The neuroscience of not being nice.

This one almost didn't happen.

Not because the research wasn't solid. It was. The neuroscience is real, the hormonal shifts are documented, the synaptic pruning happens exactly as described.

It almost didn't happen because I couldn't figure out how to write about women's biology without making it about women being treated badly.

I kept getting stuck on the gender bias angle. The "men are called leaders, women are called difficult" framing. Which, yes, is true. But it's also exhausting and nothing new. And it wasn't the ONE thing I wanted to say.

The breakthrough came when I asked myself: What's happening inside your body that you can actually understand and maybe even appreciate?

Not "society is unfair" (we know).

But "your brain is doing maintenance, and thank god for that."

This started with Ellen Scherr's piece "Aging Out of Fucks". She wrote about menopause as neurological recalibration. The Great Unfuckening. I loved the energy, but at 2,000+ words, it was too long for The ONE Thing format, and the voice wasn't quite mine.

But the core science fascinated me:

The science was there. The challenge was making it useful rather than just interesting.

Early drafts had way more neuroscience jargon. I had paragraphs explaining the amygdala, the hippocampus, how oxytocin pathways work. All accurate. All boring.

I also cut the entire "society treats women unfairly" section. Not because it's untrue, but because that's not my lane. I'm not trying to be a feminist thought leader. I'm trying to explain behavioral psychology in a way that makes people go "oh shit, THAT'S what's happening."

"Apparently I was an early adopter of not giving a shit."

That parenthetical does three things:

It's also true. I did lose jobs and friendships for speaking my mind way before perimenopause (which, given that I'm currently pregnant, I definitely haven't experienced). Which made me realize: this isn't just about hormones. It's about accumulated cost exceeding capacity.

I spent three hours trying to verify whether synaptic pruning actually targets people-pleasing pathways specifically, or if it's just general maintenance.

Turns out, it's general maintenance. The "use it or lose it" principle applies, but the brain doesn't "decide" to delete people-pleasing. You stop performing, those pathways weaken, then pruning happens.

So I had to rewrite to reflect causality correctly:

Wrong: "Your brain trims the people-pleasing highways."
Right: "Declining estrogen and oxytocin reduce the neurochemical drive to prioritize others' comfort. Your prefrontal cortex starts operating differently."

The mechanism is: hormones shift → behavior changes → pathways weaken.

Not: brain decides you don't need to be nice anymore.

It gives you permission to stop performing by explaining what's actually happening in your body.

Not "you're difficult" (judgment).
Not "society is sexist" (exhausting).
But "your brain is doing triage, and this is protective" (relief).

The ending line, "It's finally refusing to malfunction anymore", is the whole point. Your people-pleasing wasn't healthy functioning. It was your nervous system malfunctioning under chronic stress.

When you stop, you're not broken. You're finally working correctly.

There's a question lurking under this whole piece: "Does this mean I should just stop caring what people think?"

No. That's not the point.

The point is: if you find yourself physically unable to keep performing emotional labor you used to do automatically, that's not a character flaw. That's biology protecting you.

You don't have to try to stop caring. Your body will do it for you when the cost becomes unsustainable.

The question isn't "should I stop being nice?"

It's "what kind of relationships survive when I stop performing?"

And that's a much more interesting question.

// Ann