The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at DoctorKenner.com

Greg is trying to figure out how to be good to himself. He wants to learn about successful living, but he's got problems with his job, with his career, with his health, and it's... it's just—you'll hear words like, "I'm very unhappy, very unsuccessful, and I'm desperate." So see what you think about this.

Yes, Dr. Kenner, my name is Greg, and my question is this: I was fired two years ago after a spinal cord injury. I am walking. I'm not paralyzed, but I may need surgery. Disability. I'm very unhappy. I have a new relationship, which I'm very happy in, but I don't have a job. I feel very unsuccessful, and in general, I'm not happy. I'm desperately trying. I'll be 50 next year, and I guess I'm going through a midlife crisis. I just want some advice as to what it takes to be successful, how to get a job, how to get into a career again. I want to be able to work after I have my surgery, and I want to know if this relationship is healthy too. I've had a bunch of bad marriages, and it's been 15 years since I've been married, and I just have some general questions about successful living. Also, I'm a diagnosed schizoaffective person, so I take medication for that, and so I have a few problems, which I'm trying to iron out in order to get ahead in life. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I'm not going anywhere, and I just need some help to get in the right direction.

Okay, when you feel like you have so many balls up in the air, Greg, you're trying to juggle, you're trying to dig yourself out of so many holes. You've had a bunch of bad marriages, so the relationship area is real shaky for you. Is this just going to be another bad relationship to, you know, tick, tick down, put a little check mark, and say, "There goes another one"? You have been fired from your job. It feels like someone saying you're no good, you're worthless when you're fired—that you're going to want to look closely at. If it was due to the spinal cord injury, then that's another hurdle that you need to get over because you haven't even had the operation yet. So you have a lot going on in your life. What I want to get to is, what do you love? If you could imagine your ideal life, Greg, given your limitations—obviously, it can't be a ski expert, a skiing expert with your spinal cord injuries, your back problems. What is it you do love, though, that you're capable of doing? What are you good at? And those are two separate questions because sometimes you can be very good at something that you don't enjoy doing. So you don’t want to choose that, but you want the combination of something that you would either be willing to put in an enormous amount of time to learn, like I did. I wasn’t good at this at the beginning. I had to learn—there's a big learning curve when you start anything, right? None of us are good at driving cars when we sit behind the wheel for the first time, but we all learn. So you want to be able to look at your life from the vantage point of, "What do I love?" And then you want to ask yourself a question, Greg—

I’ve 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. 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.

Look at your life from the vantage point of, "What do I love?" And then you want to ask yourself a question, Greg, "What have I done well in life?" Because you carry around a bunch of your failures. You display them to me—you know, a bunch of bad marriages, which is good for me to know. But what has gone well in your life? Many of us don’t focus on that. We just take it for granted, and it fades into the background. What are you genuinely proud of? What accomplishments have you had? And that's going to counter some of the fallout from all of your failures, because I'm assuming you're saying, "I'm a failure at relationships, I'm not good enough, I can’t get a job. I go through life spinning my wheels. I don't know what the future holds for me, and I don’t know how to deal with others." All of those are fixable. A lot of those are skill-based. Even thinking better, you can get a book called Mind Over Mood to help you deal with how you handle the negative thoughts that get in the way of your pursuing your dreams, pursuing your goals. So I highly, highly, highly recommend cognitive behavioral therapy, and you had mentioned that you have schizoaffective disorder. I don’t think most people know what that means unless they're in the field. It just means that at some point you've been depressed and/or you've had episodes of being manic, or you've had signs typical of schizophrenia. But it’s not schizophrenia. It just means that, at times, you've had delusions or hallucinations, maybe some bizarre ones, maybe some disorganized speech or some behavior that isn't typical of you. You may have even experienced a flattening of your emotions where nothing seems to bother you. I'm not hearing that now. I'm hearing a very motivated person who made the effort to call a talk show to figure out how to put his life together. I would start by getting yourself into cognitive behavioral therapy. You can go to their website, AcademyofCT.org (no spaces there), and see if there's a therapist in your area. You could go to my website and look at the book Mind Over Mood. I think that will help you a lot with the relationship you have now. If no harm is being done, then try to figure out what pattern you were in in past relationships that got you in trouble—not blaming the other person and not looking to blame yourself, but looking to find the causal link, identifying the cause of what messed up the relationship. See where that originated, maybe in your family of origin. Your father may have been very harsh to you, or your mother may have been real mean, or maybe both of them abandoned you. Have some empathy for yourself as you're trying to pull yourself out of this. But I would focus on definitely getting the job, because I think that’s where most of us derive our sense of identity. And the fact that you want to do that, even with the limitations of—

Even with the limitations of having been fired, having the back injury, and going through a new operation—look forward. You know, I give you credit.

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

I want to quickly turn to the guy who wants to kill the man who had an affair with his wife. He writes to me saying that he feels he's worthless, feels betrayed. He says, "I know you probably hear this 100 times a day, but my wife has left me for another man, and I'm absolutely beside myself with grief. I would literally like to kill the other man." So number one, you need to take a vacation. You need to put in a lot of pauses so you do not act on those feelings. A lot of people feel that way, but you've got to avoid getting even close to acting. There, you continue, "I feel so betrayed and worthless. I can't bring myself to see my children right now because they remind me of my wife and send me tail-spinning into grief." Let them know that. Let your kids know that. "I can't talk to her without being vicious." I would say, don't talk to your wife yet—you’re not ready to. And I would definitely get therapy ASAP. You've said you've been to the hospital twice for depression. I would get the book After the Affair by Dr. Janis Abrahms Spring. If you’re looking to rebuild the relationship, this book will help you; even if you're not, it will help you make sense of the pain you're in, and it will normalize it. Many people who’ve been betrayed—whose partners have had affairs—feel this intense emotion. It’s not abnormal. What you don’t want to do is let it linger. So you want ways out of that. And you can go to my website and get the book After the Affair by Dr. Spring.

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

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Doctors Kenner and Locke:

It's unlikely that even an ideal romantic partner will be what you want in every detail. So to be happy, ask the question, "What’s essential in a romantic partner for me to be happy?" Well, you can start by eliminating certain potential candidates. Newspaper love columns are filled with letters beginning, "My partner is a wonderful person, except for one thing." Almost inevitably, this one thing turns out to be something very important, such as drug abuse, infidelity, making parents more important than the partner, neglect, being a cheapskate, being a control freak, or psychological or physical abuse. Any type of abuse is most certainly a deal breaker. Any serious, uncorrected flaw will almost inevitably undermine other qualities that are good.

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