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Abstract

to even try to understand your own emotions?</p><p id="144f"><b>The problem with the tired old trope of men as less emotional is that it only works if we ignore all the emotions we associate with maleness, such as anger, competitiveness, lust, rage, ambition, jealousy, and pride. And only if we pretend men aren’t affected by such feelings as insecurity, shame, sadness, fear, grief, pain, anxiety, and guilt.</b></p><p id="a656">What I observed in my professional career was that men do experience those emotions just as much as women do, but they are less aware of them, less willing to examine them, less able to discuss them.</p><p id="5b18"><b>Even feelings every human being should be proud to own, like love, are uncomfortable territory for the hyper-male to verbalize. Does that mean they lack such feelings? No. <i>So why are they so scared to talk about them?</i></b></p><p id="6246" type="7">In what sense is it rational not to try to understand how others feel?</p><h2 id="4850">Big boys don’t cry.</h2><p id="f56e"><b>To most of us, emotionality means tears.</b> Maybe this is where we got the notion of the unemotional man. Women cry, and children cry, but men are tough. They don’t react to feelings.</p><p id="5921">Well, they might react, but not by weeping. They might shout and clench their fists. They might pitch tantrums — punching walls, slamming doors, and breaking things. They might do any of a dozen crazy things, from driving way too fast to picking fights in bars, but as long as they aren’t crying at the same time, their friends won’t call them out for “getting all emotional.”</p><p id="e644">But tears are a <b>healthy</b> response to strong emotion. Tears show vulnerability, invite support, build unity with others, and regulate our neurochemical balance. Tears function as a safety valve, removing stress hormones like cortisol. When those chemicals build up, it sets us up for major health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. It also builds up pressure that can lead to desperate behavior.</p><p id="c708"><b><i>Maybe, if we taught our boys to cry, we wouldn’t see so many of our men arrested, addicted, committed, or dead by suicide.</i></b></p><p id="2497" type="7">Tears function as a safety valve, removing stress hormones like cortisol.</p><h2 id="a13e">But what about their hormones? PMS!?!</h2><p id="56ba"><b>Here’s the scoop: we all have hormones.</b> Every body and every brain has the same hormones, just not in the same proportion. And everybody’s hormones have an impact, not just on their moods but on their mental clarity.</p><p id="3e2c">Women’s estrogen levels fluctuate in predictable 28-day cycles. That’s why we see shelf after shelf of books, plus articles in every magazine that’s written for a female readership, about not only PMS and PMDD but also the emotional effects of pregnancy and perimenopause. Estrogen may be the single most-examined substance in the human body. (Or, at least, in the <i>female</i> human body, though many of the neural pathways in men’s brains are also estrogen-dependent.)</p><p id="4017">But even though males are still in the majority among physicians, testosterone has not been given anywhere near as much attention except regarding its

Options

impact on sexual and athletic performance.</p><p id="4887">Men’s testosterone levels surge <b>unpredictably</b>. Like every time they see a pretty woman. Or their team wins a big game. Or they get cut off in traffic. So where is all the research on the impact of those hormone surges on men’s moods and mental clarity? Or, more to the point, why doesn’t <i>that</i> research get more air time in the popular press?</p><p id="81c9"><b>Testosterone-juiced behavior has been described in many ways. Rational was never one of them.</b> But do we teach our sons to watch out for <i>their</i> hormones? Of course not. Instead, we show them how to justify their actions — to <i>rationalize </i>their irrational behavior and, if called out by a woman, accuse her of oversensitivity.</p><p id="bb86" type="7">Testosterone-juiced behavior has been described in many ways. Rational was never one of them.</p><h2 id="b8af">Conclusions</h2><p id="277a">A<b>re men more rational than women? </b>In a word, no. Just the opposite. Neither are they less emotional, just less aware of their emotionality.</p><p id="1b09">Our culture shows girl children lots of ways to handle feelings. It tells boy children just to stuff them. So the women have the tools, the tears, the talking skills. The men just have to wing it. In the dark.</p><p id="6fc1">It isn’t fair to anyone. Not fair to men who have grown up deprived of vital skills and knowledge. Not fair to women who are forced to deal with men who can become irrational at any moment, in response to feelings they have been conditioned to ignore.</p><p id="b67f">It doesn’t have to be that way. We can do a better job preparing all our children to live as emotion-having beings in the company of other emotion-having beings.</p><p id="4b69"><b>But until that happens, we should stop letting men get away with pretending they are somehow blessed with greater rationality than women. Because nothing could be further from the truth.</b></p><p id="cc07">.</p><p id="171c"><b><i>More from Edward Robson, PhD, MFA:</i></b></p><div id="2913" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-friend-zone-is-a-lie-f7b904035d3a"> <div> <div> <h2>The Friend Zone is a Lie</h2> <div><h3>There’s a reason you keep getting stuck there.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*9tcAn5ESD5gxfeUb)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><div id="0d10" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/you-have-the-power-to-cause-pain-ba63dcb1a55e"> <div> <div> <h2>You Have the Power to Cause Pain</h2> <div><h3>The surest way to guarantee you will is to imagine that you can’t.</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*56yO74vt1MVnhj5I0uIECg.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

How to Deal with Difficult People

If you’re over the age of four you’ve probably experienced a collection of difficult people, possibly even toxic people. That sucks and I’m sorry you’ve had to. I’m a big proponent for trying to communicate through issues with difficult folks. The problem though is that you’ll never get away from that. Throughout our lives, we constantly encounter difficult people. Thankfully there are ways to prepare for that before we meet them.

I think inside we’re all similar, most of us don’t love conflict. Even those people who create it because they were raised in it. It stresses us out. Conflict and high stress most often triggers our deep-seated response — fight-or-flight.

The fight-or-flight response is an automatic reaction our nervous system generates when we perceive threat. (Fight or Flight: Which is Better)

This can cause us to say or do things that create consequences for later. Which we also don't want.

So, how do we prepare for these high-stress conflict situations?

High-Stress Conflict Arena

We prepare by practice, experience, and muscle building.

First, we need to find spaces that have high-stress conflict but, don’t put us in actual harm. One of those spaces is the internet.

Internet of Trolls

We’ve all been scrolling on the net and found ourselves triggered by some dingus. Typing away behind the screen spouting off about something. This is a fine option. It’s a little sterile as it doesn’t have much humanness attached to it. Humanness means we don’t associate trolling content with a human, we forget that a person put it out there.

My suggestion for high-stress conflict is the realm of online gaming that includes voice chat. Here you will find people who say the most offensive and derogatory things. They’ll cut you deep with the most creatively hurtful linguistics they can drum up. This is the social gym I got to practice desensitization, experience high-stress conflict, and build the muscle of steeling myself against difficult people.

Online Gaming Community

I rediscovered gaming during the pandemic it helped me find some regrounding. Last week I was playing an arena-based first-person shooter called Apex Legends when I was outlining this article. Wouldn’t you know it, I had a slew.

A SLEW! Of difficult human beings as “teammates”

Let me throw a little context for those who aren’t familiar with gaming or this particular game.

(1) Arena games are where you drop into a map and try to be the last man or last team standing — thing Hunger Games.
(2) Apex Legends is a Sci-Fi genre game
(3) Teams are made up of 3 players

When you queue up for a game, you’re put on a team with two other players. Sometimes they have mics for verbal communication, sometimes they don’t.

If they do you’re gonna meet a lot of different people. Some of whom are the cause of high-stress offensive behavior.

In the Apex community, the breakdown is roughly this — It’s 40% verbally toxic, 30% silent, and 30% verbally chill. The toxic section gets the worst wrap. As it should honestly, there’s no reason to dehumanize someone for their lack of skill in a video game.

One of my “teammates” collected my banner after I’d died, this lets you bring them back into the game. So I pinged the nearest respawn location, waited a little bit, then pinged it again. His response was…

“I don’t F**king respawn teammates who ping more than once.” — Random Gamer

After he said this, we had a back and forth where I was getting frustrated with him and his solo player attitude in a team-based game. It probably goes without saying we didn’t reach an amicable resolution, so I quit.

Other Instances of Toxic Behavior

Getting messages during the game telling me I’m awful for not doing what they said
Getting messages after the game telling me how awful I am
Being told I should quit and go die in real life because we lost and it was “only my fault”
Being told they hope my mother and sisters get raped because I’m so bad at the game
Being muted (for them to hear me) by my teammates, while they make obscene and offensive comments about me during the game

The list could go on for a while. Needless to say, these folks can be pretty awful. Granted nobody likes losing, but, just because you lost doesn’t mean you need to villainize the other person.

I suggest this as a realm to practice overcoming difficult people because reasonably speaking. Once you log off that’s it, you’re safe again. The upside is that you can choose how long you want to desensitize. An hour, three hours, a full Saturday, whatever you can handle.

The Secret: Desensitization

I’ve found that during my time playing online games that I’d grown the muscle of steeling myself against the hateful comments. I did this by desensitization.

What is desensitization?

Desensitization is a psychological process by which a response is repeatedly elicited in situations where the action tendency that arises out of the emotion proves to be irrelevant. Desensitization is sometimes used to treat phobias by gradually and repeatedly presenting the frightening stimulus under nonthreatening conditions. Over time, when desensitization works, the phobic response becomes less and less intense.

Excerpt from Joanne Cantor, in Encyclopedia of International Media and Communications, 2003 (Science Direct)

Psychologists use this tool for many different phobias or areas of life. It helps the person grow the mental muscle for steeling yourself.

Two Big Examples of Desensitization

One man used desensitization to overcome rejection — he turned his phobia into a game.

Another man turned his phobia into a lifestyle for 100 days — then gave a TED talk on it.

Takeaway

Nobody likes dealing with difficult people but frankly, difficult people are everywhere. However, we can prepare before we encounter them and build the muscles up to handle their bad behavior.

If you’re looking to grow in dealing with difficult and toxic people in the world. Try small sessions of desensitization. Learning to stay grounded when we meet high-stress conflict is one of the foundations to becoming our best selves.

Post Script: Desensitization as a solution does not apply to toxic relationships with people you have deeper relationship with; spouses, romantic partners, and family for example.

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If you’d like to learn more secrets check out this article.

The Secret to Keeping Your Life On Track

Two simple questions that keep you on the path toward your goals.

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