The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download Chapter One for free at DrKenner.com and at Amazon.com.

Welcome to the show, Stanley.

Hi, Doctor. How are you?

Oh, very good, thank you. Tell me what your question is.

If I was feeling any better, I'd probably have to see a doctor.

Okay, meaning you're failing? Tell me about this.

I'm feeling too good.

You're feeling too good? Okay, this is an unusual call. Tell me about that.

Well, I have a history of manic depression.

Oh, you've been diagnosed with bi—it's now called bipolar, you know that? Bipolar, right?

Yeah, I'm the old school. I come from the old—okay, you can call it whatever you want. I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, with substance alcohol abuse. I've been hospitalized at least 13 times.

Wow. How old are you now?

I'm 65.

Okay.

Now, I've been depressed for the past five years, and all of a sudden I'm feeling good.

Are you drinking again?

No, that's it. I stopped drinking.

So do you think you're feeling—were you feeling good before?

Well, I was feeling good, yeah.

Okay, so you—what—you kicked the bottle?

As well as I'm feeling them, yeah. Because you know—

Oh, so you're worried that the—when you drink, you get the withdrawal?

Okay. What are you proud of in your life?

Like, grandchildren.

Okay. How old are they?

12, 7, 9.

Okay. And what emotion are you feeling right now thinking of them?

Sadness.

Yeah, tell me about that.

Well, because of my eldest. I was—been estranged from my family for the past 20 years, but recently I reconciled. My ex is what I call her—ex, yeah—and I just learned that I had four grandchildren.

You just learned this?

Which I wasn’t aware of, yeah.

Anyway, in addition to that, I lost a good friend—an alcoholic—27, rose of the liver.

Yeah. I just—

How old?

He was 27 years old?

Yes.

Okay.

He was like my substitute son, yeah. And he died.

He died?

My son died at 18, at a break.

Anyway—

When did you start drinking?

When you were 14 years old. Okay. What was the trigger?

It was available.

Yeah. Okay. But it was very available for me and I didn’t drink. So help me understand what—

Come from a culture that—using alcohol—

Okay, so you're Polish, your culture?

So it was the norm. It was like water is for me.

Drank, but they were functioning.

Okay. Or at least it seemed that they were on the surface.

Okay, so you're quite—I wanted—we're—I’m getting a lot of data because we’re on radio, meaning you only have a short amount of time. So let me sum up some of the things that I’m hearing so far. Is that I get the feeling this is going to dissipate and I’m going to go right back to being depressed again.

Okay, I look at psychology as being totally causal, and that means that there are always reasons for why things happen, assuming that it’s—that you don’t have a brain tumor, or that there’s not a brain lesion or something going on—something organic.

By organic?

Exactly. Most—most problems—most psychological problems are—

Hey, I’ve got to interrupt this, because we’ve got to pay some bills. 30 seconds. That’s it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, 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. Hmm… The Selfish Path to Romance. That is interesting.

Most—most problems—most psychological problems—are fundamentally psychological. And I think we do a very big disservice when we tell people they have a disease and they’ll have it for life, which many people are told with, what, depression or bipolar. "You’ve got a chemical imbalance," they’re told. And it makes them feel good because it makes them feel like they’re not responsible or accountable.

Yeah. Well, that’s what confuses me. But it also totally just—is it exogenous or endogenous?

Okay, you’ve got the words too. You’ve been in the field a while. I love cognitive therapy.

My psychiatrist says, “Probably both.”

Okay. Yeah, but that’s—you know—they all fudge. Meaning nobody— I think there’s something called a top-down effect and a bottom-up effect. Bottom-up would be organic from the brain up to consciousness. For example, if I take a medication for—I don’t know—not for a psychological problem, just a medical problem, it may make me feel very anxious, and I gotta get off it.

Oh, caffeine is one. If I have a caffeinated coffee, I’m a crazy woman.

You—

I can put my hand out and it looks like I have Parkinson’s.

Oh boy.

Well, that’s a Starbucks coffee, you know. So caffeine can affect me. But that’s not because of my thinking.

But most of us don’t know how to run our lives cleanly—don’t know how to think long-range, how to preserve our values. And instead, we turn to the bottle, we turn to drugs, or we become workaholics just so we don’t have to think about family problems. And if you don’t think about them, that guarantees that—what? Nothing gets resolved. You don’t see alternative ways of managing things.

So you now have a wonderful opportunity opened up before you. You have the possibility of connecting with three kids who don’t even know you. It’s really hard to do that. So you want to figure out how to be a good grandparent.

I’m going to recommend a book for you that’s a parenting book—it’s my favorite. It’s at my website, DrKenner.com. It’s How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.

Well, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.

You probably didn’t do it with your own kids, but with your grandkids, you get a second chance. I’ve had grandparents who’ve read this book, and they own up to the mistakes that they made with their own kids, and the kids appreciate that.

Well, I did it when I was healthy.

Yeah?

Well, I started drinking and going manic again.

Okay. You know, I scared—

It sounds—yeah, you’d scare me probably too. So there’s another book I’d like you to get as a gift for yourself. I know that you’ve probably made some New Year’s resolution that you’re off the bottle. Get the book Sober for Good. That’s also at my website. And that’s by Ann Fletcher—F-L-E-T-C-H-E-R. My website again is DrKenner.com.

And you want to reach commitment. You don’t want to be playing this game—on and off and on and off again. If you’ve gone to AA, have you done—have you done AA?

Well, not consistently.

Okay.

But I have problems with them. I don’t believe in any God or deity. So, you know, I like to take total responsibility for my problems and figure out how to fix them.

So she gives many other rational alternatives. In that book, she has a chapter on—it’s not just AA. You can—there are many alternatives. So I would give that to you. I would think of yourself as being more in charge than you may have in the past. Instead of looking at yourself as diseased, look at yourself as more competent.

Thank you so much for the call, Stanley.

Dr. Ellen Kenner, be back again next week.

Here’s an excerpt—and here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner:

"Maris and I have had our difficulties before, but never anything this serious. I really feel terrible having her mad at me. It’s times like this I wish I knew how to cry."

"Well, don’t be embarrassed on my account, Niles."

"No, no. It’s not that—I’m just not someone who cries. It’s not in my nature. When Maris’ Uncle Lyle died, I had to shut my hand in the car door just to make a decent showing at the funeral."

Okay, now one of the reasons that—that was from Frasier, obviously—and one of the reasons that Niles may not be crying is because he doesn’t value the people. So it’s not a loss. Whereas, if he lost someone he truly loved—let’s say Daphne—then he would be bawling his eyes out.

And I will tell you, even if he tries to tell his subconscious, “Don’t cry—it’s not a manly thing,” it would be very hard to repress that. People do repress it—it’s not healthy at all—but it’s much better to let the tears flow, male or female, because it’s a natural function of your expressing a genuine loss in your life. That’s what tears are—saying that you’re experiencing a serious loss in your life.

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

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How serious or characteristic was the offense? Adultery or driving while drunk are extremely serious transgressions as opposed to forgetting to pick up the milk on the way home from work. Sometimes the problem is not one big event, but a series of disappointments that form a pattern over the years, such as forgetting your birthday and anniversary every year, neglecting you, or constantly criticizing you.

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

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