APROPO WOMEN IN STRESS,

not thai related but relevant to this board and explains why it is so important that this particular forum stays the way it is....a doctor friend of mine sent it to me w/o knowing about this new predicament of mine:

UCLA Study "On Friendship Among Women"

By 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 Bio-behavioral 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 released 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 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 confidantes 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).

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 them 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.

Sorry to butt in here, but this is very true and has been recognised by Psychiatrists/ologists for many years. Very often, a woman with a psychosis can be helped simply by networking with other women. One of those many cases when we men are far more of a hindrance than a help!

My wife was a case in point. She got into a very bad state for almost a year after we moved to our current home. She recovered completely as soon as she found a few girls she could relate to and network with here.

Men, please read the above and give your wives/girlfriends the space and time to spend with their friends. They and you will be far better for it!

Men, please read the above and give your wives/girlfriends the space and time to spend with their friends. They and you will be far better for it!

So very true.

Thanks for the OP bina.

however...sometimes the question becomes the ol' lead the horse to the water and etc....

in the time that I've been married to my thai wife she has been able to find friends easily in the Gulf area...in Abu Dhabi she was with other thai ladies with falang husbands on big salaries, we had an active social life even though I'm not too social myself. In Bahrain she mixed with thais that were in the country on work visas; hairdressers, kitchen help and etc....quite lowbrow when compared to her AD associates but no matter...she was happy and went out a lot. In both of the previous cases the meeting and hanging out was like second nature...

here in VN she has no friends after 2 months and stays home most the day watching TV and has made no effort to find friends even though I have made contact with other thai ladies here in HCMC. She has become morose and now I worry that she will want to return to Suphanburi. Her mother hasn't been well and adds to the prognosis. However, her mother had been unwell in the past and didn't seem to affect nothin'...

Don't mean to highjack the thread darling bina but what can youse ladies advise?...

Excellent!

This is why being able to share, joke, empathise with other women on this forum is so important to some members who live far from other farang women.

And this is why it would be great if male posters understood how sometimes it is just not appropriate to add their 2 cents worth.

Recognizing that women need friends to talk and share experiences with, without actually looking to solve/fix anything

Personally, I feel more connected with the women (and like-minded males) on this forum than most of my friends who live not far away. The reason? We are all so darn busy making a living on our little island oasis that we barely can find time to interact. Am glad there are so many here that share their life & wisdom in our small 'cyber' community.

however...sometimes the question becomes the ol' lead the horse to the water and etc....

in the time that I've been married to my thai wife she has been able to find friends easily in the Gulf area...in Abu Dhabi she was with other thai ladies with falang husbands on big salaries, we had an active social life even though I'm not too social myself. In Bahrain she mixed with thais that were in the country on work visas; hairdressers, kitchen help and etc....quite lowbrow when compared to her AD associates but no matter...she was happy and went out a lot. In both of the previous cases the meeting and hanging out was like second nature...

here in VN she has no friends after 2 months and stays home most the day watching TV and has made no effort to find friends even though I have made contact with other thai ladies here in HCMC. She has become morose and now I worry that she will want to return to Suphanburi. Her mother hasn't been well and adds to the prognosis. However, her mother had been unwell in the past and didn't seem to affect nothin'...

Don't mean to highjack the thread darling bina but what can youse ladies advise?...

From your description she sounds clinically depressed. Social avoidance is one of the symptoms/effects of depression. It may have been triggered by the move (separation from friends where she was plus all the adjustments of yet another new place), or by something else, or a combination of things. Doesn't really mater what set it off, two months duration is long enough that she should get treatment. (counselling and/or medication). Don't know what is avalable in VN but try to get her to a health professional. Could start with a pyschologist/counsellor if your wife is amenable, if not, start with a doctor who can prescribe anti-depressents. (Even if she goes to a counsellor, depending on the severity of the depression, she may need drugs to be able to benefit fromn counselling).

Since I gather there are other Thai women where you are and that normally she has good social skills, once the depression lifts, she'll start making friends.

It is generally recommended that antidepressent meds be taken for not less than 6 months, although people start feeling much better within 2-4 weeks on the newer drugs. Also should be tapered off slowly. This is to avoid a relapse.

From reading your post Tutsi, if it were me, so close to home but still with no plan to move back there, I would be feeling more home sick than ever. A case of so near yet still too far? Maybe the other places you lived had a sufficient distance to make her feel like an expat so she forced herself to make new friends & get used to the local surrounds, but being in VN with so many similarities to her home & looking similar to local people but with none of the language skills or knowledge may be making this move too difficult?

Throw in of course a sick mother only a few hours away & she may be getting pressure to go home & do the dutiful daughter bit?

This is of course just me trying to get in her shoes but I hope, whatever it is, she manages to sort it out & get back to her confident self.

thanks for your replies, ladies...I'm thinkin' that she may need to spend some time back home in order to get focused again. Next month the job is moving to the provinces where there ain't gonna be any other thai ladies except perhaps for some that may happen to be married to falangs working on the same project. It will be time for me to take a week off as well. I'll leave her behind for a bit when I go back out to the job. I anticipated this scenario (the effect of isolation) when I took the job. I'm just hopin' that she'll come back out to join me when the time comes...