Are women born with more pain tolerance?

or has the society just ignored their needs.

When they say education opens up your mind, I did not think it would make me question a lot of my beliefs. Every day I learn something new in my course of Psychology. Every paper asks me to find its critics and the areas of where research hasn’t reached. How papers could be biased or research not done rigorously enough including all cultures and types of people. While doing these researches to find criticisms, the biggest problem I found is a bias against women. Either women are not being included in the research, researched only with a patriarchal lens, or women of colour are completely disregarded.

More than that, I also am on the side, learning about trauma-informed approaches. How our bodies store emotions and stress and how it can manifest into various illnesses. But then, the more you learn and read you realize the opposite is also true! Currently, I am working on a research paper on how a woman was misdiagnosed and told that she was pretending to be sick - probably just depressed only to find that she was suffering from fibromyalgia. What is mind-boggling to me is that most of these cases are of women. Living under extreme stress and pain, ignoring that pain for many years, manifested into physical conditions, no one believing her easily and pushing all of it aside like she is making up physical symptoms. I have seen cases where women who are in pain but are told by others that they are lying, believing themselves that maybe they are lying - it’s just in the head.

The problem on the other side is, that so many women are busy pathologizing their stress and finding medical solutions to answers that lie in their mental health. Families don’t want to accept that women could be suffering from mental health issues because that would mean cutting them some slack. Letting them be and taking care of them rather than expecting to be taken care of by them. This would mean stopping to listen to their needs and their emotions which they have buried inside them for years. This would mean letting them be angry, and upset and accepting their emotions. This would mean changing their attitude towards these women. It is easier for them to send them to a doctor and get a few medicines. It is easier to call them lazy when they start slacking on their daily chores. It is easier to ask them to take a day’s break but expect them to be in their best shape the next day.

There are too many women on both sides of the spectrum and I am appalled reading and knowing them. I am appalled at the medical system and the social system we live in where women’s medical issues and mental issues both are treated as though they are least important. The common denominator in both of them is that WE DON’T LISTEN TO THESE WOMEN! I am actually shouting this out. In all the cases that I have come to read and know, these women knew that something was wrong but no one believed them. They had to convince, defend and sometimes shout it out to others to be taken seriously.

I have no conclusion to this newsletter today. I am just upset reading all this literature and coming to learn of stories of people who I know. Do you know of anyone who has been through such an ordeal? Do share.