much better looking.

Many of us, often, don’t want to look at our picture of the Ideal because a) it is too different from current Reality, and b) it seems wildly unrealistic. Too different from current Reality and impossible to achieve are painful contrasts for your brain to contemplate.

It’s precisely because the contrast is painful to contemplate that we are going to pitch a fit.

Go ahead now and look at your picture of the Ideal and scream at the top of your lungs: I WANT A BETTER JOB! I WANT MORE MONEY! I WANT EVERYONE TO LOVE ME ALL THE TIME! I WANT TO STOP WORKING SO HARD! I WANT 8 MILLION FOLLOWERS ON INSTAGRAM! I WANT THE PERFFECT MAN/WOMAN/NON-BINARY PERSON TO BE WITH ME ALWAYS! I WANT EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH ME ON POLITICS TO SHUT UP AND DIE! I WANT CLIMATE CHANGE FIXED WITHOUT ANY EFFORT ON MY PART! I WANT MY KIDS TO NEVER HAVE ANY PROBLEMS EVER! I WANT TO BE HAPPY AND CAREFREE ALL THE TIME!

And so on. Now it may be that literally screaming at the top of your lungs may not work for you. It might be embarrassing, disruptive, or inconvenient. But you can scream in all caps inside your head, on a piece of paper or on a screen. On some occasions, you might be able to shout at a friend “I just want everything to go perfectly all the time!”.

But you can’t say in a quiet little voice to your partner, “I just want us to be happy again.” A quiet little voice is not pitching a fit. Your declaration of the Ideal needs to be made in the emotional equivalent of all caps. ALL CAPS!

Why are you doing this? Because, unbeknownst to yourself, you have been repressing your Ideal on the grounds that you can’t have it. But suppressing your Ideal picture does make it go away. It just hangs around in the background making you miserable, taunting you, saying mean things to you about your unworthiness and sucky life.

You do not have an option to go around without an Ideal picture in your head, even if you’re a Buddhist. It’s just there, built into the structure of how your brain works.

So go ahead – it’s time for some ALL CAPS! Swearing is encouraged as well. Pitch a fit until you’re tired of pitching a fit. I mean really exhausted and you have no more fit-pitching to do at the current moment – you’re used up.

And then we’ll move on to Step 1b.

Step 1b: Assess Your Ideal.

Now that you’ve acknowledged your Ideal, it’s time to take a look at it. It may well be as unrealistic as you feared/imagined. It’s important to know exactly what you want, but you’re right, you’re probably not going to be able to teleport everywhere you want to go instead of taking a plane or car – at least not in the immediate future.

That’s okay. It’s even great.

Identifying a totally unrealistic Ideal picture can ease your angst considerably. The reason it can ease your angst is that even your snarky little Ideal that has been carping at you about not being realized, will understand once it is forcefully acknowledged and even celebrated in ALL CAPS, that not all the people who disagree with you are going to shut up and die or that not everyone is going to do everything that you say all the time or that not all events are under your control.

It is amazing how much and how often people suffer with and from unrealistic expectations simply because they don’t acknowledge that they have them. They keep trying and trying to achieve an Ideal that is unworkable because they will not admit to themselves that they’re doing that.

So take a deep breath. Maybe take several. What a rock star you are to have acknowledged your Ideals. You are so great.

And you’re ready for Step 1c.

Step 1c: Identify What Your Ideals Are Telling You About What You Don’t Like

Humans spend the bulk of their lives accidentally trying to avoid the negative, with some minor, and often ill-fated, detours to pursue the positive.

But even though we spend our lives trying to avoid the negative, we often neglect to even identify what we don’t like. We do this because we believe, strangely, that we’re not going to be able to avoid what we dislike, so instead we should avoid all other kinds of shit like speaking up for ourselves, because there might be a negative outcome. We ignore the negative outcomes we are actually experiencing to avoid imaginary future outcomes. It’s wacky!

But it’s what we do. However, we’re in the midst doing something different from what we normally do, so we will forge ahead with identifying what we don’t like.

Maybe you don’t like being lonely. Maybe you don’t like being stressed. Maybe you don’t like feeling like you’re in an argument all the time. Maybe you don’t like corruption and greed. Maybe you don’t like hot weather and oppressive humidity. Maybe you don’t like your boss. Maybe you don’t like your country, your neighborhood, or your neighbors. Maybe you don’t like the direction things seem to be going in the world. Maybe you don’t like being a paraplegic or experiencing racism or being rejected by other people.

The reason you are fed up is because there is some shit that you don’t like. Identify it.

This could be scary if the things you don’t like are deeply woven into the fabric of your life. But that’s okay. You’re not doing anything about them. You’re just admitting that you don’t like some shit.

What you don’t like is actually surprisingly small. It may seem like you just don’t like anything about your life, but what you actually don’t like is the feeling that other people don’t think you’re as good as they are. Or the feeling that you’re trapped. Or whatever.

And you are allowed to dislike things. Even if you have to live with them every single day of your life – you don’t have to like them. You have a god-given right to not like things.

People think that if they feel as though they can’t change something, they have to accept it. And they think accepting it means they somehow have to like it. Because disliking something is bad and negative and should be avoided.

Disliking things though is life-affirming, self-affirming, positive and moral. It all relates back to your Ideal. Deep down, you actually want everybody to be happy all the time, You don’t like things that interfere with that perfectly natural and unobtainable goal. That’s all. You want better from the world than it coughs up. Disliking things is part of your moral compass.

I gotta say you are pretty darn special to have figured all that out on your own. Congratulations!

Time for another deep breath. Or two. Maybe even a congratulatory snack.

And then on to Step 2.

What to Do When You are Fed Up Step 2: Make That Trend Line Go in the Right Direction.

See how everything loops back around the opening paragraphs? It’s amazing. We’re back at Trend, the very thing we chose to ignore earlier.

Trend is going to be your savior now. Your brain gets hopeful and optimistic when the Reality Picture starts getting closer to the Ideal Picture, even if the magnitude of change is small.

It does not matter to your brain as much as you’d think that you are not going to fix the climate crisis or whatever your Ideal picture imagined. If it sees consistent evidence that climate disasters are gonna get less disastrous, it will edge away from fed-up-ness toward ‘okay, let’s build on this trend.’ Your brain just wants to see that damn Trend line moving consistently in the right direction.

This will not happen. Your brain will get fretful and upset and annoyed from time to time when the Trend line suddenly reverses, as it will sometimes. But it will buck right back up if you follow the above steps to get here – to the magical point at which you are going to make the Trend line look better.

You are going to take some tiny little thing you don’t like (or maybe even a big thing) and you are going to stop pretending that you like it or that you don’t mind it, or that it’s not that bad, or that it’s going to change without you even saying how much you don’t like it.

You don’t like your relationship, for example. So you are going to stop pretending that you like your relationship. You may not know what you are going to do about this given that you are married and have children and are not a billionaire. But you are going to stop pretending that somehow you are going to like a marriage that you don’t like.

People think they need to know how to solve a problem or what’s the fucking use of thinking about it, trying to do something about it, or even acknowledging that they have it. They think they have to figure out how to like their job if they don’t know how to leave it. They think that if they admit to negative feelings they will have to (gasp!) change and boy oh boy do they not have the energy or ideas to change right now.

In reality, you will have more energy if you spend less of it pretending that you like something you don’t like. Little chirpy birds will start singing in your heart when you are relieved of the burden of pretending. It almost feels like freedom!

So – you don’t like your marriage or your job or the country’s politics or your finances or your commute or a gazillion other things. Fine – you just don’t like them. You have arrived at Step 2a.

Boy, you’ve made a lot of progress in under a hour. Way to go!

Step 2a: Say Out Loud What You Do Want

We have now accidentally turned the corner into positivity land. We are now orienting ourselves around what we do want instead of what we are trying to avoid. That was unexpected.

You want a group of supportive friends instead of being surrounded by people whose values are different, whose vibes are toxic, and who can be downright mean to you.

Your supportive group of friends is nowhere in sight! You can’t see anything remotely resembling a supportive group of people in your entire field of view even if you try to look really hard and really far. That must mean that getting to a supportive group of friends is going to be really difficult and take a lot of effort and involve doing things you’re too tired to do, that are really scary and probably won’t work anyway. Right?

Nope. Supportive people are fucking everywhere. You can’t see them, sure, because you are encased in a cocoon of non-supportive people. That doesn’t mean they’re not out there.

Actually, your brain has not been looking for them because it didn’t even know you wanted to find them! It thought you were going to put up with your toxic environment forever, so it totally stopped looking in favor of whining and complaining and telling you that you’re a failure and waste of oxygen.

You’d think your brain would know what you want without your having to tell it, and you’re kind of right, but the truth is, if you don’t tell it, it will guess based on prior experience – and since you’re fed up, we know your prior experience sucks.

So you tell it – I want a supportive group of friends. Yup, that’s what I want. Or – I want money. That’s what I want.

Your want is based on getting rid of something you don’t like – that’s important – it helps get your brain on board to understand it is still in the business of avoiding the negative, its default orientation.

Keep an eye out, brain, for that supportive group of friends, or that big pile o’cash, or whatever. Go at it, brain, go get ’em!

Your brain will bound joyously forward, like a dog chasing a stick, eager to impress you with its fetching ability. It may not tell you this. It may be embarrassed to have you watch it work, afraid that you will criticize its every move. But underneath it will be wildly excited by the opportunity to impress you.

IMPORTANT PROCEDURAL NOTE: You do not need a plan. You need a desire.

Now we’re on to Step 3.

What to do When You’re Fed Up Step 3: Reinforce Your Desire Frequently.

Tell yourself things like ‘I am looking for a way to make a difference in the world’ if that’s what you want. (Pro tip: That’s what everyone wants although it is possible to not realize this except when you’re pretty young or pretty old.)

Keep a notebook or a journal or an app or a bunch of sticky notes or whatever to jot down things that come to your mind. Because they will. Improbably perhaps but they will.

It may be that you have been depressed and fed up your whole life and you didn’t want to do the previous steps because it’s so discouraging – and yet – if you do them and go all through the process (I don’t like being so depressed! I want to be happy every once in a while) – your brain, shyly perhaps, will start bringing you things to try to fulfil your desire. ‘Here’s a yummy donut,’ it will say, ‘will that make you happier? Really yummy.’

And if you accept the gifts your brain gives you, even if they’re so small (it’s the thought that counts), you will start to feel just a tiny bit happier. It was, indeed, a pretty darn yummy donut.

What you thought you wanted was to solve your whole damn problem at once. You thought you wanted to ‘own the libs’ until the libs were dead or for Trump to solve all your problems or to remake the entire economic system according to some disastrous model that you think reflects the way reality ought to work. You thought you wanted the perfect life partner. You thought wanted so much money that you could spend the rest of your life being an asshole and nobody could do anything about it.

What you actually wanted was to be working on the problem. Because your damn brain is so obsessed with Trend. If you have achieved everything you thought you wanted, your brain will mope around like a lovesick teenager because now the Trend can only be downward. Boo! Sadness! Emptiness! Sometimes even despair.

For example – you have a good life, and you’re miserable. You’re a billionaire and an asshole and you’re still fretful and dyspeptic and worried and often downright frightened. Not to mention furious that being a billionaire still doesn’t mean that everyone does everything you want all the time.

Your brain wants to feel efficacious, worthy, competent, useful. You gotta give it something to do. You gotta give it something to fetch for you.

SUDDEN ARGUMENTATIVE RESPONSE: What do you mean I don’t need a plan?! Don’t I need a plan? I have to have a plan!

Okay, remember how we talked about religion and faith a long time ago? That wasn’t by accident.

You need faith before you need a plan. I’m not gonna say a plan without faith is useless because it isn’t. It’s just that a plan without emotional alignment does not really make you any less fed up in the long run. It’s not bad in the short run.

If you want to skip straight ahead to a plan for quitting your job or getting a divorce or whatever – be my guest. You may or may not accidentally get rid of the thing you dislike. Sometimes making a change of any sort will loosen things up, reinvigorate your brain’s enthusiasm for the game of fetch, and start you on the path to a fabulous new life!

I’m also not going to say that ‘the plan will appear when the planner is ready.’ It often kind of does. But sometimes you have to sit down, and work it though with your logical brain instead of just your fetch brain.

You have decided that you dislike sitting around so much given the crappy way it makes you feel mentally and physically. You have decided that what you want is to get back on the treadmill like you used to do five years ago before you had young kids and dementia-addled parents and a shitload of other worries. You want to be in a gym and walk or run with your headphones on for at least an hour when no one can bother you and you can just fucking pound away while everything that stresses you becomes irrelevant.

You cannot, however, afford a treadmill. Or a gym membership. And you really don’t want to run in your neighborhood (scary!). And you don’t have time. If you’re lucky, your fetch brain will find you a listing on Facebook Marketplace for a used treadmill for $49 that you just so happen to have.

But if you’re not lucky, then you sit down and write out things like ‘look for cheap treadmill. Where? Or cheap gym memberships? Where? When to train? Craigslist, Freecycle, neighbors? During naptime? Won’t work. Running club safer? What to do with kids? After they’re asleep? Sounds tiring. Where to store treadmill? Babysitter? Trade time with another parent? Plan: 1. Research treadmills. 2. Research gyms. 3. Research running clubs. 4. Set budget. 5. Decide on best option. 6. Save money for purchase if necessary. 7. Set time, place, and arrangements for kid sitting.’

If that makes you feel better – do it! What we’re looking for is that all-important Trend line. If that works for your Trend line, then it’s right for you.

If you want to be more casual and relaxed and just idly scroll through listings for used treadmills, that works too. What’s important is that you are letting your brain play fetch and that you are being nice to it when it does (Good boy! Good brain! Are you a good brain? Yes you are. You’re a very good brain.’ )

Because the plan will appear. Even if you never recognize it as such. So….

Go forth – and get pretty fed up in good conscience and with good results. Namaste.