The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at drkenner.com, and I want to welcome Byron to the phone. Byron, you're studying anger.

Well, I’m a theater major, and if you’ve got to get on the stage and play characters, you have to be angry at times.

Yeah, you sure do. Even if you’re not feeling it, you might have the best day, huh?

Well, isn’t it true, if you want to play a character who’s very angry at someone, you must figure out why in the world is this person angry? Anyway, I studied quite a bit of psychology, and there’s a book entitled The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner. Are you familiar with it?

I am. I have not read it, but I’m familiar with it, so go ahead and tell me.

She made a statement, and I would like to get your response to her statement. Okay, here is the statement: “Anger is an internal signal that too much of the self is being asked to be compromised.”

Okay, well, I could ask you your thoughts on that, but go for it. That’s a smooth move. No, I’m not accusing you of anything.

Go for it. All right. Basically, I’ve noticed in my own self and people that I interact with in the community and my family and that sort of thing, anytime I or I see anybody else that I’ve noticed, someone attempts to command them or dominate them or abuse them or take advantage of them in any way, or to say what they should or should not do when they feel that they should or should not do that particular thing, there seems to be a little rise in temperature.

Yes, that’s exactly right.

And so being able to deal with that, I think, is a very good thing. And my children—15, 13, and 10, all boys—seem to be developing the ability to basically not particularly look under anyone but their own total self for any kind of self or emotional validation. And generally, when they are upset at their mother, they generally just say, “I’m angry,” and they leave it up to her to respond. So, I’m really proud of them.

Very skilled at a very young age. Are they role modeling you?

Well, “the child is the father of the man,” said Wordsworth, and so I must say that it is a conjoined effort in this man’s development, and I am grateful for them and their inherent intuitive knowledge on these things. I mean, people think that children don’t understand the inner workings of their own internal world. That is, it’s not true?

No, I fully agree with you. Let me jump in here. The way I look at anger is it’s your “injustice detector.” It’s something very healthy for a person, provided—something I’ll talk about in a moment. But if I never got angry, if someone stole my purse, if someone told a lie about me, if my husband cheated on me, if my boss didn’t pay me and I just sat there and said, “Oh, well, you know,” or if I did the opposite, if I giggled and said, “Oh, isn’t that fun?” you would call me deranged. I mean, there’s something off with me. So it is proper to have standards—moral standards—and if somebody violates your moral standards, then you feel an emotion, and the emotion is, “It’s not fair.” Somebody did not trade with me voluntarily. Somebody’s trying, in your words, to command me, to dominate me, to abuse me, or to tell me what I should or should not do, and they’re basically trying to control my mind, my free will, my choice-making, or they’re taking something away from me by fraud. They’re telling me they’re giving me the goods, a car that I think is brand new, but it isn’t, and that makes me angry. Anger is your mind’s method of detecting injustice, things that are not fair.

I’d like to say something. You touched on something in my mind. This is a very interesting thing to me. I have noted that oftentimes people’s alter ego or “shadow side” of their personality will become angry when they cannot get me to do what they want—not their other self, not their true self, but their alter ego.

Okay, I’m not sure I understand. I would need an example. Do you have a quick example?

Oh, a very quick example. Let’s suppose that you have a young lady, a little girl, who was abused as a child by her father. Okay, she grows up with almost like a dual personality, a twin—an “evil twin,” as it were—and the true self wants to be related to, but the other self wants to be treated differently. So if you refuse to treat this person in a certain way—let’s say it’s someone that I might be in a relationship with—then that shadow side of their self becomes angry because that side cannot relate to that memory.

Right. Okay, here’s what happens if you’ve been abused. All of us carry fundamental ideas. If you look at people, people have different personalities, Byron, and you say, “Well, what accounts for that?” Well, they have core ideas—C-O-R-E, ideas—that’s what it’s called in cognitive therapy. And you have a fundamental idea about yourself: “I’m good” or “I’m a loser” or “I’m unlovable,” and you have core ideas about other people: “They’re basically good” or “They can’t be trusted” or “I have to cling to them because I’m dependent.” And you have core ideas about the future: “I can make it in this world” or “I’ll never get anywhere.” And you have core ideas about the world itself: “It’s a horrible place to live” or “It’s a nice place.” When you’re brought up in an abusive situation, typically, your core ideas are not great because your view of yourself is awful. Your view of other people is awful. Your view of your future in the world is awful. But you may be fighting for better ideas. You may get examples of better people. So there’s a battleground going on inside of you, and it’s not that you have two people inside or alter egos. It’s that you have mixed core premises. You have mixed ideas at the foundation of your personality, and you need to resolve the contradiction. And that’s what cognitive therapy is all about. I know we’re right at the end of time, and I want to make one more comment, and then we need to wrap up. Just because you feel the anger doesn’t tell you how to act. And I think the way your sons are acting is proper. They can talk about themselves. Many people get messed up because they have the wrong standards of what should make them angry. They’re very entitled, and they feel that they’re owed the world, so standards can go off. And actually, you need to know the skills of how to rationally act when you’re feeling angry, and that doesn’t mean without passion. It means without damaging yourself in the process. So thank you very much for your call.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner on self-sacrifice. We view self-sacrifice as the ultimate virtue. Can a man sacrifice his integrity, his rights, his freedom, his convictions, the honesty of his feeling, the independence of his thought? Self-sacrifice. But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. A man’s self is his spirit. It is the un-sacrificed self that we must respect in man above all.

And that is from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. The book is by Ayn Rand, but it’s from the movie The Fountainhead, and that issue of not sacrificing yourself—you know, you want to say something, but you hold it in and you stuff it, and you feel like you’re ready to burst, but you feel like keeping the peace is the best thing. And also, not going after your values—you feel like you have no right to have the goodies in life that you’ve earned. It’s not about taking things from people, but that idea that you’re good if you sacrifice is the psychological killer. In the physical world, cancer is a killer, and in the psychological world, altruism, self-sacrifice—giving up your values and your mind, your thinking—is the ultimate killer psychologically.

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

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, who’s world-famous for his theories in goal setting:

An important personality trait valuable in romance is genuineness. Have you ever dated someone and thought to yourself, “What a phony”? When evaluating a potential partner, ask yourself if the person is trying to play a role or if they’re just themselves. Role-playing stems from insecurity, and its goal is to make an impression, usually for the purpose of boosting the illusion of self-esteem. People who are genuine are far more likely to have authentic love relationships than those who are always playing a role.

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