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 Mary.

Mary, welcome to the show.

Hello, hi.

What's your question?

Well, when I said it, he left, so maybe I'll alter it a little bit.

Oh, don't do that.

How can I tell if I'm an OCD clutterer? But I think it's been confirmed. My partner here is telling me I definitely am. Okay. I'm trying to decide—I have all these piles around my recliner of mail and information and books, and in my sewing room, I bring things in and stack them up and pile them up. I just have a lot of piles. It's not dirty, it's just cluttered, and my desk is like that at work. So should I go to a psychiatrist and get medication? Or should I go to a psychologist to try and figure out what the deep-seated problem is that may be causing it?

You can definitely go to a psychologist. I love doing the detective work about myself. I think that you and I could join a club, because I've been a clutterer my whole life. And what you need to do is look at the ideas underlying your own clutter. What is your reason for clutter? And it may not be the first reason we tell ourselves. Like one of my reasons is, "Oh, you know, I’m so busy, I just don’t have time to clean up." That’s one of mine. Now, that's like a surface reason. It is true that I'm very busy, so there's always a grain of truth in those. But what's the deeper reason? What is it I’m saving?

So look at the things that you're saving. Let’s take one or two of them. What are one or two of them that you’d really like to let go of?

Mail.

Mail, okay. What type of mail do you save?

I let it all stack up, and one week, I go through it and try to throw out what I can. And then I save some of it, thinking I’m going to file it, and then I put it back in the stack at the foot of my chair, and there it is till the next week.

Okay, so what you're doing with the mail is that you're messing up your life in a way, because it's not that you're saving coupons, it’s that you’re saving important papers that need to be filed.

Probably is a lot of it. Some of it is—I'm a sewing nut, and so some of it is sewing-related things that I may know that I'm not going to do, but I save them just in case.

Okay, I keep a lot of those "just in case" things too. That’s something we’ll deal with in a minute. If it’s important papers, I read a book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. I highly recommend this. This will save you bundles of dollars on therapy instead. You can still—How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. Luckily, it’s a skinny little book and with very short chapters, little short sections, and it’s written—it’s an older book, but I think it's still in print. And if not, you can go to Amazon and try to get it in the out-of-print books. It’s by Alan Lakein—L-A-K-E-I-N. L-A-K-E-I-N.

And he talks about the fact that to not be in charge of your time—which is when you're cluttering, when you’re collecting a lot of stuff—you’re wasting a lot of time. You’re going through the papers again, and they’re just—they’re all around you with stuff to do, and you never feel like you own your own life.

And then it becomes overwhelming, and you can’t face it, right?

Right.

Because you go on overload. You just look at a huge pile, and it's no longer three papers, it's 300 papers. And it's like, oh my god, I'm never going to get to these. And you kind of hope that there'll be a flood in the house, and I get rid of—you have to get rid of all of them. So in that book, he talks about—he gives many tips. Some of the tips—

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 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.

So in that book, he talks about—he gives many tips. Some of the tips that I’ve gotten are that with important papers, try to do them the minute they come in. So if it’s a bill to pay, I pay it right away. For me, if there’s an insurance paper, I do it right away. It’s not something I used to have. This is a new skill that I’ve acquired. You have to bring through your own resistance. You have a new standing order in your mind, a new rule in your mind, a new helpful, loving rule in your mind that—touch this paper only once. That’s it. Touch it once.

With the ones that you want to save, you need to learn how to prioritize—prioritize and be selective. I collect lots of articles for radio. How many do you think get on radio?

I have no idea.

Very few. Very few. So at a certain point, I need to toss. I need to toss. If I need to find out something, where can I go?

The internet.

Internet. Especially with the internet, you could find all the sewing tips that you ever wanted—all to your heart's delight. You could spend a weekend by yourself on the internet looking up sewing tips, correct?

What is your laughter telling you right now about the piles of paper?

That they’re—they’re not really that important.

Right? Right. That they’re not important. That you value the space more than you value the paper. That’s another point that has helped me. If I tell myself, I value the space more than I value these old blankets I'm saving—I can buy a new blanket. Okay? That helps me toss.

With magazines—I have tossed out all my magazines. I never was able to do that because I, oh, someday I would read them all cover to cover, right? I toss them out. Now it hurts the first few times you do it, meaning you’re breaking a pattern. So be good to yourself.

What else would you like to get rid of? You mentioned the sewing room. You mentioned piles in front of your chair, your desk at work.

I’d like to be organized at work. I’d like to not—I guess the same thing that you’re saying, touch the paper once, file it when you’re done with it, instead of putting it over on a space where I’ll get back to it.

Okay, so there’s no “get back to it” space. There’s no—right. You want to get rid of that “get back to it” space, unless it’s a crisis. I mean, if there’s a fire in the building, you’ll get back to it later, obviously. But at work, in order to organize, you need to get specific. You need to take the 300 things, for example, and write—and group them. Like what—where would I like to begin? Where would you like to begin organizing?

I don’t know. I’m overwhelmed.

Okay, when you’re overwhelmed, get paper and pencil and start writing down the areas. Visualize your office. Write down the areas—the left-hand corner of my desk, the pile in the corner near the coat rack, the bookshelf. You can’t do them all at once, so just pick one small, bite-sized piece, and that’s what you’re going to work on. Only commit to 10 minutes to work on that. My guess is you’ll work on it longer, but only commit to 10 minutes, and you’ll just see remarkable progress.

And you can also get therapy help too to get to some of the underlying causes of it, but you can still change it without knowing all the details of what caused it in the first place. Thank you so much for your call, Mary. Let me know how things go, all right?

Thank you. Bye.

Bye-bye.

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 Dr. Ellen Kenner.

How do you let your partner know what you like and don’t like in intimacy? What works well for each of you? Sex therapists emphasize the need to phrase feedback lovingly. For example, rather than saying, “Oh, I hate it when you do that,” it’s far better to just gently move your partner’s hand. Or you might say, “I prefer you to touch me here. This feels really good.” Ask your partner what feels good. Neither of you are mind readers.

It is important to avoid deceiving your partner about your enjoyment. This is dishonest and a breach of trust. There may be times when you or your partner simply are not aroused enough to achieve satisfaction. On certain occasions, a feeling of closeness and intimacy may be satisfying enough. However, if this is the pattern in your relationship, you should figure out how to increase your mutual pleasure.

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