The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Transcript

The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at Dr Kenner.com

Here is a question I received from Betty.

My question is about happiness, Dr. Kenner. I have been married for 14 years, and I am not happy with that or much else in my life. I was taking medication, and it was helpful for a while, and then the doctor and I decided I could go off it as it had done all it could do.

Remember, medication does not teach skills, thinking skills, but let me continue. My doctor wanted me to go to counseling, and I started that, but then I stopped going, because I didn't tell the counselor anything.

I have sex with someone else on a regular basis, even though I've been married, she said 14 years. And I know it's not helping my marriage, but I don't think it's the whole problem either. I exercise, but I can't get up the motivation to make any changes in myself, and I don't know what to do anyway. I don't know where to begin.

Betty. Betty, the first place to begin is understanding yourself. What is going on in your life. You are making choices that are not going to get you near what you're aiming at: happiness. You're not going to be happy if you need to go to counseling, you go to counseling, and then you don't talk. Or you are married for 14 years, and you're having an affair. You're living a double life there.

So you need to understand yourself, how you use your mind. Betty really does matter. The choices you make have an impact on your emotions, on your self-evaluation, how you feel about yourself, and if you don't value yourself, if you feel like you're not a good person, then it's hard to get motivated. I'm surprised you're even able to go to the gym. That's very good. And that's a foot in the door.

Where to start is to be honest with yourself. I would get yourself into cognitive therapy if you can. You can go to my website, Dr Kenner.com, or the Academy of CT.org and find a therapist in your neck of the woods, or even continue with the counselor that you went to if you liked that person. But figure out what was the barrier? Why did you not want to talk to the counselor? Did you not like the person, or was it the case that you were afraid to face facts about your choice-making?

You need to go through that pain. You need to look at whatever is the motivation behind hiding things from your husband. Whatever is behind the motivation for not talking to a counselor. Whatever is your motivation for, in bigger terms, evasion, pushing stuff out of awareness that you need to look at. You need to look at it. And it may not be pretty, but the only chance you have of turning things around for yourself, turning a corner, are to look at the things that are causing you pain.

So I highly recommend valuing your own mind. It's very painful to try to stuff things in and not look at things you know need addressing. Your choice-making in particular. It's very hard to live a double life. Anyone who's tried to have an affair for any length of time or to keep it hidden for any length of time is very stressed, because they're lying to the people around them, and they have to train themselves to lie to themselves too. Oh, it really doesn't matter. I can have an affair. I deserve it. You know, my spouse isn't good to me.

Why not get a divorce? So why not bring things out in the open so you can make a decision? These are very hard decisions to make granted, you know, getting a divorce, or even having the affair, or continuing it. But not shining the light of reason on it, not looking at it carefully, not analyzing it, not understanding yourself, is like being in prison. And as one author said, it's like you put yourself in prison and you threw away the keys. You don't want to do that any longer, Betty.

So I definitely recommend some of the books on my website, or cognitive therapy. Again, my website's Dr Kenner.com, d-r-k-e-n-n-e-r.com,

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

Here is an email I got from Jonathan. Hi, Dr. Kenner, I'm 50, and I just lost my dad several months ago. I just can't handle it. I don't sleep, I don't eat much, and I can't work. I feel helpless and incapacitated. I don't know what to do. I miss him so much. What do you suggest? Thanks, Jonathan.

Jonathan, I'm hearing something very lovely in what you said, even though it was short and there's a lot of pain there. The fact that you're feeling the pain, that you miss your dad, tells me that you had the capacity and have the capacity to have a good bond with somebody, a good relationship. That's not always the case. Sometimes people don't miss their parents, or they feel tremendous guilt, or sometimes they feel relief, or there's a lot of unresolved anger, or sometimes they feel dead nothing when a parent dies.

So the fact that you had a very valuable relationship to you is something nobody can take away from you. You carry those memories for the rest of your life. But what may be keeping you awake at night is what you say to yourself.

If you say to yourself, I can't cry, that's going to keep you awake at night. You need to experience the loss. You need to have the tears, because it was such an important relationship.

You also need to not catastrophize. If you're saying something to yourself such as, I'll never be able to survive without my father, you need to rethink that. You need cognitive therapy that would help you tremendously. If you're catastrophizing, ask yourself, what would my best friend tell me if they knew I had sleepless nights?

Instead of telling yourself, I can't handle this, I cannot handle this, ask yourself, how can I handle this, and work with maybe, as I said, a cognitive therapist.

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

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? Ah, 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.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and Dr. Edwin Locke.

Imagine being 80 years old looking at old photo albums with your kids or grandkids. What adventures, achievements and experiences would you like to share with them? But you're not 80, and you still have time to create those experiences.

What obstacles do you have to overcome? Set personal goals for yourself and rank them according to what you value most, then fit them into a reasonable schedule so that you will have time for work, hobby, friends and romance. Don't abandon yourself by sacrificing your life for others or indulging in short-term shallow pleasures such as excessive drinking and gambling. When you look back at 80 have something to be proud of.

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