Editorial Team 
Written by Shannon Battle, Licensed Counselor and Strategy Coach.
Let’s face it. Women are brilliant! We have the capacity to create life. And enhance the lives of everyone around us. Women know how to labor physically and mentally in support of the people around them. From the secretary in the office, the stay-at-home mom, and the corporate giant…we all have an inner prowess that can take on tough challenges. So what makes women break down easily?
I recently watched an interview with singer and reality tv superstar Tamar Braxton on the Tamron Hall show. Her conversation was about her circumstances surrounding her publicized suicide attempt. She never discussed the means. But admitted that she had to get hospitalized.
She talked about being at her all-time low. So, as a viewer, we are captivated by the fame and visible success of her life. But it is hard to imagine that she could have reached that level of a breaking point. Her example is an indication that women need to examine their emotional well-being.
Understanding Emotional Well Being
Life is a roller coaster. Everything moves fast and everyone wants immediate results with an increased level of demands. Women have to become an octopus when they have families and careers. Hence, the demands become automated habits of doing without assessing the impact on your emotional health.
Your emotional well-being is attacked by emotional pain. Anything that makes you struggle with finding your self-worth or knowing your value to your family or work can intrude on your thoughts. In fact, you can become overwhelmed and never know that you are on the verge of anxiety or depression.
Contributors of Emotional Suffering
We all experience emotional pain. This is the pain that makes us feel uncomfortable by feeling angry, sad, disgusted, or scared. Also, this pain is further linked to complex emotions that are interlinked within those categories. For example, someone who experienced the pain of betrayal from their spouse will likely experience a combination of them all. So, if you break down the emotions that intensify those responses, we uncover the penetrating pain that interferes with your happiness.
In other words, anger also means:
- Hurt that the person you loved was dishonest and unfaithful
- Devastated that this intrusion was brought into your life.
- Furious that your love was taken for granted.
- Humiliated if other people outside of your marriage are aware of the act.
- Crushed that the person you loved didn’t value your love.
- Damaged because your lifelong partner cut into the crevices of your heart….
Can you see how we may only acknowledge eye-level emotions that really have complex levels of symptoms? You know how to identify anger, but what about identifying the patterns that disassociate your ability to reason with your emotions?
Women are expected to be resilient. I believe the superwoman gave us a falsetto of our actual range of sanity. But, for most women, their family is their core of strength and existence. A woman will go to the ends of the earth to fight for her family. In her quest to make life great for her family and give excellence to her career, she has hidden pain that layers underneath success and image. She is also very careful to hide her inner turmoil at the sacrifice of her mental well-being.
Signs of Emotional Distress
I have an opportunity to work with a nonprofit program called Give an Hour for military service members and their families. As I train service members on how to identify these signs, I am far too aware of the increasing number of military suicides and suicide attempts each year. However, the problem with suicide in the military is that it is often blindsided. People close to those individuals are never aware anything was wrong.
Women will often feel alone, as though they are unrecognizable. I have counseled women who felt like a notepad. Mental Maintenance for the Stressed out Woman. They are always taking instructions and executing others’ demands while feeling neglected. So, if we are going to be our sister’s keeper we need to know what patterns to notice. Below are a few suggestions on how to notice signs of emotional stress:
- Personality Change
- Withdrawal
- Self-Care
- Hopelessness
- Agitation
Finding Your Way Through
If you know that you are changing normal patterns and have not been feeling like yourself for the past 30 days, you need to get help. Basically, this means sucking up your pride, picking up a phone, and scheduling an appointment with a licensed professional. You can call a psychiatrist (medication management), psychologist (counseling/testing), or a licensed social worker or counselor (individual therapy).
In short, your sanity is just as important as your physical health. No one is going to take care of you like you! Your greatest superpower is your ability to recognize your weaknesses. So, in your weakness, God’s strength is made perfect. You are a prowess who needs scheduled mental maintenance.