The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

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

Here's a question from a woman who feels like she's always being put down.

Dear Dr. Kenner, I'm 45 years old, and I'm just curious, why am I always being put down as a bad person? I try so hard to prove to people that I'm a good person and that I have my faults like they do. For example, it's hard for me to get a job or keep it for very long. I've been seeing counselors my whole life because of things in my life. It seems no matter where I go, I'm always being put down or looked at like there's something wrong with me. I'm a mother, and my child is young. I don't want her to think that she has a bad mom. All my life, I've tried to be that perfect person. I just end up getting really hurt. I've been told that I do nothing but hurt people. What am I to do?

Maggie.

Maggie, you want to do a lot of keen thinking, because either you've grown a paranoia over your years—there's no basis for it, you're a perfectly lovely person, but because you're paranoid, you push people away—or there's something else going on, there is something that you're contributing to people moving away from you. So there are three points I want to cover.

The first one is your evaluation of your own problem. Listen to how you phrase it to me:

Dear Dr. Kenner, I'm 45 years old, and I'm just curious why I am always being put down as a bad person.

Now, there are things that I'm just curious about, like maybe what my husband had for dinner, but "just curious" sounds like a passing fancy. This is an all-pervasive problem. This is a fundamental problem. If I felt like I was always being put down, called a bad person, when I had felt I had done little to deserve it, I would say, "I am hurting so much I can't make sense of the people around me, they don't recognize what I do. They often put me down. I can't make sense of their words or their actions. It feels like I'm living in a nightmarish universe." I want you to value yourself more. Don't make it a passing curiosity. Make your happiness a focal point, a point of importance. It's a lifelong puzzle, not a passing curiosity.

So that's the first point.

The second point is, learn how to do the detective work, the introspective work. It seems like others have a settled opinion of you, that you're bad. You're just a bad person? Well, bad is a global term. What the heck does "bad" mean? That you deceive them? That you're just an annoying nag? That you're boring? What does "bad" mean? I don't know. So you can write down these people in your life. Take a piece of paper. Write down Joe, Sam, Susie, Sally, all the people in your life, your mother, your sister, and everyone else that you feel has said that you're bad. And then try to get specific. What is it that they're not liking in you, or that they say they don't like in you, or that you imagine that they don't like in you? What? What causes that? Then ask yourself, "Is there any truth to it?" You're looking for facts. Is there any truth to what they're saying? If there isn't, then maybe you've just been hanging around the wrong crowd. Maybe you're a good person and you're hanging around envious people, in which case you switch your social group, you find better people to hang around, including your family. You reduce your connection with them. But if that's not the case, if there's some truth to what they're saying, then work on making yourself more lovable.

There are things that people do. One book is called Red Flags for Relationships. This is a book The Loneliness Workbook: A Guide to Developing and Maintaining Lasting Connections by Mary Ellen Copeland that you could get. She talks about red flags for relationships: rudeness, sharing personal information about others, doing all the talking and not listening to others, violating boundaries, knowing it all (having that know-it-all attitude), putting others down, teasing, ridiculing, taunting, making threats, bad-mouthing your friends and family, lying, being dishonest—the list goes on and on and on. So you could get her book and look that up if you want. Again, that's Mary Ellen Copeland's book The Loneliness Workbook that could help you out and try to make sense of why this happened.

Now, there's another factor...

Hey, I’ve 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.

And try to make sense of why this happened. Now, there's another factor. When did this start in childhood? Did you feel like you were never good enough and you set some unrealistic standards of perfection? Those you need to challenge. You want to look at your own evaluation of yourself. Do you feel really insecure? Do you feel like you're not meeting up to your standards, and by that, you're "bad" because you've been thrown out of a couple of jobs, or because you were let go? When you look back to your past, you could go way back. Ayn Rand—A-Y-N, R-A-N-D, my favorite author—once said of independence, meaning psychological independence: "Somewhere in the starting years of your childhood, before you had learned to submit, to absorb the terror of unreason and to doubt the value of your mind, you had known a radiant state of existence. You had known the independence of a rational consciousness facing an open universe—that is the Paradise which you have lost, which you seek, which is yours for the taking." So imagine that. (End quote.)

Imagine a child out on a playground just totally joyous, and the parent says, "You're not swinging well enough. You're not doing this well enough. You're not doing hopscotch the right way." Nothing is ever good enough. And you take that joy from your child and you squeeze it out of that child. If that was done to you, don't continue the abuse. Don't continue to do that to yourself. So ask yourself, "Am I self-sabotaging? How am I self-sabotaging? Are you high maintenance? Are you nagging? Are you always looking for reassurance from others?" Learn to value yourself more, make yourself into a really good person.

I’ve written a book with another author, but we have a chapter in our book talking about how to make yourself lovable. When you love yourself, it's very easy to connect to other people. You don't want to always look out and feel like you need their reassurance to love yourself. You want to set your own standards, and healthy standards, for your child. Also, go back to the job market and see if it's not possible to find a job that fits you well and stay employed, because you need that evidence as part of the picture to show yourself that you don’t need to continue with the self-image that you're a bad person.

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

My husband and I went on vacation about a month ago. We went to Sanibel Island in Florida. I loved it. They have beautiful, beautiful shells on the beach. The beaches are wall to wall shells. And we went out to eat, and there were two couples sitting near us, an older set of couples, and one man was just sitting there. The women were chatting, as they normally do, and the two men were just sitting there. One man looked at the other man, and he said, "I'm so bored at the gym. I do exercises, but I hate it. The time passes so slowly. I've been doing the same routine for the past six years. It's just boring. It gets monotonous." And my thought was, "Such is life. I’ll bet this guy's life is like that." Because if you're bored at the gym, bring some tapes to listen to or do exercise a different way. I mean, why sit for six years and do the same thing that's so boring and just complain about it?

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to drkenner.com.

Here's an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by Drs. Kenner and Locke:

Everyone you date gives you more opportunity to fine-tune your knowledge of what you want to avoid and what you want in yourself and in a partner. If you discover flaws that make you less lovable, correct them before looking for another potential soulmate. Put the past behind you. Don't wallow in self-pity or self-doubt or fantasies of what could have been. Don’t pursue the unimportant or unattainable in your search for a soulmate. If you have been rejected by someone you truly know and love, or if you have broken off a long relationship, give yourself reasonable time to grieve the loss, just as you would if a loved one had passed away. Healthy mourning involves reinvesting in your own life. In this case, it means motivating yourself to look for a better match.

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