December 21, 2025 • 27 mins
Dr. Wendy is giving us some Wendy wisdom with her drive by makeshift relationship advice. PLUS we are talking to Dr. Andrew Erdman, the licensed psychotherapist and historian, about his podcast "Feel Familiar? Emotionally Intelligent History."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. I'm answering your social media questions.
If you have a relationship question, you just send me
a DM on Instagram at Dr Wendy Walsh at doctor
Wendy Walsh. Uh Dear doctor Wendy, how can I handle
(00:20):
disagreements in a way that strengthens the relationship instead of
damaging it. I tend to lash out at my boyfriend
and raise my voice at times. He's infuriating. Okay, first
of all, you are acting with your ancient brain. You know,
it's like you're a baby or an adolescent. I mean,
(00:43):
we all are inside, right, and so what's happening is
you haven't processed some of your feelings through your prefrontal cortex,
which is like an editor. It kind of washes things.
It gives us language for things. So I'm going to
give you a few tips that I use with my
husband if I'm mad. And the first is I totally
(01:04):
become aware of my body. So instead of saying.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
You did this or why did you say that?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I say, literally, I feel like adrenaline in my stomach
right now, and I feel my heart beating really fast.
Focus on your experience. Okay, just say it out loud.
It's not necessarily for him to solve. It's for you
to become aware of and by saying it out loud,
you become aware of it. And then I want you
(01:30):
to think of a reaction that begins with your feelings.
It might be something like, you know, what you said
just then felt like a threat to me. It felt
like you could possibly leave me over this. That is
a whole lot better than how dare you say that? Right?
That's sort of a lashing out, a protective thing. So
(01:53):
stay in touch with your body and then stay on
I feel words right and again I always say it,
but I mean it. You guys can go to licensed
therapists and learn how to fight fair. These are skills
that can be learned. They really can be all right,
Dear doctor Wendy, how do I know when to compromise
and when to stand firm on my values? What are
(02:15):
the keys to look for? Well, it's not really the
keys you need to look for here, it's your value
you need to look for.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Be real clear.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I mean, sometimes people will say, well, that's my value,
when really, really it's just your taste and mustard. I
don't know, Like, come on, a value is something that
is almost life or death to you. Like one of
your values might be, we don't murder people in my household,
(02:43):
or we don't insult people at the dinner table, or
one of my huge values is that family actually comes
before work, or one of my values is the work
ethic is so important and hard work is more important
than you know, taking a weekend off for something fun, right,
(03:04):
whatever it is, figure out what your values are, because
it's like you're like, when do I compromise or when
do I stand firm? That tells me you don't have
values and you don't have boundaries. So write a list
of all the stuff that you're like that is a
non negotiable for me, and again then cross off all
the little stuff. You know, how they squeeze the toothpaste out,
(03:30):
how they flip their burgers. I don't know that stuff
is not a value, right, that's a habit. And remember
I say it over and over and I mean it.
We cannot change anybody else. We can only change our
reaction to them, all right, dear doctor, Wendy, What should
(03:52):
I do if I feel like I'm putting in more
effort than my girlfriend? I love her, but she's wrapped
up in the man should do and be everything mindset.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
That's a mindset.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That's a thing. All right. Let me just say this,
Why why are you doing it? I don't understand. It's
just so simple. Just don't put in the effort. And
if she leaves you, okay, this is not the girl
for you. It's not a good match.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I mean again, you, your job is not to convince
her out.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Of her mindset. Her mindset is her mindset. She's never
going to change her mindset by words. You know what,
I'm putting in too much around here. I'm just gonna
do less. Oh really, well, I believe a man should
do everything. She is going to learn when you give
her the gift of pain, and the gift of pain
may simply be you know, I feel like I've done
(04:39):
my eighty percent in this household. I would like to
be a little more fifty to fifty. That feels better
to me, whatever it may be, whatever you're talking about
where there's domestic chores, where I also want to be
careful when I hear you say I put in more
effort than my girlfriend. I want to know what that
effort is because it might be something that she doesn't
consider effort or hard work. And you guys need to
(05:00):
discuss that, right because all people they should sacrifice for
each other, because a relationship is an exchange of care.
So they're going to put in effort, they should be
putting an effort. If the effort is that you have
to do all the calling, to arrange all the social things,
if you have to pay for everything, I'm assuming you're
(05:22):
not living together yet you didn't mention that, so it
sounds like she wants courtship to extend eternally.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, you need to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Say hey, we've been seeing each other six months, a year, whatever,
four years, whatever it is, and just say we're not
in a courtship phase anymore, and I'd like to see
you step up and contribute. And if you can't, then
we need to talk about this. Right, But why are
you doing it? Why are you doing it?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
All?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Right to your doctor, Wendy, what role do honesty and
timing play when sharing difficult feelings? Or I love this question,
It's an excellent question. Okay, you want to be honest.
But if you're honest too early, like on a first date,
(06:08):
you're trauma dumping, right. And if you wait too long,
then you're being a little too closed and mysterious and
you don't actually get to grow emotional intimacy. You do
it by just dipping your toe in bit by bit
at the very beginning of dating. You're gonna test somebody
(06:29):
by just throwing in some kind of little thing, right,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
You're gonna like say some.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And just something tender, some memory, something, and then you're
gonna see how they react. And if they change the subject,
if they laugh at you, if they are dismissive, they
failed the test, and you don't want to move further
disclosing more things or you will hurt yourself. You also
may not want to continue with that relationship because they
(06:59):
fail the test. Right, So honesty and timing are very
important now. In my particular case, my husband and I
started with intimacy and bare honesty, and partly it had
to do with the fact that we were grown ups
and we were in our fifties, and so I started
our first coffee date by simply saying hey, instead of
telling each other how fabulous we are. Why don't we
(07:21):
start by telling a story about how undtable we believe
we are? And he looked shocked and said, okay, you
go first, And so we began our coffee date with
real intimate conversation. But it was reciprocal. Both people did
it all right. That brings that to a close. We
have special guests when we come back.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Okay, my next guest I'm very excited to have on
the show because he's interested in the two things I'm
interested in psychology and history, and also the question of
why don't we learn from history? I would like to
welcome doctor Andy Erdman a license to get this psychotherapist
and a historian who's uncovering how societies repeatedly enact the
(08:13):
same all nonsense over and over.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Hi, doctor Andy, how are you?
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Hi, Doctor Wendy. It's great to be here. Yeah, you've
got those interests too. I think it's a rare overlap,
but I think an essential one.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So your podcast, we should get this out of the
way and make sure we mention it again later. Is
called feel familiar Emotionally intelligent history. And in your podcast
you look at a riot that took place in a
theater in back in eighteen forty nine. Twenty five people
died and you called it a celebrity fueled culture war.
(08:50):
Can you just tell me in a bullet point what
happened there?
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Yeah, So in eighteen forty nine, this is in Manhattan,
you had a big rivalry between these two actors on
his name Edwin Forrest, and he's kind of the he's
the first American born action he's American born actor. He's
kind of an action hero, kind of a Tom Cruise
Bruce Willis type. And there are all these guys, these
young sort of bros. They're known as the Bowery Boys,
(09:14):
you might have heard that term. And they're very like
pro American, we're real Americans, even though of course they're
not Indigenous Americans. They're immigrants, and they're very white identified
and you know, they don't like girls, etcetera, etcetera, very masculinist.
And there's a British actor named William McCready who is
really popular, brilliant actor, and he is beloved by the
(09:36):
more elite, moneyed classes of New York who are known
as the upper ten or the codfish aristocracy. I know
why they were called that, but it's pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Funny and I had a lot of money off codfish.
I will tell you. I'm from Newfoundland originally.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Okay, oh yeah, so yeah, that's the cod Yeah, that's
that's serious cod Cod neighborhood. So yes. So MacCready comes
to do a tour of Macbeth at the Astor Place
opera house, which is sort of the krem dela Creme.
It's where the fancy classes like to go, and the
Edwin Forrest followers, these kind of rough and tumble guys,
(10:11):
believe this is like a conspiracy theory of the day.
They believe that McCready has been undermining ned Forrest's career
and making it hard for him to get gigs in
England and in Europe. It's not true, but they believe it.
So there's this again, this kind of white grievance. And
there's something very to me again as a psychotherapist, something
very adolescent about it, Harry, that hurt adolescent where it's
(10:35):
like you're no good, but we need you to recognize
us the way that's kind of an adolescent does. So
they decide that they're going to do a big takedown
of McCready when he plays Macbeth at the Opera House
in May of eighteen forty nine. And they put all
their people together and they're going to smash windows and
try to break their way in and shut down their performance.
(10:56):
In Meanwhile, the people who are backing McCready at the
Opera House are these very prominent New Yorkers, the mayor
and also some well known writers, Washington Irving and Herman Melville.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, we cannot
have the mob telling the unlettered mob telling us what
we can do and can't do. So Forrest Edwin Forrest,
(11:18):
the American guy, does his own version of Macbeth down
at his favorite theater down on Bowery, just as McCready's
doing his. Anyway, there's a big riot they try to
bring down McCready. The city authorities call in the National
Guard to put down the mob, and the National Guard
ends up opening fire. This is the huge crowd, there's
fifteen thousand people. They end up opening fire, and as
(11:41):
you point out, wow, so.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
We don't want to give the whole end away. We
want people to listen to the whole podcast. But what
I want to know is one of the things you
talk about is that how unprocessed societal trauma can and
it can kind of create this cycle of violence in
future generations. In looking into the future from history, how
(12:11):
do you process trauma that's society wide.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Yeah, well, it's a good question, and there are different
models for it, and obviously it's not an easy thing.
But if you start with sort of the so I
think like, well, we're working with an individual client, I
would look for the parts of the self that have
been dissociated, that have been repressed, and you can often
see that projected onto the other. So there's a sense
(12:37):
of the self where there's huge amounts of shame, and
shame often gets and grief often gets covered up with
feelings of aggression. So there's a way to say we understand, like,
nobody wants to feel that they come from a family,
a group, a state, a country, a race that has
(12:58):
done bad things. People don't like to, you know, admit
that sort of thing, but the shame is survivable and
once we integrate that shame. And I would say this
is probably familiar to you, your your professor of psychology.
You know that there's grief. Uh, there's grief underneath it,
there's all and there's existential feelings, and then those are
integrated into our adult ego. And so rather than responding
(13:22):
from our kind of limbic system, which which is, you know,
our kind of fight flight. You know, people familiar with
trauma will know that we can begin to integrate from
our pre frontal prefrontal cortex, which is really our executive function.
It's the it's the kind of thing that goes. Let
me think this through first before I throw a brick
through a window, like we all want to do it
when we feel someone cuts us off in traffic. And
(13:45):
I think more than you know a sense of when
people talk about our way of life is being threatened,
I think what they really mean is they feel at
some level as if they're going to be erased and unseen.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Oh well, that's even been said, right that this of
a group of Americans right now are fearing that they
will be a race. And so your answer is, you know,
I often say that, you know, our job, all of us,
is to go with a fine tooth comb through our
childhood and process these mini traumas or experiences through our
(14:20):
adult prefrontal cortex. So it's like we filter it through
and there's all kinds of techniques. I'm sure your clients
do it through talk therapy, sometimes journaling and writing, and
sometimes just you know, some of the most traumatized people
produce great art, right, films, poetry, et cetera about their pain.
(14:40):
So when you think about what's going on in America today,
what do you think is the biggest collective trauma that
Americans have not processed?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Well, I think one trauma. I mean, this is not
kind of my original idea, but I think it is
this kind of addiction to kind of Anglo European whiteness,
that we are white somehow and that saves us from
being at the bottom with you know, black and brown people.
(15:13):
And I think underneath that there's a sense of, you know, well,
if I'm not somehow superior, who am I? What am I?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
You know?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
And I think that can account for a lot of structural,
you know, and other inequalities that we continue to see.
Now there's also there's also class trauma. There's this society
and you know, we didn't build it on our own
or overnight, but which says that society is a big ladder.
It's a big pyramid. Ultimately, you have to sort of
(15:44):
fight your way to the top, and you can't be
sure if someone's been stepping on your head or if
you're going to step on somebody else's head. Rather than
a different conception of a mutual and related you know,
social order, social space kind of like a therapist tries
to create with a client, which is this is an
equal space for you to be here.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
If that makes sense, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
We have to go to a break, but when we
come back. I just watched all of ken Burn's American Revolution.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
It's a lot of outs.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Oh yes, I saw the first episode.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Oh good, and it really talks about that addiction to
whiteness and also the class piece. I do want to
talk about this, this idea that America is, you know,
broke away from British and the class system, and there
is this illusion that we don't have class, but we
have a lot of very distinct classes. They're just more subtle.
(16:36):
We'll talk about this when we come back. My guests
doctor Andy Erdman. He's a license psychotherapist and historian. His
podcast Feel Familiar Emotionally Intelligent History.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
So, Doctor Andy Erdman, your podcast Feel Familiar emotionally intelligent
history looks at a particular event in history, But do
you do some comparisons to what's going on today?
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Absolutely, because what we saw in the events that I
cover in Field Familiar is the Astroplace Theater riot of
eighteen forty nine, in which there's a very race, class,
and gender based divide. It focuses on these two dueling actors,
but really it's about these deeper grievances and then the
government intercy.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
You do.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
You have soldiers on the street and people are being
shot dead, which you know, scarily is close to what's happening,
you know, in places today. I think what's different about
eighteen forty nine is in that particular fracture, you don't
have the so called billionaire classes who at the time
are called the upper ten, the elites, and the sort
of white working class, the sort of angry white working class.
(17:52):
They're not aligned, so you don't have all of the
structural power in one place. I think what's so scary
about this moment is you do have that he has.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It's a very interesting alignment, isn't it from the lowest
classes to the upper class who have joined hands? If
you will. I don't know if you remember a book
it's a little dated now from the eighties by Paul Fussel,
literally called Class, a Study of American Society, and it's
one of my favorite books because he's an Englishman who
comes to America where he's told there's no class, and
(18:21):
then he looks around.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
He's like, wait a sec there is a class.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It's divided by zip code, by school you went to,
by street you live on, by what kind of mustard
you eat, whether you have your grandmother's Persian rug on
the floor or something from Ikia, and he breaks it
all down. He actually he has a very funny it's
humorous as well, it's true, where he does a living
room test to basically tell what class you are based
(18:44):
on what you can find in your living room, a
fun test to.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Take, so.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Interestingly enough, I also teach health psychology and I teach stressors, right,
various stressors, and when we talk about class and class stress,
I refer to studies that show that in America, some
of the biggest anxiety about class actually isn't with the
(19:10):
lower classes.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Nor is it with the upper classes.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It is in the upper middle classes because.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Their position is so precarious.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
They're pretending to be rich their friends and they get
to hang out with rich people and their friends and
family and neighbors, and everybody thinks they're rich. But you know,
one lost job, one bad investment, and they fall down
into god forbid, the middle class.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
And I'll just say, you know, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book.
I believe it was sort who wrote a book called
Fear of Falling, where there's this deep anxiety of the
people who have, you know, sort of come from I
don't know, immigrants or working class, you know, backgrounds, and
they've reached that gated community. And I think you're absolutely right.
There's identity terror identity or so can so I have.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
I'm this weird person, very atypical in the sense that
and I think it's due to the fact that my
dad was in the Canadian military Navy, and we moved
a lot, and by the time I graduated in high school,
I had gone to ten different schools, so I was
always the new kid in class. I knew how to
make friends quick, but I was never part of an
in group, I would have to figure out what the
(20:21):
inn group was doing and sort of get assimilated as
quickly as possible. But I never internalized a sense of
I must be of a certain class, and so as
a result, I have friends in what you might consider
the lowest classes, but I think they're very happy people
who live at the beach and write great poetry, right,
(20:44):
and then the various upper I mean I have private
jet friends too. I have literally everything in between. And
people have always referred to me as a free spirit,
But I think it is that I was never put
in a box growing up. Do you think a lot
of this class and class dress comes from our childhood?
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I mean absolutely, it comes from our various kinds of conditioning,
a lot of which happens in the family culture, in
the I grew up in a very upper middle class.
We moved from a very middle class to a more
upper middle class neighborhood, very aspirational, and so again a
lot of the identity and the kind of sense of
the false sense of self, you know. And Eric Ericson
(21:24):
the Psychologist, talks about what happens during adolescence, which is
we're trying to define who we are in relation to
our core self and in relationship to others. So yeah, like,
particularly during adolescence in high school, we're getting all these
messages from our immediate surroundings and also from the larger
cultural surrounding. And I think it's important, you know, just
(21:45):
like somebody who comes into therapy with certain assumptions about,
you know, what a relationship is, to begin to see
that conditioning for what it is.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Can we talk before we go about crowd behavior? I
think you I'm thinking very much about January sixth, right,
how a mob attacked the White House in your podcast,
there was a mob attacking a theater. Right, What are
the psychological mechanisms that make Because you look at some
of the people that were arrested and then later you know,
(22:15):
let out of prison and they were hairdressers and real
estate agents and plumbers and former military, regular community, law
abiding people became a mob.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
How does that happen?
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Yeah, Well, there's you know, there's lots of different explanations
for it. And at one level, the kind of political
or historical explanation is that there is a kind of
sort of what you're talking about, a kind of class solidarity,
a sense of we're the real Americans, we belong here.
But I think at a deeper psychological level, what I
see is there's there's a sense of safety associated with domination, right,
(22:53):
rather than we sort of have to let other people
to the table. It's not a threat to my it's
not an exercial threat to my being. My mind still exists.
Even if somebody else with brown skin and a whole
different worldview, et cetera exists, I can let them exist.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Has power.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I think there's right or has and or has power exactly.
And I think I think at some level you know
to know internally, and this does come from childhood to
know internally I'm precious and valuable. No matter what you know,
life's going to be hard. But I have that, and
therefore I can see that in others. But when there's
that fragility, there's a reactivity. It's the again, it's not
(23:34):
using the prefrontal cortex. It's a reactivity around this feeling
of a rasure. That's how I would explain that when
you know outside of that, sure people can play by
the rules because that sense of erasure isn't felt. But
when it's felt, those deeper psychological mechanisms get activated.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
If something happens when we're in a group, this diffusion
of responsibility, right, the sense that we're just going to fight.
We are when we get in a group. We love
to be a tribe in a pack and we just
follow along.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Yeah, and things get normalized and it goes the other way,
you know. Seeing I'm just you know, thinking of like Zora,
Momdani or other kind of leaders who have come out
and behaved and said things differently. Well, the things we
think are unthinkable, for better and for worse, when someone
articulates them, they become normalized and kind of the ether
and people think like, oh, I guess we can say that.
(24:26):
I guess we can do that. Hey, you know what,
it's not so crazy to think X, Y and Z.
I mean, if you want to know why people behave
the way they do, I think the biggest explanation is
because people around them are behaving that way, you know,
which kind of accords with what you were just saying.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So Yep, with very little time left, I just want
to ask this question, how do we pass down these
maladaptive coping mechanisms? Is it always within families or do
cultures do it as a group?
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, I think it's both. You know, in social work school,
I was trained in systems theory. So we have the
microsystems around us, our family, our school, our immediate community,
and that's very powerful. We also know that genetically traits
and you know, fears that our great grandparents have we
might actually have. I think the way that we begin
to change it culturally is starting to change some of
(25:15):
the dialogue in the media sphere, the kind of macro discourse.
And one thing I'd like to see is more emotional
intelligence among people who are in the media and reporters,
and so that rather than just arguing or debating or persuading.
I mean, I know that's enjoyable at some level to watch,
but it doesn't move the ball. I'd rather hear, you know,
(25:35):
a journalist say it's curious that I find it curious
that you should say that. Can you tell me more
what I'm hearing, to hear the feeling like a therapist
would do to pull it out.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, instead of this arguing, well, we won't get the
polarization of the media, we won't get into well. Doctor
Andy Erdman. His podcast is called Feel Familiar Emotionally Intelligent History.
I'm about to get on a couple of long flights
to head home for the holidays, so I will be
listening to many episodes on those planes.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Thanks for being with.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Us, Thanks for having me. Happy travels.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Thank you, and that brings the Doctor Wendy Wall Show
to a close. I hope all of you have a happy,
happy holiday. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show,
that going home for Christmas is often good for your
mental health. It reminds you of who you were, It
helps reposition yourself as somebody in the world. It causes
(26:31):
a wonderful break in the year and have a little
travel and downtime. Unless you've had astronomical trauma in your childhood,
remember that there's a big difference between discomfort and stress.
You might be uncomfortable with some of those conversations, but
get to the dinner table with people, keep an open
mind and remember where you came from.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
It's very important.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Thanks for being with me. I'm here every Sunday from
seven to nine pm. You can also follow me my
social media at doctor Wendy Wall.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh, you can always
hear us live on KFI A m six forty from
seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
This is doctor Wendy Walsh and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Doctor Wendy Walsh Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. I'm answering your social media questions.
If you have a relationship question, you just send me
a DM on Instagram at Dr Wendy Walsh at doctor
Wendy Walsh. Uh Dear doctor Wendy, how can I handle
(00:20):
disagreements in a way that strengthens the relationship instead of
damaging it. I tend to lash out at my boyfriend
and raise my voice at times. He's infuriating. Okay, first
of all, you are acting with your ancient brain. You know,
it's like you're a baby or an adolescent. I mean,
(00:43):
we all are inside, right, and so what's happening is
you haven't processed some of your feelings through your prefrontal cortex,
which is like an editor. It kind of washes things.
It gives us language for things. So I'm going to
give you a few tips that I use with my
husband if I'm mad. And the first is I totally
(01:04):
become aware of my body. So instead of saying.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
You did this or why did you say that?
Speaker 1 (01:10):
I say, literally, I feel like adrenaline in my stomach
right now, and I feel my heart beating really fast.
Focus on your experience. Okay, just say it out loud.
It's not necessarily for him to solve. It's for you
to become aware of and by saying it out loud,
you become aware of it. And then I want you
(01:30):
to think of a reaction that begins with your feelings.
It might be something like, you know, what you said
just then felt like a threat to me. It felt
like you could possibly leave me over this. That is
a whole lot better than how dare you say that? Right?
That's sort of a lashing out, a protective thing. So
(01:53):
stay in touch with your body and then stay on
I feel words right and again I always say it,
but I mean it. You guys can go to licensed
therapists and learn how to fight fair. These are skills
that can be learned. They really can be all right,
Dear doctor Wendy, how do I know when to compromise
and when to stand firm on my values? What are
(02:15):
the keys to look for? Well, it's not really the
keys you need to look for here, it's your value
you need to look for.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Be real clear.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I mean, sometimes people will say, well, that's my value,
when really, really it's just your taste and mustard. I
don't know, Like, come on, a value is something that
is almost life or death to you. Like one of
your values might be, we don't murder people in my household,
(02:43):
or we don't insult people at the dinner table, or
one of my huge values is that family actually comes
before work, or one of my values is the work
ethic is so important and hard work is more important
than you know, taking a weekend off for something fun, right,
(03:04):
whatever it is, figure out what your values are, because
it's like you're like, when do I compromise or when
do I stand firm? That tells me you don't have
values and you don't have boundaries. So write a list
of all the stuff that you're like that is a
non negotiable for me, and again then cross off all
the little stuff. You know, how they squeeze the toothpaste out,
(03:30):
how they flip their burgers. I don't know that stuff
is not a value, right, that's a habit. And remember
I say it over and over and I mean it.
We cannot change anybody else. We can only change our
reaction to them, all right, dear doctor, Wendy, What should
(03:52):
I do if I feel like I'm putting in more
effort than my girlfriend? I love her, but she's wrapped
up in the man should do and be everything mindset.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
That's a mindset.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
That's a thing. All right. Let me just say this,
Why why are you doing it? I don't understand. It's
just so simple. Just don't put in the effort. And
if she leaves you, okay, this is not the girl
for you. It's not a good match.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
I mean again, you, your job is not to convince
her out.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Of her mindset. Her mindset is her mindset. She's never
going to change her mindset by words. You know what,
I'm putting in too much around here. I'm just gonna
do less. Oh really, well, I believe a man should
do everything. She is going to learn when you give
her the gift of pain, and the gift of pain
may simply be you know, I feel like I've done
(04:39):
my eighty percent in this household. I would like to
be a little more fifty to fifty. That feels better
to me, whatever it may be, whatever you're talking about
where there's domestic chores, where I also want to be
careful when I hear you say I put in more
effort than my girlfriend. I want to know what that
effort is because it might be something that she doesn't
consider effort or hard work. And you guys need to
(05:00):
discuss that, right because all people they should sacrifice for
each other, because a relationship is an exchange of care.
So they're going to put in effort, they should be
putting an effort. If the effort is that you have
to do all the calling, to arrange all the social things,
if you have to pay for everything, I'm assuming you're
(05:22):
not living together yet you didn't mention that, so it
sounds like she wants courtship to extend eternally.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, you need to talk about that.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Say hey, we've been seeing each other six months, a year, whatever,
four years, whatever it is, and just say we're not
in a courtship phase anymore, and I'd like to see
you step up and contribute. And if you can't, then
we need to talk about this. Right, But why are
you doing it? Why are you doing it?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
All?
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Right to your doctor, Wendy, what role do honesty and
timing play when sharing difficult feelings? Or I love this question,
It's an excellent question. Okay, you want to be honest.
But if you're honest too early, like on a first date,
(06:08):
you're trauma dumping, right. And if you wait too long,
then you're being a little too closed and mysterious and
you don't actually get to grow emotional intimacy. You do
it by just dipping your toe in bit by bit
at the very beginning of dating. You're gonna test somebody
(06:29):
by just throwing in some kind of little thing, right,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
You're gonna like say some.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
And just something tender, some memory, something, and then you're
gonna see how they react. And if they change the subject,
if they laugh at you, if they are dismissive, they
failed the test, and you don't want to move further
disclosing more things or you will hurt yourself. You also
may not want to continue with that relationship because they
(06:59):
fail the test. Right, So honesty and timing are very
important now. In my particular case, my husband and I
started with intimacy and bare honesty, and partly it had
to do with the fact that we were grown ups
and we were in our fifties, and so I started
our first coffee date by simply saying hey, instead of
telling each other how fabulous we are. Why don't we
(07:21):
start by telling a story about how undtable we believe
we are? And he looked shocked and said, okay, you
go first, And so we began our coffee date with
real intimate conversation. But it was reciprocal. Both people did
it all right. That brings that to a close. We
have special guests when we come back.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Okay, my next guest I'm very excited to have on
the show because he's interested in the two things I'm
interested in psychology and history, and also the question of
why don't we learn from history? I would like to
welcome doctor Andy Erdman a license to get this psychotherapist
and a historian who's uncovering how societies repeatedly enact the
(08:13):
same all nonsense over and over.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Hi, doctor Andy, how are you?
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Hi, Doctor Wendy. It's great to be here. Yeah, you've
got those interests too. I think it's a rare overlap,
but I think an essential one.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
So your podcast, we should get this out of the
way and make sure we mention it again later. Is
called feel familiar Emotionally intelligent history. And in your podcast
you look at a riot that took place in a
theater in back in eighteen forty nine. Twenty five people
died and you called it a celebrity fueled culture war.
(08:50):
Can you just tell me in a bullet point what
happened there?
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Yeah, So in eighteen forty nine, this is in Manhattan,
you had a big rivalry between these two actors on
his name Edwin Forrest, and he's kind of the he's
the first American born action he's American born actor. He's
kind of an action hero, kind of a Tom Cruise
Bruce Willis type. And there are all these guys, these
young sort of bros. They're known as the Bowery Boys,
(09:14):
you might have heard that term. And they're very like
pro American, we're real Americans, even though of course they're
not Indigenous Americans. They're immigrants, and they're very white identified
and you know, they don't like girls, etcetera, etcetera, very masculinist.
And there's a British actor named William McCready who is
really popular, brilliant actor, and he is beloved by the
(09:36):
more elite, moneyed classes of New York who are known
as the upper ten or the codfish aristocracy. I know
why they were called that, but it's pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Funny and I had a lot of money off codfish.
I will tell you. I'm from Newfoundland originally.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Okay, oh yeah, so yeah, that's the cod Yeah, that's
that's serious cod Cod neighborhood. So yes. So MacCready comes
to do a tour of Macbeth at the Astor Place
opera house, which is sort of the krem dela Creme.
It's where the fancy classes like to go, and the
Edwin Forrest followers, these kind of rough and tumble guys,
(10:11):
believe this is like a conspiracy theory of the day.
They believe that McCready has been undermining ned Forrest's career
and making it hard for him to get gigs in
England and in Europe. It's not true, but they believe it.
So there's this again, this kind of white grievance. And
there's something very to me again as a psychotherapist, something
very adolescent about it, Harry, that hurt adolescent where it's
(10:35):
like you're no good, but we need you to recognize
us the way that's kind of an adolescent does. So
they decide that they're going to do a big takedown
of McCready when he plays Macbeth at the Opera House
in May of eighteen forty nine. And they put all
their people together and they're going to smash windows and
try to break their way in and shut down their performance.
(10:56):
In Meanwhile, the people who are backing McCready at the
Opera House are these very prominent New Yorkers, the mayor
and also some well known writers, Washington Irving and Herman Melville.
And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, we cannot
have the mob telling the unlettered mob telling us what
we can do and can't do. So Forrest Edwin Forrest,
(11:18):
the American guy, does his own version of Macbeth down
at his favorite theater down on Bowery, just as McCready's
doing his. Anyway, there's a big riot they try to
bring down McCready. The city authorities call in the National
Guard to put down the mob, and the National Guard
ends up opening fire. This is the huge crowd, there's
fifteen thousand people. They end up opening fire, and as
(11:41):
you point out, wow, so.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
We don't want to give the whole end away. We
want people to listen to the whole podcast. But what
I want to know is one of the things you
talk about is that how unprocessed societal trauma can and
it can kind of create this cycle of violence in
future generations. In looking into the future from history, how
(12:11):
do you process trauma that's society wide.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
Yeah, well, it's a good question, and there are different
models for it, and obviously it's not an easy thing.
But if you start with sort of the so I
think like, well, we're working with an individual client, I
would look for the parts of the self that have
been dissociated, that have been repressed, and you can often
see that projected onto the other. So there's a sense
(12:37):
of the self where there's huge amounts of shame, and
shame often gets and grief often gets covered up with
feelings of aggression. So there's a way to say we understand, like,
nobody wants to feel that they come from a family,
a group, a state, a country, a race that has
(12:58):
done bad things. People don't like to, you know, admit
that sort of thing, but the shame is survivable and
once we integrate that shame. And I would say this
is probably familiar to you, your your professor of psychology.
You know that there's grief. Uh, there's grief underneath it,
there's all and there's existential feelings, and then those are
integrated into our adult ego. And so rather than responding
(13:22):
from our kind of limbic system, which which is, you know,
our kind of fight flight. You know, people familiar with
trauma will know that we can begin to integrate from
our pre frontal prefrontal cortex, which is really our executive function.
It's the it's the kind of thing that goes. Let
me think this through first before I throw a brick
through a window, like we all want to do it
when we feel someone cuts us off in traffic. And
(13:45):
I think more than you know a sense of when
people talk about our way of life is being threatened,
I think what they really mean is they feel at
some level as if they're going to be erased and unseen.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Oh well, that's even been said, right that this of
a group of Americans right now are fearing that they
will be a race. And so your answer is, you know,
I often say that, you know, our job, all of us,
is to go with a fine tooth comb through our
childhood and process these mini traumas or experiences through our
(14:20):
adult prefrontal cortex. So it's like we filter it through
and there's all kinds of techniques. I'm sure your clients
do it through talk therapy, sometimes journaling and writing, and
sometimes just you know, some of the most traumatized people
produce great art, right, films, poetry, et cetera about their pain.
(14:40):
So when you think about what's going on in America today,
what do you think is the biggest collective trauma that
Americans have not processed?
Speaker 4 (14:52):
Well, I think one trauma. I mean, this is not
kind of my original idea, but I think it is
this kind of addiction to kind of Anglo European whiteness,
that we are white somehow and that saves us from
being at the bottom with you know, black and brown people.
(15:13):
And I think underneath that there's a sense of, you know, well,
if I'm not somehow superior, who am I? What am I?
Speaker 1 (15:22):
You know?
Speaker 4 (15:23):
And I think that can account for a lot of structural,
you know, and other inequalities that we continue to see.
Now there's also there's also class trauma. There's this society
and you know, we didn't build it on our own
or overnight, but which says that society is a big ladder.
It's a big pyramid. Ultimately, you have to sort of
(15:44):
fight your way to the top, and you can't be
sure if someone's been stepping on your head or if
you're going to step on somebody else's head. Rather than
a different conception of a mutual and related you know,
social order, social space kind of like a therapist tries
to create with a client, which is this is an
equal space for you to be here.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
If that makes sense, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
We have to go to a break, but when we
come back. I just watched all of ken Burn's American Revolution.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
It's a lot of outs.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Oh yes, I saw the first episode.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Oh good, and it really talks about that addiction to
whiteness and also the class piece. I do want to
talk about this, this idea that America is, you know,
broke away from British and the class system, and there
is this illusion that we don't have class, but we
have a lot of very distinct classes. They're just more subtle.
(16:36):
We'll talk about this when we come back. My guests
doctor Andy Erdman. He's a license psychotherapist and historian. His
podcast Feel Familiar Emotionally Intelligent History.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
You're listening to doctor Wendy Walsh on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
So, Doctor Andy Erdman, your podcast Feel Familiar emotionally intelligent
history looks at a particular event in history, But do
you do some comparisons to what's going on today?
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Absolutely, because what we saw in the events that I
cover in Field Familiar is the Astroplace Theater riot of
eighteen forty nine, in which there's a very race, class,
and gender based divide. It focuses on these two dueling actors,
but really it's about these deeper grievances and then the
government intercy.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
You do.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
You have soldiers on the street and people are being
shot dead, which you know, scarily is close to what's happening,
you know, in places today. I think what's different about
eighteen forty nine is in that particular fracture, you don't
have the so called billionaire classes who at the time
are called the upper ten, the elites, and the sort
of white working class, the sort of angry white working class.
(17:52):
They're not aligned, so you don't have all of the
structural power in one place. I think what's so scary
about this moment is you do have that he has.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It's a very interesting alignment, isn't it from the lowest
classes to the upper class who have joined hands? If
you will. I don't know if you remember a book
it's a little dated now from the eighties by Paul Fussel,
literally called Class, a Study of American Society, and it's
one of my favorite books because he's an Englishman who
comes to America where he's told there's no class, and
(18:21):
then he looks around.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
He's like, wait a sec there is a class.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It's divided by zip code, by school you went to,
by street you live on, by what kind of mustard
you eat, whether you have your grandmother's Persian rug on
the floor or something from Ikia, and he breaks it
all down. He actually he has a very funny it's
humorous as well, it's true, where he does a living
room test to basically tell what class you are based
(18:44):
on what you can find in your living room, a
fun test to.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Take, so.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Interestingly enough, I also teach health psychology and I teach stressors, right,
various stressors, and when we talk about class and class stress,
I refer to studies that show that in America, some
of the biggest anxiety about class actually isn't with the
(19:10):
lower classes.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Nor is it with the upper classes.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
It is in the upper middle classes because.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Their position is so precarious.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
They're pretending to be rich their friends and they get
to hang out with rich people and their friends and
family and neighbors, and everybody thinks they're rich. But you know,
one lost job, one bad investment, and they fall down
into god forbid, the middle class.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
And I'll just say, you know, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book.
I believe it was sort who wrote a book called
Fear of Falling, where there's this deep anxiety of the
people who have, you know, sort of come from I
don't know, immigrants or working class, you know, backgrounds, and
they've reached that gated community. And I think you're absolutely right.
There's identity terror identity or so can so I have.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
I'm this weird person, very atypical in the sense that
and I think it's due to the fact that my
dad was in the Canadian military Navy, and we moved
a lot, and by the time I graduated in high school,
I had gone to ten different schools, so I was
always the new kid in class. I knew how to
make friends quick, but I was never part of an
in group, I would have to figure out what the
(20:21):
inn group was doing and sort of get assimilated as
quickly as possible. But I never internalized a sense of
I must be of a certain class, and so as
a result, I have friends in what you might consider
the lowest classes, but I think they're very happy people
who live at the beach and write great poetry, right,
(20:44):
and then the various upper I mean I have private
jet friends too. I have literally everything in between. And
people have always referred to me as a free spirit,
But I think it is that I was never put
in a box growing up. Do you think a lot
of this class and class dress comes from our childhood?
Speaker 4 (21:03):
I mean absolutely, it comes from our various kinds of conditioning,
a lot of which happens in the family culture, in
the I grew up in a very upper middle class.
We moved from a very middle class to a more
upper middle class neighborhood, very aspirational, and so again a
lot of the identity and the kind of sense of
the false sense of self, you know. And Eric Ericson
(21:24):
the Psychologist, talks about what happens during adolescence, which is
we're trying to define who we are in relation to
our core self and in relationship to others. So yeah, like,
particularly during adolescence in high school, we're getting all these
messages from our immediate surroundings and also from the larger
cultural surrounding. And I think it's important, you know, just
(21:45):
like somebody who comes into therapy with certain assumptions about,
you know, what a relationship is, to begin to see
that conditioning for what it is.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Can we talk before we go about crowd behavior? I
think you I'm thinking very much about January sixth, right,
how a mob attacked the White House in your podcast,
there was a mob attacking a theater. Right, What are
the psychological mechanisms that make Because you look at some
of the people that were arrested and then later you know,
(22:15):
let out of prison and they were hairdressers and real
estate agents and plumbers and former military, regular community, law
abiding people became a mob.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
How does that happen?
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Yeah, Well, there's you know, there's lots of different explanations
for it. And at one level, the kind of political
or historical explanation is that there is a kind of
sort of what you're talking about, a kind of class solidarity,
a sense of we're the real Americans, we belong here.
But I think at a deeper psychological level, what I
see is there's there's a sense of safety associated with domination, right,
(22:53):
rather than we sort of have to let other people
to the table. It's not a threat to my it's
not an exercial threat to my being. My mind still exists.
Even if somebody else with brown skin and a whole
different worldview, et cetera exists, I can let them exist.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Has power.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
I think there's right or has and or has power exactly.
And I think I think at some level you know
to know internally, and this does come from childhood to
know internally I'm precious and valuable. No matter what you know,
life's going to be hard. But I have that, and
therefore I can see that in others. But when there's
that fragility, there's a reactivity. It's the again, it's not
(23:34):
using the prefrontal cortex. It's a reactivity around this feeling
of a rasure. That's how I would explain that when
you know outside of that, sure people can play by
the rules because that sense of erasure isn't felt. But
when it's felt, those deeper psychological mechanisms get activated.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
If something happens when we're in a group, this diffusion
of responsibility, right, the sense that we're just going to fight.
We are when we get in a group. We love
to be a tribe in a pack and we just
follow along.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
Yeah, and things get normalized and it goes the other way,
you know. Seeing I'm just you know, thinking of like Zora,
Momdani or other kind of leaders who have come out
and behaved and said things differently. Well, the things we
think are unthinkable, for better and for worse, when someone
articulates them, they become normalized and kind of the ether
and people think like, oh, I guess we can say that.
(24:26):
I guess we can do that. Hey, you know what,
it's not so crazy to think X, Y and Z.
I mean, if you want to know why people behave
the way they do, I think the biggest explanation is
because people around them are behaving that way, you know,
which kind of accords with what you were just saying.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So Yep, with very little time left, I just want
to ask this question, how do we pass down these
maladaptive coping mechanisms? Is it always within families or do
cultures do it as a group?
Speaker 4 (24:53):
Yeah, I think it's both. You know, in social work school,
I was trained in systems theory. So we have the
microsystems around us, our family, our school, our immediate community,
and that's very powerful. We also know that genetically traits
and you know, fears that our great grandparents have we
might actually have. I think the way that we begin
to change it culturally is starting to change some of
(25:15):
the dialogue in the media sphere, the kind of macro discourse.
And one thing I'd like to see is more emotional
intelligence among people who are in the media and reporters,
and so that rather than just arguing or debating or persuading.
I mean, I know that's enjoyable at some level to watch,
but it doesn't move the ball. I'd rather hear, you know,
(25:35):
a journalist say it's curious that I find it curious
that you should say that. Can you tell me more
what I'm hearing, to hear the feeling like a therapist
would do to pull it out.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, instead of this arguing, well, we won't get the
polarization of the media, we won't get into well. Doctor
Andy Erdman. His podcast is called Feel Familiar Emotionally Intelligent History.
I'm about to get on a couple of long flights
to head home for the holidays, so I will be
listening to many episodes on those planes.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Thanks for being with.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Us, Thanks for having me. Happy travels.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Thank you, and that brings the Doctor Wendy Wall Show
to a close. I hope all of you have a happy,
happy holiday. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show,
that going home for Christmas is often good for your
mental health. It reminds you of who you were, It
helps reposition yourself as somebody in the world. It causes
(26:31):
a wonderful break in the year and have a little
travel and downtime. Unless you've had astronomical trauma in your childhood,
remember that there's a big difference between discomfort and stress.
You might be uncomfortable with some of those conversations, but
get to the dinner table with people, keep an open
mind and remember where you came from.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
It's very important.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Thanks for being with me. I'm here every Sunday from
seven to nine pm. You can also follow me my
social media at doctor Wendy Wall.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
We'll see you next week.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
You've been listening to Doctor Wendy Walsh, you can always
hear us live on KFI A m six forty from
seven to nine pm on Sunday and anytime on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Dr. Wendy Walsh on Demand News
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