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 Appy Am six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show. Haylo, you know what last week was your birthdam I have to tell you a funny story. I was out at eight like a dinner thing. It was a vineyard thing. It was outdoors with a bunch of you know,
grown up people. I'm not shy, but my age. And there in the garden doing photo opportunities was the most beautiful young sixteen year old girl and her gaggle of sixteen year old friends. And she had two giant pink balloons and one was a number one and one was a number six, and together they made the number sixteen. And my daughter looked at me and said, Mom, go ask her for her numbers. Just switch him around. And I did. I ran up to her and said, congratulations, happy birthday.
It's my birthday too. Cannot borrow those numbers because I'm exactly in the opposite. I'll send you that picture. Kayla web page. Yes, please celebrating. It's very funny. I'm laughing anyway. Welcome to the Doctor Wendy Well Show if you new to my show. I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a psychology professor at California State University, Channel Islands, and I know my students are very excited because this week coming is our last sort
of in person class time before we head into final exams. So chug a lug, chugg a lug. The semester's ending, and congratulations to those of my students who are actually graduating soon. It's very, very exciting. In my personal life, I like to read a lot about the science of love. I've written three books on relationships. My dissertation was on attachment theory, and I think about attachment style pretty much all the time because it influences every
conversation I have. Not that we're talking about it, but I'm paying attention to the signals and cues that people are giving me that let me know what their attachment style is, so I know what their needs are like. If they're avoidant, they need a little distance, don't get too intimate and close. If they crave intimacy, I'll sense that too, and I'll know to be warm and close and cuddly, because that's the thing they need. This can happen in a workplace, not the cuddly part, but in a workplace.
It can happen in your friendships, it can happen in your love relationships. So probably the most important, not well, the most important relationship that we ever have, of course, is our relationship with ourself right, learning how to be self aware, how we impact others, Learning how to have insight into our own feelings, learning how to communicate those feelings to others, learning how to have boundaries around other people. That's the most important primary relationship.
Next, as far as I'm concerned, isn't the love romantic relationship. It's the parent child relationship, because so much we inject our stuff into our kids and they grow. I mean, think of it. Every other relationship we have in our life. You meet somebody and you slowly grow closer and closer and closer and closer, except the parent child relationship. You literally if your woman start off as one body and it's a slow process of separation.
Why am I bringing this up because this weekend I was in Santa Cruz to see my daughter who has left the nest. My baby left the nest last September, but we're planning on getting back together this relationship because it was good for her to learn some life skills, but she needs some you know, just like how a toddler on the playground. They'll sort of like venture and then they'll check back and come back and touch base with mom or dad,
and then they'll venture out again and come back. This happens also with adolescents, teenagers and college students. That's why I have this theory that the more money you pay for college, the less amount of time they keep them. Have you noticed the higher end the college It starts later in September and then they're home for what five weeks? Six weeks at Christmas? I mean, quit, What are we paying you money for this supposed to be educating them?
But I think also that coming home of college students is an important touching base with your secure base. This particular kid of mine didn't do the traditional college route. She's working and learning a lot of life skills, but it's very normal. And so this summer she's going to live with me again because she said, I just miss your mom, And you know what, who's going to turn that down right. You think it's just she wants the free rent. I don't know. Maybe I also want to tell you something else
about raising children. So our parents live inside us long after they're gone. Well we know because when we parents, sometimes like my ang green mother comes out of my mouth and I'm like, where did she come from? The exact same nasty thing she'd say to me sometimes would come out to my kids. But on the other end, there's no such thing as a perfect parent. They're all good and bad. They do the best with the tools they
had. But also the good of our parents lies inside us. That if we had good enough parents, because that's all you need, good enough parents, we have a piece of them that we can use during times of stress as coping strategies. For instance, my mom had a few failings, but one of the things she was really great at is taking care of us when we were sick, And unfortunately it made me get sick more often to get
her attention. But that's a whole other thing, munch housend. But when we got sick or had a fever when little little kids, she'd wrap us in a warm blanket and she'd sit in the rocking chair with we were beyond her lap and she would rock in front of the fire. Literally it was Candida, it was cold, we had fires going, and she would sing to us, and that her voice, and that song lies inside my bones.
So in the worst of stressful times, and we all have stress, everybody, nobody gets out of here easy, trust me, um, I go back to that, And certainly when I'm sick, I go back to it. When I got a fever and I'm delirious. Okay, look, can I just add one thing? Yeah? But what else isn't like the COVID pandemics supposed to be ending this week according to who I know May eleventh. I guess all the money stomps or something? No, who people who
announced that the COVID I don't know what government May eleventh. Yeah, h w what they called it? Yeah, all right, the World Health Organization? There you go, Yeah, they announced it. Yeah. Well guess what I got through and I never got COVID once. Wow, knocket it tomorrow for saying that, right. You got to be careful. Actually, I heard at my birthday table some of the women of a certain age are getting their fifth Maderna shot. Now, wow, So I'm thinking better line
up for that one. I've gotten every shot they offered, and then some I wear a mask whenever they said too, I heard you earlier talking about airplanes. That's the one place I still wear the mask. Yeah, but otherwise I'm just lucky, so I didn't have to conjure up my mom, is what I'm trying to say during COVID. However, this week, when I was driving back from Santa Cruz, an interesting thing happened that hadn't happened before in my life. And I'm the number sixteen backwards, so that's a
very long time. I left at like five in the morning. It was very very dark. I was on roads that I didn't recognize. My eyesight's not what it used to be, and then started to come down torrential rain, I mean like a swall. A swall was happening, and of course I was trying to listen to ways and ways was you know, every once in a while, ways gets dementia and it starts to take you on streets that doesn't and I end up in weird, what feels like dangerous places because
it's dark. And then there's a swallow and I'm on this road I'm trying to squint and the lights are reflecting in my I was just like, I was really scared. I was alone in the world. And then I remembered who taught me to drive, my dad, and I remember the things he used to say. He would sit by the way. Both my parents died of cancer when I was thirty. Whole long story. He used to sit in the passenger seat. His nickname for me was Chick. I don't know why, but he said it funny. Chuck, Hey, Chuck, and
he'd say, you got it, Chuck. Just hold her straight there, Chuck, you got her, Gunner, Now, Gunner, you're getting around the corner. You got her. And I would hear his voice and everything he said to me. It was like he was sitting there beside me in the dark. Now I wasn't hallucinating. I wasn't delusional. The point I'm trying to make to you is that what we inject into our children, the
goodness and the love, comes back during times of stress. It functions as I'm going to use some psychobabble that psychologists would probably use, like an internal working model, an internal working model of self black. It just means you hold them with you the memories and they help sustain you. And eventually the sun rose, the rain stopped. The one oh one was spectacular all the way down through Santa Barbara, and I felt glad that I'd had my Dad
with me in my mind during those times. I do want to say one thing before we move on to something else. I passed a lot of white school buses on those dark roads at six in the morning, and I was amazed that they all seemed to be trailering a trailer that held three porta potties. And I'm like, what kind of school bus brings porta potties with them? You know where I'm going with this, right, You know exactly where
I'm going with this. I was traveling through the land of big agriculture, the land of the bread basket of America, California, and I looked up into the window of those painted white school buses and I saw hard working farm workers, women, childrenish bothers going in the dark out to fields in the
middle of nowhere with a porta potty with them. I want you to think about that the next time you throw a strawberry in the trash, Think about the work that it take and the human that it took to bring it to your Trader Joe's and your table, okay, or your Gelson's, or your Vans or your Ralph's wherever. Think about it. We need to care about people. I was frankly shocked to see in the dark of that morning, at five in the morning, how many hard working people there are in California
bringing food to our tables. And my heart goes out to them, and I have lots of gratitude too. All right, when we come back, are you planning on moving this summer? Summer is the big moving season. I want to talk a little bit about the psychology of moving because I moved again this week. And do you know what, when we come back, I'm going to tell you you won't believe it. I counted how many houses I've lived in in my life. Just take a guess, Kaylea, take
a guess seven. You go with seven? Okay? Well, the average amount of moves that the average American has is eleven. Oh, just let me say I was more than that. I'll explain when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show and KF I am six forty, but live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I Am six forty. KYF I Am six forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Walls Show.
I had this conversation with my best friend this week because I was moving again, and she said again, like, didn't you just move in November? And didn't you just move a year before that? And didn't you just move before? God, Well, there's always good reason. For many of the time the years it was about getting my kids into better schools, moving right into the district where I needed to. I was going to try to cheat. I'm just gonna move there and say I'm in the zip code,
get me in that school. And I did that many times to get my kid the support she needed. But the conversation with my best friend was, you know, she said, I just moved last year, and that was the first time I'd moved in twenty five years. She said, when I was a kid, we only moved once. So she's had three houses in her entire life, and she's like my age sixteen backwards. So I started doing some research on the moving phenomenon, and what happens to our psychology with
the moving phenomenon. Well, it turns out the average American moves eleven times in their lifespan. So if you were counting, Kayla, you're thirty years old, how many places have you lived and since you were born? I was just trying to count, I'm probably gonna set like ten yet. Yeah, see ye around there, so you're almost getting there. Yeah, you'll be up to fifteen before. I'm sure you'll see. Now, I grew
up military. My dad was the Navy, And what my parents used to do is we'd move to a new city and they would rent a house for the first year while they got the lay of the land, figured out the schools and where you want to live and whatever, and then they buy the second year, and inevitably the place they'd buy in would be at a different
school district. So I always went to new school. I was always the new kid in class, always, always, always, And then we'd have this house for two years and my dad would get another posting and we'd be gone. My parents used to joke that their real estate, their real estate strategy was to buy high, sell low, because they had to constantly move. It was based on the military, not on what the market was doing.
So I saw the statistic eleven times that the average American moves in their life, and I sat down, using my fingers to count all the places I lived in. Now, some of them I couldn't remember the exact address. I was young in its places, but I pictured my bedroom and every single one of them, like there's a memory, an emotion attached to our personal space, right our little cave where the tribe is. And I saw them all in my mind's eye, very very clearly. And then I ran
out of the ten fingers, and I started again. And then I ran out of those ten fingers, and I started again, and I got up to twenty five. You are always above average, and so you would think. So the conversation with my best friend is how do you do it?
And I'm going to give you some good strategies for like literally how to move, because really a queen of that, I know you're thinking to get in a new place, so you might note, so here's what my mom taught us that as soon as you get to the new place, the very first thing and she'd make sure that that particular box or whatever was at the first thing off the truck is you make your bed. Now. The bed might not be put together, but the mattress will be there. You got find
your sheets, find your pillows, find your duvet whatever. Make your bed. If you start at seven in the morning moving, make your bed first, because that sound's going to set. You haven't even found the lamp side of the boxes yet. That place is going to get dark and you can't find nothing, and you got to your dog tired and you just want to go to bed. So make your bed first. Then just start doing it
box by box, and do it all at once. The worst thing you can do is take two or three weeks to move, because you'll never be organized. Here's the thing. Psychologists would say that when we organize our external environment, we're actually organizing ourselves internally at the same time. So every time you go through a box and find places for things, your brain is becoming more settled. I did that all weekends, so I can tell you about
it. How good I feel right now at getting through the last couple of boxes. But I want to all so say this about moves. There's research on military kids and frequent moves and how destabilizing it is. We know kids love consistency. It's good for their development to keep close contact with the same friends, etc. I'm proud to say that despite all my moves, often it was within the same city and so my kids, each of them still have best friends from preschool. Right. So that's one of the things,
is that keeping consistency of relationships is important. However, the research shows that after five moves, kid's actually become resilient. It's less stressful, they become more adaptable to new situations. So, in other words, it's more dramatic to move two or three times for your kids than it is to move eight times. Fascinating and that fascinating, yea, So they start to become resilient. We start And this was the conversation I had with my best friend because
she'd only moved three times in her whole life. She thinks of it as a trauma and I'm like, no, I think of it as a new adventure. I do it all the time. I'm good at it. And here's the best thing I love about moves. The perch. Oh my goodness, I'm Arie Condo in my life. You know what, Marie Condo, that decorator lady says. She says that if you hold an item in your hand and you ask yourself, does this item bring me joy? And if the answer is no, you have to get rid of it, cut it,
loose, dump it. And I swear every time I move, I do that with many, many, many items, and I feel lighter and I feel happier. And you know what else I learned. The less clothes I have, the more outfits I have. It's bizarre, but you start putting things together better in new ways. Like I've never worn this sweater with this before, but boy, it looks good, doesn't it? Because I pulled it out today? What else did I want to say about moving?
Get ready for a schmore gess board of emotions, because our homes are attached to our well being. Look, I'm a landlady. No he has a problem moving into my building. One hundred percent of the people have a problem moving out, even if they wanted to go, even if it was time, even if there's a good reason for going. There's a drama over the security deposit. There's a drama over broken stuff. There's a drama over the move date. There's a drama over the people moving in there's always a drama.
It's because emotions are high with separation, and we have to acknowledge that we have to grieve the loss of moving from place because you do feel unanchored a bit, You feel set adrift just a little bit. And so I often think that moving is a grieving process. But change is also good. Change helps us grow. So if you're planning that move this summer, make those beds first, find the lamps next, and you can start packing a couple weeks early, but don't take two weeks to unpack. Get it all
done in one weekend. Pull an all nighter if you need to. That's the way to do it all right. I digress because I have not talked about the science of love and relationship hips very long. You know who people want to date more than anything in the world, no matter what their gender.
Charismatic people, people who have charisma. And I used to think that charisma is something you're just kind of born with, that's your personality type, until I did some reading and I found out that charisma is something that's learned, and we can all learn these skills. Let's talk about what they are when we come back. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show and 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 sixty k AM six forty. You have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. He is the Doctor Wendy Walls Show. So last night I was out to dinner with a new group of people. There was one friend there who I knew from a long time ago, but she was introducing me to kind of to her group of friends. And our host was an English gentleman who had a lot of charisma. Right.
He was very funny, he was, you know, very intelligent, he was charming, he had very good manners. Um, what is the definition of charisma. What would you say? It is, Kayla, charisma. That's a charismatic person, charming personality and endearing personality. Yeah, it's somebody whose charm actually inspires devotion in others. Right. So, charismatic leaders sometimes are politicians, sometimes they're preachers. Sometimes they're great teachers, right,
that have a lot of charisma. But here's the thing. Charisma is not a personality trait. You know, psychologists don't say, oh, there's I can I can diagnose you as being a charismic Nope, doesn't exist. It's actually a set of social skills that can literally be learned. So I did some reading so that I could figure out how I could be more charismatic. Although I do radio and I do teach, so I would hope that I have a few of these traits that I've not inherited them, but learned them
along the way. But we can always improve. The most important trait of charisma, I think is self awareness, being aware of how you impact other people. What would people say? Reading the room, knowing how to read the room, knowing how to say like, for instance, what's really lucky about me is that when I teach, I got forty thirty forty little faces staring at me. Not so little. They're young adults, and the active listeners are direct mirrors to whatever I'm saying. So I can see a wave
of she did not say that, did she? I can see it on the faces, and that I can quickly double back and correct myself. Or I can see the quizzical look like I'm clearly not being clear because I see some furrowed brows here or I see the eyelids starting to droop on a group, and I know, oh, I'm not being fun enough. Right. So I have learned from being in front of classrooms for years how to be self aware and understand my impact on others. But other people don't have that
skill naturally. You have to literally watch the faces. You have to literally stop talking so that you can get the feedback from the people. Now, another component of charisma is warmth, being approachable, being understanding and caring, being optimistic, being enthusiastic. You know, when I met my boyfriend Julio almost three years ago now on Bumble and we had our first coffee date. And if you've been listening to my show long enough, you've heard the story
I said to him, and we were out. It was during COVID outdoors with masks on, wind blowing the whole thing, and that was kind of a litmus test. If guys wouldn't do that, I was not going to meet him. So I said, look, instead of us just telling each other how great we are and how datable we are, why don't we tell each other a story of how undateable we are? And I told him a couple of things about me, and then he told me this big thing about
him. And later I said to him later meeting months later, you know, because we love to revisit our first date, I said, what was it about that first date? And he said, you know, I was telling you something quite disturbing, And you seem to have this openness and this warmth and this desire to understand more instead of getting closed off or fearful. So obviously I had that trait, the warmth. Now another trait of being charismatic is competence. You know, we love people that we can learn from.
So if you are walking in a room, let's say it's for a job interview. Let's say you're going to meet new perspective coworkers, being competent and having a little bit of an in charge attitude, not taking control, but self confidence, good posture, letting them know like you don't one hundred percent need this job, you'd like this job, you'd be good for them, you could help them, but you know, just having some competence that's
charismatic. And on that same note, while you're doing it, having relaxed and open body language. So I know, we get nervous and we want to just fold those arms across our chest. I noticed last night at the dinner party. By the way, I'm sitting beside the charismatic host and who has a much bigger brain than me and more life experienced than me, and he's expounding on something that was very interesting to me, and I didn't notice
it until somebody. Why do people all do this nowadays? They take out cameras iPhones in the middle of dinner and they just start snapping pictures of people. Do you notice this? Can't You can't go out without seeing it. It's weird. Everywhere is everywhere. Yeah, so I see happened, But I am very camera aware, I will say that. And I happen to see this iPhone go up at the end of the table and someone's taking a picture. And I immediately when that iPhone goes I am sternhams at. My
posture changes to my face changes. I know there's a picture coming, right, And so I realized my hands were across my chest as I was listening to the charismatic host, and I immediately adjusted my body language, put my arms, my forearms on the armrests of the chair, and had an open smile towards him. So the picture would turn out well. Okay. Also, charismatic people tend to be playful and funny. Our host was definitely that I try to make the odd little joke. I'm not a comedian, Kayla,
You're hilarious. Come, come, try to be a little funny if I can. They also maintain good eye contact. We can all learn that. Yeah, for sure, look at people you know nowadays. I hate to say, especially those young people that I'm staring at their phones, but literally they're not looking people in the eye. And I'm sure the pandemic made it worse. I know, I know. But the big one is praising
others. Praising others literally finding something fabulous about everybody. There is something fabulous in every single person you meet, and your job as a charismatic person is to find that fabulosa and tell them about it. Remind them because they're gonna want to have you around because they feel good when they're around you. And I should add, please remember people's names. It's super hard. So one
of my tricks is I asked them how they spell their name. Even if it's like Carol, I might say, is that Carol with an E or just the traditional C L? Because it gives me a moment to spell it and help myself remember it. That's my trick genius. I also connect it with other people I know, Like I met someone recently named Andy. I didn't actually meet them out where, were emailing and I said, oh, you know my favorite little brothers named Andy. It just warms my heart to
type that name Andy. So I now I connected with my little brother's name. Anyway, that's how you become charismatic. When we come back, the Surgeon General says that here in America we are in a great health epidemic and there's something we can all do to fix it. No, it's not COVID,
it's something else. You're listening to the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on kf I AM six forty a live everywhere on the iHeartRadio Appum, you're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from kf I AM sixty kf I AM six forty you have doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Talk to Wendy Walsh Show. I'd like to welcome my TikTok audience. If you'd like to come on to my TikTok channel, you certainly can the handle is at doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh and you can be live in the studio with us
and see what we're doing here. So this week, did you hear we're entering another public health epidemic. In fact, this epidemic, if you catch this disease, has health risks that are the same as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. It's known that this health epidemic is already costing billions of dollars every single year here in America. It's also estimated that it's affecting fifty fifty five zero fifty percent of Americans. On Tuesday, the US Surgeon General officially declared
this a public health epidemic. Loneliness, Yes, loneliness. You know. I'm a professor at cal State Channel Islands and one of the courses I teach is health psychology. And while you would think there'd be a lot of biology, what you should eat, if you should exercise, how you should sleep, and yes, some of that's there, but we also talk a lot
about our relationships. We talk about toxic relationships that can make your body sick, we talk about healthy relationships can make your body well, and we talk about isolation and how dangerous it is. You see, human beings evolved to live in tribes. We were cooperative breeders. We worked together with a village to raise kids. If we were ever alone in the wilderness in our historic past, it probably meant imminent death. And so as a result, COVID
of course increased it. We've got people living alone and apartments that are not unlike the solitary confinement that we give in our penal institutions. Right bad for our health. Here's why. Here's what's been happening over the last few decades. We've seen a decline in religiosity, but it hasn't been replaced by things.
We've also seen a decline in participation in community organizations. And because of the mobility that was needed in modern capitalists him, people are being separated from their big, wide ranging, supportive family structures and so people are reporting more loneliness. The number of single households that means people living alone in a studio apartment, a one bedroom apartment, has doubled in the last fifty years. This was literally unknown when I was a kid, never heard of it.
But then we had the COVID crisis, where people, workplaces were shut down. Schools were shut down. Even people who had regular interaction were suddenly forced into isolation. I know, I did a lot of calling of my friendships like a COVID silver. I'm like, do I really want to call that person back? Did I need that one? Right? And I started to feel my own social world start to shrink. You know, people spend about twenty minutes a day on average to a friend, twenty minutes a day.
Just a decade ago, it was more than an hour a day. The amount of close friends people had used to be in the dozens. In fact, there's some research to show that those with the best mental health have the largest social networks, but they're not necessarily intimately close with everybody. They just you know what it is. If you have a referral, you call somebody with a referral who's got a contact for something, a doctor, a lawyer, or whatever. You need a golf game. I don't know that you
will have a better life by having that group. Now, Producer Kaylea, if you had to guess which group is most impacted by the loneliness epidemic, you know it used to be I'll say, so, don't guess this. The elderly. The elderly were alone. They people didn't visit enough, they didn't get enough touch. Right, who do you think suffering the most? Now? Maybe women in their late thirties, early forties into twenty four year olds. Really, Oh, let me tell you. I teach college,
and these students have more social anxiety. They missed two years of social connection and learning social skills, and I watch them. I put them into discussion groups specifically so they just you know, have fun and laugh and talk about things. Now, the government has said there's a reason why, you know, they gave this big announcement about this public health epidemic, that they're going to try to put some money towards strengthening the social infrastructure. That means building
more parks, more libraries, more programs for the public. They are going to make public transportation more accessible. They're going to do more paid family leave. We hope this is where the money is supposed to go. Once they pay attention to this, They're going the government is going to try to cultivate a culture of connection. You know what, you can do it today for yourself and your world. Don't wait for the government. You should volunteer right
now. Go on the internet. Look for a place in your neighborhood where you can volvolved here. If you haven't been to a gym during COVID, it's time to get back to the gym. Join a sport, a team, see some people, chat with them. Start a book club. Invite friends, Invite friends of friends, people you don't know really well to join your book group. Meet your neighbors, say hello on the street. You know, it's the dog walkers and the stroller pushers who find each other out
there. But you can just go out and chat with people while you're gardening or what have. You. Join professional organizations, whatever your organization is, join them. You know, you can go online to meetup dot com and find a group that's together. You need a group, You need some people. You can join a religion, or if you're not religious, join an atheist group. They get together. You know, it's very like a religion, but no magical thinking. So whatever it takes, you have to be
the difference. You have to reach out because your life may depend on it. Isolation and loneliness raises your inflammation, raises your cortisol levels, your stress hormones, and that's related to every major illness we have when we come back. Are you in a relationship and you are wondering if you should break up? You know, plenty of people are in a relationship because they're attached, not because they're in love. Let's talk about this when I come back.
You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show and kf I Am six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walls. You can always hear us live on kf I AM six forty from seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.