This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to kf I AM six forty,
the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome did the
Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on kf I AM six forty. We're live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio app. It is Sunday, it is seven pm. Let's think
about our love lives, Let's think about our mental health. If you are
new to my show, I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm not
a therapist, though, I'm a psychology professor at California State University, Channel
Islands Go Dolphins. I know, students, We're in the home run,
aren't we. Some of my students listen, they do. Yes, we
are in the home stretch of the semester. I think we've got a couple
weeks left in the semester, so you guys should be working on your final
term papers, your projects, getting ready for your final exams. I used
to hate this time of year when I was a student, and you know
why, because human beings never do anything unless two things happen. We need
a reward and we need a deadline. Honestly, even though all the research
shows that students who do a little bit of homework every day actually do better
on exams than the ones that cram the night before. I know because I
read your term papers that when you pull the all nighter and write the term
paper, it is not as good as one that you spend a lot of
time on right, and that applies to everything in our lives. Humans don't
do anything unless they get paid for it, get some reward. I teach
in my health psychology class that we need to structure reward systems into our day.
I mean literally, give yourself a treat. Treat yourself. Treat yourself
the next time you want to do something that you don't want to do.
But I digress. We are going to talk a lot on this show today
about age and about stage of life. I also want to talk about your
friends, because there are different times in your life that their certain relationships are
very important and you need them. But you know what, you don't have
to keep them all for the long haul. Sometimes it's time to end,
yeah, end a relationship that might be a romantic relationship but also just a
friendship. I'm also going to talk about the five kinds of friends we all
need yeah, we're talking about friends. We're going to talk about age.
You know why I'm talking about age today. Okay, I'll admit it.
It's my birthday. It's my birthday today. Happy birthday. Thank you for
Dusa kay La? Is my birthday? All right? Here's the thing.
I am going to be celebrating with friends later. But I learned something about
birthdays. I teach developmental psychology. Did you know up until about the age
of well, I don't even have to tell you this. You know this
late thirties or so, when you have a birthday, it's a celebration,
it's a culmination, it's an accomplishment. You got through another year. It's
exciting. You added to your store of wisdom and life experience. It's fabulous.
And then through the forties birthdays are kind of whole hum and then in
the fifties, birthdays become something else. They become a countdown to launch.
Yeah, there's actually research to show that after the age of fifty, people
stop counting the years they've lived and start to count the years they have left.
Of course, nobody knows how many years they have left, but people
do try to think. That's why bucket lists become so important. That's why
I look at older people. I'm like, huh, wonder how old they
are. I wonder if they think about how many years that are left to
them. I do want to say that my birthday April thirtieth, for some
reason, even though the research says that spring is the time when our neurotransmitters
explode, just like the baby birds coming out of their shells and the buds
coming out of plants, that we actually feel I don't know it rejuvenated.
It's like a new birth, and I have my birthday during the season of
the new birth. But for some reason, I always go through a funk.
Now, I know it's not about what many women. The pressure that
women deal with, right, so when women leave their reproductive years, sometimes
society makes them feel a little bit irrelevant. It's not that for me because
I like myself. I like myself with makeup, without makeup. I like
that my face is aging gracefully. I don't want any plastic, botox,
nothing injections, cellulose pulled back, nothing, nothing happening. I want to
put some soap and water on my face and some moisturizer in the morning.
That's all I do. Folks and have a lot of wonderful laugh lines on
my face so that people can see I lived and am living a rich,
happy life. So it's not stress about that, but there is I think,
Okay, I'm analyzing whether you've eyes okay, because from my friends and
I like to analyze together. But this came up recently with my boyfriend Julio
because we're entering third year and we're doing our third year. So therefore,
the third birthday that I have planned for myself and organized, didn't expect him
to pay for, show up, do anything. And I always said,
well, you know, I don't want to put pressure on you. You
might be working and doing things. Look, one year, I had thirteen
girlfriends over for dinner. I cooked a four course meal and even baked my
own birthday cake. Now, if you are a therapist, if you are
a therapist and you're listening, I know what you're thinking right now. You've
already analyzed this. Oh, she has dependency issues. You know what that
means is it means that I can't I feel like I can't depend on others
to celebrate me. And so this year Julio brought it up. He goes,
you've done it again. You organized a dinner with all your friends.
I go, I invite a you and I don't expect you to pay.
And he's like, that's not the point. You didn't just really acts and
see if I would do something for you. I was like, Oh,
there it rears its head again. Dependency issues. Afraid, afraid to depend
on others to celebrate me. That's why people like me don't like surprises or
surprise parties. That's why people like me like to control everything because it reduces
anxiety. So here I am doing it again. But at least now I
know what it's about and I can explore it right anyway. I will say
that this year, my pre birthday depression was much less than normal. Did
you notice that, Caleb about me? I've been happy last few weeks.
You've been an excellent and last year I was in a serious funk, like
a lot of things were getting me down. Yeah, but right now,
for some reason, a lot of new beginnings happened to me around the beginning
of May, and you know, psychologically, that was when my brain came
out of my mom and it's a fresh start when we come back. Did
you know there's been research on birthdays. I'm not talking about astrology here.
I'm talking about research that correlates the month of your birth and various mental health
disorders that you have a higher chance of getting. Uh huh. Basically,
you don't want to be born in January. No, no, no,
I'm not saying that. Look, let's talk about all the months when we
come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM
six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor
Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I AM six forty. Welcome back to the
Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. I'm a birthday. It's
my birthday. I'm gonna just keep singing, Happy Birthday to me, Happy
Birthday to me. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. If you're new
to my show. I've got a PhD in clinical psychology, but I'm a
wee tad obsessed with the science of love. I've written three books on relationships.
I did a dissertation on attachment, and I just can't stop reading about
the biological, the psychological, and the sociological pieces of love. In fact,
in class this week, one of the students said, doctor, Wells,
I know this is off topic, but you might know the answer.
Can xes be friends? Interesting question? And I said, depends on the
xes, and it depends what the relationship it was like, and it depends
what the breakup was like, and it depends if one or both of them
have found other partners. It depends if they're trying to keep that one there
as a backup mate. Uh huh, lots, it depends there. I
would say this, if two people have an avoidant attachment style, no threat
of intimacy there, then they're going to easily become friends afterwards because there was
also no passion to ignite things. If you had somebody who had an anxious
attachment style and the other person was avoidant, and they were constantly trying to
draw out the avoidant person, then they're going to be triggered running into their
X later. Also, if you have a relationship where one person found love
soon after and the others still single, you're gonna have some problems being friends.
I do say that since a relationship is very much part of our identity,
and I don't mean just our social identity. I mean like a part
of us. You know, when you're in a close intimate relationship, somebody
else does half the mental work for you. They help problem solve for you.
They literally do half of the physical tasks if you're living together and sharing
domestic responsibilities. And then when they're not there, you feel like half a
person, and it's up to you to spend the time growing the neurotransmitters,
growing the part of your brain and yourself to become a complete person again so
that you can meet the next person. Right. So, I think people
need to be This is just my opinion. I just think people need to
be broken up at least a year before they can be friends. Otherwise there's
too much baggage, stuff can be triggered. You could be keeping them as
a backup mate in case single life doesn't work out, you know, So
do a year, get a new mate, then talk about getting together for
something. That's my opinion, But I digress. I was talking about birthdays.
I don't know how I got there. That's what I do. That's
how my mind works all day long. It's a train just rolling around and
the tracks cross. Sometimes. My boyfriend Julio thinks it's hysterical. We go
for long walks and hikes and he's like, I don't have to say a
thing for a whole hour. We just march and march and he said,
you're so entertaining. He says, all right, birthdays. Do you believe
in horse goats? Do you believe in astrology? Kayla? Do you to
an extent? Yeah? But not like hardcore? Okay, So, like
what astrological sign are you? I'm a Pisces. I don't know what that
is? The fish, right, Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be
a Taurus, with means that I'm bullheaded and all that and stubborn. Yeah.
No, I'm the most open, flexible. Give me more information.
I'll change my mind. As I'm getting older, I'm getting a little stronger
with my boundaries, but I sure wasn't for most of my life. So
anyway, this confirms what the science says. Astrology is nuts. So it's
bogus. It means nothing. Stop it if you believe in it. You
know, one of the things I do with my class is I do this
funny thing where I put up a slide that shows the names of the horoscope
and the description of them, and I asked them to look at it,
find their astrological sign and tell me do you think that really reflects you?
And most of them like, yo, yeah, that is me. And
then the next slide flips the cards around and shows what the real name of
that astrological sign is that goes with which definition they're scrambled. So the point
is all astrology is vague, and it's meant for you to project your stuff
onto it. If you read somebody's astrological forecast, it is so open and
so vague, you could read any of them and go, oh, yeah,
that's me. I think that's happening. Mercury is retrograde. I know
that's a problem for my sign, and if you read them all, it's
a problem for all the signs. PA I don't know, So I'm sorry
to burst your bubble. You can send me all your mean emails with your
anecdotal evidence. It's not science and it's not data. But here's some other
data. Did you know the month you were born can actually predict if you
might get a mental illness? I know this was hard for me to get
around too. I'm like, what is the correlation here? And how could
this be? Okay? So One study out of Queen Mary University in London
back in two twelve looked at your risks of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major
depression, and they found that they looked at more than twenty nine million people.
This isn't a study of twenty people or a thousand people, twenty nine
million because they could pull it from England's general population. And they found that
of these twenty nine million people, fifty eight thousand had been diagnosed with one
of these three conditions. So they took the fifty eight thousand. They looked
at their month of birth, because you know your birthdate's in there with your
medical files. Right, You're ready, sit down, Okay, winter babies.
Winter babies were at the greatest risk for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. January
the worst month, the worst month for both of these disorders, the more
likely. Spring babies appear to have the greatest risk for depression. Oh my
goodness, producer, Kayla, we've figured out my spring depression leading up to
my birthday. Wow, I'm born on April thirtieth. I get in a
funk. There you go. Okay, here's another one. According to the
National Alliance on Mental illness. That's an American group ninety percent of people who
take their own lives. When I say take your own life, this is
the most important definition. I want everyone to understand. We never use the
term commit suicide anymore. It sounds like committing murder. It is not a
character flaw, a moral flaw. It is a symptom of mental distress.
It is a symptom of mental illness. Okay, So there are two studies
examine that looked at birth month and likelihood of one taking their own lives.
Kayla, you're ready the months or April at May. Okay, So I
just get in a pre birthday funk. I'm not gonna do anything about it.
Maybe drink a little wine. I don't know. Yeah, I think
that's probably the best answer to drowned my sorrows. Here you go. Okay,
So now I know you're thinking, well, what does this mean and
why there is a reason, not just correlational, not just data, why
scientists think baby's born in these months have this predisposition. I'll explain when we
come back. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on kf I am
six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to Doctor
Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I AM six forty Welcome back to the Doctor
Wendy Walls Show on kf I AM six forty eight Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio
App. Okay, I was talking about why certain birth months are highly correlated
with either mental illness or the propensity to unfortunately take one's life. Yeah,
they're actually there's data on this. There's data on everything. Well, I
gotta say, scientists really aren't sure why some birth months are linked to these
greater incidents of say, mental health disorders. But there is a possibility that
our birth month actually influences our biological clock. So one study found that mice
who were born in the winter actually had trouble in the summer, didn't adapt
well to the light cycle, They had an inability to regulate their biological clock.
This was linked to mood and stress. Do you know how they tell
mice are in a bad mood? Apparently they don't want to do those mazes.
I don't know, they don't want to mate. They have all kinds
of mice behaviors. They look at right, Remember a few weeks ago,
Kayle. We had that producer, the researcher on and it was a study
on potential for male birth control and her all day long, her job is
to look at mice's bums to see if they had fun leather before with their
honey interest in job. For sure, I have a very different job during
the day, although when I have the mother of babies and toddlers, I
looked at a lot of bums all day and clean them at his part of
that. So research or speculate that if you have difficulty with your sarcadian rhythms
and dealing with your biological rhythms, this can also increase mental health disorders.
Another speculation only is that vitamin D could be a problem. Vitamin vitamin D
is produced when our bodies are exposed to sunlight. Many people actually aren't aware
that vitamin D can weaken your bones, cause rickets can also affect your nervous
systems. Lower levels of vitamin D can impact the developing brain. And there
you go. So maybe the mom didn't take enough. Stop blaming mothers,
Stop blaming mothers. I'm just saying. Research is saying. One study out
of Denmark says that people born with the lowest levels of vitamin D when they
were born are more likely than others to develop schizophrenia later in life. Also,
scientists blame infections. During the winter, a pregnant mother actually might get
more flu bugs and this could influence the development of a baby. Wow,
it's so interesting, we think, you know, this makes so much more
sense than astrology. What the planet's lining up the magnetic pole of the moon.
I don't know. That doesn't mean anything anyway. Don't panic folks.
Just because something is correlational, it doesn't mean it's absolute, doesn't mean it's
guaranteed to happen. And even if you have a genetic predisposition to anything,
you can make lifestyle changes to make sure that doesn't happen. Right. One
of the things that's really good for our mental health, and there's lots of
research to support this, and it's also good for our physical health is social
support, friends, friendship, and I want to explain the five kinds of
friendships that everybody needs in their life to have the most full, most happy,
healthiest life. A lot of people have this idea that a friend is
a friend of his friender's friend, and they have this idea in their head
like, these are the rules for friends, and this person is not my
friend if they don't do this, if they don't think this way, they're
not my friend. Well, actually, there are lots of different levels and
kinds of friendships, and you need them all. Let's start at the beginning.
The first kind of friendship everybody needs is a historical friend. Kayla,
do you have a friend from your childhood at all? I do. How
early in life did you meet my best friend? Her name is Kayla too.
We've been friends since we were thirteen. Yeah. In fact, the
research says adolescence is the time that you tend to form the longest bonds for
lifelong friends because you going through puberty and real personal stuff to talk about with
each other, and you form a real intimate bond. So usually friends from
adolescents become our historical friends. Now here's the thing. They might not fit
in with your life. Now, some of my historical friends when they come
to visit me in my crazy La life, and they're from a small town
in Canada, you know, socioeconomically, fashion wise, whatever, they may
not fit in, but doesn't matter because when we get together, I am
reminded of what it was like in eighth grade. My brain goes right back
to me. I'm reminded of who I am, who I was, how
I began, and getting together late at night over a cup of tea is
when we do the work of historical friendships all right, So we don't see
them very often, but when we get on the phone with them, it's
like where no time has passed, We're back to that time again. We
also have stage of life friends. These are friends that may not be lifelong
friends, but in our lives they really supported us during a particular stage where
we needed the social support. For instance, friends everybody's got one or two
friends they remember from college. They're college buddies, right Or maybe new parent
life, whether you're a new dad who took your kid to baby swimming class
and you met other dads there, or mom's there. If you're a mom
that took your kid to baby music or baby yoga and you realized you needed
friends in the trenches who were going through the same thing at the same time.
I recently was at a Starbucks up in Malibu at Trancas Canyon, and
it was early in the morning, and I ran into one of my stage
of life friends, her son and I met in a baby playgroup and we
stayed friends until the kids went different directions, probably till they were eight or
nine or something. And when I saw her it was like just seeing a
long lass. Oh my god, how are you? And it was a
big hug and a kiss, and we were so happy because we were so
vital to each other during those years. Now, it doesn't mean that she's
going to be my lifelong friend. It doesn't mean she's going to be the
most intimate friend. We have boundaries, of course, but it does mean
that we have a connection because we have this share experience together. Now in
your life today, you've also got a couple kinds of friends that are important
to your mental health and your physical health. One I call the common interest
friends. These are your friends from your garden club, your bridge club,
your pilates class, the one you know from the gym. You might even
not have their phone number, but you're going to run into them at that
same place you go to together. Right. So these friends, you have
a lot of boundaries with them. You're not disclosing a ton of personal stuff,
but you really enjoy their company because what you share is this common interest.
Whether your interest is going to classic car shows together. Whether it's going
to me. I like to go to botanical gardens and walk them. It
really makes me happy, whether it's going your hiking friends whatever. Although a
lot of intimate information is often exchanged on those hikes, because when I'm hiking
alone and I hear you ladies talking, I cannot believe what you're saying out
loud for the entire hiking trail to hear. Oh my goodness, it is
down and dirty, ladies. The funniest thing is who lu and I were
hiking a few weeks ago. I can't remember where. We were, to
mescal or somewhere and will Rogers, they grew up in will Rogers, and
a group of women came from the other direction towards us, and we could
hear them complaining about their husbands, and it was so funny, and we
just got past them and I gave Julio a little wink in a smile.
I'm like, yeah, that's what women do. And then like thirty seconds
later there come their husbands and coming along behind them. They were talking about
golf. But anyway, so that's what women do on those hikes. So
not every common interest friend, though, has to be an intimate friend.
Then we get to a friend that you might think might be completely superficial but
really important to our mental health and our physical health. And that friend is
actually, according to science, the most important friend that we need in our
life right now. And when we come back, I will tell you what
that friend is. You're listening to the Doctor Eddie Welsh Show and kf I
Am six forty. We are live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening
to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I Am six forty. Welcome back
to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and kf I Am six forty. We're live
everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Want to remind you you can follow me on
my social media everywhere. The handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh at dr Wendy
Walsh. Mostly I'm on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. I also have a
really fun Patreon group. We meet every Wednesday at six thirty. Go to
patreon dot com slash doctor Wendy Walsh. And it's not therapy. I'm not
a therapist. We just talked about the science of love. I usually present
some research study that I've just read and heard about, and then everyone takes
off talking about stuff. But there is a little relationship stuff because there's a
couple of people who are dating, not each other, but they're dating.
So everyone wants an update, like how did that date go? What happened
with that one? So it's kind of fun. It's a it's a great
regroup. Anyway, back to my chat about our friendships. Not every friend
is meant to be a close intimate friend. According to research, the most
important friend we need, and we need a bunch of them for our mental
health and our physical health. It's actually just a social friend. You know
that friend that can stir up a party anytime. You know the friend that
you can call for a referral to anything. I need a doctor, I'm
a lawyer, I need a guy to come and fix my pipes, whatever.
Right, you have a friend that you know is totally connected. Now
you're not necessarily close with them, but you're on their invitation list. Right.
Those are the people that get us out of the house. But more
importantly, the science says, connect us with all the other important brains that
we have. One of my favorite friends that goes probably in this category is
chef Katie Chin. We've had her on the show before. She's a celebrity
chef. She used to have a show on Bravo. You should look her
up online. Chef kata Chin is. I think her Instagram handal, but
she is what do you call her? She says, a connector. She
has so many friends. I've ever heard her say a bad word about anybody.
She's light and fun and happy. And I know that if I need
a referral for literally anything, she's got the person for me. And I
have a few friends like that. They're amazing, so they are good for
our mental health and physical health. But we also need intimate friends. We
can't go through our entire lives with superficial friends or stage of life friends,
or just historic friends, or just common interest friends or social friends. We
need a friend. We can open up our heart too. And you're lucky
if you have one or two in the course of your lifetime. But ask
yourself, if it were three in the morning and you had a pain somewhere
in your body and you thought maybe I should go to an emergency, who
would you call? Do you have that friend? Hey? What if you
needed a five am run to lax which friend would you call for the airport
run? Only intimate friends do that, just to let you know. So
I want you to if you haven't spent the time in your life opening up
to people, to take a risk. And that's really the next thing I
need to talk about. So many people write to me and say that they're
feeling isolated or they're feeling alone. This was exacerbated by the pandemic. Of
course, we actually have more single adults in America than married adults for the
first time in history. Now, I do want to say something about that
data that it includes I think people who are dating or cohabitating, so they
may be in relationships right, but still, and we also have more Americans
living alone than ever before. This is not what our biology is wired for.
I want to remind you we are walking around in very ancient biology.
Our hunter gather ancestors are the same that we are today. It takes generations
and generations and generations to adapt to environmental change. People will say this to
me all the time. Why do you read evolutionary psychologists psychology? That's what
they needed back then, But today things have changed, and so haven't we
adapted. Oh no, no, no, no, Our ways are very
ancient and it takes many, many, many generations to adapt and change.
So what do we need back then, Well, most humans traveled in roving
bands of about thirty five pp thirty to thirty five people. If it got
up to forty, they often split into two. Think about it, We've
discovered that's the most productive work group size. That's the most productive elementary school
classroom to learn in. Right, we still keep these groups then? When
we did, our closest intimate relationships were in multigenerational family systems. So around
us at all times was a village, a village filled with aunties and cousins
and uncles and close friends and nieces and nephews and kids. We lived together
as one. This idea of leaving the family of origin and going out and
becoming independent, of making your own family of origin has been messing with our
mental health for decades. We've lost the wisdom of having an elderly person in
the home, not to mention the free childcare. We have also lost the
ability to get along with people who may be close to us that we need,
but we may be different from them in our thinking. It's good to
have that messiness of a multigenerational family. So today, partly because of modern
capitalism, the industrial revolution meant that we needed a mobile workforce. And so
somehow we came up with this really political idea that we needed to be independent,
we need to be individuals, we needed to be separate from our family
of origin. And that was the beginning of our mental health crisis. Truthfully,
industry needed us to move around for jobs. They needed us to move
around and find a different mate in a different place. So as a result,
we're seeing more isolation than ever before. And the question I'm asked all
the time is how do you make friends? How do you find people?
Okay, I just want to stop. If you are working alone at home
on a computer, get off the computer. Don't even try to make friends
there, Okay, unless it's to find a meetup group to go out and
join, you know, to go hiking or meeting for some common interest.
The number one way to meet compassionate people is to volunteer whatever that organization is,
because it attracts people who care, and those people who care likely will
make good friends. Right, They'll be good friends for you. So I
would say, if you need to get out of your rut, you need
to do something different. This is the time to find a group where you
can give your time or your talents or both. Not just your money,
your time or your talents, but the other way to make friends is to
be a friend. Ask yourself who around you need something some giving and what
can you do for them? And also ask yourself, am I being real,
open and authentic with people? Or am I walking around with a game
face? Am I walking around afraid to be authentic? Because then, oh,
people might not like me if they knew the real me? And so
we're fronting, We're pretending to be somebody who were not. Ask yourself,
is this what you're doing? Or are you ready now to be real and
make some close friends? All right, let's get into romantic relationships when we
come back. Let's talk about huggin and kissing. Did you know sometimes we
bristle at our partner's touch. I'll explain why. And there are some places
in the world where people hug and kill the most. You've been listening to
doctor Wendy Walls. You can always hear us live on k five AM six
forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app,