Brain Sex

The brain, like the body, has a sex.

Brain sex differences impact on personal, social and work relationships. In the context of wellness and coaching, let’s explore some of those average differences.

• Females in general read, feel and understand both their own and other’s emotions better than men.
• Her style of thinking is personal and contextual.
• Research done on the competitive sport situations revealed that they stress her out. She gets more satisfaction from playing well (competing with herself rather than others) and the companionship of the team.
• Her instinct in stressful situations is to tend and befriend, not fight or flight.

• Men in general are less in control of frustration and anger than women. His anger circuits are larger and less under control of thinking brain than those of the female brain.
• His style of thinking is impersonal, deductional and strategic.
• A man’s brain is wired to compete, take risks and to focus on one thing at a time
• His stress response tends to flight or fight.

If you found yourself irritated by behaviours that directly result from brain differences, you are part of a large population.

Men and women are designed to be the perfect team.

Yet, it is not uncommon for men to grow impatient with how their female counterparts talk about past, future and present within one sentence, adding unpleasant memories of past conflicts like commas. This results from women’s ability to remember more of the detail of events, including emotional detail. Females have greater ability to verbalise emotions and their brain is in general more networked. That is why men perceive female thinking and communication style as scattered and illogical.

Men often seem to females to be simply deaf, because women hear two to ten times better than men.

“He doesn’t listen”- does this sound familiar? Well, once his brain is activated and focused, nothing, almost nothing, will deflect him. So if you are trying to talk to him while he is absorbed in other activity, you may have little success in grabbing his attention. Not to mention that your attempts to communicate while he was focused on something else didn’t yield results because he possibly didn’t hear you.

Understanding brain differences can provide sound basis for good relationships in versatile work and social contexts. Instead of taking things personally, it is possible to meet irritations with more understanding based on knowledge of how the brain works.

Knowing how the brain is wired can give more flexibility in place of well-rehearsed responses and patterns of behaviour.

So next time, if you happen to be a woman, and your male boss is not responding to suggestions expressed through tone of voice, seems to be oblivious to emotional side of communication and your facial expressions, stop and notice that dynamic. And then simply say to yourself: “He can’t do it differently”.

He really can’t.

That said, it is not that your opinion doesn’t matter to him. All you have to do is to leave as little as possible for him to guess. He doesn’t have the ability to read your mind the way females in your friends or family circles do.

Krystyna Zalewska. MA(Psych)PSI Grad, P.Dip( HGI)
Psychologist
Human Givens Therapist
Business Coach