#3 Stress and how to handle it.
Part 2 – How women de-stress
In the last tip we looked at the importance to our health of de-stressing. Men’s brains evolved to mostly only think of one thing at a time, so they can de-stress just by doing something other than think about their problem. This strategy doesn’t work for women as they are natural multitaskers. The human race would not have survived without women being able to look after a cave full of children while foraging for food, being nice to their cavemates, cooking and doing a hundred other things all at once. When a woman is stressed, she can’t just watch television – she needs to talk. And talk. And talk, talk, talk. Talk about the stressing incident from every possible angle.
Ideally, they talk with their female friends, who will be supportive and caring and let them know that they were not alone. Sometimes the woman doesn’t have her female friends to hand and tries to de-stress by talking to a man. This usually doesn’t work; the man often fails to be supportive enough, or even worse tries to solve the woman’s problem (men’s brains are wired for problem solving, and it is very hard for them not to offer a solution – no matter how unlikely it is to work for the woman). She isn’t looking for solutions, she is looking for emotional support so that she can de-stress.
So women, when you need talk something through, first try to find a female friend. If you can’t, let your man know what is expected: “Darling, something happened to me today that I want to talk through – I’m not looking for a solution from you, I just want to know that you are here for me…”
And men, if your woman is telling you about her problems don’t offer any advice or solutions unless she specifically asks you. Instead, just listen (actively – you can’t just grunt and nod while watching telly). For extra points, be supportive at appropriate points in the story “That situation must have been difficult, Darling” or “So what did you say to that then?” etc.