Brain Girl
If she wants to vent, she'll tell you and you can sit back and know that just by listening you are offering meaningful support. More important, she'll start to learn that sometimes, just by listening, you are providing all the help she needs. Your daughter may be suspicious of your motives the first time you offer her the opportunity for unbridled venting. If she has grown used to getting and, of course, reflexively rejecting your advice when she complains, she may wonder what you're up to.
But stick with it and be clear that you believe in the healing powers of "just venting. Don't expect that venting will — or should — fully replace complaining.
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If the content of your daughter's venting strikes you as totally unfair and you feel compelled to weigh in, consider saying, "I have a different take on the situation. Do you want to hear it? Congratulate yourself when you can get your daughter to advance to venting, because there will be times when you won't even be able to get how she expresses her displeasure up to the level of complaining much less venting. These are the days when she simply takes out her annoyance on anyone in her path — a particularly unpleasant, and common, form of using you your other children, or the family dog as an emotional dumping ground.
If your daughter feels that she must punish your family for her bad day, you might let one or two cutting comments pass. But, if it becomes clear that she plans to be wretched all evening, go ahead and say, "You may not be in a good mood, but you are not allowed to mistreat us. If you want to talk about what's bugging you, I'm all ears. Externalization is a technical term describing how teenagers sometimes manage their feelings by getting their parents to have their feelings instead.
Your adolescent daughter doesn't wake up one day and say to herself, "I think I'll start handing off my uncomfortable feelings to my parents. Unconscious processes can be powerful. If we could hold up a microphone to your daughter's unconscious mind, it would say, "You know, I've had a long day of being upset about this poor grade I just got back — the whole thing has become exhausting.
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I don't have a solution to the problem, but I need a break from being upset. I'll leave the test where Dad will surely find it so that he can be upset about it.
Externalization happens when your daughter wants to get rid of an uncomfortable feeling. And not just anyone will take on her uncomfortable feeling; it has to be someone who really loves her. It goes beyond feeling with your daughter to the point of actually feeling something on her behalf. When teens complain, they own their discomfort, will often accept your empathy, and may even allow you to help them address the source of their misery. It's the difference between "Mom, I want to tell you how uncomfortable this very hot potato I'm holding is and see if you've got any good ideas for how I might manage it" and "Mom, take this hot potato, I don't want to hold it any more.
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Externalization is a strange and subtle process that helps make adolescence manageable — for your daughter. When teenagers feel overwhelmed by their feelings and need to do something, they find a loving parent and start handing out potatoes. Lucky for your girl, but not so lucky for you. For the most part, there's not much that you can do about externalizations. You will rarely, if ever, be able to identify an externalization at the moment it occurs. And talking with your daughter about her behaviour won't prevent her from doing it.
Teens don't consciously decide to externalize, so they can't consciously decide not to. Even if you could talk your daughter into taking responsibility for all of her difficult feelings all of the time, would you want to? Your willingness to hold your daughter's emotional hot potatoes from time to time is a thankless and charitable act, but it will help her get through some of the roughest patches of her adolescence. If you find yourself compelled into radical action after a brief but painful encounter with your daughter, I've got two words for you: Talking with a trustworthy adult about what's happening with your teenager is usually the perfect salve to the discomfort of being on the receiving end of an externalization.
By sharing the situation with someone who isn't holding an emotional hot potato, most parents start to see things more clearly and to regain an adult perspective on the problem. Sometimes another adult isn't available or the content of the externalization feels too sensitive to be shared. Under these conditions — and absent pressing safety concerns — wait at least a day before taking any action. From the book Untangled by Lisa Damour, Ph.
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Report an error Editorial code of conduct. Log in Subscribe to comment Why do I need to subscribe? A week later, there is a rise in progesterone, the hormone that mimics valium, making women "feel like cuddling up with a hot cup of tea and a good book," Brizendine said. The following week, progesterone withdrawal can make women weepy and easily irritated.
For most women, their mood reaches its worst hours before their period starts. Men can have the uncomfortable feeling that women are mind readers or psychics, Brizendine said. But women's intuition is likely more biological than mystical. This is one explanation for why women consistently score higher than men on tests that require reading nonverbal cues. Women not only better remember the physical appearances of others but also more correctly identify the unspoken messages conveyed in facial expressions, postures and tones of voice, studies show.
This skill, however, is not limited to childrearing. Women often use it tell what bosses, husbands and even strangers are thinking and planning. Stressful situations are known to spur the "fight or flight" response in men, but researchers have suggested that women, after sensing a threat, instinctually try to "tend or befriend.
Women may have evolved to avoid physical aggression because of the greater dependence of children on their survival, suggests Anne Campbell of Durham University. In ancient hunter-gatherer days, men only needed to do the deed to spread their genes, while women had to stay alive long enough to birth and raise the young. They tend to use more indirect forms of confrontation, he told LiveScience.
Brain-imaging studies over the last 10 years have shown that male and female brains respond differently to pain and fear.
And, women's brains may be the more sensitive of the two. The female brain is not only more responsive to small amounts of stress but is less able to habituate to high levels of stress, said Debra Bangasser of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, describing her recent research looking at molecular changes in the brain. Bangasser's research was conducted in rats but is considered potentially applicable to humans. Stress sensitivity may have some benefits; it shifts one's mental state from being narrowly focused to being more flexibly and openly aware. But if the anxiety is prolonged, it can be damaging.
Such findings may help explain why women are more prone to depression , post-traumatic stress disorder and other anxiety disorders, the researchers told LiveScience.
It's not just hormones
The research was published in the June issue of Molecular Psychiatry. Women may also have evolved extra-sensitivity to interpersonal cues as a way to avoid conflict, a state that can feel intolerable to women, according to Brizendine. The flood of chemicals that takes over the female brain during a conflict -- especially within an intimate relationship — is almost on the same order as a seizure, she explains. Possibly because of their overachievement in "mind reading," women often find blank expressions, or a lack of response, completely unbearable.
A young girl will go to great lengths trying to get a response from a mime while a boy will not be nearly so determined, Brizendine said. For females in particular, a negative response may be better than no response at all. For women to get in the mood, and especially to have an orgasm , certain areas of her brain have to shut off. And any number of things can turn them back on.
A woman may refuse a man's advances because she is angry, feeling distrustful -- or even, because her feet are chilly, studies show. Pregnancy, caring for small children and menopause can also take a toll on a woman's sex drive although some women experience a renewed interest in sex after The Change.
Best advice for a turned-on dude? For women, it is everything that happens 24 hours beforehand," Brizendine said. Progesterone increases fold in the first eight weeks of pregnancy, causing most women to become very sedated, Brizendine said. Don't worry; it returns to normal size by six months after delivery. Whether pregnancy causes women to think differently is controversial -- one recent study linked memory problems to pregnancy hormones -- but some researchers have suggested the changes prepare brain circuits that guide maternal behavior.
These circuits likely continue to develop after birth.