The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here is a question that I received from a woman who is having some difficulty dealing with the loss of a therapist. This is from Melinda.

Hi, Dr. Kenner. Just to give you a brief background, I am a 27-year-old female who has been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, I'll tell you what that is in a moment, and bipolar disorder that used to be called manic depressive disorder. When you have both highs and lows, you get very depressed, and then you get manic. You do things that are a bit crazy. About eight months ago, after a long history of absurdly held, unhelpful attempts at therapy, I started seeing someone whom I really clicked with. I liked working with him, and while progress was slow, at least it was not nonexistent. A couple of months ago, he went on leave suddenly and unexpectedly due to personal issues and ended up not coming back. When I told my new therapist that I was devastated by losing him, she seemed surprised. Now I feel like I can't talk to her about how upset I am. Is it crazy to be so upset about losing someone with whom my relationship was strictly professional, my therapist? I think I could have dealt with losing a lover or a close friend more easily than I am dealing with this. I can't talk to anyone about it because it seems so unreasonable to feel as strongly as I do.

Thanks, Melinda.

Melinda, congratulations, because you just challenged one of your thoughts. One of your thoughts was, I can't talk with anybody about them. And yet, you took the time to formulate your thoughts, to name the problem, and to email me. So number one, you want to see that your thoughts can be changed. Your actions can be changed. Your feelings can be changed, so that should give you a little hopefulness.

The second point is that I want to get into borderline issues, but borderline issues focus on feeling abandoned, feeling intensely abandoned, and they have a cause. It's not like somebody has a wonderful childhood, no trauma at all, nothing else, and then suddenly they have borderline personality disorder — that doesn't make any sense. Psychology is causal. My guess is you've been through trauma, you've been through abandonment, you've been through losses in your life. You've been through unexpected losses, sudden losses. Maybe it was a parent, maybe it was a grandparent that suddenly left your life, whom you felt close with. Borderline Personality is the disorder that really highlights very stressful problems with relationships. So it's not surprising. Don't beat up on yourself. You're actually going to therapists to get the help. And it's not surprising that you had many of what you call absurdly unhelpful attempts at therapy. Not all therapists are equal, which you found out. And also, not everybody clicks with every therapist. You can have a wonderful therapist, but you just don't happen to like them. They remind you of your sister or something, and you never liked your sister.

So first, with borderline personality, abandonment is one of the key themes — very intense problems in relationships, and problems with feeling like somebody is wonderful one day and then they're your worst enemy the next day. You know the ups and downs, you've been there so well.

First, you need to know what therapy is all about. It's about being willing to take the risk. 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.

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Well, first, you need to know what therapy is all about. It's about being willing to take the risk to unravel mysteries about the most important person in your life, Melinda, and that's you. You want to start valuing yourself and not worrying that the therapist felt surprised, or that she didn't feel surprised, or that she yawned one day. I know you didn't say that, but you don't want to focus on her mood. You want to milk her. She is a wealth, hopefully, of good skills and good information, thinking skills and information. Question that she can pass along to. If she doesn't have good skills and information, you do want to search elsewhere, but you want to see me, tap her, tap her mind first so you can explore her surprise. What makes you surprised? And more importantly, you want to explore not her surprise, but you don't want to close yourself up and not explore your own inner pain, that feeling of abandonment with her.

So here's what happens when you have an emotion that's way out of proportion to the situation. You know, that's what road rage is all about — somebody, what, somebody's driving a little slowly, and the person in back of them says, "They're not gonna hold me up." And, you know, they honk the horn and then they give them the finger and everything. It's, it's a response. It's an emotional response that doesn't make sense for the situation. You know, just wait a little bit and then pass them.

So when you're having an emotional response to losing your therapist, that's way out of proportion. You want to be able to explore. First, be able to name your feelings that you're feeling abandoned, you're feeling hurt, you're feeling angry, you're feeling sad, you're feeling depressed, whatever it is. And then you want cognitive therapy skills. Cognitive is just a dressy word for thinking, but you want the skills so you can translate all of those feelings one by one into words which will give you an inner clarity. And you want to be able to see, are my thoughts grounded in fact? For example, when this male therapist left, you might have concluded something along the lines of, "I'm unlovable." Well, man, you really want to put that to a test. Is it true that you're unlovable? Or you might think, "He was the only one that ever could help me." You know, after all this searching, and I will never get any help again. So you're predicting a negative future for yourself, which is actually a thinking mistake. There may be many people who can help you. You may feel like he was the only one who truly understood me well. That's a huge loss if you feel like you've lost that connection, but you want to be open to talking with your new therapist to see if you can find out how to connect with her and how she can learn. You can learn to let her understand you, to let her help you, and to learn the skills.

So I recommend going to a website, Academy of CT.org or Academy of Cognitive Therapy.org and there looking up some resources on helping yourself with abandonment issues. There are wonderful resources. And if you're still having therapist problems, you might want to see if there's a cognitive therapist in your area. Your therapist may also already be a cognitive therapist.

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

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.

Does analyzing our emotions take the mystery out of love and thereby ruin it? No, just the opposite. Real love is based not on mystery or fantasy, but on causality. When you know the reasons for your love, assuming they're rational reasons, the relationship is stronger and more secure. If you don't know why you respond to another, you'll feel out of control and often confused. Emotional responses to your partner will come and go for no discernible reason, and emotional conflicts will be irresolvable. Communication and intimacy will be undermined.

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