You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand KFI Am sixty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is Doctor Wendy after Dark. It's really dark now since those clocks have changed. Oh, producer Kayla, I was driving to work going what is it midnight now already? I know, and I'm so exhausted earlier, I don't know what this is about. Has melitonin in the daylight saving time? I think I think we just like animals, go to sleep earlier in the winter, sleep longer, know the you know,
like think of the summer. We were out like having picnics at eight at night, and now here we are like, oh, it feels like I just want to snuggle in my little duvet, cuddle up. Anyway, Welcome to the Dr Wendy wall Show. Here's what we got. I'm gonna talk more more over the top tiers about from that Golden Bachelor, I'm sick of it, Taylor and Travis take their romance on tour and for the rest of us, what's the difference between positive psychology and toxic positivity? People are
getting confused. I'm gonna define. Also, if you have anger, you never wonder what you're supposed to do with it, Like, what does the research say, how is the healthy way to really deal with our anger? We can turn our anger into a super strength. Okay, So, if you're new to the show, I have a PhD in clinical psychology. I'm a psychology professor, not a therapist at cal State Channel Islands. But I'm
obsessed with the signs of love. I've written three books on relationships, did a dissertation on attachment theory, and well I'm up to speed on anything to do with love and health. I'm also a professor of health psychology. You want to know an interesting study that came across my desk today, Kayla. Super interesting. So I've always thought that if i'm and I teach it, if you're not getting enough sleep, it's bad for your health. But I
don't know how to tell you this. But in the last few months, and I was always asleep, or when I was young, I needed my nine hours. I love sleep. In the past six months, I'm not sleeping more than six, maybe six and a half hours at night, and I never feel tired like I get up I go to the gym. There's no afternoon fallout like oh, I'm so tired, should take a nap.
So you know, it may be is sort of a postmenopausal thing because when the factory shuts down, we probably don't need as much sleep to maintain it. But I was still worried. So the Wall Street Journal sends an article to me today because I think they hear I'm talking like everybody here is instagram, TikTok whatever, and it says, don't worry if you're not getting enough sleep, as long as the sleep is in a consistent pattern like more dangerous.
Apparently even if you are getting eight hours his inconsistent pattern staying up super late, getting up early, dealing with jet leg, shift work, all that stuff very bad for your health. They actually had a sentence that said something like, if you're getting only six hours of sleep sleep a night, and it's at you go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, then you're gonna be much have better health outcomes than the
persons who's getting eight or nine but in an inconsistent way. So I felt better because I'm pretty consistent. I'm like dead out by ten and then unfortunately, somewhere in the four o'clock hour, there I am I staring at the ceiling. So it is what it is, A little bit update, Okay, Taylor Swift to update like you care. Apparently there's other news in the world, but in the last year, Taylor Swift seems to be the only
news that we like to talk about. So Julio told me my boyfriend Julio, because he was watching he's watching like Sunday Night football right now, and I said, oh, I read the Travis is on the road with her, and he said, yeah, he doesn't have to go back to work until November twentieth. I'm like, you have all the players schedules memorized and he's like, yeah, he named what kind of week it was or whatever.
He's like, yeah, he's not back till November twentieth. So according to E Entertainment News, it's time for us all to grab our passports because Travis Kelcey and Taylor have taken their romance on the road. The Kansas City Sheet chiefs tight and we have we examined that we know if he has a tight end. Ye, yes he does. Oh, you've checked it out.
Okay, they went down to South America because she's starting the next leg of her tour, and he was apparently enchanted to see her perform in Buenasadas Buenazada's Argentina, but he was caught in the VIP tent standing next to her dad, and her dad was wearing a Kansas Chief's lanyard. Oh yeah, dad's approving. I don't think we've seen many of her loves were her dad.
At least nine headlines I've read. This is interesting. The night before the couple were spotted out to dinner, fans captured video of them walking holding hands on the way into the restaurant. When they walked into the restaurant, everybody applauded, Okay, that's the new Okay, she's going on tour. Anybody remember the Katy Perry Russell Crow marriage that happened For a minute, I watched the Katy Perry documentary, and I literally watched that relationship fall apart because
of her tour and his tour. He was touring, she was touring. She was on private jets trying because they wouldn't give her a day off to fly in and see her boyfriend and husband. Whatever. Now this girl's heading off on tour and he's still got some football to play apparently, so either he gets on that private jet with her and follows her around the world as soon as the season's over, but that's not until Well, I don't understand football, Like, there's a super Bowl in January, but don't they kick
out some teams before that and they stop playing? Yeah, I think the only two teams that play are the two in the Super Bowl? Until then you're fighting. So does anyone know what his team is doing? Is it doing good? Or well? Anybody anybody the best team in football? Is that your favorite team? It is okay as being biased? No, but could they actually get all the way to the Super Bowl? Don't know. Not the way they're playing. I want them to, but I don't think
they will. I'm a big fan and I'm hoping for it, but no, I will say I feel like he has a little bit more of a successful, busy career than Russell had, so maybe they'll be a little bit more understanding between him and Taylor versus Katie and Russell. Because he was on tour. He was touring, Yeah, he was doing comedy tours. Well just look at that, and doing movies. So he was stuck. They were both stuck, all right, so anyway, I hope his team loses
very quickly so that he gets kicked out. And I'll tell you why, because the way to build a relationship is with time. You gotta do FaceTime, and I don't mean the one on your iPhone. I mean you gotta be there and you gotta see each other. So he needs to jump on her jet and just go be with her while she's on tour. Otherwise it's
not going to work out. There's also a big danger to dating in public like this, And I do want to say, I know it's boring to stay inside a hotel room and order room service, but they need private time to grow intimacy. They can't have it. I mean, there they were on Saturday Night Live, just two or three weeks after starting to date.
That's a little much, all right. Golden Bachelor update last week, as you recall, Leslie, the dancer and personal trainer from Minnesota, she got the rows, she was safe, and then our Gary shed tears again. That man needs to stop crying because he couldn't decide between I mean, Faith, the one who roared in on a motorcycle the first week, and Teresa, the seventy year old who pretended she was in her birthday soup, but it was a skin colored like thing. You know, she had a robe
on and she flashed him, I know. Anyway, this week's Golden Bachelor was the conclusion of the last rose ceremony, and they also do this Women Tell All where everyone comes back. So remember last week, My prediction was that the prettiest one who was sick of it all and went home to her daughter who had postpartum depression or something, would come back. She did, in fact come back this week, but with all of them, and I don't think she's staying. She did, you know, talk about her daughter
and the birth of the baby, et cetera. They talked about a bunch of stuff. Anyway, this is all you care about. Teresa got the rose and motorcycle driving faith was eliminated. We were all shocked. Do we have some sound on that? Then? Going on? What makes me feel the worst? I promised her family something that promise. Okay, that's so awful, No, it is, that's awful. I promise the thing that
I would protect your heart. Yeah, and I didn't do that. I don't feel like you deceived me. I don't feel like you purposely broke my heart in any way, shape or form, and I don't think my family feels that way either. I know your heart is true in all the good ways, and you're a beautiful soul. And I feel so blessed to have telling you. It's been quite a journey, How isn't it? Yes? It has? Okay, if you could have seen the tears. Women love a man who can cry, but not very often, and not every week
on every episode, but every week this guy the waterworks. I'm done with it. Okay. So his final two are now Leslie and Teresa. They head to Costa Rica. This is it the big thing this week. They're gonna meet Gary's family. They're gonna have their fantasy sweets. Fantasy sweets. Are they really going to go in there? Are we going to watch a seventy one year old go knock boots with two different women one night in a row, Oh my god, one after another terrible. I will just tell
you right now. Leslie's gonna be the winner. She you know why, because they're down in Costa Rica and she runs these pilates trips down there and that's like her second home. So I think Teresa, as much as she's been all gug off for him all the way along. Teresa's going to say
they're getting rid of her. This is my prediction. All right, when we come back, you ever mad, I mean really mad, and you don't know what to do with it, and you've been told be nice and think positive, and you're mad at yourself or you're mad at somebody else and you can't figure out what to do with this anger. We're gonna talk about this when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're
listening to KFI AM six forty on demand KFI A M six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Wendy wallsh Show. I am going to disclose something now. I have always had a problem with anger. I you know, my parents did the best they could with the tools they had that came from the generation before them. And if we expressed rage or anger as children, no one ever said to us, I see you're really angry right now, Let's find a way for you to deal with
it. Let's, you know, talk about it. They would say, young lady, go to your room and come back when you've changed your attitude. See the critical voice just flows in my head. Come back when you've changed your attitude. And at the very worst, they would say, just cheer up. That's what they heard. Those were the lessons I got in my life about how to deal with anger. So when I feel angry, I never know what to do with it. And when I was in therapy, I would say to my therapist, I'm so man, I have to
get She would complain that I would make myself happy too quickly. I wouldn't stay in the anger long enough. Who wants to stay in anger? First of all, is not real comfortable. But she kept saying feelings are messengers and there is fertile ground there. I'll never forget there is fertile ground. Something's going to grow from it. But I would try to bounce back into positivity because I didn't know how to garden in that fertile ground. I didn't
know what to do with that anger. Now, I used to think, because I read all those silly studies about you're supposed to like get it out and vent yell and scream, you're supposed to like hit a pillow or something. Guess what. The newest research shows that that just raises your blood pressure and your heart rate and it doesn't calm you down. You know, we're told all the time that we're supposed to stay positive, We're told to focus
on the positive. But there's new research that I'm going to tell you about in a minute that says a healthy dose of anger can actually be motivating, can actually become a superpower. Now. I have noticed in recent years a couple people who have passed through my life se passed through I didn't let them stay, who cope with their anger using a strategy called toxic positivity. I
didn't even know this had a name until recently. There's a great book called Toxic Positivity written by Whitney Whoever in Florida, a really great therapist I follow on TikTok and Instagram. And toxic positivity is kind of what was tried to be instilled in me, which is the pressure to only display positive emotions, that if you're not showing positive emotions, you're somehow unattractive. Right, So people learn to suppress any negative emotions, any negative feelings, or their reactions
to stuff. And what does it do it invalidates us as an authentic human being. Right, It can lead to all kinds of things. Well, first of all trauma, Like in my case, I didn't know what to do with anger. In fact, I was told be nice so much that when I was raped as a teenager, I was nice to him. I didn't know where to put my anger or what to do with my anger.
Right, If you become a parent and your coping strategy is toxic positivity, it can be traumatic for children because children aren't taught what to do with those natural, normal human feelings. It can also lead to unhealthy coping mechanism. Oh yeah, if you're trying to suppress any negative feelings, how are you going to do that? Uh huh, You're going to use a little alcohol. I'm going to use some drugs. How about sex? That's a really
great drug. Those are all those things we do to negatively cope with uncomfortable feelings, And the biggest thing that can happen is our relationships can become ruptured. Here's some example of toxic positivity. I hear it all the time in our culture. Hey hey, hey, good vibes. Only you're trying to express yourself and they say good vibes only, or they say, come on, look on the bright side, where things could be much worse. You
know, think of how bad it really could be. You're really lucky to be in this situation you're at. You know, earlier I should say, I'm not going to disclose what it was, but uh, my own wonderful beloved producer Kayla told me a story of somebody she was angry with, and I didn't say, you know what, she did her best. She was a nice person and probably she's struggling. That's what my mom would have said to me. But you know what I said, You want me to go
beat her up? Right? You said she's such an itchy you want me to go beat her up. Of course, I'm not going to use physical violence. Calm down, everybody. I'm not being literal. But what that statement said is I hear you, I feel your feeling, and I feel protective of That's what I heard. Other people who use toxic positivity say things like, you know, we just have to be grateful for what we have, okay, and the big one, don't be so negative. Don't be
so negative. You know what toxic positivity. As far as I'm concerned is actually a form of gaslighting, because remember what gaslighting is, right, where you make the other person feel crazy, that they're the crazy one. So it creates this false narrative of reality. You know, there was a person I knew who has toxic positivity. That's her coping strategy. I'm sure she has a lot of underlying anger, and it's not my job to deal with
it or get out. But anytime I would try to be authentic and express my real feeling, she would change the subject, she would get happier, she would find a way to you know, she just couldn't tolerate it. And what did I feel? I felt dismissed. I felt pained because I was I was just being ignored, right, And I felt kind of embarrassed and a shame that I tried to be vulnerable and it made her feel that
uncomfortable, like somehow my real feelings weren't welcome. I do want to be clear though, that toxic positivity is very different from this area of psychology called positive psychology. I teach this in all my classes at cal State Channel Islands. The father of positive psychology is a former head of the APA American Psychological
Association. Martin Seligman, He's written all kinds of books about positive psychology, and he basically looked at what with therapy was doing, and that it was allowing people to wallow and whine and giving them all kinds of empathy in the therapeutic frame in the office, but they weren't working to build up someone's strengths. Right. So positive psychology isn't about suppressing feelings ignoring feelings. It's about saying, Wow, some bad stuff happened to you. Let's see how you
were able to become resilient, How were you able to become hearty? What kind of strengths grew from that horrible thing? Not like, oh, let's look on the bright side, you should be grateful, right, And so basically, positive psychology tries to help people gain the skills to be able to deal with the bad stuff in life so that they can live a life that is full and authentic, compassionate, humane, and to have this ability to be whole and not be afraid of our feelings, right, not be afraid
of the negative feelings when they show up. As I was and still am, sometimes nobody's more. I shouldn't disclose this, but My sweet loving boyfriend is so afraid of anger, and I'm like, you need to get angry more. I end up getting angry more often than he does. So what do we do with our anger? We don't try to just ignore it. We don't it find a way to just you know, hit pillows and all
that kind of Although going for a good walk can't be good. But there's new research that just came out showing that anger actually has benefits to help you attain your goals. And I'm going to explain all the steps of how we can all use anger in a healthy way when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Andy Walls Show and KFI AM six forty were live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand KFI
A M six forty. You have Doctor Andy Walsh with you. This is the Doctor Andy Walls Show. Oh my goodness, anger, anger, anger. I feel so uncomfortable when I am angry. I don't know what to do with it. And I know the research says, you know, hitting a pillow or doing what it doesn't work. It raises your heart rate, it raises your blood pressure. There is some researchers say that going for a
nice long walk to cool off is very helpful. But there's a new study from the Department of Psychologue Glen Brain Sciences at Texas A and M University, and the studies called anger has benefits for attaining goals. Da da da da. You know, it reminds me of a very famous Malcolm X quote. Malcolm X once said, usually when people are sad, they don't do anything, They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they
bring about a change. So let's go back to, you know, the Me Too movement, when women started to really go Wait a minute, I had this unspeakable of feeling that I was being discriminated against or sexually harassed in the workplace, or god forbid, sexually assaulted. And I had nowhere to put this anger. But now that we can, you know, have a hashtag go on Twitter. We can you know, try to take abusers down.
It helps people when they do something about it. Now, I know that a lot of you believe that a state of happiness is idea and that the pursuit of happiness should be our major goal. I think it's written into our constitution or something I don't know something about the pursuit of happiness. Isn't it some big legal document. Well, and I know it's a Will Smith movie. That's whyfe liberty pursuit of happens. You know, it's something political.
We're supposed to be doing it over here in America anyway. But here's what we know that a mix of emotions, which includes negative states, actually results in the best outcomes for us. Remember, we inherited every single feeling and emotion because our ancestors needed it and we need it right. So here's what the researchers did at Texas A and M University. They did seven separate experiments. They used students to participate, and they made students experience anger.
Apparently it's very easy to make college students feel really angry when you insult their school. They showed pictures of you know, some of the football stars wearing diapers and baby bottles, and I don't know. They just got them all rowled up and angry. And then what they did is gave them different puzzles to solve, and they found that anger helped the students solve more puzzles when they were asked to play a challenging computer game. The game was rigged to
make it nearly impossible to win, like some crazy Rubik's Cube. This made the students angry, but in those moments they moved faster, their reaction time decreased, and so overall, as far as productivity is concerned, anger actually can increase its beneficial increases. It can be a superpower. Right now, how there are some steps, because we know that anger can do some very bad things. If you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, or
you hit a person or break an object. This is not a healthy way to channel your anger. So let's talk about what really is healthy. Here are the steps. Write them down. Number one, recognize it. Some people are so used to their own toxic positivity, or they've been told that, you know, you're not attractive if you show that anger that they're not even aware that it's there. So you might want to check your body for it. Is it in your stomach, Is it in your chest? Is
your heart beating fast? Do you have a headache? Recognize where that anger is in your body and then attribute it. Now, if you're somebody who always blames yourself, which I always was, what did I do wrong? If I had done it differently, than this wouldn't have happened, right, I had to learn to tolerate the guilt of attributing it to others. Now, if you're somebody who externalizes and you're blaming everybody else for all your problems,
you need to learn how to tolerate self blame. When you're angry right now, if your anger is completely all consuming and you might hurt somebody, you need to step away, cool down, because if you go for that long walk, then your thinking brain can use the angry energy more thoughtfully. When I was angry this week, I actually when I use anything, Julio and I had a very small tip. It wasn't even a big deal,
and we're fine now. But I stormed out, I'm going to the gym, And then on the way to the gym, I called my best friend and I never made it to the gym. I was just walking around the block talking to her, inventing right in the meantime. What he does when he's angry, probably not as healthy, is he rides his motorcycle. So I'm watching him ride his motorcycle around the block and around it and passing me, and I'm walking and he said, we're pretending we don't even see each
other. Then we get home and we're like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it was weird. Okay, So also fight knee jerk reactions that won't help you feel better. I know we love to have those moments of retribution, right, I'm gonna get them. That's not gonna make you feel any better. Or what about you know what when you apologize to me? No, extracted apologies never make us feel better. They're they're not even real. Instead, except that that other person might never see your side, and that's
okay. You don't have to win when you have anger. All you need to do is express your needs, set your boundaries. Oh and stick to those boundaries or maybe find a compromise. But you don't have to insist that they see you, understand you, that they said you win. Just make sure you say I'm angry when you did this, it hurt me in this way. Just tell them that's it. So from now on, the new rule is I am not going to and then you stick to it and walk
away. Try to refrain from ranting and venting and repeating yourself. That's not solution oriented and the biggest one don't ignore your anger and don't ignore confrontation. It doesn't have to be scary. You will get better and better and better at it the more you just learn to say, hey, this really bothered me, and so in the future, I would like for you to do this, or I'm going to react by doing that. Okay, you just
basically set your boundaries straight, all right. A lot of people online imagine that they are dating narcissists for some reason, the narcissistic personality disorder, which is only about, like we should look this up, Kayla, two to three percent of the population. If you look on you know, TikTok, it's like eighty percent of the guys women are dating. However, there are certain things that narcissists actually do, and I'll tell you how to spot them
when we come back. How many point five and one percent? It's the point five, So maybe one out of one hundred dudes is an actual narcissist. Some of them have narcissistic traits and some of them are just a little bit selfish. But I'll tell you how to spot a real narcissist when we come back. You are listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show, on KFI AM six forty alive everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You're listening to KFI AM six forty on demand KFI I Am six forty. You have Doctor Wendy Waalsh
with you. This is the Doctor Wendy Waalsh Show. I'd like to welcome my TikTok audience. If you'd like to come in the studio and see what we're doing here, just log onto TikTok and look me up at doctor Wendy Walsh at Dr Wendy Walsh. And the reason why we're on TikTok now is because after this segment, I will begin to take your calls for my drive by makeshift relationship advice, So get ready for that. I'll be giving out the number at the end of the segment. Okay, So today we are
talking about narcissists. If you look at the women venting and ranting on the internet about their dating lives, you would estimate that about eighty percent of men have a narcissistic personality disorder. I'll tell you what's actually going on. We have an oversupply of successful women who are because of the advent of the birth control pill, can now enjoy sex without the risk of reproduction, and so
why not it feels good. They're putting sex out into the culture and high supply, and you know what happens when something rises in supply, the price goes down. So in the nineteen fifties, the price of sex was let's see six months of courtship and an altar, a full on wedding. People tried to be virgins until they got married. Right in the nineteen eighties, that was my era, the price of sex was three expensive dates. There was this third date rule. Today, the price of sex can be one
well worded text. And as a result, men are starting to call the shots because they don't have to commit. They're getting what they need. Now. We know they need more. We know they need an emotional connection with a woman. We know they need love. But it's hard for them to do that when they're getting so much free sex. So I'm not telling women to stop having sex with men. I'm saying we should be petitioning our government
to give us money for childcare. Every workplace should have free childcare in it because there's a growing number of single parents, because we have a fertility window that men just don't have. Right, But I digress. So there are men out there waving the flag that I'm just wired that way. I'm polyamorous, and I'm very committed to all the women I'm having sex with. Uh huh, it's just because you have access to more women. It's not that
you're all polyamorous. Okay, I'm just gonna say that flat out. It's because you can and women are allowing it. We'll say that, not blaming women, to saying it's happening. So it's not that eighty percent of men out there are narcissists, but one percent of them actually are, according to data, right, actually have a bone of eyed narcissistic personality disorder. So how do you know? How can you spot that narcissist that's showing up. First of all, they tend to engage in a lot of love bombing.
Now, at the very beginning of any relationship, two people overvalue each other. You literally, there's research to show that your neurochemistry actually thinks the person's better than they are. So yeah, there are going to be some compliments, some praise, some attention, some gifts. Let me tell you my story. One time, on a third date, a guy gave me a Cardier watch. Now had I known what I know now, it was like
an early apology, that's what was happening. It was like, here, take this now, because there's some bad stuff that's going to happen, and I'm going to do it to you. That was it. I found out he was cheating on me with all kinds of women. Did they all have Cardia watches? I don't know. Here's another way to spot a narcissist, besides the love bombing bombing. If you do try to be vulnerable and honest and express your feelings, they get irritated and they gaslight you and make you
feel like there's something wrong with you. Well, maybe you just need to go deal with this, okay, because that's not my thing, right, That's how narcissists do. One time, years ago, I met a guy.
It was a fix up through other people and I we did one of those overnights at a hotel, but not in one hotel room, like we were just going to meet at a resort that's in my town, and he said, oh, I'll get you your own room and we'll have dinner there and I'm flying in And it was a fix up through friends, So I knew him and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I knew the friends, and of course he expected me to go in even though there were two rooms, expected me to spend time in his room and that night,
and I chose not to, and he got so angry. This guy literally did the flip from being kind and elegant too angry and rude. And in fact, we had to drive back to LA two hours and he was driving, and he drove, so I was so terrified. Ugh. So, yeah, it's a narcissist. They get irritated. They also maintain this false idea of security. Narcisses don't want to get vulnerable. They think feelings are weird. Do they make you feel like you're weird for having feelings? And
they are so stealth at changing the subject and deflecting. I remember I was dating this guy one time and I called him and I said something I don't know, sweet and loving and wanting to be close to him, and he said, hey, did you hear who was hosting SNL last night? He literally just changed that, So I was like, did I just say what I thought? I said? Narcissies love to go shopping because they want to control you and your style, right, That's what they do. They it's
not like they're being generous and love bombing. They want to mold you into somebody they can control, and they love to control the plans. Right, So it seems romantic because they suddenly have these last minute great concert tickets, or they call you and say, you know, one time, this guy called me and he's chatting with me and he's trying to It was late at night too, and he's trying to get all sweet and sexy and lovy. And then after I'm taking the bait a bit, then he says, oh,
by the way, I'm parked outside your apartment right now. Can I come up? As if it's this big romantic gesture, I'm like, that is creepy. No, you can't come up. That is weird that he drove to do that. All right, when we come back, I'm going to be taking your calls. The number is one eight hundred five two zero one KFI. That's one eight hundred five two zero one five three four. You can change your name if you want, because I know these are tender
topics and reminder. I'm not a therapist, I'm a psychology professor, but I've written three books on relationships, and did a dissertation on attachment style. So I've got some Auntie Wendy wisdom for you. One eight hundred five two zero one five three four. You are listening to The Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI AM six forty. We Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app KFI A M six forty on demand