Transcript:
Okay, let’s get political. We’ve been talking a lot about the sociological reasons why people get migraine and are stressed out, and I want to do a deeper dive and put forward the notion that a lot of people, especially women, are suffering from chronic migraine. One could say, one could look at it this way because of patriarchy.
Now, before you men get too up in arms about this, and before you women affirm this, I think it’s important to examine this word patriarchy, right? And Terrence Real, who I’ve mentioned before, is incredible. He is a firm believer in patriarchy, as having experienced it firsthand as a man who was beaten by his father, he dedicated his life to understanding patriarchy and its effects on both men and women, and really getting super discerning about what it is. And he distinguishes between what I think he calls political patriarchy, which is the way we usually normally see patriarchy, which is the dominance of men over women in the political spheres of life.
He distinguishes between political patriarchy and psychological patriarchy. So unlike political patriarchy, which is certainly real, psychological patriarchy is the way in which any person, male or female, has created a divide between the so-called masculine and feminine aspects of themselves, and perpetuates this program that denies vulnerability, which is traditionally seen as a more feminine trait. So in patriarchy, as he says, the feminine qualities of cooperation, vulnerability, sensitivity, accommodation, these qualities are seen as feminine and therefore looked down upon.
And what it really does, it does a lot of damage, but one thing it really does that’s damaging is it cuts men off and disconnects men from these feelings that are actually human feelings. So his whole point is that these have been designated as feminine feelings, but they’re actually human feelings. And so patriarchy can be extremely damaging to men as well as women in the way that it cuts men off from their feelings and their full humanity.
But in neurolinguistic programming, there’s this thing called a nominalization. And a nominalization is any time that we use something that’s a process and act like it’s a thing. Any time we describe something as a thing that’s actually a process.
And I think patriarchy would fit into that category. So really, what we need to think about is not patriarchy as a thing, because patriarchy is not a thing. It doesn’t exist any more than migraine is a thing or migraine exists, or any disease exists as a discrete entity.
Diseases are processes. And the disease of what some call patriarchy is also a process. That process is the process of patriarchal thinking, which Terrence Real defines as the illusion of dominance and the denial of vulnerability.
And women can do this as well. When we get into this fight flight mode all the time that stresses us out and depletes our adrenals. And when we’re so driven and hard on ourselves and so goal oriented, this is that patriarchal thinking that keeps us pushing at ourselves that keeps us being so hard and judgmental on ourselves and others, where we are denying our vulnerability, we’re denying our limits and our capacities.
And we have this illusion that if we just worked hard enough, we would dominate, we would succeed, we would reach the goal of succeeding in this performance based self esteem system that is patriarchal thinking. I think this is interesting language to think about these challenges that we face. Because we can observe that people with migraine are hard on themselves, that humans are hard on themselves.
In other words, they’re not as mature as some people in terms of having the good mental health to be kind to themselves. And one way to look at this is the way that a patriarchal culture does not value the ability to rest or to be gentle with oneself or the reciprocity of relationships, which is what really renews and sustains all of us. So we’ve gotten caught in this very competitive based system that doesn’t nourish us.
It’s a disservice to both men and women. And it’s also, it’s a denial of our full humanity because women have drive and men have feelings. And so by having ourselves, they call this having when certain attributes are attributed to one gender and the other attributes are attributed to another when these attributes are really human attributes, we split, we become split in half.
And this creates tension and competition between different parts of ourselves. And so healing and managing our stress response and overcoming the stress of a system of dominance that doesn’t value rest or vulnerability is to integrate these parts in ourselves. And I just think that Terrence Real is so brilliant in the way that he has discovered and elucidated and described all of this.
So you could say that healing migraine or healing any disease that’s caused by stress is a feminist act. But I wouldn’t actually go so far as to call it feminist because again, that’s just splitting in half saying that whatever is the opposite of patriarchal is feminist when really we’re trying to get out of that split. The healing and the wholeness comes from getting out of the split of seeing these qualities as being so opposite from each other.
And again, integrating and becoming our full human selves. And I think that is a real revolution. And it is a revolution to heal yourself.
It is a revolution to say, the medical system says that this condition can’t be healed, that it’s not understood, that it’s genetic or whatever. And to actually see and know that you can heal, you can heal through nutrition, you can heal through your attitude and your mental perspective, and you can heal by healing your relationships. But living in a culture of dominance, if we want to heal, we have to heal the internalized ways that we are domineering with ourselves at the expense of our tenderness, at the expense of our gentler, more vulnerable, exquisite sensitivity.
Because it’s our birthright to feel that and to feel it in its exalted, most joyous form, and not to suppress that or look down upon that.
