The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Welcome, Claritha. Did I get your name right?

Yes, yes. And your question is, what?

How to get rid of that nervousness?

So my gosh, you're on the air right now. How did you do that just now? What did you say to yourself to encourage yourself to call in?

I needed some doubt.

Okay, so give me an example of what's going on. What would you like fixed? If you could give me an example of the problem.

When my name is called in front of people, my heart starts beating fast, and I get inside the word I cannot speak.

Okay, yeah.

And then what happens?

Well, I feel like I need to pass out or something.

Okay. Do you know what's happening there?

No.

Let me tell you first what's happening. If you were, let's see, about to cross the street and a car was coming towards you. Bear with me for a minute. What would happen to your body? Would it relax? Would it be like you're on a desert island and, you know, sipping rum or something?

No, you would tense up.

Right, right? Your muscles would tense up. Your breathing would get tight. You might feel a tightness in your chest. Your heart would start beating faster.

What does it need to relax or to beat more efficiently to get more oxygen in? It'd be fast, right? It needs to get the oxygen in.

And a little people feel a little bit dizzy or disoriented, or sometimes it's called derealization. That's because a tad less oxygen goes to the brain. A tad less of your blood goes to your brain. But what happens is you're shifting gears. You're shifting gears from digesting food and storing energy to getting ready to spend a lot of energy if a Mack truck is coming towards you, right? You need to run across the street or run back on the street, or take very quick action.

Yeah, that is normal. Would you agree that that's normal, healthy functioning? That if we just sat and relaxed when we saw the truck coming towards us, something would be off base?

If I said, "Oh, there's a Big Mac truck speeding towards me," and, "Oh my gosh, you know something, I'm made of flesh and bones, and that truck is made of metal, and I might be squished," you know, do I have time to think like that?

No, I have no time.

So we have a part of our nervous system called the autonomic nervous system. You can think of it as the autopilot, the automatic nervous system, and it responds to threats instantaneously. It releases cortisol and adrenaline into your system when you recognize the truck coming at you, and that shifts different systems in your body.

As we talked about, your heart will pound faster, and it's beating faster to get more blood in and get the carbon dioxide out. Your muscles will tense.

What are some of the other things that you felt? A little bit dizziness, I talked about, that your eyes will dilate a little more. You would never… how do any of us know that, right? Unless we're looking in a mirror.

But that is what's happening. It's triggering the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. It's normal functioning. Under normal function, everybody has it.

Now, what happens when you or I are about to speak in public? Someone says, "What's your name?" and they were going around the room, and we're going to introduce ourselves.

Ellen, would you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you?

And I feel that rush of adrenaline, right? And there's no Mack truck there. So what hit me? It wasn't a Mack truck. Something else had to hit me.

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 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 on Amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance. That is interesting.

And there's no Mack truck there. So what hit me? It wasn't a Mack truck. Something else had to hit me. What they think here in my thoughts, it's actually my thoughts. I sent myself a Mack truck thought.

And the thoughts could be along the lines of, "What if I mess up? What if they don't like me? What if I don't know what to say? This is awkward. I wish they wouldn't put me on the spot this way."

Those do sound like Mack truck thoughts?

Yeah.

When you have those thoughts, your body does the natural thing. It triggers that autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic branch. Is that making sense?

So number one, you need to know that that's a normal function of your body. Otherwise, people come up with all sorts of things.

So usually four things people feel when they feel that rush of anxiety: they feel that they're going to die, they're going crazy, they're going to embarrass themselves in public, or they're having a heart attack.

None of those, typically, none of those are true. I mean, unless you have a medical problem, unless you have heart problems. If it's just that anxiety, that rush of anxiety, none of those are true.

So what would then turn it around? What would make it not a Mack truck thought, but just a lovely thought?

If asked me my name right now?

What is your name?

I'm Ellen. What's yours?

Oh, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Did it go ahead?

Now you're unprepared, right?

Yeah, you don't know what to say. So you could just tell me I'm unprepared right now. Why don't you tell me about yourself? Ellen, I'm prepared right now.

Notice that you don't have to answer my question if you're unprepared. You can just say, "You know, why don't you pass to the next person? I'm unprepared right now."

Okay, so that's one thing you can do. You can also get some help from cognitive therapy. Have you heard of that before?

No.

Cognitive therapy? There are wonderful books that will help you deal with anxiety. You can go to my website, DrKenner.com, and there's a link there to a cognitive therapy website, but you can also look at the books I recommend.

Anxiety is something you need to see. What are your thoughts? You know, all that talk we say to ourselves, "What if I make a fool of myself?"

What do you typically do?

Do you typically say, "What if I make a fool of myself?"

Right?

And what if I get it wrong?

What if I get it wrong?

Yeah.

And what if you said to yourself, "Who cares? Who am I trying to impress here?"

Okay, when do you typically do this?

Someone calls my name?

Everything's COVID, Russia.

Okay, you can practice having someone. Do you live with someone close?

No.

You can have them, you do.

I know I don't.

Oh, you don't.

Oh, if you have a friend or a coworker, just say, "Call my name," and just get used to someone calling your name, okay?

And just have different thoughts, you know, just say, "It doesn't matter whether I get it right or wrong. I'm curious to learn about the person who's asking me my name," okay? Rather than always feeling like you're being judged.

For more Dr. Kenner podcast, 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.

It's no accident that narcissists and altruists often have a magnetic attraction to one another. Can you see how perfect the fit is?

The altruist feels the need to selflessly serve others, and this is just what the narcissist wants. Narcissists want to be worshipped and gratified in every way possible. And this is just what the altruists offer, thinking it demonstrates their moral virtue.

But the fact that they represent a fit does not make such a relationship successful. The narcissist cannot be satisfied and may soon tire of just one worshiper. And the more selfless the worship the altruist offers, the greater the feeling of emptiness that results.

Such people may stay together out of fear or inertia, but it won't be a relationship between self-respecting equals, and it certainly won't be romantic.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com and you can buy the book on Amazon.com.

Here is a question that I received from an 18-year-old girl. I don't know if she's driving yet, but hello, Dr. Kenner. I'm an 18-year-old girl who suffers from telephobia. I'll help you out there. That's fear of imperfection, of not being good enough.

Pis, I can't even get this one. Pis, tantro phobia, fear of trusting someone. I had to look this up online, fear of trusting someone. Maybe a relationship has gone bad, and phyllophobia, fear of falling in love or being in love.

And she also said, I also have a possibility of having ADHD. Pi. Pi is predominantly inattentive, meaning she's not hyperactive, but she's predominantly inattentive.

I don't know what I should do. Do you have any advice? Charlene?

Charlene, my first suggestion is to drop the technical terms. I didn't even know them. I had to look them up. And I've been doing this for many, many years. I know the basic anxieties, you know, different phobias with heights and things.

But you don't have to have that type of name for it, and it makes the situation sound insurmountable. If I came home and told my husband, "Oh my God, I have a telephobia and pistanthrophobia and phelophobia," he would go, "Huh?"

So, you know, there's another disorder that's got a really messy name. What if you came home with trichotillomania? Now that sounds really bad. It's got mania in there, and it sounds like trichotillomania. It sounds like spidery to me, I don't know.

And all it is is hair pulling, but it sounds so darn scary.

So drop the technical terms. Listen to how different it sounds if you phrase what you're experiencing as a young adult, "I'm feeling like I'm not good enough, and I have some trust issues." So much simpler that way.

So let's take those one at a time. When you're saying you're feeling like you're not good enough, you know, everybody has periods in their life where they doubt themselves, or they might set unrealistic standards.

You know, I have to be perfect. I'm doing a piano recital. If it isn't perfect, then I'm not good enough. Or I'm dancing, and if I miss a step, then I'm not good enough.

Or if I'm, you know, playing football or baseball or tennis, and if I don't perform perfectly, then, you know, I've got the red mark.

The red marker out, you know, like a teacher grading a paper, I'm not good enough. So partly, we all feel not good enough when we're learning new skills, or when we set inappropriate standards for our goodness, for our worth.

And if you set the standard as perfection, then that requires that you're omniscient and omnipotent, and honey, nobody is.

So what do you do in a situation where you're not feeling good enough?

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 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 on Amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance. That is interesting.

So what do you do in a situation where you're not feeling good enough? You dig deeper. You try to figure out, "What is it I'm not feeling good enough about? Is it me?"

And if it's yourself that you're not feeling good about, then you want to know that self-esteem is something that you build. We all build it.

And at the age of 18, you're in the process of discovering what your top values are in life, what your top career values might be, and it might take you even 10 or so years to discover the one you really like, trying to discover what you like in romance, trying to discover what you like in friendships, which ones work, which ones work, which don't?

Family bonds that you want to strengthen, others that you want to loosen a little bit. So you're in the process of really building yourself, discovering yourself.

And self-esteem is an emotion that comes from your own judgment of whom, of yourself, and it's the judgment that you feel worthy and capable of pursuing your values, your dreams, your goals.

So how do you learn to value yourself? There's a huge enemy out there to self-esteem, and it isn't… I'm not talking about the phony self-esteem where everybody is good in every way, every day. All of that's nonsense.

To build self-esteem means to build your character, honesty, integrity, a sense of earned pride. Doing activities that you enjoy, that you think are worthwhile, you build yourself into a productive, happy person, essentially.

But the enemy? What is the enemy?

Have you ever been told that you are selfish? Not because you're trying to pull your sibling's toys out of their hands, not because you ate all the cake and didn't leave some for others when it was there for everyone to share, but when you were pursuing your dreams, your goals, your hobbies, your interests?

Whether you were a child fascinated with your Legos and you were told you were selfish for not sharing whose Legos? Your Legos.

That word is an attack on happiness, and it combines two opposites. Selfish combines a good, selfish, which is just not hurting anyone else, not stepping on them, and enjoying your own life, and a bad, and I won't even go self-destructive connotation to that word, which means that you're going to have things my way or the highway.

And it's that, you know, you punch and cheat and steal and lie, and that's not self-esteem. No self-esteem can be based on that.

So if you've picked up ideas from maybe your family, maybe from your peers or your religion or the culture that says that you should sacrifice yourself and serve others, then you're never going to reach self-esteem.

So you don't want to sabotage yourself. You want to learn how to build self-esteem, and I did it by reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

And those books turned my life around. I discovered myself, the desire to pursue my dreams.

The second part of your question is trust. How do you trust again?

So instead of giving it the fancy phobia name, know that not everyone is trustworthy. You need to know how to accurately evaluate a potential partner, and that takes a lot of thinking.

And I recommend a book that I wrote with Dr. Ed Locke on my website, DrKenner.com, or Amazon.com. The Selfish Path to Romance, how to love with passion and reason.

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

You're a good mom.

I'm the best, no, I'm pretty sure the best moms let their daughters drive, and yet…

Oh, come on, look, let's not have this conversation. But I took the class.

Spend enough time not knowing where you are. I don't want to add to that the possibility that you're on the highway. I just don't want you driving. Okay? I want you here.

And that's a very scary time of life for parents letting go and letting your child drive.

And that clip was from Buffy, by the way, and that is something that really depends on your child. You evaluate your child. Is my child trustworthy or not? Are they impulsive? Are they happy when they're speeding?

Do they focus well? Do they take driving seriously? Do they value the ability to drive, or do they just want to get out and party and use the car in reckless ways with their friends to go on drinking and driving?

And you have every right to be nervous as a parent, so that is not an overprotective parent if it's in that context.

However, if your child has earned your trust and you're nervous, very nervous, it is new, and you have a right to be nervous.

However, you can't hold on. We can't be overprotective of our kids. We need to let them go at some point.

And yes, there are risks for all of us, but you know, that's part of what we need. That's part of being a parent, having that anxiety and living through it, and then finally saying, "I'm proud of my daughter. She can drive, and she can get herself places," and it also makes my life a whole lot easier.

For more Dr. Kenner podcast, 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.

To be told by your romantic partner what it is about you that they adore offers an irreplaceable value when it mirrors your self-image.

Notice that you can't get visibility by being with someone whose character is fundamentally different from your own. A coworker you despise, a date with whom you have nothing in common.

Such a person's way of coming at the world is alien to your own. You will not feel an affinity for them or experience a reflection of yourself, and you certainly won't feel any romantic attraction.

To act as your mirror, another person must share important values. It is no accident that one of the most painful complaints you can make about your partner is, "He or she makes me feel invisible, unimportant, like I don't exist."

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book on Amazon.com.