This is Doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the
Doctor Wendy wallsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome back to the
Doctor Wendy Walls Show. I k I AM six forty live everywhere on the
iHeartRadio App. You know, back in the day, when I was a
young woman crying into my pillow, big mascara stains on my pillow over whatever
guy broke my heart, I went to the bookstore and I started reading every
self help book out there. I think the very first one was The road
Less Traveled. If you haven't read that, you should, it's actually a
good one, followed up by Further Along the road Less travel and then you
had a third one that's like Beyond the road Less Show. I read all
those, but I read every kind of self help book out there. Eventually,
I did what we all should do and go to therapy and work it
out. But there are a few things that I think can work. I
want to talk about the biggest one in the next segment. However, there's
a lot of gobblygoog out there disguised as psychobabble telling people that they can change
just by having a certain thought or thinking a certain way. And there's a
lot of stuff that has absolutely no scientific support. So let's go through some
of the things that really don't help if you're not in therapy too. So,
do you remember years ago, Saturday Night Live used to have a skit
about positive affirmations. They had a guy like looking in the mirror going I'm
good enough and I'm great and I can do this, and they made such
comedy over the trend of having positive affirmations. Now, the research says just
doing positive affirmations doesn't really do anything if it's not backed up with concrete actions
and behavioral changes. For instance, when I was healing from my catchment disorder
as I like to call it, and I learned, you know that after
a while, heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak, there was this common denominator in
every one of my relationships, and it was me. I was the one
in every one of my relationships. And I was picking people who would abandon
me, people who were emotionally avoidant. So I was always craving intimacy and
closeness, and they were running away, and so and probly I was pushing
them away, making them run away. So when I did get into therapy,
I chalked it up to finally learned that, oh, having a daddy
in the Navy who has gone most of my childhood and in very inconsistent duration,
different times, gone for a week, gone for a few months,
whatever, probably created a lot of that for me. And so one of
the things I did that's kind of along the lines of positive affirmations is I
put little post its on my mirrors and windows that said all it said is
I'm so embarrassed telling you this. All it said is Daddy loves me.
Daddy loves me. And I would catch it in my p pro vision all
the time, but I didn't just say it out loud, and I didn't
just read it. I would be hearing the voicemail from the playboy, the
player who was like, hey, how are you am? Missing you?
You want to come over tonight? And I would look at that thing and
say, Daddy loves me. I don't need this, I'm not calling him
back. I would back it up with concrete behavior, not just the words.
All right, here's another thing that's often preached as a self help tool
but doesn't work at all. Suppressing negative thoughts. Now I want to explain.
Human beings have a wonderful ability to compartmentalize, and sometimes compartmentalization can be
very, very healthy. In other words, let's say you're having a big
trauma with a family or relationship, and then you've got to go to the
office. You put go into your office worker compartment of your personality. Right,
you don't come in and cry on the desk of a coworker because this
is going on, right, So this is called healthy compartmentalization, knowing that
when you get in the car at the end of the workday then you can
have your boohoo and visit it again. But suppressing negative thoughts is completely different
from compartmentalizing it. Compartmentalizing it is just putting it in a little box,
closing it up, and knowing that you're going to open it at another time.
Suppressing negative thoughts is trying to just keep them from showing up, ignoring
them. But guess what, you know what negative thoughts do If you ignore
them, they show up as bad behavior and then you're like, I don't
know why I said that. I don't know why I did that. That
came out of nowhere. Yeah, because you didn't attend negative thoughts, emotions,
negative feelings are messengers. They're saying you need to change something. Right.
In the same sense, there is a notion out there that you can
change yourself through sheer will power, that you can literally go You know,
I am a professor of health psychology and I teach behavior year of change.
And you know people that want to take up an exercise program or a diet
program, or quit smoking or whatever it may be, and they think I
will just do you know, I'll put my nose to the grind down.
Willpower, will power, will power. No, willpower does not work.
In fact, behavioral change is about figuring out what the trigger is, changing
the trigger, making a new routine, and creating a reward for yourself for
the new routine. But just mind over matter does not work. All right.
Maybe you're one of those people who were told go to your room,
come back when you've changed your attitude, young lady. Don't know where I
heard that from, must have been my mother. If you are told that
you're not welcome, that you're not attractive, if you have negative feelings,
you may have learned that you need to be alone when you're under stress,
when you're feeling sad when you're feeling angry, and that isolation is the best
coping mechanism for you. Well, I'm here to tell you that there is
absolutely not an ounce of research that supports that. In fact, isolation is
probably the biggest punishment we ever give to a human being. Solitary confinement.
It makes things worse, It exacerbates feelings of loneliness, and it can contribute
to a greater decline in your mental health. Obviously, you need to reach
out to a licensed therapist, but also reach out to friends and family.
Social support is the better way to deal with negative feelings. Here's another thing
that doesn't work. Excessive self help book dependency. I can tell you this
from personal experience. I read so many self help books. I was pounding
through two a week. I did learn a lot, and then I went
to therapy. And you know what's interesting to my therapist, she had a
wall of textbooks behind her. So I switched from my self help book addiction
to Every time I would have a session with her on a Friday, I
would ask her to borrow a book from one of her shelves. Now I
know now that was my attachment anxiety. Right, If I take a piece
of her home with me. Then I'll have to come back to return the
book, I know. So I would pound through it every week. So
I'd reading a book a week. And then a few years into therapy,
I was expounding on something and I said to her, Hey, so yeah,
I mean, I don't have a degree in psychology of anything or anything,
but my opinion is and she goes, actually you do, And I
said what she said, You have read that entire wall of textbooks. That's
a full ba in psychology right now. Why don't you go back to school?
And I was like, no, how can I afford to do that?
How can I make it work? But thank goodness she planted that little
thought, because I did go back to school. Finally, I just want
to say, the biggest thing that you should not be doing in your life
for your mental health is ignoring the importance of sleep. Okay, sometimes all
we need is a good night's sleep. Don't eat too much the night before,
don't drink any alcohol, just have a good night's sleep, and that
can be the biggest self help gift you can give to yourself. But there's
one thing that you can do besides getting a good night's sleep, that is
really really good for your mental health, and it's totally supported by science.
We'll talk about it when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor
Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty were Love Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty, Live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You know, I always say that because they
tell me to say that, but I want to remind everybody that if you
download the iHeartRadio app, you can listen to Doctor Wendy on demand anytime you
want. This whole show gets put up. Producer Kayleb puts it up right
after the show. Right, it's not what it's also streams live. Right.
They can listen to it now. Yeah, they listen to it now,
and then if they miss it, they can go to the app and
listen to it there. Yeah, it's so much easier. I actually have
one of those cars that doesn't have AM radio, so I listen to everything
on the app. Yes, if he was effective, yeah, well no,
Some manufacturers like Tesla decided to do it early. It's not law,
but some manufacturers are deciding not to do it, which is a bad thing.
It's really bad. Well, especially when there's like a big breaking news
thing, where do you think the first place everybody turns, no matter how
old they are, when there's breaking news, they go to AM radio.
Yeah, that's the first thing. Like if the rain is coming down and
you're wondering if a street is flooded out, you go into Twitter for that.
No, you go to AM radio because you know that they're giving the
news right away. Specifically KFIAM six forty, which is why, of course
is like number one in the country, because we keep you updated on the
latest. We are we number one. We're number one. We're the number
one new talk news station in the country and the whole time the most listen
to radio station on the iHeartRadio app. So wait, wait, I didn't
even know this. So all like all the top forty music whatever, news,
number one news. We're number three out of everybody, Okafi is a
big deal. We're number three out of every radio station in the freaking country,
number three and number one for talk talk. That's probably why I always
get these dms from people all around the country saying I listen. I've been
listening forever. Station is a pretty big deal. That's so cool, all
right. So besides listening to AM radio as a good method of self help,
get that segue there, you know, I teach health psychology, and
the very first class of each semester, I have my students read an article
published on the American Psychological Association's website that is the scientific benefits of wait for
it, drum roll, here we go, mindful meditation. And it is
chock full of evidence that mindful meditation can help you regulate your own feelings,
it can help you have more empathy for other people's feelings, people have better
interpersonal relationships, better mental health. In fact, one study was done where
they had therapists go through an eight week program of mindful meditation every day,
and they compared them with a control group of therapists who did not go through
the eight week And while the therapists who did the program, of course,
had got the benefits, they also found out that their patients healed faster,
that their patients got better faster because it increased those interpersonal skills for the therapist.
So if I were to try to pinpoint the number one self help thing
that you could do for yourself. It would be to practice mindful meditation.
Now, some of my students get a little you know, HEBGB about it
because they think it's a religious thing, right, because there are some Eastern
religions that practice a form of meditation. But let me tell you, almost
every religion in the world practice is some form of meditation. Whether it's silent
prayer, whether it's chanting. I don't care whether you're saying Oh, over
and over Hail Mary, full of Grace and doing a Rosary. You're chanting
because it creates vibrations in your body that calms your central nervouses. That's why
every religion has some form of calming. Whether it's hymns, whether it's repetitive
prayers, whether it's chanting, this is what calms people down. So mindful
meditation, though, has no religious connotation at all, And let me explain
what it is. Because the other thing my students will sometimes say to me
is I try to meditate, but I can't because I can't stop my thoughts.
I hope you don't stop your thoughts. The day your thoughts stop is
the day you get put in your coffin. Okay, no, no,
no, we don't want to stop thoughts. I want you to think about
what mindful means. Mindful you are actually focusing on your mind and your thoughts,
not obsessing and letting them run wild and ruminating, but instead simply watching
them, accepting them, respecting them, and sometimes just gently guiding them off
to the side of your awareness and bringing your attention back to your breathing,
if that's what you're choosing. Whether some people focus on a mantra or they
count, they'll do a meditation where they say in their head one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine ten nine
eight seven six, you know, back and forth, up and down the
ten scales. Some people just focus on the breathing right to It's just sort
of a device to have your brain focus on something. And let me explain
how mindful meditation works in the brain. You know, you go to the
gym, you work out in your weights to make your muscles stronger. You
do some cardio, the bike, the stair master, whatever. What you're
doing is you're getting your body ready for that moment when you're walking down the
street or crossing the street and a car Koreem's for you towards you, and
you have the agility, the strength and the ability to jump out of the
way and save your life because of all that training and practice. That's what
mindful meditation is for you. Brain. Do you know you ever find you
say to yourself, Oh, I wish I'd been quick enough and said to
that person you know, and they said this to me right, Or I
wish I'd been quick enough to bite my tongue when that I didn't mean to
say it like that, blurt it out right. So mindful meditation is no
different than training your body at a gym. It's training your mind to slow
down, to wait, to be aware of your thoughts, be aware of
your feelings and think, stop and think. It creates a little gap as
you watch your thoughts instead of letting your thoughts run you around. It creates
this little moment of huh, what's that feeling about? What that? Do
I have to do anything here? Or just respect it and know it's there
and it's part of me. Right. That's what mindfulness does, and it
helps reduce stress. It can proven by science, help reduce anxiety and depression.
It can of course improve your emotional regulation. That's what I've been talking
about. People who practice mindfulness regularly report sleeping better too. You have increased
self awareness, you have a better mind body connection. Yesterday I did a
lecture on pain and pain management, and we did a meditation in the class
at the end of the class, and I asked them to look for pain
points while they were breathing deep and doing body scans and relaxing their muscles.
Were they feeling hungry, did they have a headache? Was there a muscle
ache somewhere? And talk to that pain, Where is it coming from,
how does it need to be attended to increased mind body connection. It also
makes you more open minded and adaptable because once you can learn to accept every
part of yourself, including the dark and maybe you might feel ugly uncomfortable parts,
then it makes it easier to accept it in others and forgive others.
Speaking of forgiving others, when we come back, I want to turn the
conversation to our workplace and our workplace relationships. You've probably heard the term quiet
quitting, and you know, if you're doing it, more power to you.
But what if you have a coworker who you need to depend on who's
actually practicing quiet quitting behavior? How do you handle that relationship? Let's talk
about it when we return. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show
on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're
listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty. Welcome back
to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere
on the iHeartRadio App. I just had a thought, I know I want
to talk about with being with a colleague at work who's quiet quitting. If
you don't know what quiet quitting is, it's a workplace trend right now.
It's a situation where somebody kind of disengages from their job responsibilities without fully resigning.
In other words, it's like they're waiting to be fired. Right well,
quiet quitting happens romantic relationships all the time, and it is most of
it. I hate to put a gender on something, but Kayla, who
do you think does that more often? Women? No? Man? Men?
Man? You know why men quiet quit because they want to keep having
the sex. Oh, I thought women do it because it takes the while,
like for their body to leave after their mind leaves. Their mind leaves
first, and your window closes. Yeah, and then your body leaves a
little after windows that when that window closes. For a woman, she's out.
Gentlemen, you just know this, Yeah, she's out. There's something
that happens that window closes. By the way, Julio and I had a
little argument last night. Uh oh, and it was the worst argument we've
ever had. Don't even water. It was about something dumb. It doesn't
even matter about the content. And we made up and everything's fine today.
But there was a moment during that argument when I was really angry that I
felt that window just start to creep a little bit, slide it close,
like I am not gonna have this wedding. I am not gonna marry this
man. I had that thought for just a second, but then I was
like, okay, this is angry when talking dangermann, calm down. Open
that window up again, be open, And you know how I knew everything
was going to be okay. It was a nighttime fight. We got into
bed, and if you're you know, real, if you don't have good
repair skills and you don't have a healthy relationship, by the way, fighting
is part of a healthy relationship. By the way, when you go to
bed, you go to the other opposite side to the bed. Right.
So here, we've just been arguing with each other, we get into bed,
and what's our first reflex to totally wrap up in each other's bodies and
cuddle all night. Right, So our bodies were making up. We're fine.
So the window closing is different than quiet quitting or is that the same
thing? Men just do it more often in a different way. What men
do is they stay in a relationship to take the free sex, but they
check out because they don't want to do the breaking up. They wait till
a woman breaks up with them. Yeah, they just get lazy in their
relationships. They stop doing the stuff that they used to do at the beginning.
It's like they're quiet quitting. I understand kind of that window with the
women. They're going to dump you. They're not going to wait for you
to dump them. Eventually, you're gonna get dumped as the man. Yeah,
I'm it's going to go after enough enough, they say, and they're
just done. So So the advice I'm going to give you is for if
you have a colleague in the workplace. But if you have a boyfriend,
girlfriend, husband, wife who is quiet quitting, you could also use some
of this advice. Okay, first thing you want to do if you notice
that your coworker is not pulling their weight or your boyfriend is stop doing all
the nice things. Start with communicating something empathetically right. You want to have
a non confrontational conversation, hopefully private, where all you want to do is
inquire about their well being, so to say, is everything okay, Like
I noticed you, I think you know you're not doing as much as you
used to do. I'm wondering. Just ask these open ended questions. So
you're trying to like encourage them to talk about what's going on, because they
might not even know they're quiet quitting, and then when you notice it that
they're not doing as much, they may go, wow, I didn't even
realize right now. The next thing you're going to want to do after you
allow them time to talk things out. You know, you have rights in
the workplace too, and if you're working on projects together and you need each
other, it's not your job to take over all the work of the quiet
quitter. That's not going to help them. Get fired, by the way,
you're just covering for them, right, So you want to clearly communicate
your expectations regarding you know, their job roles or their responsibilities. Right.
So it could be that they're not even quiet quitting, they're just unconsciously lazy
and what all they need is a new little kick in the pants. Right,
So you need to say something like, Okay, by the way,
when you come in, the first thing I expect you to do because I
can't get this done until you've done this piece, right, So you just,
in a kind way without getting mad, be very clear about your expectations.
Now. Also, sometimes people quiet quit because they're overwhelmed, and so
you might want to actually find out if they need support. Maybe they're struggling
with their tasks and maybe you need to reach out to somebody else in the
workplace to help them. Right. I do want to say that people like
workplaces better, stay at jobs longer, and are far more productive, and
this is according to research. If they have social support. There's nothing better
than a best friend at work. So if you're listening to this and you
are a manager or an owner of a business, it is not a waste
of time to have employees social times. It is not a waste of time
to have softball tournaments, getting out of the office to do stuff together,
even if it's walking meetings with a group of people, Because you want to
encourage these kinds of friendships. Obviously, friends with boundaries. I was gonna
say friends with benefits. No, no, no, no, not an
office of friends with boundaries, right, because they're workplace friendships. But think
of it this way. There's research that shows that people are more likely to
get in shape if they go to a group exercise class than if they exercise
alone. They'll they're more likely to be compliant and stick to it. Why
Because they know they make these kind of tertiary like lightweight friendships and they don't
want to let their friends down. Oh you know, they'll be there.
I see them there every Monday and Wednesday morning. I got to go because
my friends are going to be there, right, Same with workplace. There's
much lower absenteeism when people have friends at work because they're like, God,
I don't want to let down my buddies. I don't want to call in
sick. I want to come and get things done right. And so one
of the best things we can do for workplace is to encourage these relationships.
When I teach my classes, I break my students out into discussion groups,
not because they learn a whole bunch more by googling some answers to a discussion
question, but because they're talking to each other and building rapport and building friendships.
So talk to your colleague who's quiet quitting. Pull them into the fold.
Maybe they're feeling excluded, maybe they're being isolated. You know, at
the end of the day, it's this delicate balance you have to achieve between
being empathetic, you know, quietly inquiring about what's going on, communicating your
needs, and being proactive to create a better social environment for them. And
if it gets really bad, I'm sorry, but you got to go to
HR because don't let this person pull you down to That's the problem, is
that if you're collaborating on stuff and they're quiet quitting, it's going to look
really bad on you. So you might have to go let ar HR kind
of know, who's ar Ai? I'm thinking of, maybe don't let Ai
know. Don't let Ai do your job. You got to do your job,
all right. When we come back, sticking on workplace relationships, a
lot of people have asked me about this. They are looking for new jobs
or different jobs, especially post COVID, because they're ready for a change.
But with technology right, how everything's visible. You post on LinkedIn, Hey,
looking for a new job, and your boss is the first one to
get it. So how do you find another job without jeopardizing the one you
have? I got some tips and tricks for you. You're listening to The
Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show and k I Am six forty.
We are in the home stretch of the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. And you
know, when I talk about the science of love, I'm also talking about
all of our interpersonal relationships, including the relationship we have with our workplace.
We spend like a third of our life in bed sleeping and a third of
our life at our workplace. We have to have good relationships. We have
to good relationships with our bosses, with our coworkers, and with our sense
of self and meaning. Right, our jobs are so intrinsic to our identity,
and sometimes changing jobs, changing environments can really change everything, you know.
I moved to California when I was a young woman in my twenties in
a snowy, dark winter, from Toronto. And look, I put the
tea on for you Americans, I said, Toronto, Toronto. Okay,
I'm move from Toronto and Toronto baby too. And I remember coming down to
the beach in Santa Monica the first week that I arrived. It was April,
and it was a warm day and I had lily white skin, and
I laid down on the beach and I you know, when your eyelids are
closed and you can feel the sun, you can see the sun through your
eyelids, and I was seeing, I was feeling the neurotransmitters of my brain
just exploding. I didn't realize that I had suffered from a seasonal effective disorder
for years. I mean, I even get it when it rains too long
here in California now, so I know what it is. But everything changed
for my life, partly because the seasonal effective disorder was cured with the sunshine.
But secondly, I got to reinvent myself as the person I always wanted
to be. I didn't have to drag baggage from my past. I could
do a fresh start with new friendships and new relationships. And this move literally
transformed me. And all I really did was changed environments. Well, you
can do that by changing a workplace. Right. Now, here's the problem.
We live in a time where everything happens online and everything seems to be
public online. If you start posting on LinkedIn, hey guys looking for a
new job, anybody have any contexts? The first person who's going to read
it is your boss. So when you're searching for a new job while you're
still employed, you have to be very discreet, and you have to use
some strategic planning skills because you don't want to jeopardize your current position. Right.
Unlike love relationships, where it's usually a good idea to end one before
you begin the next one, you are most hirable when you're actually employed somewhere
else. So the first thing, obviously is to maintain some level of confidentiality.
Don't be telling everybody in your world. Keep your job search confidential only
trusted friends and family members who you are sure understand the word discretion. Right
when you are actually applying for jobs. Do not use company office equipment,
company email, or company time. This is really important if you're sitting at
your desk on a company computer shooting out resumes on monster dot com or indeed
or LinkedIn jobs, I promise you there's no privacy on a work computer.
They know it, they will know it, and also you know it's probably
violating your workplace contracts to do that. So use your personal computer your personal
email. Now, when it's time to schedule a job interview, try to
schedule it outside your regular working hours, so that means you're early in the
morning, your lunch break, or after work. If that's not possible,
then you've got to take a personal day or vacation time, because if you
get busted sneaking out to go for a job interview, you can blow everything
up before you even get that job. Turn off your LinkedIn or update your
LinkedIn really strategically right. Turn off notifications for a profile updates, and that
way you don't alert your current colleagues or superiors. And be a little bit
cautious about making sure that your job searches aren't broadcast. So get to know
all those bells and whistles on LinkedIn, so that you keep things as private
as you possibly can. Now, here's the thing about references. We all
want a reference from our current employer, but when you're searching for jobs and
you don't want them to know you're searching for jobs, you can't go and
say, hey, can I have a lot of reference because I'm looking for
a better job than this place, darn it. Right, So what you
want to do is course go to past and lawyers before this current job.
But also think of people who are at your job workplace, who you work
with, who know how you work, but who will keep it a secret.
Now, make sure you know them well enough because they're always going to
feel a little bit envious that you're looking for another job and you're getting out
of here. So even if they're a trusted colleague, be sure that they
really are your supporter, and then ask them for a letter of reference.
Right. Some people, and I don't know if this is possible, they
update their resume, but they don't put the name of the company that they're
currently at because the resume they have to upload into all these job search sites,
and then that robot of those job search sites crawls it right. So
here's the other funny thing is that sometimes on these sites, you know there
are other people you work with who are also out there trying to get the
same jobs too. But anyway, there might be a way that you don't
have to actually put the company name. You can put more like what the
company does. Also, I want you to go back to that original employment
contract that you might have signed. You can just ask HR for a copy
of it if you don't have it, and it may have non disclosure clauses
in it, right, so be very careful about what you signed and what
you're obligated to keep a secret about your current company. You might want to
get some legal advice on that too. They may have things like non compete
clauses too, where you can't work for a similar company for a period of
time after you leave, so you want to check out with that. Also,
prepare for the absolute worst plan for your boss to walk into your office
one day and go, sey, I heard you you apply that so and
so someone told me or whatever. Get ready with your response and just say,
well, you know, I'm always keeping my options open. I do
enjoy working here, it's wonderful, but you know, and also while you
are looking for a job, make sure you do your current job very well.
You never know, maybe you'll move on and move up. And while
your employer or your current manager might be very sad that you're moving along,
they might also write you a kick ass letter of reference because you kept up
with your job duties along the way. Right. Human relationships are very delicate,
right, and you have to think about the consequences of every situation in
every person, and you have to think about their personality, will they feel
abandoned or not, And certainly in your personal relationships as well. So I've
been here on KFI for oh my gosh, nearly a decade and I'm always
here for you every Sunday from seven to nine pm. If you miss any
part of the show or want to re listen to anything, it's always on
the iart radio app. Also, you can follow me on my social media.
The handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh at dr Wendy Walsh. We also
have a great Patreon group every Wednesday night made up of a lot of KFI
listeners. That's at six thirty on Wednesdays, and to join that you just
go to patreon dot com slash doctor Wendy Walsh, but I'm always here for
you on k PHI. Thanks for being with me. You've been listening to
the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on k FHI A M six forty live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always
hear us live on KFI A M six forty from seven to nine p m.
On Sunday and any time on demand on the iHeartRadio app