The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Susan, you have a 16-year-old daughter who's not talking.

Yeah, yeah. What? What's going on?

Well, she's actually been a quiet girl for her whole life. She's been quiet, but she is with her friends. She's more extroverted, but interesting, but she's extroverted with her friends, pretty much. You know, she takes part. She has a small group of friends. She's very selective. But at home, and there's just the two of us at home, or the family situation broke up years ago, but she doesn't smile, she doesn't talk. People, you know, have a friend come in and engage her in conversation about something personal to her. You know, it's oncology, and I talked about, and everybody's all up and laughing and chatting, and she doesn't even laugh. She doesn't crack a smile. And a friend of mine said today she was talking to, you know, when she was here on Saturday, when we were all talking, she said it was like she just wasn't there. It was like she was—my friend was very frustrated to try to talk to her because she just didn't get a response back. And I said, well, that's where she is all the time with me.

I came home this evening with great news about her, some projects she had done, and it was met with great success. I mean, she's a very, very talented girl. That was great, great success. And I'm saying, oh, my God, they love what you did. They were all excited. They said they got shivers. She had done a video for somebody, yeah. She didn't even have an expression. I said, isn't that great news? And she will not. She is not a—she never says, "I love you." Ever, ever, ever, ever. Yeah, she doesn't. When I go to kiss her or something like that, hug, I can kiss her, but she still is very reticent. She pulls back.

I don't know where, what is she protecting herself from? What pain? I can think of it, but I can't get to it.

Yeah, but what do you think? You know her better than anyone. If you've been living with her, how long have you been divorced for?

Well, I've raised her on my own. Her father was always very inconsistent. Still is inconsistent. Is he in the picture at all?

He was in another state. She hasn't talked to him for weeks. She saw him in July. No, no, he's coming. He's gone. I've raised her on my own. We were only married for a couple short months, and sometimes I think—and she's angry a lot.

Yeah, she's just angry. Angry means something is not fair. That's her injustice detector. So what big, what are the biggest things in her life that—if she—and again, we're guessing—what's going on in her mind? I can't guess, but you can guess.

I can't even get to it.

Yeah. I mean, is it she's angry that she doesn't have a father, that her father is distant? Is she angry with you? Were there any traumas in childhood? Was she abused at all? Are there any hidden secrets?

No, nothing like that. I sometimes think that it is, that it's not fair, or that I think she's—I think if she's angry at anybody, she's got to be angry at him. And sometimes I'll bring it up, and, you know, the last time we had a big conversation, it was less than a year ago, she said, "Don't worry, I'm not traumatized. It's fine. He's fine. It's fine, I know."

But here's when people are in such pain.

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.

Don't worry, I'm not traumatized. It's fine. It's fine, it's fine, I know. But here's when people are in such pain, if they repress their emotions, if they give their subconscious in order don't feel, you know, sometimes a wife will cheat on a husband, and the husband says, I never want to feel that pain again of having been betrayed like that. I'm not going to get close to anyone again.

And it may be in a very powerful private moment that they have this conviction that my coping strategy from now on is to never let anyone get too close because I don't ever want to be hurt with that depth of pain again, and then they kind of bury that, and they just say, "Don't feel." And your subconscious hears, "Don't feel," so you don't get the highs and you don't get the lows. And you see a person who is emotionally flat.

Exactly. But what you need to do—it means you can't do it. This would be up to her. But as the mom, I would recommend therapy for yourself because I'm—

I'm actually going now, but I'm not. I'm just getting a response that I'm getting is, well, this is the way she is.

This is the way she is.

Yes, you can't force her to talk because the more you pursue her, the more she'll clam down. She's protecting—her coping strategy is that she's protecting herself from some feelings, from some pain, from some recognition of reality.

Vietnam vets are the vets that come back who have been in combat. Vets very often do this. They alienate themselves. They shut down because of the pain and trauma they experience that their mind is their own enemy. They don't even want to go to sleep at night because they're afraid that their memories will haunt them, the memories of all the trauma.

So in your case, I think that it's so sad for a mom not to have that connection, especially when the two of you are together, and I don't know all the details. There may be all the details, but if she is angry, if you're sensing she's angry, I would give her invitations to talk. "Honey, I know that you're angry at something, and I've tried to put my finger on it. I can't name it, and I'm puzzled. Anytime you want to talk about it, honey."

If, yeah, I've pretty much done that. Sometimes I use my humor, you know, or I'll leave the room, and I say, I don't know what you're angry at. Please tell me what you're angry. What is this language?

Okay, so you're giving planting the seed. You could go to therapy with her. Whatever it is, when people have opened up with me, when they've been that repressed, emotionally repressed, they go through a stage, typically, that's called flooding. Once they give this some subconscious permission to talk, it all comes out in a disorganized manner, and it just overwhelms them. It's like so hard to talk about it and get clarity on it, and so maybe it's hard for her to open the floodgates, but something is hurting her that she's trying to run from.

You can never run from your own mind. It's much better to face it. I would recommend if you could get some family therapy with you and your daughter—a few sessions. Maybe she could even come to your therapy.

Well, I asked her to go to a therapist last spring.

Yeah, crazy.

No, it does. If she thinks the therapist—if it's crazy, it's really thinking.

I would—we're right at the end of time, Susan. I will look up cognitive therapy. Go to the website, academyofct.org, and thank you so much for your call. And I wish you success with your daughter.

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

Well, it's all right, Ross, it's just the whole thing just catapulted me back to high school, you know. Well, they know me as an adult, but back then I was rather an unathletic, bookish sort. Jocks were the bane of my existence. They always called me a weenie that would steal all the girls that I wanted.

Fraser, you must have had some girlfriend friends.

Yeah, yeah, anytime they wanted a sensitive shoulder, the car. But some blockheaded pillar of testosterone would come by, and it was, "Bye, Fraser, we can study later," and I'd head home to Niles.

We'd put on the Brandenburg concertos and play air violin, and that's from Fraser, obviously.

And think of times in your own life when you have just—you know, you're feeling real confident, you're feeling on top of the world, and suddenly somebody says or does something to you that just catapults you back to childhood, and some injury that you had in childhood just reappears, and you feel very vulnerable.

If you look at it as, "Oh, my God, I'll never change," chances are you'll never change. If you say, "Wow, this is an opportunity to correct a thinking error, or to deal with a problem that I had in childhood that I didn't realize was affecting me, but it is affecting me."

And let me do some thinking about this. And there are wonderful cognitive therapy skills that give you thinking skills. There's also a wonderful woman, Jean Maroney Ben Swanger. You can Google her—either Jean Maroney, M-O-R-O-N-E-Y—to find some thinking skills that would help you tease apart some of what's going on underground, what's going on in your own thoughts, in your own mind, so that you gain some clarity on your own, on what's going on emotionally with you, and how to fix it.

For more, Dr. Kenner podcast, go to DrKenner.com.

And please listen to this—that here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by Doctors Kenner and Locke.

There are two errors about sex that make it degrading. Number one, the spiritual view, because it regards your body as sinful. And number two, the physical view, because it divorces sex from your consciousness, your knowledge, your emotions, and your character.

The spiritual view leaves you feeling shame, guilt, and regret about the sex act, evading the fact that sex is fundamental to a romantic relationship. The physical view trivializes sex and turns it into a meaningless animal act. It implies that sex is divorced from you and your partner's deepest values.

It also implies that it doesn't matter who your partner is, but of course, it does matter. Sex itself is not bad or meaningless, but the wrong views that many people hold about it are.

Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com.