Why Am I Like This?!
We are a therapist and a psychiatric nurse practitioner and we want to share a simplified view of these complex concepts that are often misunderstood, avoided, and even feared.
This is a podcast about being human, adapting to life, and learning from our unique experience.
We try to provide the answers to question: Why am I like this?
Why Am I Like This?!
Why Do So Many Women Struggle With Depression And Anxiety?!
Discover the hidden forces shaping women's mental health as trauma therapist Laura Wood and psychiatric nurse practitioner Michaela Beaver join forces to bring to light the often overlooked aspects of depression, anxiety, and the emotional toll of societal expectations on women. In an earnest conversation that promises both enlightenment and empowerment, we dissect the complicated reasons why women are more frequently diagnosed with these conditions, and how early childhood interactions regarding boundaries can set the stage for future mental well-being.
Navigating through the thorny landscape of gender roles and their influence on mental health, our discussion reveals the psychological consequences of the support—or lack thereof—that children receive while crafting their sense of self. The pressures to conform to unrealistic standards often leave women battling a relentless cycle of guilt, shame, and helplessness, which we examine with heartfelt understanding and compassion. Sharing relatable stories and scientific insights, Laura and Michaela offer a fresh perspective on how these dynamics contribute to the broader challenges faced by women in maintaining their mental health.
As we wrap up, the conversation shifts to the undeniable necessity of self-care. We illuminate the path towards embracing one's own needs and the transformative power of choosing wellness. From practical lifestyle tips to the profound impact of early intervention in mental health, this episode arms you with knowledge and strategies to prioritize your well-being. This isn't just another chat about mental health; it's a call to action, urging every listener to take that decisive step towards a healthier, happier existence. Join us for this compelling exploration and find the courage to place yourself at the top of your to-do list.
Laura's Free Course on Emotional Development and Regulation:
https://benavieri.com/neuroception-sign-up/
This show is sponsored by:
Benavieri Counseling & Coaching
www.benavieri.com
Active Healing Psychiatric Services
www.activehealingpsych.com
Hello and welcome to. Why Am I Like this? The podcast for those who didn't get enough hugs as a child? I'm Laura Wood and I'm a trauma therapist.
Speaker 2:Hi and I'm Michelle Beaver.
Speaker 1:I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner, so Michelle, why are we doing this podcast? Thanks for asking.
Speaker 2:We want to help you understand yourself a bit better. How are the things that you've learned about yourself and the world in childhood still affecting you today? We want to figure out why are we like this? Those random things about ourselves that we might wonder about, Like why am I so jumpy? Why am I so anxious? Why do I take everything personally? Why are my thoughts so negative? Why do I feel like I have to fix everything?
Speaker 1:all the time. Yes, we are talking about women's mental health today and we are going to try to answer the following questions why are so many more women diagnosed with depression and anxiety than men? What's the deal with all the guilt and shame and how can we start doing better? So I think we just go in order. Why are so many women diagnosed with depression and anxiety?
Speaker 2:That's a really interesting question and I think that there's multiple different plausible answers, or maybe it's like all of them right. But in kind of researching for this topic, I found a couple of different answers. In one area they looked at brain scans of women and men and they found that the women's brains were active in many different regions. As women, we might have stronger activity in the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is that thing that modulates self-control. It helps us make sure that we can say no when we're supposed to say no or make sure that we don't do things that would maybe cause harm to us.
Speaker 2:Because of that increased activity, there is an increase in, maybe empathy and our ability to have self-control over things and have that healthy level of worry about things. But there's also this statistics that women were twice as likely to exhibit anxiety and depression than men, and that also can correlate with increase in chronic pain disorders, insomnia and disorder eating, and so that's kind of one of the things that might be related to it. So we have all this extra empathy and my question is does that correlate with having more guilt and shame?
Speaker 1:potentially, what are your thoughts? I think that's possible. I mean, what I'm hearing you say is our brains are more active in our prefrontal cortex, meaning we are trying to handle more things. Maybe we're trying to understand more things, we're trying to sort out more things, maybe more problem solving and thinking about how our interactions or how our behaviors are impacting others right, like that social aspect of it, because we're trying to behave in a societally acceptable way.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what I think about when I think about our prefrontal cortex, right, executive functioning, self-control and all of that is really geared towards being effective in society, being effective in our relationships, being effective in doing all the things. Maybe we're just doing too much, we need to do less. But then if we're trying to do everything, and then we've got that guilt and shame right, I'm hearing or I'm thinking about this I can't do everything. That's not reasonable. I know and recognize how my behaviors are impacting others and so my not being able to do everything might be letting people down, right, yeah, maybe I am feeling guilty about not being able to do everything and letting people down, and then that guilt leads to shame in that I'm not good enough, kind of sense, right, like that kind of feels like a cycle to me.
Speaker 2:I could definitely see that. In something else that I was looking at. I was kind of talking about how guilt and shame are one of the moral things that are used culturally to conform right, To fit in, to make sure that we're doing the right thing, so that we don't get ostracized, so we don't get kicked out, right, because that's a survival thing, right. It's like if we get kicked out then we'll die, right, and so I have to conform to these things, otherwise I will die.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. That's so interesting that you talk about it that way because the prefrontal cortex is one of the newest areas of our brain, right from an evolutionary perspective, Like it's the most recent, and if its job is to kind of help us manage in complex societies and help us maintain that connectedness or that like belonging space, like not getting kicked out of the tribe, I hear so much fear from people who are struggling with depression and anxiety, so much fear about how others perceive them, how their families will accept them or whether or not they are worthy of acceptance and love. You know, if I am a part of a family who has historically maybe used guilt and shame as a way of control and a way of influencing behavior, you know that emotional manipulation that I think we all have experienced at one time or another shaming and blaming is often a way to get children to do what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1:And as I'm thinking about this, I wonder do we shame and blame our girls more often than we shame and blame our boys, or is?
Speaker 2:it that we, as women, are more sensitive to being shamed. So I think it's important that we discuss here the difference between guilt and shame. So guilt arises when we think that we've done damage or we've done something to hurt someone else right. But shame arises when we believe that we are damaged in some way, so we're unlovable, we're unkind, we're inferior, we're incompetent, and so that shame comes from those deep underlying things that we believe about ourselves.
Speaker 1:Hmm, that's really interesting, okay. So how do we possibly influence this feeling in our girls and in our boys, like if we think about in childhood? I heard a story the other day about a girl who got in trouble at school for punching a boy in the face. Oh, and it turned out that the girl was punching the boy because he was snapping her bra right and uncomfortable. Before she punched him, she asked the teacher at school to help her. She said I need you to make him stop doing this and the teacher said just ignore it. And so when she went back to her seat and he continued to do that and she'd asked him to stop and he's not stopping she punched him in the face, which is not an okay thing to do either.
Speaker 1:But what I got out of that story is what are we teaching our girls? We're teaching them to internalize that whatever someone else does to me is my responsibility to sort of be okay with right versus other people need to respect my boundaries, right. So I'm being taught that I'm not worthy of respect, that I have to sort of work through that on my own and just tolerate this behavior because it's not okay for me to have a problem with it. No one's going to help me with this problem. Nobody sees this as a problem except for me, so it must be me, it must be my problem, right.
Speaker 2:You know, makes me wonder like clearly that child felt, or had, some kind of innate ability to stand up for themselves. Like what are they getting some of that at home to show them that, like they think they can be their own hero in the story? I mean, granted, I don't think that you know, punching the kid is the right choice, but they're. But they ask for help, they advocate for themselves, and then nobody was there for them and instead they reacted to the situation because they didn't have, they weren't given other skills from the people who were supposed to be helping them, and so you know, maybe that child's getting some kind of help in the home situation situation to be able to stand up for themselves, so that they can take care of a situation and not have to depend on somebody else if they're not helping.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. This type of situation can go one of two ways. One, their parent supports them in upholding their boundaries and says you did the right thing by asking for help. When you're in a situation like that, Maybe there's another option besides punching. But whatever right, Like you're supportive of the child's need for the boundary to be upheld and enforced. Or we say you shouldn't have done that, it's not a big deal, Boys will be boys, Just ignore them and kind of reinforce that message that you're not worthy of getting help right. So at home, however that situation is handled, can really influence your view of yourself and your view of yourself and your role in the world.
Speaker 1:You know, I think we are much more likely to experience depression and anxiety if we are asking for help and help is not coming right, Because that is telling me I'm not worthy of getting help, I'm not worthy of having a better experience, there's something wrong with me, People aren't choosing to care about me, right, and so feeling yeah, so now I'm in this sort of shame spiral. You know that will lead to kind of shutting down my expectations of you. Know success right, Like depression comes with a lack of motivation, lack of joy and things that once were joyful sleep issues, difficulty concentrating and kind of handling day to day tasks. To me, when I see depression, I see a part of us that is shut down to the prospect, the possibility that things can get better. Right, it's that hopelessness, and I don't know a better way to create hopelessness than when a kid asks for help and help doesn't come.
Speaker 2:Sure, and that also plays into that guilt of being you know I'm bad, I did this wrong. I never do anything right. You know. Definitely that kid could have had a different outcome had the teacher just said, OK, well, let's move you, you know. Or if they were like, hey, if this continues, here's what you need to do. But they were given nothing, they were given no guidance on how to handle that. And so when that kid finally broke and at the last time that he snapped the bra, she probably went into a little bit of that fight or flight Our totally our brain shuts down and we make an impulsive decision just because we don't know what else to do. We weren't supported in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And with women, I think, today, at least in my experience I have felt throughout my life that the expectation is higher of me the expectation to be a certain way to care for people, a certain way to be nurturing, to be able to do 100 percent of the work at home and still support my family financially and be pleasant and be welcoming to others and to be patient and to not be too loud and to also speak up for myself and follow all the rules but also have good ideas and create new solutions, like my expectation to be this impossible person. I don't know that there's anyone who can be all that. So then the message is OK, well, I'm not good enough, right? Because I'm not good enough to do all that. I'm not, I can't. Who would be? It's an impossible standard.
Speaker 1:And so essentially, by creating these standards, we're telling everyone you're not good enough because you can never meet them. That's shame, and then that's guilt. When I can't meet them, I'm letting someone down because they're all depending on me. You know, if I get upset and I kind of lose it and ask for help, but in a way that is more desperate, right, like I'm so exhausted and I need help, and then it's like I'm looked at Right, like I'm looked at as it's not being taken seriously, my words aren't being taken seriously because of my emotional reaction, right. So it's like you know, there's so many barriers to being seen and being understood and being really truly connected in an authentic way, I think for women especially and I can't say that men don't experience this in some ways either but you know, I don't think that we really consider what we're doing to put women in this impossible position and how that is impacting overall mental health. Right, like if I'm just constantly feeling like I can never do enough and I'm never good enough, that would wear anyone down.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well, and that also makes me think of like some of the disparities Maybe maybe that's not the right word but like the concerns that are still going on and like with women in the workplace, right, speaking to the same point, of being made to feel like you should stand up for yourself and you should be strong and you can't be weak. But also, if you stand up for yourself, then maybe you're a little bit too emotional, these double standards that kind of contradict each other, that make us to feel like we don't have a right choice, and then that creates that helplessness which is so strongly correlated with depression, you know, and our ability to struggle without handling our emotions when we have that feeling of helplessness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting. As we kind of you know, unpack this. I'm thinking about another aspect of being diagnosed with depression and anxiety. Could that even be part of the problem from the perspective of oh, you need to change, you are sad and we want you to be able to be happy and be able to perform and here, take this medicine? I think that more of us need mental health support than we even realize. But I'm just wondering about specifically the diagnosis versus.
Speaker 1:If a man were to come in and present something similar to a woman, like that I have all this worry, or that you know I'm tired all the time, or that I'm not interested in the things I used to be interested in, would they get a diagnosis? Or would they be told that they probably are working too hard and the pressures of providing? You know what I'm saying. I wonder if we're hearing things differently from women versus men and we're more likely to assign a problem for a woman, especially when it comes to emotionality. We're more likely to diagnose that than we would if a man was complaining about some of those same things. I don't know. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:So what immediately comes to my mind is a couple of things. So first, what is the story that we're being told as children, as a child who's a boy?
Speaker 2:it's suck it up, take a salt tablet, walk it out don't have feelings, don't have emotions, and I think that women get that too right. But we're also a little bit. We have a little bit more allowance for feelings in girls. We tolerate that a little bit more in girls. And so then by the time the man might present, they're not complaining of as many of the feelings pieces of it, right, they may have, they're tired, they may have, they may just might present differently, and so then that might get overlooked as being more of one thing than another.
Speaker 2:Right, because they're just. They were given a different message, right, and I think all of us to some degree were given that same message of like feelings are not okay, I must be happy all of the time, and if I'm not happy all the time, then there is something wrong with me. And so sometimes I think that that's what we're seeing, and they just don't know how to handle those emotions, and so then it gets labeled as depression and anxiety and whatever else, because they just don't know how to tolerate having any feelings at all, because it's not okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think in a lot of households, especially for those of us who grew up in like the 80s, for example, nobody cared how you felt. That just wasn't part of the conversation. I think women have more permission probably to express feelings or to have them at all, and as you were kind of talking about the story that they're telling, the guilt and shame came back for me like a woman is much more likely to go into a doctor and say like there's something wrong with me than a dude Like a guy is just not as likely to be like oh, something's wrong with me and let me go seek help for it.
Speaker 1:They are much more likely to seek out their own solutions, like internalize it, not ask anybody for help, like just kind of deal with it right, shut it down or you know whatever, and so I think that also is part of it, that women are more likely to go and do something about their mental health condition. I think that needs to be part of the conversation and also needs to change if we want to stop these patterns and stop this cycle.
Speaker 2:I do see, and I do fully believe that this is getting better. I do see that more men are reaching out and asking for help, but the question is, before they get to me, how easily are they being identified? Because they're going to be coming in and being like I can't sleep. There's some like I just can't sleep, I don't know what's wrong with me. No, nothing's happening. I'm not waking up in the middle of the night worrying about stuff. I just can't sleep, and so like the complaint looks different. So how often are they recognizing that this isn't just insomnia, this is really anxiety and depression. That's really what's going on. It's not just I can't sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the conversation is a really important aspect of the care, right, like we need to be asking the right questions as clinicians, as providers, to say, okay, what's really going on, how does this look, how does this feel for you? And I do think that there's maybe a gap in potentially like feelings vocabulary between men and women. I think maybe women have a higher feelings vocabulary than men typically do.
Speaker 2:My friend and I were just talking about this the other day. Is it in part that we are communicating so much more? Right? Like we're very we're more communicative with you know, we have more words, we're talking more, we're trying to understand people, we have that empathy, like does that play into the fact that we have better vocabulary surrounding this or we have better comfort, maybe even with there being something wrong with us and that being okay?
Speaker 1:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that does play a big part, you know, in insight is communicating with other people about what's truly going on, and I think women are maybe talking to each other more as well, and that provides a space to get support, to get insight, to realize like, hey, maybe this is more than just a phase, like I've been feeling this way for a long time, you know, and maybe a friend could tell me you don't deserve to have to feel this way all the time, like things can get better, you can have help and you deserve that.
Speaker 1:And so I think those conversations women are more social in those conversations about, you know, internal things and feelings, whereas I don't think that men necessarily are given that space quite as often, maybe more today, which I think is a good thing. And that's when we get into how can we start doing better. First of all, as clinicians, we can ask better questions and we can really think through what somebody is telling us and not just hear that at face value. I think that's really important. There are things that you can do for yourself, that one variable can have a ripple effect throughout the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:We talked about you had mentioned some supplements and nutrition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely whole body care right, and that's the emphasis like we're not just one thing, our brain and our body are actually connected and so we need to use that. You need to use a whole body approach to help us feel well. Exercise, moving your body, increases endorphins. It naturally increases serotonin in your body. Being more active and green space therapy like being outside, looking at wide open space and nature helps increase our ability to it, improves depression. Basically, the things that we use to fuel our body.
Speaker 2:Having the right nutrients right, eating the right things, helps to support health and wellness, and that includes our brain. When we're eating a lot of carbohydrates and things that are ultra processed, like we're not fueling our body with nutrients, and then we wonder why we're still hungry and why we can't feel well. Some of the supplements that are calming would be like magnesium, alfany, holy basil, and then there was whatever serotonin, like things that increase serotonin, so you can take like a 5-HTP or something like that, or you can just work on eating more proteins and bananas have tryptophan and that leads to serotonin, and so there's lots of things that you can do from a food standpoint that can help support those neurochemicals as well.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. I think sometimes we think about our mind and just thinking differently. It's a mindset, not necessarily a whole body solution. I often, when clients come to me and present with depression or a lot of sleep issues, a lot of my questions are about okay, well, what are you eating? How much are you eating every day? Are you drinking? How much water are you drinking? Because these are basic things that our bodies need to survive, and so if we're not getting enough of those basic survival needs, then our body can shut down. It's not going to function as effectively, right, it's not always just well, change the way you think, which I think is a solution that we hear a lot of the time. Really, we can do one small thing that impacts a whole host of other areas in our life, right, like if I'm setting a goal for myself to be more active, that doesn't have to mean I'm going to work out for an hour and a half every day, and if I skip one day, then I'm going to shame myself because I failed. That might just mean I'm going to go up and down my steps two extra times today and I can feel good about that. Basically, what we can do is something. Anything is better than nothing. Anything is a really great start.
Speaker 1:I think also, when we are feeling bad, we often try to tell ourselves that we're not really, or we try to tell ourselves that it's not as bad as we think. Or it's all in our head, or it's just. I just need to get over it, or other people have some bigger problems. I don't have anything that I should be upset about. This is for no reason. There's something wrong with me, but it's not wrong enough to get support.
Speaker 1:One thing that we can start doing better is getting support before it's like a crisis. Any level of distress that's preventing you from experiencing joy is worth addressing Absolutely, because you deserve to feel joy, you deserve to feel present and you deserve to feel in control instead of helpless. If you're experiencing a helplessness feeling at any time and it's kind of coming up for you a lot, then instead of talking yourself out of it, trying to sort of minimize it, I would say give yourself the credit and respect to listen to those feelings and get some support. You can help yourself because you're not helpless. Taking that action is even a powerful thing in and of itself.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I was listening to this thing the other day and somebody was saying that until they saw the value in the treatment, they were able to come up with a lot of excuses as to why they wasn't for them or financially it was a hardship that they couldn't overcome. It wasn't until they actually valued themselves, getting better and the value of the treatment and seeing that it could work, that let them overcome the financial burden of getting help. What would you say to people about that piece of things? What comes up for me a lot is that it's too much from a financial standpoint.
Speaker 1:I think I'm not in everybody's wallets. I can't know exactly what the financial situation is in every family, but my perspective is that investing in care when you start to notice that you're feeling kind of off, that you think, as soon as you start to notice this, just I'm not fulfilled, I'm not in a place that I want to be that's when you want to invest in care. When you invest in good care, it doesn't last as long as when you prolong it and then later on down the line you're having to pay for therapy for a really long time because you have all of these things that have piled up over the years. The way that I kind of look at it is the sooner you get started, the less you'll need prolonged treatment. If you can get in and start working on some things and start really healing some of those wounds and some of those things that are making it difficult for you now, healing that stuff doesn't have to take forever. It's something that can be done and can be done in a relatively reasonable period of time.
Speaker 1:I think that it's much more expensive to put off care than it is to spend the money.
Speaker 1:Get you know, spend the time, invest in yourself.
Speaker 1:And the reason why I say that is because you are feeling depressed and anxious, so you're likely spending money on things that you don't need. You're likely eating out more often because you don't feel like cooking dinner. You're probably, you know, buying other supplements or other things that are not working for you. That are, you know, sort of just quick fixes or things like if you haven't gone and gotten care and said like, okay, specifically for me, what's going to make the most sense, and you're just like buying this. Buying that, this piecemeal approach like that's going to be a lot more expensive than just going to meet with someone who can really assess your whole situation and offer you a treatment plan that is designed to solve your exact problems and support you as an individual, versus whatever quick fix we find online and you know, I think I'm guilty of that too Like I've accidentally bought stuff off of you know, a social media ad here and there and I'm like, oh, I probably was, that was an impulse buy because I was feeling this way or whatever, right.
Speaker 1:So I mean, in my experience, it's just more expensive to put off care. Yeah.
Speaker 2:To speak to that too, like what comes up in my brain when you're saying that stuff is also like how much is that affecting you in your either pursuit of a career, your current career, and also in your family and relationships? You know those things are also affecting all of that too. So, yeah, I could definitely see that that is a good argument for, you know, looking at it and investing in yourself. And it is time consuming and it does take away from other things. But I really like maybe I've said this before, but I really like what somebody said about time and we all only have 24 hours in a day and when we say I don't have time for that, we're really saying I choose not to spend time on that, and so all of the time that we have, it's a choice, and you know it's hard. It's hard to manage how much time we have. But if we can find the value in what we're investing our time in, then we can, you know, look at it in a different light.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. We need to start choosing ourselves and choosing our care and choosing our wellness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and as women I'm sure everybody's heard this too but like, as women, we like often they have our glass and we like pour it out all over everybody and we're like I just going to keep giving and giving and giving and then like there's like nothing left and we're so depleted and we have no energy, but instead, if we like fill their own cup up first and let it overflow to everybody, like we are so much better able to help other people and be there for the people that we want to be there for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that is a great place to end today. Yes, thank you so much for listening to why Am I Like this, and if you like our show, please leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Follow the show and share it with friends. This episode was written and produced by me, laura Wood and Michelle Beaver. Our theme song is Making Ends Meet by Thickest Thieves, and a special thanks to Benaviria Counseling and Coaching and Active Healing Psychiatric Services for sponsoring our show.
