Here’s your ONE drop:
By early childhood, girls already demonstrate measurably higher awareness of others emotions than boys and adjust their behavior to keep the peace. Not opinion. Not theory. Documented across decades of developmental psychology.
Fast forward a few decades. Thousands of interactions spent reading rooms, softening language, calculating how your words will be perceived before they leave your mouth... Running complex social equations while also trying to, you know, live your life.
Then something breaks.
Your brain can only run the nice girl script for so long before it says absolutely the fuck not.
During perimenopause and other hormonal transitions, shifting estrogen levels influence oxytocin pathways, weakening some of the neurochemical pull toward constant social bonding and emotional management. Your prefrontal cortex, the part that has been suppressing your real responses for decades, also shows age related changes in how it processes social feedback.
Research on aging consistently shows people become less concerned with social approval over time. Whether that is biology or accumulated exhaustion is still debated. The pattern holds either way.
It often accelerates in midlife, but it can happen earlier (I started losing jobs and friendships for speaking my mind in my twenties. Apparently I was an early adopter of not giving a shit).
When this shift happens, people notice. You are labeled difficult. Not a team player. Changed (my personal favorite, said with the same tone that really means disapproval).
Meanwhile decades of chronic stress from constant social monitoring dysregulate your HPA axis, the system responsible for stress response, so what looks like you becoming difficult might actually be your nervous system finally prioritizing your survival over everyone else’s approval.
Your brain is not malfunctioning when you stop softening your edges or cushioning your opinions. It is finally refusing to malfunction anymore.
The difficult woman people warned you about is not a choice you are making. She is what happens when your biology stops cooperating with a system that never served you.
Whether you like it or not.
// Ann
PS. This one almost didn't happen. I couldn't figure out how to write about women's biology without making it about society being unfair (true but also exhausting and nothing new). I spent hours verifying synaptic pruning and nearly gave up twice. If you want to see the mess, the wrong turns, the cuts, the moment it finally clicked, that's what Behind the Drop is for.
