The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

We don't know if he's having an affair. I mean, he could just be involved with—I don't know—people who get together to invest things, and the place that they invest things is filled with potpourri, and that's why his shirt smells so sweet when he comes home. It's possible, yeah.

It's possible. It's possible. It's possible we can find your husband neck-deep in potpourri, investing things.

And that's from the movie Shall We Dance? And of course, if you know the story, she is so very anxious because she is fighting the idea in her mind. Her feelings are getting in the way of thinking, and she's fighting the idea: is my husband having an affair? And she's looking at other possibilities. And by the name of the movie, you can tell that the other possibility is he's out learning how to dance.

And with me to discuss thinking and feeling—and how feelings can get in the way of thinking, and how feelings are sometimes a wonderful source for doing your thinking—is a thinking expert. Her name is Jean Moroney Binswanger. She's got a website: thinkingdirections.com, and she has corporate clients: BB&T, Microsoft, Amazon, Got.com. And she has three degrees. She's got two master's degrees, one in electrical engineering and one in psychology—one from MIT, one from Carnegie Mellon—and she's combined all of her training in engineering and psychology with Jean’s passion to tackle your difficult thinking. She's got a wealth of information to help you solve problems in your life that put you in knots.

And with me today is Jean Moroney. Welcome to the show, Jean.

Thank you for having me, Ellen.

Oh, it's fabulous that you're here. Tell me what happens. I know many times I'll be trying to work on a project, and my thoughts will get in the way. You know, I'll be thinking, “Oh, I should do this, but I really… I'm, you know… I should work on my radio show, for example. But you know, I'm feeling anxious right now, or I'm feeling overwhelmed right now,” or “I'm feeling doubt right now.” What do you do with feelings?

Well, I think the first thing you need to do is to recognize that feelings are a normal part of a thinking process. Because when you sit down to, say, start working on your radio show, some issues—as you said, maybe doubt—those are going to get triggered. And they're going to get triggered because of the content. Everything is connected in your subconscious data banks. So I think the very first thing you need to do is to recognize that thinking is not an arid activity. You need to have a way to be able to deal with these feelings as they come up, because they are connected to the ideas that you have.

Okay, so let's just take a different example. If I'm studying for a test, and I'm just saying, “I really want to focus on the material,” let's say it's biology, and I'm trying to study the nervous system, and I'm studying and studying, and I just find that the feelings are getting in the way. What do I do at that point? I'm thinking, “Oh my God. What if I fail? What if I don't pass? What if I forget something?” What do I do at that point?

Well, okay, great. What I think is the best thing to do when you're in the middle of a thinking process and some feelings are getting in the way is to start—

Hey, I got to interrupt this, because we've got to pay some bills. 30 seconds, that's it. A very quick ad, and then Ellen 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.

What I think is the best thing to do when you're in the middle of a thinking process and some feelings are getting in the way is to start putting them down on paper—in words. This may seem a little surprising to you because a lot of times people think that what they should do in these cases is just suppress the feeling.

Oh, I just want to get them out of the way. I’ve got a test tomorrow. I can't start writing about my feelings if I have to study the nervous system.

Well, you know, there's a funny thing about this—that suppression is not always the most effective way to get things off your mind. Think about it this way. Suppose you're studying for the test. You tell yourself, “Don’t worry about your grade.” When you tell yourself those words—“Don’t worry about the grade”—what happens?

I worry. Worry about the grade. Worry about the grade.

You've actually probably reminded yourself that that's a concern.

So my subconscious hears “Worry about the grade,” where I'm not supposed to.

Exactly. You've actually reinforced the worry by talking about it. It's actually much more effective to—first of all, if you sit down, if you say, “Okay, I’m going to take, say, 30 seconds,” and believe me, you can actually do a fair amount of thinking on paper in 30 seconds—to write down what you're worried about. And if you sat down and wrote on a piece of paper, “I’m worried about the grade because I haven’t studied enough,” okay, what will happen when you take the time to do that?

It’s much slower to write that on paper than it is to have it zip through your head. And what happens is, if you were to write that down and it takes you 15 seconds, the absurdity of it all would occur to you. “Here I am, getting all concerned because I haven’t studied enough, and I’m letting my concern get in the way of the grade.” Well, that just in and of itself is going to calm you down. You've expressed the worry. You acknowledge that it’s real, and you've also seen the logic of it in a certain way.

Okay, you know what I mean?

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that if I push it away, it’s going to keep pressing. It’s like a dam ready to break loose in my mind, and it keeps pressing against me saying, “Knock, knock, I’m here. I want you to worry. I want you to worry. I want you to worry.” And anytime I spend worrying is time wasted. I can't study, right? And instead, if I just take 30 seconds, write down “I’m worried about the grade because I haven’t studied enough,” then I can say, “Okay, that’s what’s going on. Big deal. Now I want to turn my attention to studying.”

And a lot of times—I mean, not every time, I don’t want to give a false sense of optimism here—but a lot of times, just writing down what you're feeling and why you're feeling it, in effect, gives yourself the acknowledgement: yes, I’m in this situation. And it’s like your subconscious just wanted to get you to pay attention. And when you pay attention and really focus on “Yes, that’s what’s going on here,” it calms down. It stops bugging you.

Okay. And now, let’s say that I’m a very good student, and I really shouldn’t be stressing over this. So what else do I have to do with my feelings—I have all this worry, right?

So the other thing that sometimes is important here is to reality-check them. The fact that some ideas are occurring to you doesn’t mean that they’re true. It just means that that’s the two and two that’s getting put together from your subconscious data bank. And so one of the things—it may be that this exact same thought that I just mentioned here, “I’m worried because I haven’t studied enough”—when you write that down, the other thing that happens is that you see it there in black and white. And if that’s true, that’s one thing. If that’s not true—if in fact you’ve already put in four hours of work studying on this, or you’ve been studying regularly—reading what you wrote down will actually give you a moment’s pause. And you'll get some sense: “You know, maybe this is not really true.”

Yeah, and this is very important. This reality-checking of feelings that you have is very important for getting them to be in line with the facts. Now, I think you teach—with your therapy patients—I think you teach a version of reality-checking emotion, right?

And that’s a thought record. That’s something we can talk about another time.

So I’m talking with Jean Moroney Binswanger, who is a fabulous thinking expert. And can you give your website and tell a little bit about what you do in the last seconds?

I'd love to. My website is thinkingdirections.com. That’s the word “thinking” followed by the word “directions,” with no space in between them. And what I do is I have various classes and written materials on thinking tactics. So I have a workshop called Thinking Tactics, and I have a pamphlet on Thinking on Paper, which is part of what I recommend here for testing out the feelings that are getting in the way of thinking.

Tell me if people want to get in touch with you—I know you’ve helped people, you can tutor them privately, I know you give talks and workshops, and you have a lot of information on your website. You have a pamphlet, you have teleconferences—how can they get in touch with you?

The easiest way to get in touch with me is to subscribe to my free email newsletter, which you can get from subscribe@thinkingdirections.com. Just send an email there.

And I want to thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you, Ellen.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com. And please listen to this snap.

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:

The problem with full-fledged narcissists as romantic partners is that they are incapable of truly valuing another person because they do not value themselves. They are fundamentally lacking in self-esteem, and are obsessed with relieving their own anxieties. They don’t know what it means to pursue a positive value—one that is not tied to relieving self-doubt. They need others in a desperate sort of way, and they use them, but they cannot love them. They are not truly selfish, because narcissists have no real sense of self. Their “self” is only a cauldron of fears and doubts and grandiose self-deceptive fantasies whose goal is to alleviate those self-doubts.

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