The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Lisa, you want to know if your emotions are normal?

No, no, I've been seeing a psychologist for years, and he's helped me a lot, but I told him I don't feel much emotion. At one point, my son has brain cancer. When I found out I felt nothing. Now I know I'm having this problem. He says, I do, because he sees the expressions on my face. When somebody tells you your son has brain cancer, you know you would feel that. I don't know what to do.

Okay, when did you find out your son had brain cancer?

Yeah, for five years.

Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. How old is he?

Well, he's 30, but his last seven MRIs have been amazing. He's doing very, very well.

Oh, he's doing well, yeah, okay. We have a friend who had brain surgery. She had a problem too, and as far as I know, she's doing fairly well. So yeah, I hope that continues for you, too.

Thank you. Yeah, I know there are no guarantees. Unfortunately.

No, but what I'm hearing is that you want to understand yourself better. You want more clarity on why you're not feeling emotion. What emotion are you...?

Yeah, go ahead, tell me what you think.

So, what emotion would you anticipate that you should feel or ought to feel in that situation?

I mean, somebody says, "Your son has brain cancer," you should be devastated. You know, I felt nothing.

Okay, so what's one possibility that you've looked at? Why might you not be devastated?

I was emotionally abused. I'm sure that has something to do with it, right?

Okay, what's the connection you're making?

What do you mean, the connection?

It sounds like you're making a connection that because you were emotionally abused, you managed your mind a certain way.

What it managed to do is stuff my emotions.

There you go. Yeah. So as a protective device, as a kid, you learned to stuff your emotions whenever the abuse happened, and that's a normal response. It's not a healthy response, because the abuse isn't healthy, but it certainly is a life-preserving response in that context. I mean, what can you do if you have no choice, if you're being physically, sexually, or emotionally abused? Some people just deaden their emotions. They want to turn off their whole emotional response because they don't want to feel the pain.

How do I learn to feel again?

Okay, well, there's your motivation. If you said, "I love this. Don't take it away from me. I love having deadened emotions," that would be different. But the fact that you want to feel is an emotion itself, isn't it? You have a hunger. You have a desire.

Yes, absolutely I do.

So be aware that this strong desire is a very important movement forward for you, if you allow yourself to be aware of it. You have the desire to open up and allow yourself to feel. Now, remember, these were instructions to your subconscious that you, or none of us, are aware of at the time. As a kid, I mean, I told myself I'd never trust my own mind. I actually remember saying that as a kid, and boy, I felt really insecure for many years until I was able to confront that and say, "Well, I could trust it a little bit." Maybe you can use that phrase, "a little bit."

Say that again, what words should I use?

A little bit. "I'll let myself feel a little bit."

"I'll let myself trust my mind a little bit." That was in my case, but in your case, you could say, "I'll allow myself to feel a little bit." Instead of telling your subconscious, "You have to feel everything—all that raw pain, all that raw emotion," you could experience something, and you may anyway, called flooding.

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Instead of telling your subconscious, "You have to feel everything—all that raw pain, all that raw emotion," you could experience something called flooding. People with post-traumatic stress disorder might come back from a war and not want to go through the pain anymore. They might give themselves the passing thought, but don't realize it's a standing order in their mind: "Don't feel. Don't go there anymore." And then their kids can’t relate to them anymore because they're not allowing themselves to feel. It's like if you're in a hospital on a heart monitor and suddenly the monitor goes flat. What does that mean?

You're dead, right?

So, I should just say—

One of the things—I'm glad you're in therapy, because you can do this much better with a therapist. Because if I suddenly told myself, "Ellen, it's okay to feel a little bit," and I think about something that matters a little bit... what's important in my life? My son's important. You need to be able to process the potential grief, and then it settles more in your mind. Because if your son does really well, you can celebrate the joy, too.

Well, I never did have any grief, like I told you. I never felt any grief.

Because you're saying you've shut down.

Right.

But by talking about it, you're making it more conscious. You're the one who told me that you shut down during the abuse. So, you could work with your psychologist to explore any connections. It's not about digging into your past to feel all the pain again, but a good psychologist can help you understand it, release some of those emotions, and express what you really wanted to say to the abuser. This way, you can have a voice again within your own mind, and you can experience emotions and not be flat-lined emotionally. You don’t want to be emotionally numbed. You don’t want to be anesthetized for your whole life. That’s not a great coping strategy.

You know, I think I told them, I've been with my psychologist for five years, and we've worked on everything, including this. I tell him, "I don’t have emotions." He says, "You do. Everybody does." And I told him, "I know you're not experiencing them, but you have the capacity for emotions." That's what he tells me. Emotions are responses to things you value or don’t. I just, I recently went into a place that smelled like a backed-up septic tank—it was actually a drugstore. And boy, did I have an emotion! It was like a whole physiological reaction. Or you could go into a perfume factory or a florist and think, "Oh, this smells lovely." So you want to notice, even with small things, when you have a gut response to something you like or don’t like. That’s your emotional mechanism coming back online.

Be aware that if you've been through abuse, it's good to be with a psychologist when you start to "de-repress." That might mean going through a period of flooding, where emotions come back in and it scares people. They might go back to their old strategy of shutting down.

You know what? My psychologist tells me all the time, "Whenever I talk to you about emotions," he says, "you'll start talking about something else." So he says, "You're afraid of the emotion."

You don’t want to be afraid of them. You want to be able to value your emotions. Sometimes, watching a good movie can help. I recommend movies, or just something you can enjoy.

So listen, I know we need to wrap it up. I wish you the best. Emotions are the stuff of life—the good emotions and the bad. Learning how to read them is a great step. You can go to my website, DrKenner.com, and look up my review of the book Mind Over Mood. I think that will help you a bit.

Oh, really? Okay. Well, thank you so much.

Oh, you're very welcome, Lisa.

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:

Your ability to value romance can be helped if you have a rational approach to raising your own family. Being a parent is an awesome, time-consuming, long-term responsibility. Do not choose this role out of duty or conformity. Remember that it costs not only time and effort but also a lot of money to raise and educate a child. Plan long-range by saving money and by locating your home in a good school district. Make time for parenting and for romance. Thus, you maintain parenting as a value, rather than letting it turn into an unwanted duty or allowing it to undermine your romantic relationship.

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