Beyond Fight or Flight: Why Women's Friendships Work

We at The Thinking Woman are, first and foremost, proud to be women. We are proud of what women can accomplish, and, while we firmly believe women can do whatever they choose, we are proud of the differences between men and women.

That is why we want to share with you something that has recently come to our attention. A UCLA study of women's responses under stress suggest that women use friendships with other women and tending to others to deal with life's stressors, beyond the traditionally accepted "fight or flight."

Clicking the header will bring you directly to the study, but we think Gale Berkowitz did such a nifty job of summing it all up, that what follows is her analysis, found in the Utne Reader and at anapsis.org, among other places. We think you will agree that, more than just food for thought, this is affirming and enobling for women:

UCLA Study On Friendship Among Women
An alternative to fight or flight
©2002 Gale Berkowitz

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research---most of it on men---upside down. Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible, explains Laura Cousin Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.

Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just fight or flight; In fact, says Dr. Klein, it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is release as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the fight or flight response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect. This calming response does not occur in men, says Dr. Klein, because testosterone---which men produce in high levels when they're under stress---seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen, she adds, seems to enhance it.

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded, says Dr. Klein. When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own. I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something.

The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men. Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. There's no doubt, says Dr. Klein, that friends are helping us live longer.

In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidants was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight.

And that's not all. When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend and confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate. Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls' and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). The following paragraph is, in my opinion, very, very true and something all women should be aware of and NOT put our female friends on the back burners.

Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women, explains Dr. Josselson. We push the m right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women. It's a very healing experience.

Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight" Psychol Rev, 107(3):41-429.
Geary DC, Flinn MV. Sex differences in behavioral and hormonal response to social threat: commentary on Taylor et al. Psychol Rev 2002 Oct;109(4):745-50; discussion 751-3
Cousino Klein L, Corwin EJ. Seeing the unexpected: how sex differences in stress responses may provide a new perspective on the manifestation of psychiatric disorders. Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2002 Dec;4(6):441-8.

Happy Feet

We have a confession to make. Those of us who have grown up to be thinking women started out as thinking girls who loved to put Broadway albums on the hi-fi (yes, kids, this was in the days before CDs, cassettes, and even stereos), dress up in mom’s old evening dresses and dance. It didn’t even matter whether we had seen the musicals, all that mattered was the dancing.

Later, we got to know the real thing through high school drama clubs, regional performances and late-night babysitting viewings of those dashing hoofers who leaped and twirled in old MGM musicals. Let's face it: it was impossible not to have a crush on Gene Kelly.

It gives us real pleasure when the things we loved as kids and thought were gone forever, return. So we are tickled pink to see the renewed interest in dance, thanks, in large part, to the Brits. First came ABC's smash success last summer, "Dancing With The Stars," which pairs celebrities with professional ballroom dancers, and shows us the process of training a non-dancer to compete with the pros.

Then, the brilliant Nigel Lythgoe took the formula he developed back home in England, and brought it to America, first as "American Idol," and then this summer's hit, "So You Think You Can Dance."

In a blockbuster finale, the winner of "So You Think You Can Dance" was a young man from California named Benji Schwimmer. His lively personality, lovable goofiness and awesome dancing talent won him the hearts of America and gave Fox the highest rated program this summer.

But it wasn’t just young Benji – who reminds us of another Benji we know – who dazzled America. He was accompanied by nine other young dancers who reminded the nation of the athleticism, poetry and excitement of the art form. As they tackled everything from hip-hop to Viennese waltz to Broadway with stops in between for salsa, contemporary and swing, the young dancers reawakened interest in moving to the beat.

The outcome has been phenomenal. Programs that feature dancing are proliferating. "Dancing With The Stars" starts its third season in a couple of weeks, and hopes to repeat last year’s ratings. A new movie about a street dancer and a ballerina opened big at the box office last weekend. And the recently announced national tour of the top ten contestants on "So You Think You Can Dance" sold out in 11 minutes in New York.

Can a renewed appreciation of such classics as "Top Hat" and "An American in Paris" be far behind? We can only hope that a new generation will appreciate Gene Kelly tap dancing on roller skates, Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling, or the legendary Bill Robinson showing Shirley Temple how it’s done.

All of this does more than give us pleasure. It makes us feel like putting on our dancing shoes.

Dancing, anyone?

Stop the Insanity

There are days when it feels like the entire world has gone insane.

September 11, 2001 was one of these days. We weren’t around then, but we have every confidence that Dec. 7, 1941 – the bombing of Pearl Harbor – was one of those days as well.

Madness, psychology experts tell us, is a state induced by unpredictable negative stimuli. Predictable negative stimuli may make us neurotic but we’re equipped to handle it. The unpredictable type can bring on schizophrenia, psychosis, borderline personality disorder and politicians.

So is it any wonder that recent events have made things feel nuts? One day all is calm, the next some state-sponsored terrorists provoke a violent response from the Middle East’s only democracy. We have innocents being bombed in Lebanon to go with those under attack in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Jewish community center becomes the focus of rage. And conservative TV pundits decide to add to the mayhem by declaring that we are in World War III.

Are they Chicken Littles or just big chickens?

One of the favorite betting events in the Judeo-Christian tradition is trying to predict when Armageddon will arrive – even though we’re told quite explicitly that this is a no-no. Recent events have sparked landmark business in this proud tradition. Everyone from evangelical fundamentalists to the Lubavitcher Hasidim have added their “evidence” to the party. All of this adds to what used to be free-floating anxiety but now resembles a strafing run on sanity.

We at the Thinking Woman think we need to have a mother (or The Mother/Father) put a foot down and send someone to his room without dinner. It’s time to realize that we have a choice: We can take the path of love by serving the poor and distressed, truly living every day in expectation of the coming of the Messiah. Or we can take the path of fear and produce a bloody apocalypse as it is written, not in the Bible but in the national best-selling Armageddon novels.

All this focus on when it will happen and how effectively diverts people from our primary responsibility -- stewardship and service. Perhaps the world will end next week, perhaps next month, perhaps not for centuries. The signs have been interpreted as such in past centuries. But we cannot stop loving and caring for the world we were given. God, when he gave stewardship of the earth to man, didn't say that we could stop when we thought the end was near. Civilizations have been destroyed before, and the end did not come.

We must, like our forebearers, live our lives in the expectation of the coming of the Messiah, but not use it as an excuse to be irresponsible and selfish.

Like any family, we can choose to work together, heal ourselves and our world and end this madness. Then we can let everyone out of their rooms so we may all finally sit together at the same table as family. Or we can go forward with violence, horror and madness.

The choice is ours.