Podcast episode 55: We Are Emotional Sponges! - Extraordinary Women Magazine

Today, I’m going to make some huge generalizations, but science and research has backed me up on this one, so I feel comfortable.

Here it is….

As a woman, you have a greater need to regroup, recenter and re-energize yourself than men do. It doesn’t matter what is your job, your career, your lifestyle or even what is your Myers Briggs type – women are very different from men. I’m going to refer to us women as emotional sponges. That’s never going to change, so we need to figure out how to better cope with all that emotional energy we are naturally taking in.

Welcome to the Extraordinary Women Podcast where we chat about the issues that women just like you, are thinking about, dealing with and working through in our daily lives.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Sharri Harmel, Editor and Chief Creative of the Extraordinary Women Magazine.

Life can sometimes get a little complicated, stressful and even messy at times but always remember, you are truly a unique and Extraordinary Woman!

It isn’t in your head. Women are like emotional sponges. You really do find it harder to switch roles without having the emotions from one role spill over into another. For example, if you’re a mother, your mother emotion naturally spill into your role at work or your emotions around work can affect how you interact with your partner or children.

Men are both culturally conditioned and hormonally or chemically made to be much better at compartmentalizing than women. Now it’s not so great that men excel at this, they have their own set of issues, but today we’re talking about things you can do to help yourself not be an emotionally dripping sponge.

I’m bringing this up because you’re probably reading like I am, how much more difficult Covid has been on working women versus men. During covid, there was no physical separation between all the various roles you have as a woman. There was minimal time and space going from one role to another. You didn’t have the commute time or standing on the side of a soccer field watching your child that both helped you to switch roles. The bigger impact of Covid on women versus men now sort of makes sense, doesn’t it?

But it’s not just something major like a pandemic that overloads our emotional sponges.

I’m bringing this up because I’m struggling with this right now and it has nothing to do with Covid. I’ve recently moved. I’m making design decisions on my Boston apartment, leaving for Paris on October 15 for three months, creating a quiz for my business, and just published the 3rd issue of Extraordinary Women Magazine.

ALL good stuff but I’m a little nuts and more than a little frazzled. Thank God I live alone, or I’d be snapping at someone! It all feels like too much, which makes me want to run from all the decisions and responsibilities I have and sit on the sofa and veg out with a good book or Netflix biographies.

Maybe you can relate. Even if everything happening in your life is really good, and you tell yourself over and over you should be feeling incredibly grateful, but you feel scattered, crabby and unfocused.

Why? What’s going on?

We all have heard the phrase women are wired differently from men, but actually it’s your hormones not the wiring systems of your brains that is very different from a man’s biological makeup. Your body reacts to very different hormones than men, and these hormones will comfort you, jazz you or make you anxious.

A woman’s hormonal experience does make us more emotional and in fact it also helps us to see the big picture much better than most men, which maybe creates a whole different set of anxiety provoking possibilities than men ever think about.

Men are really good at sticking to the task at hand, which simplistically is known as the skill of compartmentalizing. As a woman, you see the bigger picture, see so many possibilities which runs counter to the ability to compartmentalize. Plus, as women, we carry all our stories that have emotional connections with us from role to role and even year to year. Men do not have this same emotional experience.

Recently I was with friends of mine, a long-term married couple with now grown children. We were talking about an uncomfortable experience they had with a son-in-law. The husband said it is all going well now, so things are looking up. The wife said she’s just waiting for the problems to emerge again because she hasn’t forgotten what had happened.

The husband laughed and said that he thought women have much longer memories than men and won’t forget. Now I wanted to disagree with him, but when I thought about it, I can remember things people did that were not all that nice all the way back to when I was a child!

Frankly, I’m embarrassed to say I profess to embrace the saying, forgive but never forget. But I’m now thinking that’s not such a good way of being.

Because as women, we don’t let go and we don’t forget, I think there is a strong possibility that we are often carrying around uncomfortable emotions that we’re still trying to work out. Day to day we are adding to our emotional sponges that are already sort of holding onto past memories and experiences. So, it’s easy to now feel how we are emotional sponges that sometimes are completely saturated with our emotional experiences.

And what are the consequences of being emotional sponges?

Short-term we will often realize that our emotional experiences spill over from situation to situation and role to role if we don’t re-center, re-energize ourselves between our experiences or rules.

Long-term emotional baggage is also saturating our emotional sponges and what happens when those negative comments said to you are kept in your memory bank? My best guess is that those negative comments make you doubt yourself and the probability of all your dreams coming true.

Men tend to not do this. As you all know, I was a career coach for years and I saw that men were completely confident applying to positions even if they had maybe 50-60% of the requirements.

My women clients? They would ask me if they should apply to the job if they only have 80 or 90% of the requirements! The uncertainty of the women wasn’t about the present but experiences from their past that still made them doubt their abilities and gifts.

So, ask yourself, do I have any negative statements still swirling around in my head even though I absolutely positively know that what that was said is no longer and maybe never was true?

And my second question for you is have you found yourself getting through each day completely frazzled, doing for others all day long without a minute to yourself?

Time with yourself matters. It is time with yourself that helps you to refuel, reconnect and cleanly move from one role to another. Time to yourself, even if it’s just 15 minutes, can make a crazy busy day feel much better and help you to put away any self-sabotaging beliefs that should be put firmly in the past. You have to get quiet to connect with the woman you are today.

Back in Podcast #52, I talked about 5 things you can do to be happier. One of them was to meditate each day, which actually trains your brain to focus on the present. This reconnection with yourself, whether it is meditation, a short walk-in nature or just closing your eyes at your desk and breathing, helps you to bring the focus back to yourself and what you want. That allows you to switch up those hormonal triggers you have into more positive, dream focused chemicals in your body. Ultimately, reconnecting with yourself will help you to have more energy and get more centered and not be that dripping, totally saturated emotional sponge.

Now I mentioned founding the Extraordinary women magazine. This magazine is meant to help you to have those quiet moments with yourself – to support and inspire you to connect with your dreams – what could be, rather than what happened in the past.

Honestly, this magazine might have been my craziest idea yet because I’m going up against all sorts of publishers with massive amounts of capital – but I believed that women like us need some support and want the inspiring stories of women just like us who are living their dreams. Do subscribe and spend time reading using the magazine to reconnect and refocus with yourself. It is my hope that the stories will have you saying to yourself… “If she, did it, so can I.” And you can.

Outro:

Ladies, if you are tired of never having time for you, never making the time to connect with yourself and your dreams, then I know you’ll love Extraordinary Women Magazine. The magazine will make you want to take some time for yourself because you’re going to want to read each issue as soon as it shows up in your inbox.

I named the magazine Extraordinary Women because every issue has stories of at least two extraordinary women who will probably remind you a little of yourself. Try that label on! And if you know of someone you think I should highlight in the magazine, just message me.

The magazine is a dream supporting, dream inspiring read that I know you’ll love. It’s got ideas, recipes, and lifestyle suggestions meant to give you hope and encouragement, which we need more of today. Plus, in Issue 3 we have added a section called Home Matters. I had so many people ask me about my Paris apartment and the decorating process of my Boston apartment that I decided to embrace another of my loves, the home.

Also, I’ll be back in my Paris apartment mid-October for three months, so in the magazine there is a section I call My Parisienne Attitude, where I share all the daily musings and experiences around my life in Paris.

In addition, we are creating a small special Paris Holiday magazine, so if you love Paris and want to receive it, make sure to get the magazine now. You’ll then receive that issue as a gift.

Married or solo, kids grown or still at home. Corporate careers, entrepreneurs, a stay-at-home mother or even retired, this magazine is meant to be like your best friend who appreciates you, encourages you and inspires you to find that secret to your happiness.

Go to Extraordinary Women Magazine.com and join us by clicking HERE. Nothing complicated. Just good stories, a little inspiration and a big dose of hope.

Thank you and

As I say to my friends and neighbors in Paris….À Bientôt!