Are women afraid to feel?

Have we become afraid to feel? Or have we been sold the idea that feeling anything other than the binary notion of happy = good, sad = bad is dangerous in some way?

Recently I discovered something about myself. I discovered that I can feel things, both good and bad and still be safe.

I didn’t know I didn’t know this until I came off of long term herbal remedies for low mood and anxiety and began to experience a range of emotions that were quite frankly triggering. Yet these emotions and states are in fact a normal part of our existence as human beings.

Without knowing it I had been managing my emotions with pharmaceuticals and alternatives for a very long time, combine this with an upbringing where feelings and emotions were often ignored or invalidated, some well curated dissociative behaviour due to experienced trauma plus the multi layered social conditioning that we all experience that to be emotional is at best inconvenient at worst punishable, that suddenly the experience of feeling actual emotions felt incredibly unsafe.

As a therapist I encourage people to explore their thoughts, feelings and emotions with compassion and curiosity, and I witness how difficult, how much of a struggle it is for a lot of women to do this.

What I hear is a lot of confusion, or a sense of being lost as to why they are feeling the way they feel, shame at feeling things they do not recognise as being valid, and the natural response of a lot of my clients, and myself, is to medicate, be that pharmaceutical, herbal or with drug/alcohol use, there can be other addictive behaviours that numb/deflect but today i am going to focus on medication.

There is of course a really strong argument for the use of antidepressants, hormonal replacement therapy birth control pills and herbal remedies and it is crucial that this medication used with an awareness of trauma, sometimes it is actually unsafe to be feeling and experiencing certain emotions, and there is huge amounts of evidence that these drugs can and do enable many people to function where previously they couldn’t. This blog is not connected to the latest studies around what causes depression and the question of if antidepressants are helpful, but is looking at the multitude of ways that stop us from feeling our full spectrum of emotions safely. I neither endorse or actively discourage the use of medication for depression, that is a medical issue, I am not a doctor.

So, when did it become normalised to not feel anything? When did it become a social inconvenience to feel sad?

Between toxic positivity “good vibes only” public mass shaming “snowflakes” and a collective community that is fatigued and unable to offer the support needed for a full spectrum of self paced emotions we have been beaten into a submissive state, where we don’t want to inconvenience others with our uncomfortable emotions, so we bottle them up, and neutralise them with pills and potions, alcohol, recreational drugs and harmful lifestyle choices instead of using them as our roadmap to understand ourselves better.

Those feelings, particularly the less comfortable ones are like a roadmap to knowing ourselves better, and meeting our needs, but we have been coerced into not feeling them.

For me it started as a child, my upbringing was disordered, and the coping strategy my caregivers used was to dismiss and deny any big feelings. This sowed a seed of distrust in my feelings. Tell a child enough times they are fine and to stop making a fuss when they are hurting they soon come to believe that they are fine when they are hurting,

The pharmaceuticals came in as a teenager, I went on the hormonal pill as a way of preventing pregnancy. It did this very well. Nobody talked about how this hormone therapy might impact my emotions.

Unsurprisingly there is limited research available on how the pill affects mood in women, yet there is huge amounts of anecdotal evidence that shows how it most definitely has an impact on vast arrays of our experience of life. 

A common story you might here is about sex drive. When women come off the pill they almost all experience a huge hike in sex drive. No bad thing considering a lot of women come off the pill to get pregnant, but you have to wonder what was being suppressed all those years of taking it? I can account from personal experience this is not simply to do with a desire to get pregnant. The best way I can describe what this experience is like is for you to witness a female cat in season, it is intense, not entirely pleasant and a real force of nature, yet not at all natural. 

Should you have been brought up in a home or community where sexual desire, or any desire was seen as unattractive, wanton, shameful, needy or distasteful this change in how you feel has the potential to be hugely triggering.

If the feelings that you experience make you feel ashamed this can be a huge trigger for depression, shame, as opposed to guilt is an internal state, it is not connected to your actions, it is connected to your feelings, it does not inspire change, it feels hopeless, it feels deeply entrenched into a feeling that you are bad, wrong, broken.

So, a simple choice to come off of a contraceptive pill could lead to actions that trigger feelings of toxic shame. Do not underestimate the power of the brain to create and connect stories of badness when this feeling is triggered. If as a child you were shamed for your behaviour you can be taken straight back there, feeling all those big feelings. And if you were not allowed to feel and process those big feelings you will turn back to your learned coping strategies to minimise this experience.

So you see how simple actions and reactions, learned behaviours and beliefs can spiral into a need to control our emotions, to not cause a fuss, or perhaps not bring attention to ourselves because we are ashamed of what we are experiencing.

This is not to say that the contraceptive pill is bad, I am pretty sure a pregnancy at a young age would have been extremely damaging for my mental health, and the hormonal balance it can provide for some is hugely helpful, but more conversation needs to be had, more transparency about the side effects, not just in the short term, not just physiological but also mental, social and historical.

Interestingly as I write this blog I am entering a new stage of my life at the exact polar opposite of when I went on the pill as a teenager which is equally challenging and rife with the need to control/suppress unwanted emotions, that is the menopause. Another life stage that has up until recently been mass managed with hormone replacement therapy. The difference for me now is that with years of therapy, training and body autonomy I can make a far more informed choice as to whether I feel HRT is the right choice for me.

Once again, I must make clear I am neither anti or pro HRT, it is a personal choice, but again one that needs to be made with awareness. Because time and again I have clients coming to me experiencing distressing symptoms of past trauma that are being mistaken for ‘menopause emotinality’ or ‘menopause anxiety’ due the change in hornones.

These women are sold the idea that by simply taking synthetic hormones these symptoms will go away, but what of these feelings and emotions are nor just ‘symptoms of the menopause’? What if these feelings and emotions are deeply repressed experiences that are finally able to come out once the distraction of motherhood, career and social pressures are being lifted? It is like a veil is removed and we can finally understand ourselves, our grief, our fears and actually process them?

My professional view is that as women we have 4 key areas of our life when the veils are lifted, when our connection to our true self is strongest and these times can be full of big emotions, thoughts and feelings. These shifts can be challenging but are there areas with so much potential for growth and healing.

When we begin to menstruate, when we give birth, when we go through menopause and when we are close to death.

I most often work with women at the middle 2 shifts, working with women through pregnancy and birth and women who are approaching or recently gone through menopause, and I see a connecting thread with them all, an upsurge in emotions, a confusion, a vulnerability or a shift into power.  And I often witness a readiness from the medical world to offer these women antidepressants or HRT, anything to stem the flow of emotions that have been brought to the surface. And upon gaining some history and understanding a common thread that I find is that earlier in life the patterns are there, an earlier struggle that has been buried, diminished, denied and dismissed.

The good news here is that there is great success to be had in recognising and understanding this, processing and releasing the emotional burden and finally resetting the nervous system so that you no longer are reacting from a place in your past but are fully present and regulated.

Replacing confusion and fear with compassion and understanding

If you are finding yourself struggling and recognise that perhaps you are straddling one of these times of change then I can help you walk through this challenging time with the support you need and deserve. You don’t have to navigate these epic changes alone. You can choose to use this vulnerability, this flow of feelings to finally understand and let go of events from your past, negative self belief and this fear of feeling anything other than that which society has told you you should feel due to your circumstance or life choices.

You are not broken, you are open. Don’t be afraid. Book a free consultation today and take the first steps towards your freedom to feel.