The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at Drkenner.com

And now let's go to the phones and speak with someone who wants to get over some public embarrassment. I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner, and welcome to the show.

Hello. How are you, and thank you for taking this phone call.

Oh, you're welcome. You were embarrassed at a young age.

Yes, I was barely 16.

And what happened?

I was a troubled teen, to say the least, and I admired a radio shock jock, and I left him a few messages on his voicemail expressing my admiration and a dream I had about him, which was provocative. He called me to be on his show, never asked me for ID, you know, and what teenager doesn't want to be on a TV show? He slammed my body completely, you know, made fun of me, tried to make it a dating show, and just humiliated me on his TV show, on his radio show. Obviously, I didn't go around bragging about it because who's going to brag about being made fun of, yeah? And nobody ever took it seriously. I told a few people, but we had our own problems. I’ve contacted lawyers about the situation, about a minor being on an explicit show. I appeared in person on a talk show, and nobody—everybody refused to take the case due to the statute of limitations.

Okay, so it sounds like you're still in an enormous amount of pain. What would be a solution for you? What would you like to see happen—justice?

My therapist said that rich people get away with stuff.

Okay, you’re talking about a particular individual. The one good thing is you and I are not married to him, meaning you are now away from him. But psychologically, it's a wound that keeps opening for you. So the question is, how can you close the wound, given that too much time has passed? How many years have gone by?

Well, I'm 32 now, but I've been in therapy for the last two years consistently. And this came up, and my therapist, I feel like she’s not even taking it seriously, like it's some type of joke, you know.

Okay, so that’s the key that you're looking for. You're wanting someone who hears you, who hears the pain, who hears the trauma, who hears the story. There are situations that I've had in my life where I've been in pain, and when I didn't have people listening to me—maybe they were too busy, or maybe they didn’t see the seriousness of it—when I felt dismissed, that was a secondary pain that amplified the initial pain.

And it’s not fair to my friends and family to constantly have to deal with this, you know, right? All the 100 lawyers, you know, one told me I needed a miracle. One firm was kindly, you know, fairly compassionate. I found the archive online. There needs to be justice. I don't care if you're a multimillionaire; you can’t be a multimillionaire.

No, even if he were a cheap shock jock who wasn’t wealthy. Let’s just say that he was a Joe Schmo on the local radio station. He had no money at this point, okay, but let’s, you can't have minors on an explicit show.

Okay, so here’s what I'm hearing: this is somebody who is in the news. This is somebody that people—you don’t have to give his name here—but this is somebody who we might recognize. So there are two situations. One is that he's getting away with it. He continues to get away with it. And what I was saying is, the person in my life is continuing to get away with it. I had to make a decision—do I wrap my entire life around it and make that the wallpaper in my children's life and my husband's life? Or do I say sometimes this is what happens, and it doesn't matter. You know, I think the fact that he's wealthy or not wealthy may play into it a little bit, but it's the lack of justice that's hurting you the most. I mean, even if he were poor. And so, I think that you want some method, and there are methods to do this. I no longer— I rarely think about this individual today. I may, because you and I are talking about the person that got away with it, but I rarely think about it. And when I do think about it, I have come to a different conclusion. The solution is they're not going to mess up my life. I am not going to let one person mess up my life that way. I want my life back, and if I spend my entire life—

No, it's just not fair, though.

You're exactly right there, and—

—start a sexually explicit show and have minors on it. It's just not right. And it's not right. I know I'm not the only one.

Both you and I wish that you had known to do that earlier, before the statute of limitations. I don't know, and in this, you know, there are a lot of—

Go ahead.

No, no, you go ahead.

There are things that, after the fact, we wish we had done differently, and you don't want to beat yourself up for that, because it is what it is. You weren’t ready to talk about it, or didn’t know how it had affected you until you went into therapy. And now, what I would recommend is a therapist who can help you reach some way so that you can have some lovely wallpaper in your home. Here’s another way of looking at it: our minds—one psychologist said—our minds are Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the good things in our life. What happens with Teflon?

Things kind of reflect off.

Yeah, just roll off. So the good things we don't value as much, and the bad things we wrap our minds around and replay. So we're building pathways in our brain. Actually, you know, we're rehearsing it; it's becoming like a habit. And you want to have methods to shift away from that. To say, every day of my life, these are irreplaceable moments. You and I talking right now are irreplaceable moments in our lives. And you want to make your mind decide at some point that it’s Velcro for the good. Someone said that not being a victim is realizing what you can change, realizing what you can't, and getting on with your life in the best way possible.

What happens is, what made me so special that he didn’t ask me for ID? How many others?

You and I will never know, you know?

Three other girls went up there with no ID, you know.

You and I will never know, and maybe one of the other girls—the situation that I was in—other people took the person I was upset with to court, and it still didn't go anywhere. And I'm living with that, and that's okay, meaning it’s not okay justice-wise. But I know that the main justice is that person has to go to bed with themself every night. They have to live with their character. I don’t have to live with it, and I have a much better soul than them, much better character. And you want to know that about yourself, and you want to treasure the people who are right in your home, your family, your kids.

And maybe I have a young son now, and I think that the reason why a lot of this came up is because I'm very overprotective of my son.

Okay, that is what you want to focus on in therapy. Listen, we are at the end of time. I wish you the best with this, and thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I hope that you can get the Velcro for the good, taking in the good with your son.

Thank you.

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

What keeps people together? What keeps partners together when it’s an abusive relationship? What keeps people from reaching out and learning some better communication skills? And of course, you don’t want the opposite. If you've got someone abusing you, the alternative is not to punch them out. The alternative is to speak up assertively. You need to get police protection in some cases; you need psychological protection for yourself. You don't want to buy into all of the false names they're calling you. You want to own your own life. And how do you do that? That's one of the many topics that we talk about on our show, The Rational Basis of Happiness. I'm a clinical psychologist. 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.

Romantic love is not mysterious. Its causes can be understood by looking inward at one's own thoughts and feelings. Researchers claim that love is basically a matter of brain activity, with your free will and choices reduced to pushes and pulls from neurochemicals and brain systems. Your personal values and your mind—the part of you that perceives, reasons, and feels—are left out of the picture. Why would anyone believe that love is basically brain activity, or that love is solely a matter of unanalyzable emotions? The reason is that emotions often do feel mysterious. They happen so fast. They are actually very quick, automatic reactions involving your subconscious, personal knowledge, values, and standards.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book on Amazon.com.