This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show, and this is the time of my show where I answer your relationship questions. Reminder, I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor. I do have a PhD in clinical psychology. I've written three books on relationships and did a dissertation on attachment theory because
I'm obsessed with the science of love. I've also had a lifetime of experience. I've been everything. I've been a girlfriend, I've been a wife, I've been a divorce a I've been a mistress, I have been a single mom. I have been everything and in every situation. So let me weigh in. If you'd like to send me a DM We're going to social media this week. Just go to my Instagram at doctor Wendy Walsh and type away. I
will keep your identity a secret. Okay, here we go. Hey, Doctor Wendy, whenever me and my girlfriend argue, she hits really low behind the belt. I think you mean metaphorically, she calls me miserable because oh I had debilitating depression for a few months. She brings up things that I told her in confidence. Is this something someone will grow out of? Or are we just not meant to be? Is that always the question?
Like?
Is it going to work?
Is it not? So it sounds like she is trying to hurt you. She's betraying your trust. She's taking your vulnerability and turning it around and using it as a weapon. So my first bit of advice is to tell her about it and set up a boundary that says something like, you know what, the next time you bring up my depression, I'm going to end the conversation and leave the room and we'll have a conversation another time. Right, a boundary
is protecting yourself. It's not trying to get somebody else to behave It's about what you need to do to keep yourself emotionally safe. Or you might say something like, you know, there are lots of tender things I've shared with you. If you continue to choose to use them as weapons, then we're not going to be able to continue right in this relationship or whatever. I do believe people can change but they need to be told ahead of time, and they need to have boundaries followed by consequences.
And I also highly suggest that the two of you enter therapy with a licensed clinician so that you can learn better skills, because if it continued, my prediction, my personal prediction, would be that it's not meant to be because you don't deserve to be hurt by the secrets you've shared. Okay, all right, scrolling away, moving on? What have we got?
Uh?
Oh, here's an interesting one. So hey, doctor Wendy. I keep finding evidence that my boyfriend is cheating. Yet he explains it away. He claims he keeps everything I find. He keeps everything I find is old. Oh and he just had a life before me. I have found underwear, pictures, love letters, and so on. My gut tells me he's lying, But how can I know for sure? You might be surprised by my answer to this one, which is, can
you trust your gut? You see, here's the thing, you know, Years and years ago, I had a man who I was counseling, and he told me that he was telling all this evidence that he thought his girlfriend was cheating on him. And I had a supervisor at the time, and she told me, you know, here's the thing. If somebody has an anxious attachment style and they have high sensitivity to feelings of abandonment, then they're going to be really vigilant. What is this? Is this underwear? Is this
a love letter? What could this be? Right? So she said she used the best expression, she goes, trust me, they always find something to hang their hat on. In other words, your anxiety might be real or it might be using all these little evidence to just continue with your anxiety. So I have a few things that I would say as far as behavior to do. The first thing is, if he's got this quote unquote underwear, pictures, love letters or whatever, will he throw them away or
is he hanging on to them for some reason? And why you want to know about that? And the other thing is how often have you been able to trust your gut in the past? Has cheating been a thing? Because here's the thing. I don't mean to say that people who are cheated on are responsible for that or to blame for it. However, people who have a high
abandonment anxiety unconscious fall in love with cheaters. Like it's like when two people meet they do a kind of unconscious handshake, and they're like, Okay, you promised to treat me like my abandoning daddy. Cool, you're gonna treat me like my critical mom. Great, we're on. And so they do this dance of dating. Oh, what movies do you like? What music do you like? But underneath they're doing another dance. I call it the parallel universe. So look about your
look at your past. Have you experienced a lot of cheating? Are you naturally attracted to cheaters? Is this what's happening? Because I hear people say I don't know what's wrong. I always just keep meeting cheaters. Are all people like that? No, you unconsciously pick them and you fix it. Am I going to therapy? Yes, it's the advice I give all the time because I benefit it from it so much. Going to be and finding out whether your gut is trustworthy.
That's really the thing, Whether your gut is trustworthy. All right, So when we come back, I want to talk about this next listener who wrote to me, and I want you to think about this for a minute. That her significant other, this dude who says he's her boyfriend, says they're committed but hasn't introduced her to anybody in his life yet. Da Da Da da. Let's talk about what that means when we come back. If you'd like to send me a DM, the handle is at doctor Wendy
Walsh on Instagram. Okay, we'll be right back. You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh Show. Ok I Am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
I'm still answering your direct messages on Instagram. If you'd like to send me one, the handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh. Okay, says this listener. I was single for seven years and it was so low only and hard to connect. I met a man who is pretty okay. I'm gonna pause right there, pretty okay. Actually I'm a big fan of good enough relationships anyway, so I like that description. However, she continues. He says, we're in a relationship, but I haven't met his friends. He doesn't tell anyone
about me, and he won't post our pictures. I don't want to be alone again, but I feel a bit alone with him. What do I do?
You dump them.
I'm sorry. I'm just gonna be clear on this. A guy who says we're in a relationship but doesn't bring you out to his tribe, doesn't tell anyone about you, doesn't post your pictures, is either married or seeing four women. Honestly, this is not normal behavior for people who say they're in a relationship. He's there for the sex, trust me, dump them, move on. I rarely say that, but there's just too much. Uh. Okay, uh, Dear doctor Wendy, I miss my love. We don't live in the same state
and we didn't want a long distance relationship. So I guess that means you broke up. Okay. I blocked him because he was dating and I couldn't stomach it. Oh so I guess he was posting pictures on social of him dating or whatever. Should I reach out or stay strong and keep the no contact? Okay? Just because you miss somebody doesn't mean that that person is the person for you. It just means you have a feeling of wanting to be with someone, a feeling of you know,
wanting to be close, a feeling of loneliness. You know, I've said this for years. You know, even if you're in a bad relationship. After the breakup, you're going to have to grieve because it's like losing a leg. But don't forget that leg had gangrene. You don't need it. Okay. So you may miss somebody, but it's not about him. It's not because he's great. So yeah, keep locking him,
keep no contact, don't do it all right. These next two are kind of interesting, and I'm going to read both of them, and then I want you to think about it. Okay, First one says my partner has not told his ex wife and the mother of his children that we're in a relationship. He says he doesn't want to upset her because quote, she's crazy already. I don't like that language. Is this a red flag? Or should
I stay out of their relationship. I don't know how long you've been seeing him, but just saying now, Listen to the next listener who writes me, Hey, doctor Wendy, I'm dating a guy who's a great dad and he has a great relationship with his co parent. I know he'll be a great dad if we ever get to that stage. However, where's the boundary between great co parenting and alarming behavior with the ex. So we see two
extremes here. We see one person who says, I'm not going to tell my ex about you because she's going to be all upset and that's going to mess things up with me and the kids. The other one who's so close to his ex that you're kind of like a little bit jealous and envious. There's no one right way to have a relationship, to have a blended family, to deal with your ex, first of all, but if you're feeling insecure about some way that your partner is
relating with their ex, then you need to talk about it. Right. So in the first case with the listener who says he doesn't want to tell her because you know she'll get upset, now, he doesn't have to tell her. He doesn't owe her anything. Now is the question will she
find out? Because now he's going to introduce you to the kids, And I'm not a big believer in introducing to the kids until you've been together at least six months, come on, at least if not a year, get it solid before you become a revolving Dora of parental figures in a kid's life. Okay, so he doesn't have to tell her anything, the fact that you want him to tell her tells me that you're worried that they're too close, that they're having some kind of intimacy, emotional intimacy. Okay.
The second listener says, I'm dating a guy who's a great dad. He has a great relationship with his co parent. You know, this week Doug em Off's you know him, he's he's married to Kamala. Right, his ex wife posted how much how happy she was that Kamala was such a good stepmother to her kids. I mean, that is unique, and I think it's wonderful. But in order to maintain
these relationships, you have to also have boundaries. So it sounds like when you say he's got a great relationship with his co parent, However, where's the boundary between great
co parenting and alarming behavior with the X? Well, the alarming behavior is if he's betraying confidences about your relationship with him, right, and if he's sharing emotional intimacy with her, if she's still his kind of like best friend and he's combining in her and he hasn't transferred those feelings to you where you are now his secure attachment figure, then that could be alarming. That could feel alarming, So
talk about it, talk about where the boundaries are. Say things like I don't want you sharing information about our relationship, et cetera.
Uh.
Okay, so it's hard negotiating with an X, but it's possible. One final question before we go. Dear doctor Wendy, I'm so excited for a first date. This guy and I have been talking for three months and we're finally ready to meet in person. We talk every day. First of all, there's a problem with that, you guys, Please a couple texts, a phone call, meet for coffee. The whole thing should take a week before you meet three months now the anticipation is so high, or if the person's catfishing you,
you're so all in. Oh my gosh, three weeks and you have three months and you haven't met. So then she says, we confirmed our date, the date of it, but not the location, And then I haven't heard anything since, and when I bring it up, he changes the subject. Our date is supposed to be tomorrow and we haven't spoken all day. Is this worth a conversation or should I just move on? There's a reason why he's not meeting you in the real world. Maybe you should call
those guys from Catfish. Uh And why no guy waits three months? I'm sorry. Guys have energy. If they want a relationship, they want to get it done, they want to get close to you. There's some big secret there. I promise. I think I might see you on Catfish someday, because there's there's some reason three months you've been talking every day, Oh dear, all right, when we come back. Earlier I talked about Simone Biles and how proud I am of her being what I call a poster child
for mental health. When we come back, a licensed clinical social worker who is working hard to help children, particularly children of color, overcome their own trauma. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show and KFI AM six forty We Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Earlier in the show, I talked about my new heroine, not heroin, heroin, hero hero Okay, she's just a shiro, Simone Biles and how she has become such a maverick for an a poster child for mental health and her own therapeutic process that is taking her again to hopefully another Olympic gold. She's in number one of the trials so far, so that's pretty cool. And it made me think about how many children not only have high ACE scores you've heard me talk about ACE scores before, adverse
childhood experiences, but also real trauma. And we know remember a few weeks ago, I had a guy on my show who was the researcher who developed the whole idea of journaling and language, and he found that the trauma stays in the body if it is not expressed. It is the words that help us heal. My next guest works with children, particularly children of color, to help them find those words. I'd like to introduce Nia King, a licensed clinical social worker and her website is called kidonyx
dot com. Nia, Welcome to the show.
Hello, doctor Wendy.
Tell me about your journey and why you decided to focus particularly on this area which is growing emotional intelligence and emotional vocabulary in children of color.
Well, a child like myself, I was very talkative.
I would talk back a lot, I would get in trouble a lot in school, and I always wondered if I would have had better emotional regulation or better coping skills would have gotten in that much trouble. So that kind of inspired me to become a therapist because I always wanted to help children so that they wouldn't have to go through the same things that I went through as a child, and I always had a passion for it.
I always had a love for it.
And during the beginning of my career, I was working in Englewood and Los Angeles, and I noticed that a lot of the their tools didn't have any children of color in them, or even if they did, it would be like one or two pictures of them in it. And I'm thinking, if we're trying to get the next generation comfortable with mental health or comfortable with therapy, it has to start from a young age.
So that's how kid.
Onyx kind of came to mind, And I said, why do I make it a cartoon, Make it fun, make it entertaining so that kids will be drawn to it. And that is how I came up with my first Kings and Queens emotion cards.
But before we get to the details of kid Onyx and how it works, now, you mentioned something a moment ago about beginning your career in Inglewood historically African American community in Los Angeles, and I want you to talk a little about a bit about the stigma that still exists regarding therapy in the Africa in American community. Is it changing, I would.
Say yes and no, because coming out of grad school, I saw a lot of black therapists and black people talking about, you know, mental wealth and therapy and coping skills. And even in some of the TV shows, a lot of the black TV shows, they.
Have a therapist on there. But in reality, the children are still thinking that if I have a therapist, that means I'm crazy, or the parents are still telling me, oh, it's nothing wrong with my child. They're not crazy. They don't need to talk to you.
So in theory, it looks like we're getting better at it, but in reality, in Los Angeles and Inglewood, it's still a little bit of a hesitance towards therapy because it's still a stigma.
The stigma still exists. And as another a colleague of mine, a person of color, said to me once, if you say that you're not feeling well in the head, they just tell you. Your community tells you just go to church and get on your knees then, so the competition is with religiosity, right.
Right, And I always tell people, you know, religion is great, that's a great coping skill. Prayer is great, but also let's incorporate some therapy as well, Like why can't.
We do both?
When you saw the reports of Simone Biles coming out talking about her recovery from her mental health crisis through the use of therapy, and also she couldn't take medication because they test them for drugs, right, So what was your first reaction when you heard about this.
I'm not really surprised that she struggled mentally because she's been ridiculed, you know, and talked about a national television for the past Harvard many years her career has been and when you're an athlete on that level, you know, it's almost like can I do this again?
You almost get like imposter.
Syndrome because you've done so great in your career and it's like how long can I keep this up? So for I know a lot of black women in general, like we are you know, the most educated, and we have the most entrepreneurs and businesses, but we're always trying to do more because it's like as soon as we make it to where we want to be, it's like, Okay, how can I sustain this?
Or am I going to be able to top this?
So it's really I mean, it's sad, but it's not surprising to me that she struggled.
Because she's on such a high level and the world is watching her.
It also makes me wonder and as a licensed clinical social worker, I'm sure you can comment on this whether the criticism online is a triggering of early trauma. I mean, here's a young woman who's there's no secret her parents struggled with addiction, her mother lost custody of her, she was put into foster care, and then eventually adopted by her grandparents. Later notoriously, she was a sexual assault victim of the famous team doctor Larry Nasser, and so she's
been very public about having gone through this. But I'm wondering if the pressure to perform and the pressure to get criticized, the pressure from the criticism online, does that trigger some of this earlier trauma.
I would say it depends on the person, but for her, at the level that she's at, I'm sure it's gotten to her because I even remember when she did an interview with her husband, and there was so much ridicule about that that she spoke out about it. She was like, I see what you guys are saying, and I love my husband.
You guys are wrong.
So I definitely think that she's paying attention to what's being said online.
It definitely bothers her at times.
Oh yeah, of course. All right. When we come back, Nia King is my guest, licensed clinical social worker. She has decided to dedicate her life to helping children of color, and in fact, the lessons that she's going to share with us can benefit all children to have greater emotional intelligence, beginning with emotional language. When we come back, let's learn
about her website, kidonyx dot com. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty We Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI AM six forty.
My guest, Nia King, licensed clinical social worker who has dedicated her life to helping kids and particularly children of color. Now, you mentioned earlier that a lot of the tools that existed didn't have the representation of kids of color. What kind of tools are you talking about that are helping kids' mental health.
So with working with who are as young as five years old, a lot of therapy is really teaching them about emotions. And during the pandemic, I had to get real creative because I wasn't able to be there with them in person. So I went through Amazon and on Google and I'm looking for coping skills cards, emotion cards, and I'm looking through them and I'm like, where's the Hispanic children, where's the Black children. I don't see them represented in this area. And I was just like, we
need this for our community. And one of my sorority sisters is a graphic designer, and I talked to her and I said, you know, I want to create these coping skills cards for children of color and.
She was like, okay.
So we worked on it for a year and that's when I came up with the Kings and Queens emotion cards. But I couldn't really find a lot of therapy tools that were geared towards people of color at the time.
Let's talk about the beginning. You mentioned that children who are as young as five or even earlier than that, who are just developing language themselves. The first step for all kids is to learn to recognize their feelings. How do you do that?
Well, you have to show them the faces, right, because social emotional learning is something that a child needs so that they can regulate their emotions as they get older. So a lot of times what I see parents do is when the child makes a certain face and when they copy their parent.
It's like, no, don't do that. They kind of shut it down instead of explaining what it is.
Right, And me, as a therapist, I'm helping them recognize the faces.
I'm showing them pictures. I'm showing them cartoons.
Before I had my cards, I would literally show cartoon characters and be like, what does that face look like to you?
And they would tell me. I'm like have you ever felt that way? And they're like yeah, when this happened.
So it starts very young and probably even before or five, because these kids are having tablets at one years.
Old where they could see all these different things.
So yeah, helping them name those feelings.
Right, exactly, helping them name those feelings because they already have feeling as soon as they come off the womb, they're crying, right, so they.
Already have feelings.
But it's about recognizing them and being able to communicate them, because a lot of parents will come to me and they're like, oh, my.
Child is throwing tantrums, my child is having these crying spills, and I can't get them to calm down. I don't know what's wrong with them.
It's like, okay, so let's help them learn how to verbalize what it is that they're feeling, so then maybe you could help them better.
Right, I'm going to tell you a wonderful story that
will warm your heart. My youngest kid is a little bit on the spectrum and had a classroom aid and a behavior list when she was in elementary school, and she one of the first things this behavioralist did is ask her to do different emotions with her own face and take photographs and then she put them on her desk under like laminated and tape, and so whenever she would be frustrated and couldn't find her words, all she would do is point to the face of what she
was feeling, and the aide knew, Okay, she needs a break, needs to go out outside and do cartwheels, or she needs this or needs that. And to this day, I think she has more insight and emotional intelligence than most people because at an early age she learned to identify her own feelings.
Right right, it starts. It starts there.
And one of the first clients that I ever had was only two years old and he was autistic and he was nonverbal.
Well at the time they thought he was nonverbal.
But pictures and getting him to recognize those pictures is what had him.
Say his first words.
So it's like that repetition and that those pictures and things that are familiar with them, that that's that first step.
And I do want to say this that every human of every age could stand to improve their emotional intelligence. And I want to remind everybody I say this all the time that it's a three prong thing versus recognizing your own feelings and then learning to express them in language, and the third piece is recognizing them in others so that you can be emotionally mature and have some empathy for others' experiences. I think it is great work that you are doing. Niah King, thank you so much for
helping out children. Where can people go to find out more or reach you?
They can go on kidonyx dot com and I am also on Instagram at underscore kid Onyx, and I'm also on TikTok Underscore kid Onyx and I will post every week post coping Skills of the Week.
I post when I have new.
Products, and I also have a private practice that I see children through, so I'm very reachable. You can definitely find me on those platforms and reach out to me if you're interested in the product or if you're just interested in getting your child in therapy. That's that's what I do.
And we thank Simone Biles and maybe even the movie Inside Out for starting to destigmatize therapy. I'm speaking as the beneficiary of eighteen years of therapy myself, so I know how what enormous change and joy that it can create. Although I always say to people, you know, therapy doesn't make happy, it makes you real, right, Absolutely, being authentic is what it's about. Nia King, thank you so much
for joining us on the Doctor Wendy Wall Show. Thank you for that you are welcome and that brings the Doctor Wendy Wall Show to a close. You can always follow me on my social media. The handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh and a reminder, I have a wonderful Patreon group we meet every Wednesday. A lot of KFI listeners there. You are welcome to join up. That's Patreon dot com slash Doctor Wendy Walsh, but I'm always here for you every Sunday from seven to nine pm on KFI.
You've been listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on KFI Am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app