Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash
What is emotional pain?
Well, for one thing, it’s a lot more complicated than just physical pain. It’s a kind of mental suffering that happens when you don’t pay attention to, and care for, your negative feelings. It also only happens in the context of a relationship or social situation, which makes it especially hard on women and girls.
Why?
Louann Brizendine, M.D., founded the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco in 1994. She writes about the way female brains register things, and her research shows “the psychological stress of [relationship] conflict registers more deeply in areas of the female brain” than it does in male brains (p. 28). She goes on to say that “the female brain is [an] expert at: reading faces, interpreting tone of voice, and assessing emotional nuance” (p. 159-160). That all means that female brains are more impacted by social slights, relationship issues, and interpersonal problems. If we deny how we feel when those things happen, we set ourselves up for emotional pain and suffering.
So, how do you deal with your negative emotions instead of pushing them to the side? You start by understanding that your negative emotions are just as important as your positive ones, and that there isn’t a right or wrong way to feel about anything. Anger, sadness, embarrassment, shame, fear, anxiety, disgust – they are all telling you something. You just need to listen, and the only way to listen to feelings is to feel them.
Maybe it seems overwhelming and too hard, or you don’t have time, or you think it’s just not “good” to feel bad stuff. Girls and women are often taught and conditioned to be nice, and that being nice means no anger, no pushback, and no negativity. Being nice comes at a price – and it costs you a lot to keep swallowing your anger, sadness, and pain. Upcoming blogs in this series on Emotional Pain in Women and Girls will tackle these subjects and discuss topics like:
Identifying Emotions 101
Venting – Is It Good or Bad?
Why Anger Matters
Can I Control My Anxiety?
Healthy Ways to Care for Pain
Responding vs. Reacting
Being ALL of Yourself
Stay tuned! The next blog is out on June 1.
Brizendine, L. (2007). The female brain. New York, NY: Harmony Books.
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