The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free. Doctor Kenner.com, and I want to welcome Melody to the phone right now.

Melody, yes, I'm here.

Oh, yes, you have something you want to touch base with?

Yes, I called you, Doctor. Oh, it's probably been 10 weeks, maybe three months ago, and I told you that my husband had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and I was concerned, scared, yeah. And my question to you was that, did you think it was correct to ask for a second opinion?

Yeah, and I was afraid to ask for a second opinion. I'd asked the doctor, and he had just kind of ignored it. I went to a neurologist, very good to read the X-rays and the MRIs and all that. He said, "Well, the MRIs won't change."

Yeah, and I said, "I know that, but it's a different mindset, a different mind, a different training, a different set of eyes to look at that MRI."

Yeah, and so you encouraged me to get that second opinion.

Yeah, and my husband and I did travel to a large city, yeah, and we met with a neurologist, and she said, "You are absolutely correct. He does not have Alzheimer's."

Wow, wow, wow.

So she said, now, so they tested him every which way. She said, "First of all, I work with people; I don't work with MRIs."

Yeah.

And I think your husband is showing some test anxiety as I'm working with him. But she said, "After all, he is believing that he has Alzheimer's. So we have some work to do."

So anyway, long story short, she wrote on her pad, "No Alzheimer's, no dementia. Wow, possible mood disorder. We can't know that until he's been off of his aricept medication for three months."

So she sent us home, and she said, "Go home." And she said, "You need to learn to be confident."

And my husband said, "Competent."

And she said, "Oh no, sir, you have been competent all your life. You have just lost your confidence."

Wonderful, yeah, yeah.

So we're in that process now, but I wanted to thank you for encouraging us to get that second opinion because I knew I needed to do it, and I was making the decisions for him, really, because that's just the way it is. After you've been married forever, right? And someone is sick. I mean, I was, you know, running the show.

And anyway, so we are back home, we have the diagnosis, and we are waiting for the medicines to leave his system and then to see whether or not there might be a mood disorder.

Okay, go ahead. You have a question. Go ahead.

Well, the thing was, he was having a, she said he was having a— the doctor saw an exquisite reaction to the medication that they had given him, which was an antidepressant. And she said, "It's unusual. Not too many people react like this, but he did."

Okay.

So it was a complication of the medication.

And if I mean, man, if someone told me, "Ellen, what you have is not Alzheimer's, but you have a confidence problem," I'd love to work on my confidence problem.

You know, he's just, you know, he was going around thinking, "Oh my God, it's over. Yeah, I've got Alzheimer's." And she said, "No, you don't."

But anyway, we went to a big university research to do this, and they will now follow him every six months, and he has donated his body for right now, at least for research, and every year they will be running tests on him and watching what's going on.

Well, that's nice.

They said, "We're just gonna watch age and throw. That's fun."

Yeah?

But she said, "You know, she said, both you and Melody have a chance, 50/50 of having Alzheimer's when you're 85."

Yeah, but you're only 72, so they'll have a good 13 years, and we'll talk.

I love that. She sounds like a lot of fun.

So listen, she was a very— you know, it was kind of hard, so we had to go back to our first doctor and tell him that he was wrong.

And what did he say?

He said, "I am delighted. I wish I was wrong more often."

Oh, okay, so he accepted it gracefully.

And we were scared because we're not— we don't like confrontation, I guess, right?

And so we kind of psyched ourselves up before we went in, and we said, "Okay, this doctor really is our employee. We hired him to help us have good health, right?"

And so now we have to face him.

Went in, and we thought he would give us a huge argument and tell us how wrong we were.

But he said, "No. He said, I don't understand it the way I look at it. I still think there's a problem here."

But he said, "I will, you know, whatever she— the woman who talked to us was a relative. Simply young, young doctor, well-trained at the university and a neurologist, and I felt like I had to take her diagnosis."

And he had a battery of tests too. It wasn't just an MRI.

Listen, you're speaking up, and you're speaking up to the original doctor is one of the ways you build confidence. You're not afraid of the world. You can speak up, you can face some things that feel a little risky to do, but that are not dangerous.

And so that took courage, and that's part of building the confidence.

The other thing I would recommend if they're trying to rule out a mood disorder, I would get a jump start on that, and I would learn cognitive therapy skills in advance so that you don't mask, so it doesn't look like a mood disorder when he just gets— he doesn't know how to manage some emotions properly.

So you could get the book Mind Over Mood.

Okay, it's by Dennis Greenberger and Christine Podesky. And what that does is it teaches you how to decode your emotions.

So if I'm feeling really angry, because I know cognitive therapy, I know that that means I'm experiencing an injustice, something's not fair.

If I'm feeling sad, I know that I'm experiencing a loss.

If I'm very sad, it means a big loss. So I can ask myself, "What's the loss?"

If I'm feeling guilty, it means I acted against my own moral standard.

So when did I do that?

And notice I can— if I'm feeling anxious, it means I'm dealing with uncertainty or self-doubt.

When you learn cognitive therapy skills, you're not a mystery to yourself anymore. You can read your emotions.

You can learn how to know what the thoughts are that are driving the emotions, and if the thoughts are irrational, you can change them.

Okay, so it's called Mind Over Mood.

There are many— there are many different cognitive therapy techniques, but that one is wonderful.

So listen, I want to thank you so much for calling. That's so much fun.

Melody, yeah, to hear that.

Well, you had been so encouraging, and you had told me, you know, that if the diagnosis were correct, that I would— we would need to agree together, and then I would need to form a well life.

And right?

I had all that in my— well, you have that for when you're 96 years old.

You guys can do that.

Okay?

So anyway, listen, thank you so much for the call.

Thank you.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner.

My home life is unsatisfying.

Allison here says she wants to run away because her home life is unsatisfying.

Well, everyone's home life is unsatisfying.

Yeah, you understand.

But I think hers goes beyond what guys like you and me consider normal unsatisfying.

And you know, we all complain about our childhoods. You know, there's something I wish mom had done this. So why did dad do this?

And sometimes it's just the run-of-the-mill problems between parents and kids, and your parents could have used more assertiveness skills, or maybe some better listening skills, and you could have used them too, and you just say, "Ho hum."

You know, it's a learning experience, and hopefully as you mature, you get along better with your parents and remember the good things that happen too.

But sometimes that's not the case.

Sometimes you grew up in an abusive household, and it's a nightmare going home, and you want to stay at school later or go to friends' homes or hang out any place, but to go home with arguments or the silent treatment or fighting or whatnot.

And how do you deal with that?

How do you chronically live with that situation and still keep alive your passion, your desire to enjoy your life and carve out a life for yourself?

And how do you deal with the trauma after you move out of the house?

Many people still keep the same rules that they grew up with. They carry it into adult life, and they don't know how to challenge them.

I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner.

That was from the Breakfast Club.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this ad.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner.

People frequently blame their partner for a lack of intimacy, but it is not always the partner's fault.

Some people truly fear intimacy, having a fragile sense of self; they feel vulnerable to being hurt, ridiculed, or rejected.

Such individuals are chronically anxious.

Paradoxically, they may also cling to their partner for security, not for intimacy, and make unreasonable narcissistic demands.

Some reject intimacy because they fear valuing, wanting, or desiring.

They may be emotionally repressed or feel guilty valuing; they fear it is too risky or too self-assertive.

They may have spent their lives pleasing others or may have been hurt in the past, falsely concluding that it's safer not to pursue or to have personal values.

You can download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.