The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at Drkenner.com and right now, we're

going to go to the phones and speak with Anna. Anna, welcome to the show. Hello. Hi,

Anna. What's your question?

My question is, how to help my best friend with anger, severe anger,

so something like what I was just talking about is exactly

everything you say is exactly what she's going through, but more it's just I know what she's going through because I've been there in a situation since she's been divorced the first time to the second divorce and she got separated, but I seen that this time that she got separated. Second time, things got worse. Out of proportion. She got into a very deep depression, and the main thing that triggered her is anger is the first thing that she has, and she just gets upset with every single thing, gets annoyed. And I realized that the ones that are more closer to her, which I'm usually the one that's the most closest to her, because I go visit her every single day, I'm the most targeted. It's gone to a point that she becomes very vulgar and insults me or she throws things around the house, and she just starts screaming, and she can't control it, and she tells me, "I can't control my anger. Can you please leave? Because if you don't leave, I'm gonna kill you." Is exactly what she says.

Okay. What is your relationship with her?

She's my best friend.

When you say that, is it a best friend that you just met a year ago, or is it a lifetime best friend from grade school?

I met her close to like eight years, going to nine years.

And how has your relationship been with her over that period? It's almost a decade.

Since I met her, it's when she barely started divorcing her first husband. She was very nice, very calm, and she was kind of disappointed by the fact that her marriage didn't go well, but what I know of is she started wanting to go out and drink a lot, almost every day, to try to surpass the problem she had, you know, with her husband.

So she picked up a really bad habit of trying to self-medicate, trying to blank out reality, not deal with the hurt, not deal with the anger, but just to blind herself, psychologically deaden her emotions?

Yes, and since then, I mean, she's been drinking and she drank and she drank. So every time she would drink, and I've noticed that when she would drink, at the beginning, she started being very calm and happy, like a happy, social person. Then when she met her second husband, that's when I met him the same day they got married, and everything went out, and when, the moment they got married, they started having problems. So from there on, her marriage was mostly separation, then togetherness, and she started drinking out of anger, and her attitude just changed completely. Drinking led to violence for her. She would get violently angry, not toward her husband but toward the people that were close to her. There have been several occasions where she would be so intoxicated and so upset to the point that she couldn't control herself. I would ask her, "Can you please calm down?" and she would confront me, and got physically aggressive. That was one time when I totally stopped talking to her for a while, which I feel I shouldn't have, because I think she needed more help, but I think it was better because I didn't want to put myself in danger knowing she was that upset.

What keeps you attached to a woman who's being abusive to you, who used to be a former friend? She's got alcohol problems now, and she's not taking care of them. They're getting worse. They're getting progressively worse. There's a phrase, "You go home and kick the dog." You're angry with your exes or somebody, you're angry with your boss, you go home and kick the people that are most supportive of you. You're being the one that's kicked. That's called displacement. She's displacing her anger onto you. You didn't injure her, right?

No, of course, I'm not. I'm not a person of violence. I remember.

What keeps you trapped in that relationship?

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

What keeps you trapped in that relationship when you could go out and have much better friends?

Okay, what keeps me to it is that since I was very young, I've been a person that liked to help people, and every time I try to help a friend, way before I met her, I would help a friend enough so they could get on their feet. So I was always the person that people would come to for advice, and I would help them up, and once they were on their feet, I would let them go.

Would you feel like a failure if you didn't succeed with her?

I feel that the reason why I don't let go of the friendship is that I want to be the person to help her achieve her happiness.

Okay, can I stop you there, Anna? You can never do that for someone else, but you need to be a friend to someone. Do you know who you need to be a friend to? Yourself. If your child were friends with someone who wanted to kill her at times, what would you tell your child?

Yeah, not to hang out with her.

Not to hang out with her. So you have every right to be a helping person to those who have earned your help. And I would love to give you some advice right after the break on situations where you help someone and circumstances where you let go and be very good to yourself.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to drkenner.com, and please listen to this.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner. A common mistake many women make is to view their male partner's passion and frequent advances as purely a physical urge, rather than as a desire for mutual intimacy. A physical urge is often a loving, emotional desire for closeness. When the relationship is a good one, being sexually desired is a great compliment and should be taken as such. What the partner is saying is, "It is through you, and no one else, that I choose to take my pleasure, to celebrate my life, and to express my love." What greater compliment could one have from a romantic partner? In contrast, being rejected means, "I do not value closeness and intimacy with you. You're not that important to me."

You can download chapter one for free by going to drkenner.com, and you can buy the book at amazon.com.