K-Fuck Radio: First time caller, long time listener

Muting the negative voice inside your

One of the things you learn in therapy is that your capacity to misunderstand yourself is infinite and incredibly powerful. Half the world sees Donald Trump as strong and smart, while the other half sees him as dangerous and stupid. But what does Donald see? I don’t know. I’m not inside the man’s head. I’m stuck inside my own head, where the vibes are often negative.

I used to believe that I was stuck with those negative vibes. Or, more precisely, I used to think it was impossible to escape those negative vibes because the vibes were me, and I was the vibes. Or, as Taylor Swift says, “Hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.”

Every single day, I’d hear this voice inside my head that I thought was my voice. The voice would say really terrible, negative shit:

• You suck

• You’re worthless

• You’re gonna fail

• There’s no point in even trying, so just give up

• You are fucked, dude

A few years ago, I realized that some people go through life without hearing a voice like that. This epiphany came one morning when the voice inside my head was especially loud. I was sitting at my desk trying to write something, but the voice kept telling me to quit. It made a very compelling case.

Down the hall, I heard my wife on her first call of the day. She was kicking ass and taking names. I tried to imagine what the voice inside her head sounded like. The only thing I could come up with was Braveheart.

Turns out I wasn’t far off the mark. When Christina finished her call, I asked if she heard a voice inside her head. She thought about it for a moment, then said, “yeah, it’s like a Viking warrior screaming as they rush into battle.”

My voice, I explained, was closer Eeyore, the depressive donkey from the Winnie-the-Pooh books. Except, my Eeyore voice shot negativity rapid-fire, like a machine gun that never runs out of bullets.

For the next few years, I envied Christina. I wanted a kick-ass inner voice, one that would say things like, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” But I figured that when they were handing out inner voices, I must’ve gotten in the Eeyore line, instead of the David Farragut line. My mistake.

Then one day, my depression went from manageable to unmanageable. After navigating a mental health system that felt more like an obstacle course made by greed-demons, sadists, and well meaning dipshits, I landed in a good place. For me, that good place is a psychologist who isn’t covered by my insurance and a drug called Wellbutrin that is.

The great thing about Wellbutrin is that it turns the volume way down on the voice. Before Wellbutrin, the voice’s volume was 50% on my best days and 100% on my worst days. After Wellbutrin, the volume is usually at 5%. I can handle 5%.

The great thing about a psychologist is that they can help you understand the voice and develop tools for disrupting that motherfucker. They even have a name for the voice: The Inner Critic. And get this, the inner critic isn’t your voice! It’s actually some fucked up external bullshit that you internalized, probably when you were a kid, because kids don’t know any better and often believe all kinds of bullshit.

“A lot of people give the voice a name,” my psychologist said, “because it helps them remember that the voice isn’t them.”

I thought about naming the voice Eeyore, but I couldn’t get the rights. Then I heard an interview with David Lynch, where he gave a perfectly accurate and absurd description of what it’s like to live with the inner critic:

I always say we are living, like, in a suffocating rubber clown suit of negativity. We don’t want to be clowns. We don’t want to have this heavy, stinking rubber all around us of negativity.

I thought about clown names. Bozo came to mind. Then Krusty. Then my lawyer told me the rights to Krusty would be even harder to get than the rights to Eeyore. Then I remembered that I’m not really a fan of clowns anyway.

I mentioned the name problem to my friend Norm. He told me that his dad called the inner critic Radio Station K-Fuck.

“Whenever my dad heard it, he’d say, ‘change the dial, down the signal tower!’”

I liked the idea of calling my inner critic K-Fuck Radio. For one thing, it felt like a nice way to honor the memory of Norm’s dad, a man who kicked ass and took enough names to fill a phone book. An obnoxious radio station also felt like a good description of the negative bullshit booming inside my mind. Plus, the name lent itself to a metaphor I was already using.

Turn down the volume of K-Fuck Radio

I asked Norm if I could use the name of his dad’s inner critic. Norm is a mensch, so there wasn’t any haggling over the rights.

“Go for it, dude.”

Shout out time!

A big thank you goes out to Toni Brayer, the newest paid subscriber at Situation Normal! Toni, I’m sending you a metric fuck-ton of good vibes. Don’t worry, shipping & handling are included.

Stick around and chat!

I ask, you tell

1. Are you a Radio K-Fuck listener?

2. What do you call your inner critic (assuming you have one)?

3. If you don’t have an inner critic, what’s your secret? I won’t tell!

4. Why are clowns so disturbing? Explain.

5. After you kick ass, what are you supposed to do with all those names? Wrong answers only!