Men’s and women’s different reactions…

Görel Wentz and Ulf Lundberg.

Struck me this morning that it stands somewhere that men and women react differently to stress, and searched for this in two books I have. One was Peter Währborg’s “Stress och den nya ohälsan” (“Stress and the new ill health”) and the other “Stessad hjärna, stressad kropp – om sambanden mellan psykisk stress och kroppslig ohälsa” (”Stressed brain, stressed body – about the connections between psychic stress and bodily ill-health”) by the professor at the Institution of Psychology and the Centre for Health Equity Studies (CHESS) at the university of Stockholm Ulf Lundberg and his co author Görel Wentz, journalist.

Währborg writes in his book on page 78 in the chapter “Differences between men and women” that Christina Maslach establishes that burnout looks different in men and women, even if this condition is as common in women as in men. In women the emotional exhaustion (the emptiness feeling) is more intensive and more usual. Men react with depersonalization and frigidity (känslokyla).

Lundberg and Wentz write at page 179 in their book in the chapter “Psychological differences” that in the stress research, as in so many other research areas, most studies are performed on men, For a long time one hasn’t been aware that men and women react differently to stress.

And they also write that it is rather psychological factors and sex role patterns (könsrollsmönster) which are decisive for the differences between the sex’s manners in reacting to stress.

Yes, we are raised and met differently from the beginning, because we are seen differently and the demands are put differently on us? But don't small children, no matter what sex (or for that matter what individual the small child is) , have the same needs, and maybe exactly the same needs (is it true that different individuals has different needs? Or can belief/idea be about the parents needs, a projection of their totally unconscious needs? And IF different individuals should have different needs: are they SO different? And IF children have different needs, can it be that they entered this world in different ways? Things we grown ups aren't sensitive to maybe at all or very little? Because we in turn had to make ourselves insensitive to survive?)?

And later we take our early unfulfilled needs out in different ways and on different persons, in different circumstances, some have more power than others and others less, so the effects of this are more or less large and directed on different targets (the more power a person has the more damage his/her unprocessed has?).

And that we take our unfulfilled needs out in different ways always causes problems, bigger or smaller, and misinterpretations and misunderstandings? Bigger or smaller wars?

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And there was a small article in the local newspaper about the incest man in Austria, where it stood that he was a classical tyrant... He was big and strong? And had much more physical strength and power than, at least, his wife and daughters? Which he didn't hesitate to use at all.

And it already stands about this case in wikipedia!

And which are the consequences of child abuse - on the political level? For who we vote on in elections? If we vote at all? If we want a savior, maybe even a "strong leader" solving all our problems and keeping things in order by punishing those who don't live in a certain way, and how the leader sees criminals (criminals need hard punishments for instance) etc. etc.? If we believe we have influence on things on different levels (in our private life, at the work place, in the society, in the world) or if we don't think we have? If we are still paralyzed with unprocessed helplessness or not? Because we were so badly treated, and had no protector?

And if we fight for things so they don't harm ourselves either...

And our (really lousy) current government uses the classical tool with scapegoats! Gathering people in chasing certain groups like those on sick pay. I am rally horrified over many of our politicians, whom are younger than me many of them, over the views the have and give expression to. Really horrified.

And I have thought for long that it is opportune to chase the ones on sick pay for instance, because most of those on sick pay are women. At least here. I have thought for myself that if it had been more men on sick pay the politicians would have taken steps in preventing illness due to stress and work place conditions/work environment (psychosocial not least).

Playing on many people’s tendencies to contempt for weakness? Beating their breasts!