The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Corrected transcript below, fully preserved and unabridged as requested:

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

Sandra, you're dealing with your husband's anger.
Yes.
Yeah, tell me what's going on.

Well, like, there's sometimes like he's okay, like he's okay during the day, and there's like little things that bother him, and he gets very angry.

Okay. I want to see what I can do to help him out. Are you in the crossfire of his anger? Are you the bullseye?

No, you're not.

So when he gets angry, who gets it? Give me, give me a typical scenario.

Like, say, my daughter, like she's crying or she's throwing a tantrum. Yeah, he gets aggravated, and he gets angry.

And how old is your daughter?

She's two years old.

Okay, so terrible twos, right?
Yeah.

Okay, so she's just learning how to say a wonderful two-letter word, which is “no.”
Yeah.

And then he counters with a counter tantrum. He says “no” to her, or what goes on?

Like a room, and she'll be like, “No.” So he will get mad and be like, “You need to go to the room.” And she'll say it again, “No,” and you'll have to put her back in the room.

Okay, so coming in and out, in and out.

So if you were to ask him, what might he—what does he think is going through your little daughter's mind, your two-year-old's mind?

That's like what I tell him. I said, she's only two. She doesn't know that much. She doesn't know right from wrong.

How do you express your knowledge that she’s only two?

Right.

And you want to have a civilized method of civilizing two-year-olds.

Yeah.

And what I tell him is, like we—me and him—can never sit down and talk, because everything bothers him, and everything, like, he gets mad. So I cannot talk to him one-on-one, because it's like he doesn't listen to me. He's like, “Whatever.”

What do you think is up with this?

I don't know.

Was he always like this?

Well, he's been like that since, like, his parents—they didn't care about him, like they live—

Okay. It's hard for me to hear you. I think it's the phone connection. But go ahead, just if you say it clearer. Hello?

Okay, I think we lost Sandra. Let me give you some advice, Sandra, if you're still listening, even if we got cut off. It sounded like I heard your husband in the background.

The whole goal of dealing with a partner's anger—

Hey, I gotta 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.

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That's The Selfish Path to Romance on Amazon or SelfishRomance.com.

The whole goal of dealing with a partner's anger is to first observe it, to understand it. What seems to trigger him? If it's your two-year-old daughter who's having tantrums, then you say, “How come I'm not angry with her and he's angry with her?”

I see her as just a two-year-old learning how to be independent for the first time, learning how to say “no.” He sees her as—well, we can guess. We can guess that maybe your hubby sees your little daughter as—what? A brat. She's defiant. She won't listen to me. There's no control in this house. And I'm the boss. I'm the big adult, and if I can't even get my two-year-old to do what I want, what does that say about me?

“She better understand. She better go to her room right now.”

If you have that mindset, it is going to completely eat away at you, and you're going to end up being at war—declaring war as an adult—with your two-year-old. You don't want to go that route.

You want to observe your child, to figure out what your child is up to. What do you think is going on? For example, later on in the show, I will be talking with a woman who is an expert in dealing with young kids, and her name is Cornelia Lockett. So stay tuned for that.

And you actually want to try to figure out what is it they want. If it's your daughter that's throwing a tantrum because she can't have her toys, then figure out why can’t she have her toys right now? Is it that they're not her toys? It's a brother’s and sister’s toys? Is it that it's time for bed right now?

And then you need methods to deal with her. One of the things—if I couldn't—I wanted to read a book right now or play with my toys and my husband pulled them away from me, I wouldn't be happy. And kids aren't either.

If my husband said, “Oh Ellen, I know how much you would like to play with your toys or how much you would like to read right now, but you can do that tomorrow morning. Let me give you a big hug. It’s bedtime right now.”

Now, obviously I'm using my husband as an example here, but with two-year-olds, you would do the same thing. They're no different.

So what you want to do is to be able to understand what's going on through her mind, to prepare in advance for situations that seem to get under your husband's skin.

There are books on anger that, if your husband were interested, he could use. One is Dr. Weisinger’s Anger Workout book. There's another book, The Anger Control Workbook by Matthew McKay and Peter Rogers, that are helpful.

There are worksheets. Of course, usually the angry person does what your husband says: “Whatever,” you know, walks away and doesn’t want to deal with it, because it can seem too overwhelming. You don’t want to get stuck in that mess. So I hope that helped.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner:

"You can’t stand alone. Give in. Learn to get along with people. Start to design the kind of buildings everybody else does. Then you’ll be rich. You’ll be famous. You’ll be admired. You’ll be one of us."

Is that what disturbs you about me, Peter, that I want to stand alone? Is that it?

And we've all had those experiences in our life where we feel like people are pressuring us. We're supposed to agree with them—whether it's our parents or our friends—we're supposed to go along and have the same opinions they have: in movies, in evaluating another person.

And we don't feel that way inside. We have a very different evaluation at that moment.

What do you do? Do you speak your own mind? Do you keep quiet? Do you know how to tactfully speak your own mind if you choose to go that route?

That's what psychological independence is about. Your ability to gauge the situation and to speak your own mind properly.

If it's an irrational person, then there may be times that it's just proper to walk away. But if it's a rational person, you try to reach the other person's mind and you value yourself enough to state your point of view.

That drop was from The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books by Ayn Rand, my favorite author. She's the author of Atlas Shrugged, too.

If you want a phenomenal book that will especially help you understand what's going on in our country today, I recommend Atlas Shrugged. It's a novel, and it is a wonderful eye-opener and opportunity for your own personal growth.

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

NAD

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

Many people with a strong religious upbringing have been imbued with the belief that sex is not a glorious union of mind and body, but rather a duty, a guilty pleasure that one should not think or talk about. This causes problems in relationship after relationship.

Consider the case of Dirk and Susanna.

Susanna had a few healthy sexual experiences in good relationships before she met Dirk. Although her sexual history bothered him, he nonetheless asked her to marry him.

Susanna loved Dirk passionately and was unrepressed in her enjoyment of sex with him. But the more she enjoyed it, the more disturbed he felt.

Because of his upbringing, he believed that true love was spiritual, and felt that Susanna’s capacity for sexual pleasure proved that she was depraved.

He divorced her over this issue and ruined his own happiness in the process. He lost a loving wife.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and at Amazon.com

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