The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com. Here is an email from Cheryl, a question she asked. Now, Cheryl is a very young woman. She's a 15-year-old, and she's been through a lot. She has been torturing herself for the last three years.

Dear Dr. Kenner, I am 15 years old and have been really depressed for the past three years. There are nights I can't sleep and lie awake just thinking of things I have or haven't done. It makes me upset, and I either cry myself to sleep, or it makes me feel guilty.

I hate that I do this, but it is so hard not to. I think of the smallest things I haven't done, like not smiling at the cashier when they smile and say hi.

What should I do?

I can't talk about it with my mom because she's been depressed. I always feel guilty. My mom would say that that's stupid and I'm crazy, and for me to just get over it. Can you help?

Cheryl, this brings up a really important point, which is that if you have unrealistic standards for yourself, such as, "I have to please everyone and be happy all the time," you might end up not pleasing yourself. If you feel like you always have to please everyone, smile at everyone when they smile at you, feel what they want you to feel, and do what they want you to do, that is a very unrealistic standard, and it'll keep you feeling chronically guilty.

So the question is, how do you get standards for yourself where you feel okay? Well, they need to be much more realistic. If you don't have a moral compass, you're going to feel guilty because you won't know what's right or wrong. It's just as if you were trying to sail a boat and didn't have a compass that works. You wouldn't know whether you're going in the right direction or the wrong direction. And if you have a wrong compass—a compass that's broken or a wrong moral compass—you're not going to get where you want either, and you're setting yourself up to swim in guilt.

Now, guilt comes in two flavors. One of them is earned guilt. And earned guilt means maybe you stole, or you lied, or you did something deliberately to hurt somebody who didn't deserve it. It wasn't just ignoring someone who was mean to you; you did something that crossed the line. Well, with earned guilt, you need to know how to make amends.

But unearned guilt—many people suffer from unearned guilt. They feel guilty and haven't done anything wrong, like not smiling at the cashier. Sometimes those small things camouflage a bigger issue in your life. And you could actually get some cognitive therapy for yourself. You could go to my website, DrKenner.com. I have a link to a cognitive therapy website.

Another thing you can do for yourself is to get a good moral compass. How do you get a good moral compass? Focus on your healthy values, bringing yourself back into the equation. Ask yourself fundamentally: What do I love in life? What do I enjoy? What activities, what hobbies? What are my goals for the future?

I know my mom's depressed. My mom can't help me out; she's dismissive of me and condescending. Can I get outside help? Can I possibly even read a book? I would recommend The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. That book helped me a lot with the same types of problems.

Here's a little more from Dr. Kenner: "I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you're the greatest woman on earth, and how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that's all about being straight and good. And I think most people miss that about you, and the fact that I get it makes me feel good about me."

And that's from As Good as It Gets. Have you ever been with somebody who tells you what they're feeling about you, and what they feel about you is a reflection of something good in you, something you admire in yourself? Maybe it's the case here that you're straight with people. You don't tell little white lies, you don't manipulate, you don't connive, you don't fake kindness when you're not feeling it—you’re direct with people. And when you reflect a person's good qualities, when you let them know, "I love this in you. I love the way you managed that difficult situation with the waiter. I love how you handled that difficulty with your son. You managed him so sweetly, and he was really upset." When you reflect someone else's good quality, you're also reflecting your own good qualities because it shows you're the type of person who can admire the good in people. You can name it specifically to yourself and to that other person, and what a lovely quality to give yourself.

We all love people in our life who recognize the good in us, and they’re the people we value when we reciprocate. They value us too.

Maybe you feel like sex has gone out the window and you don't know how to reconnect. Maybe you've accumulated many hurts over a long time. What do you do? Do you just grin and bear it and continue in the relationship that way? Maybe it's on a downward trajectory, and you're worried that it will lead to a divorce. Maybe you just don't care anymore, and you've built a life apart from your marriage with other people.

I've written a book with my co-author, Ed Locke, called The Selfish Path to Romance. In it, we talk about how to keep romance going over many, many years, how to make yourself lovable, how to choose the right person, how to learn conflict resolution, how to communicate well, how to let each other know what you value in one another. And while the title might be a little off-putting, The Selfish Path to Romance, we chose it because, to us, it means that if you don't have a self, how can you expect someone else to love you if you don't love yourself? But you need to build character traits within yourself that are lovable—honesty, being straight with people, really growing yourself in a way that’s healthy for you.

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