The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here is a question I received from somebody in college. I don't know when you were in college or in school, if you ever felt like quitting. Well, what if you quit and you didn’t tell your parents? That's the situation of this young lady.

Dear Dr. Kenner, I have been bunking college for two months. My parents don't know anything about this, and I don't know how to tell them. Sometimes I just think of quitting or harming myself. Please give me suggestions as to what I can do now. Megan.

Megan, the first thing that you want to do is don’t harm yourself. That doesn't solve any problems; it just compounds your problems. So hurting yourself, or if you have fleeting suicidal thoughts at all, get the book. There’s a book by Corey Newman and Tom Ellis. I just drew a blank here. It’s on Choosing to Live. That is the title, and it's got a lot of those good thinking methods I just talked about. And don't just settle for a book. Go to your counseling center ASAP if you have a counseling center at your school. If you don’t, go to the website Academy of Cognitive Therapy, or my website and get the link, or you can just go to the Academy of Cognitive Therapy at ct.org and find a therapist ASAP.

So what do you need to do? You would work with a therapist. But the first thing is, you need to understand yourself. Why are you not going to classes for two months? Is it that you discover that you really can’t stand college and you’re just going to please your parents, and so you're so afraid of telling them, but you can’t get yourself to go to classes? Is it that the classes are too hard, or you feel too overwhelmed, or you don't like the subjects at all, and yet the college is forcing you to take certain subjects and you just can’t focus? Maybe you decided to drink and party too much, and you're really throwing away college, and you don’t know how to disentangle yourself. Or maybe you're feeling lonely, or you're really not connecting with people at college. You need to understand yourself because it will give you some clarity. There are many different reasons why people would bunk classes in school, and if you understand yourself, you'll be able to talk with a psychologist. And if you can’t understand yourself, you and a psychologist can work together, or a counselor at your school can help you try to figure out what's going on.

Then you do need to tell your parents. Maybe the counselor at the school can come. You can have a meeting where a counselor is in the room with you, so your parents don’t go ballistic on you, if that’s what they would tend to do. Know that they're not going to be smiling, but it may be the case that your parents end up being very supportive and loving of you and want to work to help you out. That may be a lovely surprise. I know we once got a phone call from one of our kids...

Hey, I gotta interrupt this, because we’ve got to pay some bills. 30 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.

I know we once got a phone call from one of our kids, and they were having difficulty in college. I think they were absolutely delighted that we were lovingly supportive, that we didn’t damn them, we didn’t condemn them; we just were lovingly supportive. And now this person—this, our kid—is wonderfully successful.

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

Here's another email I received recently. Dear Dr. Kenner, recently, the police raided our house. They weren’t coming after me, and they were very, very nice. I was making conversation with them, laughing with them for two hours. But then there came a time when they asked me to go into my room and told me and a few others to stay there. I can’t get that imagery out of my head. It’s all I can think about. I thought the whole event was quite interesting, but I can’t remember the part very well when they put me in that room, and yet I keep replaying it. It’s driving me crazy. Please help. What can I do?

Well, it sounds like you were traumatized. I mean, man, if the police came in my house, even for somebody else, I might feel guilty. It may be an irrational guilt—maybe I did nothing—but I may worry, what if they come after me? I may be angry: what if they think I’m a guilty party? Maybe I know I’m not guilty, but I’m feeling anxious, I’m feeling fearful. You know, what’s going to happen to somebody in my house? And it’s just all so vague. It’s a vague threat. And so you want to ask yourself, What went through my mind? And you do want to try to recapture what traumatized you in that moment. Do it with a cognitive therapist again. You can go to the website Academy of Cognitive Therapy at ct.org, but you are also telling yourself, It’s driving me crazy. It’s all I can think about. If you're telling yourself that, it will make those thoughts loop. You want to tell yourself, I can figure this out. I can get to the bottom of it.

I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner on The Rational Basis of Happiness, toll-free, 1-877-Dr-Kenner.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, 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 psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and Dr. Edwin Locke, who’s world-famous for his theories in goal setting.

To have a thriving romantic relationship does not mean you must always be chained together. Feeling a sense of relief when your partner goes on a trip does not necessarily mean you don’t love that person. Maybe you need some private time, just as your partner does occasionally. If you always want your partner to leave town, that's a different matter. In a thriving relationship, you will always be glad to see your partner come home. You'll be happy you had some time to yourself, and you’ll feel reinvigorated romantically. Obviously, we don’t condone sneakiness, irrationality, or any type of dishonesty during those times that you’re on your own.

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