@DrWendyWalsh is tackling the heavy issues we face on the holiday. (12/22) Hour 1

at Gelson's. It was the week before Christmas. Both of our baskets were totally full of all the things you would need to lay out a Christmas table, and even included things like some decorations and some special serving dishes, because you know, Gelson's has forggin everything. Hey, they don't tell me to say this, I'm just saying that's my So. I looked at her, and she looked at me, and we checked out each other's cart, and she said to me, was very sweet. She said, it looks like we have

our work cut out for us this week. And I smiled at her, and I kind of did an eye roll. Oh, we certainly do, because you know, women hold families together, and men, I know you're out there, and I know a lot of you do more than just carve the turkey, although I'm shocked at how few men know how to carve a turkey anymore, just saying, but women really create kinship, maintain the ties of family, do the physical labor of

putting on various holiday dinners. So this woman said, well, it looks like we have our work cut out for.

was the best education my kids ever had. So we would I would pull them out of school to get cheaper plane flights. At different times, we would stay in small airbnb so I had a kitchenette to be able to make food and not have to go out every night. And by the time my oldest graduated high school, she'd

gone to sixteen different countries. So what I did is whenever we traveled is I would buy Christmas ornaments because you know, a lot of these souvenir shops all year round sell Christmas ornaments, even if you go in the summer. So when I started opening up all the boxes, I pulled out beautiful ornaments from the al of Morongo, where the glass blowing island in Italy, Iceland that had icicles on it. I found New Mexico, I found places in

Canada I found Costa Rica. I found this beautiful little ornament of Notre Dame that played the music and the bells. Of course that was before Notre Dame burned down and now has been rebuilt. But I went through the memories alone and rather than it being a wistful time, I open myself a little battle of bubbly, just gonna say I why not have a flute champagne with you while

you have the Christmas music on? And instead of me feeling lonely or feeling like, oh, I have to do all this work by myself, the kids aren't here helping me, I got to decorate instead. I felt like it was an assessment. It was going through a life that I'd spent as a single mom for twenty years. It was seeing the fruits of it. It was me wondering when my kids are going to come to me and say, hey, half of those are mine. I'm doing my own Christmas tree this year, and I could pass them on as

a family tradition. But I really looked, and I think partly because of that sweet lady at Gelson's, I looked at the work as a time of joy. Now for some people, the holidays are not filled with complete joy because this year they may have lost a loved one. I want to remind everybody that life is about loss, and it is about regulating our feelings during a time time of loss, it is also a time of growth, and that our lives kind of go in a circular.

to understand that we all deal with grief in different ways. Now, I want to tell you that my family of origin, my New Clear family, are very interesting because they don't dwell and own memories. They sort of old memories. They kind of close the book and move on. We're move on people. I don't know whether it's a staunch Irish Catholic thing. The person dies, we have the wake, we clean out the closet, it's done. My family, like, I don't even know where my parents they died when I

was in like thirty and thirty one. I don't even know where they're buried. I've never visited their graves. Producer Kale's look give me wide eyed, like what the heck? I'm like, No, we don't do like that. However, we do have my mom's recipe book, we do have my dad's way of cooking a Sunday dinner. We do mention them from time to time, not in a wistful way, but they we also realize they live within us. I see little pieces of my mom and my daughter's and

they never met their grandmother. She died before they were ever born or conceived. But I think we shouldn't judge how people grieve. And you do, you right, Whatever you need to do this year at the holiday, to celebrate a loved one, or get over a loved one and try something completely different, go to a different house, travel for the holiday, whatever.

mine was doing all the flower arrangements. I didn't really direct her on that, although I picked out the flowers the day before, but I had to stop and just let it go and show up at my wedding and not spend the day going oh god, almost the flowers had been that way. Oh why didn't they put the place card on that angle? It would have driven me nuts.

I wanted to just enjoy it. And the reason why I'm telling you this story is because this is what the holidays are to many women like it must a table must look a certain way, the people must sit in a certain order, The things have to it has to be perfect. So I want to talk to you about reducing holiday stress by telling you that the first thing you should know is that we live in an imperfect world and those people who are coming to your home,

family members, friends, are not extras in your movie. They are the stars of their own movie. You, in fact, are an extra in their movie. Okay, a set designer anyway, Right, So we really have to just let go and let life once we've done as much planning as we possibly can. And I'll tell you I'm using the example of my wedding again because it was the best day of my life, but it could have been the worst day if I spent time thinking about, Oh, this wasn't exactly how I imagine.

Oh she didn't do that, and that person was supposed sitting there white they change seats, but I didn't. I didn't allow myself. If even a spark of a thought of that started to creep in for a second, I would push it away and say, I am so happy. I cannot believe I'm getting to attend this beautiful party and that it all came to fruition. So let's talk about some of the things that come up over the

holidays that cause stress. First of all, family dynamics. You know, when everybody gets to that holiday table, they all become twelve years old again, even if they're in their forties. The sibling rivalry is alive and well the parent's favorite child is very clear, right, So I need you to rise above it, literally look past it. Think about bringing the family together and strengthening their relationships in different ways. For instance, try playful activities to get did you producer, Kayla,

hear my stomach just growl right there? Yeah, I'm late for my dinner.

be the year about presents. Please don't be represents. I don't need more stuff. But what I want for Christmas from everybody is that you guys play Rommy Cube with me. Is my favorite table game, and I love Remicube, and I want those young citizens of my family to sit there and play with me. Hey, maybe you want to play board games. Maybe you want to play charades or have organize a scavenger hunt. Oh the other thing I told one of the kids, is I want them to

teach me their favorite recipe at something. Yeah, give them some power and control. My oldest daughter has this eggnog recipe. I'll tell you that eggnog will put you on your butt. I don't know what she puts in it, but it is strong and she does that. Okay. Another thing you can do to help build stronger relationships is please it's the holidays. Just get comfortable with having conflict. You don't have to resolve everything. You don't have to solve everything.

You don't have to be the play cater, the negotiator, the smoother over.

just change it up, do something different. You know, one year, my daughter, I have two daughters with two different body types by nature, and one of them I've always been doing absolutely the wrong thing, and I've been on her about her eating and her weight. And one year she came home for Christmas and she just said, hey, Mom, I think the first thing I said, you know, when she was going to make a big, fattening, calorie laden, high fat, high sugar dessert is I think I said, hey,

you know, don't make it too big. We don't need to eat that much sugar this year. And she said, okay, Mom, this is the holidays. I'm going to ask you not to talk about bodies, body weight, cooking, sugar, anything for this break. It would make a better holiday for me. And she said it calm like that, like I wish I could be more calm. And I said, oh, you're right, and so now when the holidays are there, nobody's talking about anybody's gaining weight, losing weight anything. We just eat

the food that's there and enjoy ourselves. Here's a final thought, go out for walks when we go visit my brother in Canada. One of the things we have to do because there's so much food and the meals tend to back up against each other, is as a big family group, we put on our mclucks. Those are ugs for you guys, and we walk out in the snow. It's a good mile loop and through the woods at their house and they live kind of out in the wilderness and it's cold.

You have to walk fast or your toes and fingers freeze, and it's a good chance we kind of. It starts out with a group of maybe ten family members and then the fast walkers go out front, the slower ones are in the back chatting, and it goes into little conversation groups as we do our one mile walk, and we try to do it like twice a day after the big meals. It's a great thing to do, even

if you just take one or two people. It's a healthy thing to get out, but it creates little smaller conversations between people, and yeah, you'll be gossiping about the others, but that's what that's what families do.

Wendy Walls Show on KFI AM six forty. We're live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.

interesting about it. He doesn't just ask you about your love relationships. He asks you, of course, about the relationship you had with your father, about the relationship you had with your mother, and also the relationship you have with your best friend. Because these attachment behaviors we project onto all our relationships in life, including our friendships. Now I want to say that when a friendship ends, we don't actually have, you know, kind of cultural advice for how

to do that. We know how to end a romantic breakup because there are enough books written about that. We know it probably shouldn't be by text. We know it shouldn't be like weaned slowly off somebody till they quote unquote get the message and disappear. We know people shouldn't be ghosted. That can hurt terribly. We know that we should have a conversation with them. I'm fine with telephone. I don't think you need to be in person. I'm a big telephone breaker upper. You know what, My husband

Julio and I had this conversation the other day. Did you know that I don't think anyone's ever broken up with me? I mean, there have been a lot of playboy guys that just sort of slowly fade away when I'm reaching out to them, But nobody's ever said, you know, I don't think it's gonna work with us, Wendy, because I think men are not big breaker uppers. Producer Kayla, have you ever known a guy to actually break up and have the conversation?

not going to hang out with them anymore. And so, unfortunately, because I'm a talker and I like to process and I like to have the conversation, it hurts me so deeply when a close friend just disappears and stops responding to your text. And I know many of people who

have done that to me across my lifespan. But then when I think about Chris Freeley and the attachment test, if I, way back when had an kind of anxious attachment style and I was mostly attracted to avoidant men, doesn't that mean I was also attracted to avoidant women as friends. And yeah, they were behaving the same way, just kind of ghosting and disappearing. And what hurts the most is there's no closure, there's no ability to talk things out or change, and it can really really hurt.

It's like you're warning somebody who's died, but they didn't die. They're still alive, and you're wondering what was your piece in it. Now, here's what I want to say about friendships. If you've been Unfortunately, the victim of being abruptly broken up with by a friend not included on certain invitation lists anymore, and you see them on social media doing stuff without you. You have to remember that there are different kinds of friendships, and very few of our friendships

will be life long. The vast majority of our friendships are stage of life friends. We have them as close friends, maybe when we're in college or when we're building our career, or there are mom and dad friends in the village when we're raising small children, or they're friends because they're

the parents of our kids. Friends, Like, there's a whole time where our kids pick our friends for us, and they're people that we might not have chosen, but you know, we'll hang out with them because we're doing play dates with the kids and we're co parenting in the community. Now, only a few friends are close intimate friends. Some of our friends are just social friends. They're keeping it light and yeah, you may have said something that upset them.

You may actually be living your best life and they can't handle their feelings of envy, right, and so as a result they break things off, But they don't do the phone call. So here's what I want you to do if this ever happens to you. First of all, you can chase them down and try to get answers. They may not even know the answers or the why, or they're going to deny. I don't know. I've just been busy.

friend groups. Find the healthiest friends, and I mean mentally healthy and physically healthy, and you will get mentally healthy and physically healthy. Absolutely, friendships are the things that help us grow. So maybe you're thinking about a New Year's resolution. Maybe you're thinking about ending some friendships. You don't have to do the phone call. You can just move on and make time for other people and just focus on the ones that bring you up, the friendships that help

you rise. Oh okay, I want to I think we should go to social media and answer a few relationship questions because I haven't done a lot about romantic relationships producer Kayala so far. I want to remind everybody I'm not a therapist. I'm a psychology professor. But I have written three books on relationships and did my dissertation on attachment theory, and I think I healed myself with my own advice, found a great guy on Bumble four and a half years ago, and have a wonderful marriage now,

not that we don't fight. It's a healthy marriage, is what it is. We have a healthy conflict when it happens. But I'm happy to weigh in on your love life. So if you'd like to send me a DM a direct message on Instagram, you certainly may. The handle is at Dr Wendy Walsh. That's at doctor Wendy Walsh. Let's answer your relationship questions 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.

What's the best way to fight against spiraling? I know this will hurt badly. Okay, So there's two questions here, uh, that I think you need to bring up. You say that you're in different types of therapy. That makes me wonder. I think you need to be with a good, licensed clinical therapist who And that's the first question. The first question you want your therapist to help you answer is how do you You don't have to break up with your boyfriend.

You can just learn to express boundaries right now. If his reaction when you express boundaries is to try to thrash your boundaries or criticize you, or put you down or what have you, then you know it's time.

you're triggering me, you're doing it. Nobody intentionally is trying to make you deregulate. What's happening is you might have had a pattern in early life, a learned pattern of behavior. That is, when you have a feeling, like a feeling of shame, loss, rejection, hurt, abandonment, that the reaction that your brain has chosen is to get angry sad, and that those feelings are so uncomfortable to you that then you quote unquote get triggered, and it sounds like you

do unhealthy things. The best way to fight against spiraling spiraling. So what therapy does is therapy does not make us happy. I want to make that very clear. Therapy makes you real, Therapy makes you authentic. Therapy makes you not afraid of feelings, not afraid of quote unquote spiraling. There is this idea that the feeling will be so unmanageable that you will

do something bad. You will shop yourself to death, you will drink yourself to death, you'll do something right to have a lot of sex with people you don't like that much. Whatever, to try to feel good. But a good therapist will help you tolerate the feelings and know that if you wait, they will pass. Feelings aren't dangerous. Feelings are messengers, and sometimes uncomfortable feelings are meant for us because we're meant to make a change in our life.

So this worry and anxiety you have that you can't handle the feelings of leaving your boyfriend tells me that you're staying in an uncomfortable situation to avoid something that you perceive to be more uncomfortable. What about just learning how to tolerate all the discomfort, use it as messages, messengers, and make your way in life. Anyway, talk to your therapists, Babe, You're going to get through this. But stop dressing for him. Just want to say that, that's your auntie talking right here.

Stop dressing for him, all right? Moving on, Dear doctor Wendy, my friend keeps involving me in her relationship drama. Oh, I've been there. She makes me follow her boyfriend's exes on social media, pop up at his work, and so much more. It makes me uncomfortable. How do I get her to stop without ruining our relationship? Is this like you guys testing me on boundaries here, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.

Glendestine on behalf. They should have said, you know what, let's go out and find a new guy. If you don't trust this guy, let's all go out. So you need to put a boundary. You need to say the word no. You don't have to get mad, you can just say it in a kind way. She chooses to ruin your relationship.

And the third thing, according to research is if you're lucky enough to choose somebody with a secure attachment. Now, most people with an anxious attachment of saying, oh, they're too nice and I want to be with that nice person.

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