🎤 PODCAST ~ 1-Ostracized in my childhood 2-Hoarding 3 My dad is controlled by his quirky rituals.
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The Selfish Path to Romance. Download Chapter 1 for free at drkenner.com. You'll be okay here. If you hang with me and mine, you'll be accepted in no time. Of course, we do have to test your coolness factor. Willow! Nice dress! Oh, well, my mom picked it up. No wonder you're such a guy magnet. If you want to fit in here, the first rule is, know your losers. Once you can identify them all by sight, they're a lot easier to avoid.

And what's it like trying to get into the popular group? And what does that do to you? When I was a kid, I remember I had a neighbor a few doors down, and I admired her. She was so full of life. She was so wonderfully popular. And I don't think I was trying to get into a popular group because she was my neighbor. We were just kids in the neighborhood playing. But one day I went into school,

And none of the kids would talk to me. And I had no idea. My best friends who would have, I had sleepovers, they just stopped talking to me. And for me, it was just shock. I didn't know what I had done, what went on. And when the story unrolled, it actually turned out that she had told them that I was one of the unpopular kids. And if they connected with me, they couldn't connect with her, that it was either her or me. And

And of course, I mean, I would rather go to her than me at that time, too. She was a lot of fun. So my friends just stopped talking to me because they didn't know how to cope with that sort of pressure. You want your kids to be able to cope with that sort of pressure.

pressure. In my case, my teacher actually kept all of us after school, all the girls after school, and curiously, she sent me out to clap the erasers. I don't think kids do that anymore, but she sent me with a bunch of erasers out to clap the erasers, and while I was doing that, she had to talk with the girls saying, you don't do this sort of things, and my friends came right back to me. However, I always felt

uncomfortable with that, with the girl who was in quotes the popular girl and, um,

You know, the damage done was done, and I didn't evaluate her as a good friend anymore, and that's good news. So if you're dealing with that sort of a situation, be good to yourself. If you are the bully, think twice. You damage relationships, sometimes for life, which happened in my case, but you don't want to let a bully decide who you're going to be friends with. It's not worth being friends with someone who's very charismatic if they set terms like that. They should not control you.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner. Right before the break, I was talking with Eric, whose mom is in her late 50s, and she hoards. That means she clutters the house with stuff, and it's driving his dad nuts, and it's driving him nuts. The mother has things like markers and papers and boxes and bows, but it's not just like, I keep some Christmas wrap and reuse it again because it's so pretty. It's not that. It's that it's...

there's no room to walk in the house. There's just the bed that's clear and the bathroom and the garage. Those are the dad's territories. But the rest of the house is just a pigsty. And she keeps the cups and things, so you don't know if there are animals in there. And what do you do in that situation? Well, I had recommended going to the website online

um... o_c_ foundation dot org and they have some wonderful tips on their first you decide together on what the goal of assistance is so you dad and you and dad can talk about how do we want to help mom and you can talk with mom too you can explore her ambivalence meaning a lot of times she's going to defend her right to keep all of her junk all of her crap

And it's not crap to her. They're treasures. And if you try to say, no, you need to get rid of it, she's going to strengthen and embolden her position and fight you even more. But if you catch her saying, oh, I can't even get to my favorite chair, you'd say, hey, mom,

What about that? You want to work on just that piece, just getting to your favorite chair. You make a limited goal just to get the ball rolling. And you have empathy with her. This would be hard for you to do when you've hit the driving dad nuts stage in this.

But maybe your therapist would be better calling in a therapist to work with her who doesn't have that irritation or frustration pent up. But they say things like, you know, I can see this is really difficult for you. I know that you want to keep these things and you also want to get to your chair and

I understand you have a lot of mixed feelings. What are the mixed feelings for keeping the path here to the chair? You actually focus on the positive values to her first, and she'd say, well, these are my things. They're important to me. You say, well, what's the value of removing just a few of them? And she'd say, well, I could get to my chair then. And the people who are the hoarders feel overwhelmed. So you need to...

Break it down into bite-sized pieces. And you can also do things like take them on non-acquisition trips. If she's always buying things, you can practice with her going on a trip where she doesn't buy anything, but there are things available to buy. Again, these are things a therapist would do. But there are some wonderful ideas on that website, and that will help anybody who's listening who has a hoarder in the house or who has too much clutter and they think they're going the way of the hoarder.

And here's a little more from Dr. Kenner. Hello, Dr. Kenner. My father, he's in his late 50s, is extremely obsessed and dependent on pillows.

He needs about 20 of them to sleep. He makes a U-shaped nest for himself, and he climbs into bed at night. He says he cannot sleep any other way. Over the years, his pillow dependency has gotten weirder, and he has added on to his nightly habits. He adds pillows, and he adds steps to be taken before climbing on. So you can picture this little...

man in his late 50s getting into bed at night and it's just a nest of pillows, a U-shaped nest of pillows.

He also has what I think is a God complex. He thinks he's superior to everyone. He speaks in a condescending manner to his employees, to his wife, and to us, his daughters. He says he's immune to all sickness. What would his problem be called? Well, he's obviously got obsessive-compulsive disorder, and he may have a personality disorder, too. You would need to call in a psychologist, which I'm hoping that...

you will be able to get some assistance of a cognitive therapist. Continue with this. Besides his need for pillows, he has other quirks. He has to adjust his...

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uh... continue with this besides his need for pillows he has other quirks he has to adjust his ears like if one gets touched he has to then touch both of them at the same time how do i show him that he has a problem the pillow thing i think it's also a possible threat to his health since he refuses to get rid of or wash any pillow and he has had half of them for over twenty five years

I hope he's cleaning the pillowcases at least. This is me speaking. So thank you for your time and help, Gina. Gina, it's got to be so frustrating for you or anybody else in the family. His wife, I'm assuming it's not your mom, it might be a second marriage.

And the question is, what is driving this behavior? You know, why pillows? What makes sense of it? Now, pillows is not like hoarding where you can't get anywhere in the house, but you do see a health hazard there, and it's irrational on the face of it. So you will need to use some of the skills we talked about before, which is to look for an opportunity when your father gets frustrated with his pillows.

Or, we'll set aside the God complex because I won't have time for both, but when he gets really frustrated with the habit, when the pillows are not just right, say, "Dad, you know, this seems tricky for you." And then let him talk about the positives. You know, just listen to what he says about what he loves about having all those pillows on the bed.

and you can explore what any negatives are if he will share them with you. But I would try to get professional help. Usually people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder, that means that you have these obsessions, these thoughts or images or impulses that are very disturbing to you, and you have to do something right. You have to do something just so. So then you have to get

the pillows just right or touch your ears just right. And you set these rules for yourself. So I'm not surprised he's setting rules for other people around him. He's got this God complex. And you have to set rules for yourself to kind of undo the problems. You set up these rituals. Well, this is your dad's rituals with pillows. And there's a lot of help

that you can get with OCD. And I would absolutely recommend a cognitive therapist. In fact, I'll be talking with one coming up fairly soon. So you can stay tuned and listen to what your dad might hear in a cognitive therapy session, even though she won't be talking about obsessive-compulsive disorder.

But the skills, again, are to work with your father. If you try to force his mind, he will fight back and argue his position even more strongly, and you will have 20 more pillows added to his bed. So this is his thing, and he's got to work with somebody. There's also another therapy that's very good for this. It's called motivational interviewing, where you can ask somebody,

him questions like what are the benefits of having the pillows here and do you see do you have any concerns about them what worries what might you have what difficulties do they call in your life it could be difficulties with uh with your family and probably my kids don't understand me but a therapist is better to work with that for more dr kenner podcast go to drkenner.com and please listen to this ad here's an excerpt from the selfish path to romance by clinical psychologist dr ellen kenner

Is it possible for a person with genuine self-esteem to suffer a temporary blow? Yes. This typically happens when we feel we failed to gain or keep something that we highly value. We failed a test, we lost a job, we were jilted or abused. A genuinely confident man or woman may temporarily feel low and disoriented when rejected by a loved partner.

Being rejected doesn't necessarily mean you're unlovable. Maybe you had the wrong partner. Keep this in full focus. You can grieve the loss while reminding yourself of your good traits. Many relationships that don't work are simply a matter of a wrong match. You do not devalue yourself. Rather, you feel, this really hurts, but at the deepest level, I'm still a worthy person.

You can download Chapter 1 for free at drkenner.com