The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

How do you cope with negative emotions? People don't go to a therapist when they're feeling joyous and happy and cheerful. And they don't go into a therapist and say, "Hey, what's going on? I feel like I'm in such a great mood, and my life is going well." They don't go in for that. People go in when they feel like they're rolling in the mud; they feel depressed, they feel anxious—all of these negative emotions. They feel guilty, they feel unlovable, they feel like a loser. And that's what brings people into therapy, and that's what makes any of us stay up late with it. We can all feel vulnerable. We can all have our moments when we just feel like we don't know how to cope, and it just feels like the world kind of falls out from under you. You don't feel good about yourself. You may not feel good about other people.

How do you deal with negative emotions? You don't have to just sit with them and ride the wave thinking, "Well, sometime they'll end." There's a lot you can do. That's what cognitive therapy is all about. Cognitive is just a fancy word for thinking—therapy for cognitions, for thinking. And later in the show, I will be talking with Dr. Jeff Regan Bach, who's a cognitive therapist trained at the Beck Institute. We're going to talk about how your deepest ideas, ideas you may not even be fully aware of—such as, "You know what? I've always felt like a loser"—you may not say that to yourself, or "I don't feel like I can trust people." They just mess up your life. We're going to be talking about core ideas, fundamental ideas, and how cognitive therapy can help you learn thinking skills and help you build realistic hope. You can challenge negative ideas that lead to all of those yucky, negative emotions. And here's the punch line: make your life happier. You can do it. You can deal with your issues in a more reasonable way and earn the results of dealing with something well, even if it's something negative. Dealing with it well will earn you some self-respect.

And here's a person who could use some help. You know, we all have to face the fact that we're not here forever. We're going to die. And I'll tell you what I did in a moment. But how do you deal with that? This is from a college student. And think about when you were this age. Maybe you are this age right now, but dear, what went through your mind?

Dear Dr. Kenner, I'm 19, and in college. For the past few weeks, all I think about is dying. I have thanatophobia. That's just fear of dying, and the very notion of me not existing, of not being able to touch, to see, to taste, to smell, to hear, and most of all to think, has me feeling disconnected from the wonderful things in life all around me, along with my interests and goals. I was a creative, happy person, always thinking about living, about how to achieve my goal of being a filmmaker. I want to live life to the fullest and be myself, the self, but death looms over my thoughts. Everything seems meaningless and hopeless. Why?

I think it's partly my exposure to the pessimism of the people around me—from my professors, these prestigious professors who are cynical, to my cynical mom. She's pressuring me to stay in this depressing academic environment. I feel she's been manipulating me and my younger siblings and makes things hard for my dad. My parents are divorced. I have a few friends who are upbeat and rational, and I have a beautiful girlfriend whom I love because of her optimism, but I haven't been able to keep in touch with her or my friends. Why? I'm alone most of the time, struggling to go back to the things I love, but I feel stuck in a box, wondering what I can do in my career or in other parts of my life that will make it worth it in the end.

As an aspiring filmmaker, stories I have come across are of men and women who are heroic and optimistic. I want that in my life again. What should I do? Thank you for reading.

Joseph

Joe, this is the battleground within you. Now, first, I want to say something about thanatophobia. That's just fear of dying or fear of death. Listen, believe me, I have a fear of dying. I don't think about it much, so I really don't have a phobia about it, but I don't want to go through any pain. I have a fear of getting the flu. I don't want to go through pain. None of us like pain, but I don't want to make that the essence of my life and wrap my mind around it. But fear of dying—this is my view, this helped me very much. You can read all different views, and religion can really mess people up with this, or philosophy courses. Kids would come in when I taught at a college counseling center after they had listened to some really weird philosophers, and they were all messed up like this. So my view is really from a pre-Socratic.

I never have to think about my death because I will only be aware of my life. So this view of, you know, thinking of myself never seeing, tasting, or thinking when I'm not here—I'm not here, so there's nothing to think about. I will live my life to the fullest and expand it out until the day I die, and then I won't know about it anymore. So I have a view that is very helpful to me, to be able to keep in perspective that this is my life, and I am going to live it to the fullest, to the till, till my last day as much as I can. My grandfather wanted me and my uncle to tango two days before he died. We asked him, "What do you want?" And he said, "I'd like to see a tango." So that's what we did.

A few more thoughts. I think the pressure from your mother is big, and having cynical people around you can definitely color your world in dark tones. But you need to—all of us need to—develop ways to keep our own optimism alive. So I recommend pushing through the barrier, not feeling like you're in a box, but opening the door and making a phone call to your girlfriend, making a phone call to your friends, and reconnecting with other people, because you don't want these negative views to continue and you don't want to build it into a habit. I'd also recommend reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand because I think you can see that even when everything seems down and out, the hero in it is so wonderful.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by psychologists Drs. Kenner and Locke:

Personality refers to ways of acting that are habitual. Often, the first thing that strikes us about another person is whether that person is nice. By "nice," we don't mean the syrupy, selfless, sweet type of person who has no independent values and never judges anyone. We mean the genuinely friendly person who is considerate, pleasant, tactful, and shows goodwill. The opposite is a person who's just not nice—someone who's unfriendly, impolite, inconsiderate, grumpy, gratuitously critical, tactless, or otherwise shows ill will. Genuinely nice people create a positive emotional climate, and this helps romance thrive.

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