Niceness, emotional repression, and wellbeing
“Rage and anguish exist under the veneer of niceness, no matter how sincerely a person mistakes the facade for her true self.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.49
“Repression – dissociating emotions from awareness and relegating them to the unconscious realm – disorganizes and confuses our physiological defences so that in some people these defences go awry, becoming the destroyers of health rather than its protectors.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.7
“Emotional repression [is] in most cases expressed as niceness,”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.43
“Repression, the inability to say no and a lack of awareness of one’s anger make it much more likely that a person will find herself in situations where her emotions are unexpressed, her needs are ignored and her gentleness is exploited. Those situations are stress inducing, whether or not the person is conscious of being stressed. Repeated and multiplied over the years, they have the potential of harming homeostasis and the immune system.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.127
“The stress literature amply documents that helplessness, real or perceived, is a potent trigger for biological stress responses. Learned helplessness is a psychological state in which subjects do not extricate themselves from stressful situations even when they have the physical opportunity to do so.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.3
(A relateable example of what this looks like is provided on page 17, from an interview with a woman suffering multiple sclerosis: “I remember saying the main thing I wanted from him was respect. I don’t know why, but that was the big thing for me. I wanted that so badly I was willing to put up with a lot.”)
Anxiety and depression
“The less powerful partner in any relationship will absorb a disproportionate amount of the shared anxiety – which is the reason that so many more women than men are treated for, say, anxiety and depression.”
(The issue here is not strength but power. That is, who is serving whose needs?) It is not that these women are more psychologically unbalanced than their husbands, even though the latter may seem to function at higher levels. What is unbalanced is the relationship, so that the women are absorbing the husband’s stresses and anxieties while also having to contain their own.
…
The partner who must suppress more of his or her own needs for the sake of the relationship is more likely to develop physical illness as well – hence the greater incidence, for example, of autoimmune disease and of non-smoking-related cancers among women.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.196
Immunity
“In another study, married women were matched with an equal number of women who were divorced or separated. In the married group, marital quality and satisfaction were assessed by means of self-reports. Immune system activity was studied in blood samples drawn from each participant. Poorer marital quality was “strongly and positively” related to poorer immune response.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.195
Cancer
“In numerous studies of cancer, the most consistently identified risk factor is the inability to express emotion, particularly the feelings associated with anger. The repression of anger is not an abstract emotional trait that mysteriously leads to disease. It is a major risk factor because it increases physiological stress on the organism.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.99
“The partner who must suppress more of his or her own needs for the sake of the relationship is more likely to develop physical illness as well – hence the greater incidence, for example, of autoimmune disease and of non-smoking-related cancers among women.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.196
“Research has suggested for decades that women are more prone to develop breast cancer if their childhoods were characterised by emotional disconnection from their parents or other disturbances in their upbringing; if they tend to repress emotions, particularly anger; if they lack nurturing social relationships in adulthood; and if they are the altruistic, compulsively caregiving types.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.62
“”Extreme suppression of anger” was the most commonly identified characteristic of breast cancer in a 1974 British study.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.64
“A recent Australian study pointed to the importance of positive social relationships of modulating stress. Five hundred and fourteen women who required breast biopsies were interviewed. Slightly fewer than half of the subjects were subsequently diagnosed with cancer, the others with benign tumors. The results “revealed a significant interaction between highly threatening life stressors and social support. Women experiencing a stressor objectively rated as highly threatening and who were without intimate emotional social support had a ninefold increase in risk of developing breast carcinoma.
… A seventeen-year follow-up study of residents of Alameda County, California, looked at possible links between people’s social connectedness or sense of isolation and the onset of cancer… “The risk factor of major interest for women appeared to be social isolation, not only being isolated, but also of feeling isolated””
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.193
Rheumatoid arthritis
“The relationship between self-suppression and immune mutiny was illustrated in a 1965 study of the healthy relatives of women suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. One of the laboratory hallmarks of rheumatoid arthritis is the finding of an antibody directed against the self by the confused immune system. It is called rheumatoid factor, or R.F. Found in over 70 per cent of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, RF may also be present in people without the condition. The purpose of this particular research was to find out whether certain personality [“”] characteristics were associated with the presence of the antibody, even in the absence of disease.
Included in the study were thirty-six female adults or adolescents, none of whom had rheumatic disease. Among the subjects, fourteen had the RF body. Compared with the women without the antibody, the RF-positive group scored significantly higher on psychological scales reflecting the inhibition of anger and concern about the social acceptability of behaviours. They also scored higher on a scale that indicated traits such as “compliance, shyness, conscientiousness, religiosity and moralism.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.176-7
Hormones
“It is artificial to impose a separation between hormones and emotions…
Hormone production is intimately affected by psychological stress. Women have always known that emotional stress affects their ovarian function and their menstrual cycles – excessive stress may even inhibit menstruation.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.60-61
Osteoporosis and hip fractures
“Depressed people secrete high levels of cortisol, which is why stressed and depressed postmenopausal women are more likely to develop osteoporosis and hip fractures.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.33
Multiple sclerosis
“About 60 per cent of those affected are women.”
“Researchers in Colorado looked at one hundred people with the type of MS called relapsing-remitting, in which flare-ups alternate with symptom-free periods… Patients burdened by qualitatively extreme stresses, such as major relationship difficulties or financial insecurity, were almost four times as likely to suffer exacerbations.”
“Of the eight women with multiple sclerosis I spoke with, only one was still in her first long-term relationship; the others had separated or divorced. Four of the women had been abused physically or psychologically by their partners sometime before the onset of illness. In the remaining cases their partners had been emotionally distant and unavailable.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.16-17
Irritable bowel
“In a 1990 study of women patients conducted at the gastroenterology clinic of the North Carolina School of Medicine, 44 per cent of the women reported some type of sexual and/or physical abuse…. In a more recent investigation at the same centre, fully two-thirds of the women interviewed had experienced abuse of a physical or sexual nature, or both.”
Source: Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No, p.145