The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DoctorKenner.com.

What do you do if you're almost 60 years old, you've had a serious illness for the past few years? You're on medications for infections and other things, and at your doctor's suggestion, you visit a psychiatrist. You walk in thinking that the medications you were on really messed you up, but you walk out with a label, a diagnosis that you have something called bipolar disorder, and it doesn't fit your own impressions. What do you make of this? Let's turn to our after-hours line to hear about a woman in this situation.

I'm 59 years old, and have had two and a half, almost three years of fairly serious illness with infections and such. I was just recently, though, told to go to a psychiatrist and just to check to see if I am bipolar. The psychiatrist asked me questions. Said I was bipolar. Definitely. I'm not sure he's right. I think I got messed up on meds. But if a psychiatrist says they've got a special certificate and know how to diagnose bipolar, do you think that it's them? Like, 90% sure that he's right?

Okay, so you want a second opinion because you go into one doctor's office and you get a label. You get a label of bipolar. Now, is this right or not? You don't like it. This isn't what you anticipated. It gives you a totally different view of yourself than a woman who is messed up on medications after an infection and just needs some stabilization and maybe some skills, and you can move on with your life. But with bipolar, people, especially psychiatrists, usually say you have this for life. There's no, you know, you just have to live with it. It's just that your body's different than other people's bodies, and it's a disorder. It's not something that's within the power of your choice. If you go to a cognitive therapist, they will give you a lot of skills on how to manage and possibly get over it. Maybe you don't even have it, though; their theorists and psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health workers differ on their views in this situation.

When people, when a doctor gives you a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, let me spend a moment on that because you need to know what that refers to. Hey, I got to interrupt this because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds. That's it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. I wish I knew more about what girls want from a relationship. Well, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where's that ad I saw? Here it is: The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at selfishromance.com and buy it at amazon.com. Huh? The Selfish Path to Romance? That is interesting.

When people, when a doctor gives you a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, let me give spend a moment on that because you need to know what that refers to, that we have something called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is like the Bible in psychiatry, psychology, and mental health problems, and bipolar is characterized by dramatic mood swings from very happy to totally down in the dumps. Now there isn't one of us who hasn't experienced extreme mood swings. We think we got the job, and then we find out we didn't. We wait for a date to show up and we love this person. We find out we were stood up and that he went out with someone else that night. We go through a parent's divorce, and we feel many ups and downs. We feel the relief when they get divorced, that they're no longer fighting at home, but we don't like that we had to change schools.

So there are normal fluctuations of feelings that we have, and feelings are based on our automatic evaluations of whether something is going well in our life or not, in a good direction or not. Now, this is not a disorder. This is healthy human functioning, but you need to know where emotions come from and how to understand your own moods. If you have powerful, powerful mood swings, and there's no obvious cause of a good or a bad mood swing, then first you have to rule out several things. You have to rule out medications. Your doctor should do a thorough examination of what medications you were on or are on, what interactions they may have with one another. You need to rule out things like even light therapy can affect you. It's not bipolar, or if you've had any ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, that can affect it.

If you have thyroid problems, that accounts for mood swings. I once saw someone who was extremely depressed; it turned out to be a thyroid problem. Thank you. It wasn't when you fixed the thyroid problem that the person wasn't as depressed. It could be bereavement; someone died, or you're anticipating a death, or it could be medical problems, a brain tumor, lesions, and it could be emotional problems. We'll talk about that coming up right after the break, and what you can do about it. I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner on the rational basis of happiness.

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

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author, Dr. Edwin Locke. Telling your partner why you love them is especially important as you are falling in love and around the time of the marriage proposal. But don't stop there. Partners want to know what qualities their loved one values in them to know if they are the same qualities they value in themselves. For example, if you tell a woman you fell in love with her because she's cute, and that's it, nothing else, she probably isn't going to feel flattered. A woman of substance surely wants to hear something profound about why she is loved, something specific about her character, her mind, her values, and her way of approaching her career in life. This principle applies to both partners.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy The Selfish Path to Romance at Amazon.com.