The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.

So here's a question I received from Serge. Have you ever had a thought that pops into your mind, and you just can't get it out? It's a negative thought, and the harder you try to get the thought out of your mind, the more it seems to be super glued to your mind. It haunts you. Well, what if you have a lot of negative thoughts that keep popping into your mind? None of them are that significant, and yet you're tortured by them. How do you turn that around?

So here's Serge's story. Hello, Dr. Kenner. I'm retired and enjoying life with my wife and family as much as health allows. But an annoying habit I have has followed me my whole life and has grown to obsessive proportions. It's the habit of recalling, for no apparent reason, embarrassing or humiliating or inappropriate incidents in my life. Very few of these recollections are egregious. They may be so trivial that no one even noticed them at the time, but nevertheless, they strike me with such force that they often evoke a loud exclamation, which startles my wife if she's around. These memories go back to my early childhood, so that's a clue.

This happened several times, most days, and although I can live with them, I am keen to rid myself of them. When I was younger, such recollections might have served the purpose of reminding me of what to avoid doing again, but now they serve no purpose except to make me feel bad about things that were not very important in the first place and that I can't do anything about anyway now, yet I cannot stop them popping into my head and spoiling my day. If you have any tips as to what to do or where to look for help, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

All my best,
Serge

Serge, you sound absolutely lovely, and it's tragic for you to be retired and have a wife and a family and to be tortured by these thoughts. See, I don't like tragedies. I like, as I just mentioned, either Frasier happy sitcom, hopefully with a happy ending, or I like happy endings. I like romantic literature that ends on an upbeat. So you want that for your own life. You want to get rid of that word "can't." You want to tell your subconscious something different. It could be with a little difficulty. I can work on this. With some effort, I can work on this and start to fade the problem. Learn some skills that put the problem more and more into my past, so I can eventually speak in the past tense.

I used to have the obsessive thoughts about little, trivial things that were embarrassing, but now they're not front and center. They're not center stage in my life. So it does sound like you went through some trauma. It sounds like the intensity that you're feeling came from someplace. I mean, partly, it's coming from the annoyance of not knowing how to get rid of an obsessive thought that you know how to break the habit. But it also sounds like it came from someplace. So you want to honor that in yourself, that you've gone through some trauma.

I mean, many of us have grown up with a parent who was occasionally critical and/or peers who were critical. And, you know, sometimes revisiting that and putting it in an adult context is helpful. You can do it through therapy or on your own if you prefer. But you don't want to have this broken record, so to speak, go on in your mind. You want to be able to break the record or play a much lighter tune in your mind.

So how can you do that?

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. 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? 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, and you want to be able to break the record or play a much lighter tune in your mind.

So how can you do that? Well, getting rid of intrusive, unwanted images, thoughts, or memories is a skill you can learn, Serge. And so let's first look at what works and what doesn't work. First, what doesn't work. If you try to force your mind not to think about something, we all know what happens. Those thoughts come back with more power. They're nuclear powered, and they stay. They have the ability to just cling. So if I say, "Ellen, don't think of whatever I put in that place," a pink elephant or pizza. You know, my mind will say, "Okay, what am I not supposed to do? I'm not supposed to think of a pink elephant." And it comes right back in my mind.

So don't think of these trivial thoughts. Guess what? You are pulling up a file folder in your mind that says "trivial thoughts" and opening it up. And all of us have that file folder in our mind, and we have many, many entries.

So I'm going to give you my example to show you how to instead work with your own mind and be gentle on yourself in the process. You don't want to be belittling yourself. So I, let's say I have a stray intrusive thought about the time I peed in my pants. I think it was first grade. This is true, and I recall being mortified in front of my friends. I can remember the wet feeling in my little wooden chair, and my mother having to come and either take me home. I don't remember exactly, but I remember it was an embarrassing moment.

And guess what? I can chain those thoughts. When I say, "Well, when else was I embarrassed?" Well, I can recall the time. First time I was in seventh grade, I went to my first, I think it was my first dance, and I wore a strapless bra under a very pretty dress, and the bra dropped down to my waist. I didn't know it, so I had four little bumps on my chest, and nobody asked me to dance. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, or if I just looked petrified. And that's another embarrassing moment.

Then I can remember the time I asked a dumb question and I was ridiculed as a young adult. I can go on and on, and that's the good news. All of us have an embarrassing folder in our mind, and once you open up that folder, you can keep chaining them, linking one embarrassing moment to another.

That's what you're trying to break. So why I'm saying that is you want to normalize it. This isn't just you; all of us have that folder. What you're wanting to do is to be able to gradually close that folder by telling those thoughts, "Oh, you don't matter as much anymore."

Now, how do you do that? If I said to myself, when I had those embarrassing memories, if I said, "Ellen, that's so stupid. Why are you thinking of that?" Now I'm encoding this stray memory and making it significant and important, and that makes me perpetually self-ridicule. If I say, "Oh yeah, that was an embarrassing moment, not a big deal. Everyone has those moments," then my mind is less likely to tag that memory as important.

I can also put it in a sitcom context. If I'm thinking of it as just light humor, the time my bra fell down, or the time I peed in my pants. I'm an adult now, and I can just deal with it that way, or I can open up a different folder: moments that I felt proud of myself or had fun in life and start remembering those and letting those change the chain, the much happier moments with your family or your wife.

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

Oh my God, here. Have a rainbow by Dr. Honey Snow.

Mike, if you listen to this stuff, it's absolute drivel.

Yeah. Well, for someone who writes drivel, she's awfully popular.

Oh, really? Fancy that she tells everyone that they're perfectly wonderful and that nothing wrong is ever their fault.

What do you know? They like it.

Do you find yourself gravitating to people who tell you, "Oh, don't worry, honey. It's not your fault," when you know it is your fault? You know you've contributed to a problem. You know you had an argument, and you maybe started it, or you know that you cheated a little bit, and it is your fault. You're feeling guilty. Does it help when they say, "Oh, don't worry, hon, it's not your fault. Nothing's ever your fault," or "Everyone makes mistakes. Don't be hard on yourself," and they try to whitewash it?

What's the takeaway from that? The takeaway is that you don't grow, you don't learn, or you feel perpetually guilty because you think, "It's not my fault. It's not my fault." You try to convince yourself of that, but your subconscious doesn't believe it. Your subconscious is saying, "Oh, yeah, right, right. You know you lied," or "You know you deliberately chose to flirt with his wife." Or you know your subconscious is keeping track of everything, and it will let you know when you feel deceptive.

And so it's much better to face the facts. If you've misstepped, if you've done something that you're embarrassed about, or you feel you've done wrong, it's much better to face it and learn from it and grow from it.

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

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

There are rational, practical approaches to resolving conflict with your romantic partner and anyone, for that matter. For example, nip escalating tensions in the bud. When people stifle thoughts and feelings, they see the quietly, and anger surfaces indirectly in their body language and tone of voice. People who have stored up a lot of hurt and frustration may suddenly let loose fairly aggressively, using flawed communication methods. Some individuals manage to stifle their failings for a lifetime, and they become seriously depressed. They never give themselves a voice, and they betray their deepest desires.

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