The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com. Here is a question about loneliness.

So, I think all of us have experienced bouts of loneliness, or maybe longer periods of loneliness, and how do we deal with that? When we feel like you’re—you feel like you’re all alone in the world.

Dear Dr. Kenner,

I’m scared of most everything. I lost my partner to breast cancer. She was my reason for living. I have always lived through other people because I do not know how to live for myself. I have no friends, and I am extremely isolated. Since she died, I have been stuck in my apartment, in my room, terrified of life. Although my mom lives across from me and my adult son lives with me, I have no relationship with either one. I don’t know how to make friends. I tried to move on from my ex with Sheila, who became extremely ill, physically and mentally. She sleeps all the time now and doesn’t pay attention to me. I’m so depressed, confused, and lonely that at the young age of 54, I’m looking like a 70-year-old woman and feeling like my life is over.

Fran

So, Fran, first you’re going through a grief process. I don’t know how long ago she died, but if she was your partner, your reason for living should be yourself. Obviously, I think you know that. But if she was your closest companion, your buddy, then you need to know that part of what you’re experiencing and what you’re calling loneliness is normal grief, or it may be complicated grief. If that’s the case, one of the ways to break through it is to learn the thinking skills that can liberate you, and that would be with therapy. And of course, I recommend cognitive therapy, but you do want someone who knows a lot about grief work who can help be a good guide through a very difficult loss in your life.

So, the second point that I want to make is your coping strategy may have served you as a kid, but it’s not serving you well now, and that’s avoidance. Notice you’re isolating yourself. You’re staying in your apartment, you’re in your room, you’ve convinced yourself that you’re terrified of living. You’ve got people in your life—your mom and your son, who lives with you, and mom who lives across from you. And I’m sure there’s a whole story there that you could work through with a therapist. You could tell that story about why you guys are not connecting, why you don’t have any relationship. What’s behind that? Because that may give you some clues as to how to unlock your own door and let yourself get some sunshine, walk in gardens, meet people, and enjoy your life more.

The next points that I want to emphasize are really focusing on yourself. Your question to me—you said, “I do not know how to live for myself,” that you’ve always lived through other people, and that’s the best gift you can give yourself. It’s discovering, “Hey, I got to interrupt this, because we’ve got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.”

Romance. I wish I knew more about what girls want from a relationship. Well, 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 at Amazon.com. Huh? The Selfish Path to Romance—that is interesting.

The best gift you can give yourself is discovering how to be your own person, how to value yourself. And you might say, “Well, there’s nothing to value because I just sit and do nothing all day.” Well, start with now as ground zero, and move forward. You want to get the trajectory going forward so you start making something of your life. And it could start with, as I mentioned earlier, just a small walk through the garden. Get used to going out every day. You know, set smaller goals for yourself. And with that, I would definitely encourage immediate therapy if you have the ability to get that for yourself, because I think that you can get through these problems and value your life more.

So you want to discover what hobbies do you like, what interests, what jobs might you enjoy and be good at, what has intrigued you? Because you could breathe more life into your life and not have to go through your life thinking, “I always need to live in the shadow of others.”

The next skill that you want to work on is friendship skills. So valuing yourself is number one. Friendship skills are number two. And friendship skills are not something we’re born with. They are learnable. Most of us go through making a lot of faux pas, a lot of mistakes, and we can learn on the run, so to speak, or we can learn by trial and error. But there are wonderful books that can give you assertiveness skills. You can go to my website, DrKenner.com, and there’s also a book titled The Loneliness Workbook: A Guide to Developing and Maintaining Lasting Connections by Mary Ellen Copeland, which has a lot of good tips in it.

So you can learn how to start a conversation, how to share the airwaves, how to decide on the level of intimacy that works. You know, it might be just a casual friendship where you say hi, or you talk about the weather, or you can grow it a little bit more as you feel more and more at ease. If you’re hiding some deep, dark secret—maybe you were abused as a child or some such—then you don’t have to share those with everybody. You know, you can keep that close to your heart, and only if you find someone you really trust. And with a therapist, of course, you could talk about that because it’s good to process that information.

If you’re looking for a therapist, I recommend going to the Academy of Cognitive Therapy at AcademyOfCT.org, and they list therapists around the country. You may get lucky and find one.

So I want to tell you, you’re 54 years old now, and I’m older than that, and I feel very young. So you want to start feeling younger. And I remember at the age of 14, I thought my whole life was over. I felt very old. I felt like a 70-year-old woman. Why? Because the Olympics were on, and I had always wanted to be an Olympic ice skating champion. And at the age of 14, I realized I couldn’t even do spins on the ice. So rethink what you say to yourself, and you can start to feel young right now.

And here’s a little more from Dr. Kenner:

Your happiness matters. And how do you achieve your happiness? It’s not by faking it. You know that false smile that all of us have experienced from both ends, either giving a false smile and then feeling like we betrayed ourselves, or receiving a false smile from somebody and knowing that they weren’t genuine with us and not knowing how to deal with it. Maybe there are other problems that are on your mind.

We’re talking about happiness. Maybe with happiness, how do you achieve that happiness? So we’ve said that it’s not with false smiles. Is it with just doing whatever you feel like doing whenever you feel like doing, rather than dragging yourself through life? Nope. If you do that, you will make choices that are not going to be good for you in the long run. You know, “Love the one you’re with,” or “Drink whenever you want to,” or “Do drugs,” and you know, it messes up your life, it messes up your relationships, it might destroy your family, and most importantly, it will destroy you.

So acting on whim isn’t the solution. It’s really carefully thinking long range: what do I love in life, what goals make sense for me to set for myself, and how do I achieve them without becoming a doormat in my life? You know, letting others step on me and without me stepping on others. How can I actually travel through life and enjoy my life, get pleasures every day from my life? And that’s an achievement, and that’s not easy to do.

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Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

Here are some examples of poor communication. “You are so rude,” “You are so messy,” “You’re a big know-it-all.” These insults may be even a little more biting: “You’re an idiot,” “You’re a loser,” “You’re useless,” “What a jerk you are.” When such statements are thrown at you, your mind automatically signals a warning alarm, “I am under attack.” The attacked partner may immediately withdraw in hurt, shock, and frustration, or they may counterattack, blaming the attacker for any and all problems.

Instead of mutually exploring your differences or working to clarify misunderstandings, your mental energy is consumed battling one another. Real communication ceases and nothing gets resolved. Such battles can also end in withdrawal, emotional distance, and even estrangement.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.