The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here is an email I got from a teenager, 17 years old:

Dear Dr. Kenner,

I'm very upset with how my life is right now. I'm 17, a junior in high school, and I know life's tough. Yeah, I'm a teenager, but my mother doesn't know how to back off, and every time I try and ask her calmly to stop or to try and walk away, it only escalates the situation. I've been diagnosed with three things: clinical depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorder. I know that these fights are usually my fault, but when I try and take a breather, my mom won't back off, won't go away. I've gotten panic attacks from all of this happening, and my temper doesn't help. I don't know what to do, and it's starting to get me depressed again. What should I do?

Melinda

Melinda, for 17 years old, sounds like you've got a heavy load. You've got depression, bipolar, and anxiety disorder diagnoses. So the first question is, how do you understand yourself, what's going on in your life, what's causing all of the emotional turmoil, the chaos in your mind that's making you feel depressed and giving you mood swings and causing you to feel uncertain, anxious, a lot of self-doubt, I'm suspecting, and then to just swing out at those around you with a temper, and just telling your mom to back off. So you really need to have schooling in how to understand your own psychology, how to understand your own mood. And the technology is out there. The skills are out there. Cognitive therapy—cognitive therapy—can teach you phenomenal thinking skills. You can look at your temper and figure out what's triggering it. You can look for patterns and what's happening with mom. You become a scientist or a detective. What's going on with me, not what's wrong with me. You throw up your hands, and you just figure everything and everything's my fault and I can't change. You can change. You can picture yourself 10 years from now—you're 17—picture yourself at 27 saying to yourself, "Man, did I put my life together. How wonderful. When I was 17, boy, I was a mess. I was screaming at my mom and had all these diagnoses, and I was visiting doctors." But if you learn the thinking skills, you can put your life back together.

So you need to know both the origin, what triggers your different mood swings, your anger, your anxiety, what you say to yourself—your self-talk. It's not fair. They don't understand me. Nobody understands me, or I don't know how to do anything, or I'm a failure, or I'm unlovable, or I'm a loser. And then you need to be able to look at those clearly, those thoughts, that self-talk clearly, and see if it's accurate. If there isn't some good in you, there's some strengths in yourself that you can build on. And not that you're trying to fake away the bad stuff, but you're trying to encourage yourself to move more and more towards the good aspects, towards your own strengths.

And you want to look at what are alternative ways to manage your temper. You need the skills to do that. One is to put yourself on pause. What you're asking mom to do, you want to do it for yourself: to put yourself on pause and take a break, walk away from the situation, telling the people that you'll be back in 10 minutes or a half hour. And then you want to figure out what's the pattern with my mom. And that would be really good for you guys to have some therapy together.

Reading books can help you. You have, you can go to my website, DrKenner.com. There's a book Mind Over Mood. There is a book that's wonderful, written by the authors Adele Fauci and Elaine Maslish. There are multiple books: Your Guide to a Happier Family, Liberated Parents, Liberated Children, How to Talk So Teens Will Listen. That's a good one for you to read too, and that might be good for mom and you to read together and learn better communication skills.

Also, focus on your best times with your mom. If you could sit down now, Melinda, and just journal, write down all of your favorite times with your mom, any that you can remember, because you want to remind yourself and remind mom that you guys do have the potential to get along better. There may be sibling issues going on too, but you want to look at the best times you've had together and what works for you.

And then I would also recommend you, when you sent me your question, you also sent me your email, and you have a very negative email that feeds into your negative view of yourself, like "screwingup@something.com". I would definitely recommend you forming a better image of yourself, renaming your email to be much more optimistic, putting things together again, or gaining control. So you want to give yourself that gift, and I wish you some success with that.

Here's a quick question: How can you tell if you're being used or if they really care for you?

That's very quick. So, a question is, how do you judge another person's character if you're dating somebody? How do you judge them? Well, first, are they consistent, or do they tell you they'll pick you up and they're not there, or they say that they'll buy you a special gift, and they don't follow through? You want to see if it feels like an even relationship, a trader (T-R-A-D-E-R) relationship, where you might borrow things from them and they borrow things from you, and the things get returned. Or you do for them and they do for you. Or is it a one-way street? Then you are being used. You listen to their words and actions and see if there are any differences in those, and that's a quick answer to a quick question.

I'm Dr. Ellen Kenner on the Rational Basis of Happiness. Toll free: 1-870-7D-R-K-E-N-N-E-R. Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance by Dr. Ellen Kenner, the former slim prom queen who is now obese, which shocks us because it reflects her lack of pride in her appearance. Serious psychological issues may underlie such a lack of self-care. For example, a sexually abused woman may label herself as damaged goods and then keep on the extra pounds to avoid looking sexually attractive. Sometimes, individuals are just too depressed or busy to make an effort to look better. It's too much work to wear clean clothes or put on makeup, or ignoring one's looks. May follow a failed romance after being hurt, some just give up. Some feel they would be caving into cultural pressure if they improve their looks. Others feel too meek and humble to make the most of their looks, fearing they'll be seen as vain. They fail to understand that looking nice is not the same as being obsessed with looks.

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