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,