Oppression and Physical Illness as a Woman: My personal journey
There are clear studies that help create a true clarity of gender differences and its effect on physical and mental health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3013263/
This article explains the physical differences in countries, such as men receiving more food in their formative years, due to them being the breadwinners, but does not go deep into the sociological oppression and its effects on the human body. As science looks for physical qualifiers to determine statistics, sometimes it can overlook the invisible traumas that are micro, though create macro effects in the human body.
As a woman writing this article, I am not even going to pretend to be completely objective. I have thought of myself as a confident and strong woman so, it has taken me a long time to slowly unravel parts of me that still fall into stereotypical patterns of old traditional and cultural norms without conscious intention. Due to my study within the emotional body map it has given me a unique perspective on my own illness and how they manifest from repetitive emotional patterns due so sociological behavior.
Even still to this day there are parts of my body that bring up insecurity, but, I just focus on the ones I love instead.
I remember staring into my reflection and only seeing my imperfections.
As a teenager, I was beginning to see the very obvious differences between a woman and a man. While my brother would go out with girls and get praise for his prolific dating life, I would bring home a guy and watch a bit of ‘cute’ bullying by the men in my family. But, you know, ‘boys will be boys’ was the way that it was in the ’90s.
By the time I entered college, I had not yet had my first boyfriend, as most were scared away by my family. I began to date a guy at 19 and I was so happy he noticed me that I got swept away in the illusion of safety and love. It became a five year mess of abuse that I allowed myself to stay in, still holding values from my family and not allowing my power to be seen.
I carried empathy with others in abusive relationships and saw that I, myself, was allowing myself to stay stuck. I would allow myself to think maybe I deserved it, or because I understood their pain it made it easier to forgive. Empathy and compassion are beautiful skills, but a curse if self-preservation and self-love are not also part of emotional intelligence and heart/mind.
I lost many friends in the process that simply could not stay to watch the experience. During the five years my body began to break down exponentially.
First, it started just with regular UTIs, bladder infections, then, grew stronger into kidney infections and stones. I began walking with a cane most of the time and tried sobriety for 4 years due to thinking that alcohol may have played a role in what was creating my pain. It was not until I went to a holistic practitioner that explained to me of carrying the emotional guilt, anger, and lack of safety and flow in my body. When she explained I was carrying my abuser’s anger in my body and that my body was in hyper safety mode I began to start meditating and clearing some of the trauma in my body.
I did the ancestral clearing, energy work, gained confidence enough to leave the abusive relationship and within months my kidney went from 20% to 90% functioning. I stopped needing a cane and UTIs became less and less regular until they were obsolete. Leaving my abusive relationship was a direct connection to my physical health.
After this moment, I began to seek more connections to the emotional body.
A few years later I left running my NFP art center to the world of healing. I started by training in Thai massage, as my childhood, although confused, I was lucky enough to study many different esoteric healing arts. I began to notice my shoulder pains as a direct connection to carrying the burdens of others.
I started to see the patterns in others having similar dysfunctions.
Only recently though I am finally seeing the parallels of being a woman and how these pains and traumas are connected to the tangled expression of womanhood that we play into unconsciously.
For me, one of the hardest times was admitting that I was oppressed as a female artist. I would watch my male colleagues who I mentored get into multiple galleries and sell their art work while I was struggling to get interviews/sales. I would continue going to multiple art schools thinking if only I get better skills, then the struggles of getting less representation would dissipate.
There is an inevitable desire of physical safety that women inherently have that men do not. There is a need to ‘prove’ our space in existence, as taking up space is not necessarily allowed as a woman as it is for the aggressive take-charge man.
These stereotypes cause many women to question themselves as the world constantly questions them and their intelligence.
This self doubt and insecurity can persist in the body. The body carries these insecurities. The body carries all emotions, whether or not they are fully expressed, as the emotions have to go somewhere. Our body becomes a vessel for all that cannot/feels unsafe to express. The deservingness of space/love and things become a deep pillar of entanglement, and asking for help becomes a weakness.
Let us take a look at how some of these stereotypes can create pain in the body. As anxiety is built from not feeling comfortable to share, a lot of illness are digestive. Bones and nervous system related illnesses make sense too as strong people may try to control their situation, it is very uncomfortable to admit that we are in fact, being treated with oppressive beliefs. Usually, the stronger you are the more you want to empower yourself even in situations that are in fact disempowering.
List of diseases and illness more common in women than men (other than the obvious differences in reproductive illnesses)
MS - women are 3x more likely
Celiac Disease is diagnosed in women 70% of the time
Hypothyroidism - about 10% of women have some form of this
Lupus
Osteoporosis/Rheumatoid arthritis
Depression
Bladder infections
Breast Cancer
Eating disorders
Bowel cancer/digestive disorders (gastroesophageal reflux disease, peptic ulcer disease, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)), all more common in women than men
Now, knowing the emotional body map and looking at these illnesses differently it feels almost obvious that many of these illnesses come from our habits and issues trying to fit into a box given to us unconsciously.
Eating disorders and bone illnesses are ways we cope with not feeling in control. Auto-immune illnesses and digestive illnesses stem from anxiety and over-worrying/overthinking and patterns and behaviors that are created from being in a male dominated society. Where being feminine or allowing some of our qualities to be fully expressed we stifle them and in turn, create more of a fitting character that is ‘more protected’. This more fitting character is denying the power of our whole self exactly as it is without fitting in for other’s comforts.
Depression, hypothyroid, and breast cancer is an even deeper level of feeling loss. A space of loss for a version of ourselves; a woman that is safe and supported.
I am not here to say all these illnesses can easily be alleviated if we only resolved some of the oppressive qualities of society, nor if we consciously maintain our divine expressions while remembering we are safe and supported by our God/Universe/loved ones. There are obviously both physical and emotional reasons many of these diseases exist in our body and nutrition, exercise and other physical additions serve to a part of all healing.
However, this article is here to touch on the possibility that potential healing is available with checking into our emotions. Checking into our relationship to the outside world and where we feel our power is being lost.
All healing begins when we simply ask ourselves, “Who/What am I giving my power to?”
ENROLL IN OUR FREE CLARIFYING YOUR PURPOSE BOOT-CAMP!
As a woman, unconsciously and consciously we are giving our power away as oppression is deliberately built for this reason. It is in the knowingness and the investigation that we get to take our power back.
I urge you, if you are a woman, to investigate this part of your womanness. Where have you accepted the oppression? Where have you subdued your power for the sake of others? Where have you done something for validation? Where have you found that you are afraid to be fully yourself? What do those qualities look like?
I love you and all that you are. You are beautiful and powerful. You are allowed to be all of that and you are safe.
Your future Emotional Body Mapper,
Brook Woolf
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