Boying Up

by Mayim Bialik

  On The Big Bang Theory, I play a late bloomer who didn’t have sex until she was well into her adult life. My character, Amy, had been dating Sheldon for years before he was ready to have a first kiss with her, and she had never kissed anyone before! Amy decided that being patient and waiting until Sheldon was ready was important, and it was an indication of her love for him. Sheldon, in the 9th season of our show, decided to make his birthday gift for Amy the gift of sexual intimacy. Amy was really shocked, and she and Sheldon were both nervous when they decided to make their relationship sexual. Sheldon said a sweet thing. He said, “We can find out together.” And they did.

  We all figure it out one way or the other. The thing I’ve treasured most about my late-bloomer journey is being able to take a lot of time to make decisions and to weigh whether my choices felt right or not. I used to feel ashamed that I was such a late bloomer, but now I embrace it.

  THAT’S WHAT HE SAID . . .

  “My sister is 15 months younger than me, and we had a joint party for her Bat Mitzvah and my Bar Mitzvah (she was 12; I was 13). But she was taller than me because at that age girls go into puberty before boys, and I recall needing a box to stand on to see over the lectern. I remember having a complex about that; I’m taller than her now, so as I grew and saw that I wasn’t going to be that short for the duration of my life, I got some more confidence.”

  Wrapping Up

  Understanding your body and how it relates to intimacy is an important part of Boying Up because learning how your emotions and feelings impact other people is what will make you a wonderful friend, son, sibling, boyfriend and husband, if that’s what you choose to be.

  Know that your feelings and your body can help you communicate some of the most profound and life-changing things we get to experience as humans. A lot of what this chapter covered revolves around the question “What kind of boy and man do you want to be?” People like to be around someone who behaves politely, acts with respect toward people and models qualities of responsibility, consistency and strength of character. While you may see “bad boys” getting attention in the tween and teen years—and even into your 20s and beyond—know that behaving with kindness and generosity is always attractive. Boys who respect girls and women become men who do the same.

  Surround yourself with healthy examples of men and women. Avoid thinking that your popularity is the most important thing you have going for you. In the long run, a Boying Up journey that is worth taking is one of dignity, wisdom and fostering the kinds of relationships with those around you that inspire confidence, meaning and love.

  FIVE

  • HOW BOYS COPE •

  The transition from boy to young man, which I’ve called Boying Up, is an exciting one. Being alive at this time in history is so awesome, and there is a lot to celebrate.

  But is life all about awesomeness and celebration? Is everything always wonderful and smooth sailing?

  When I watch TV or go to the movies, or when I look on social media, I see a lot of spectacular things and super-happy people. I see people with smiling families, adorable pets, beautiful houses, supportive friends, loving relationships and what often look like perfect lives. The things people post show a world of joy and success. But that’s not what life is always like. Bad things happen. We get sad. Situations come up that we don’t always know how to handle. And sometimes it can feel like, if our life isn’t the way other people’s lives look, there’s something wrong with us.

  Psychologists and sociologists are experts on why and how people do the things they do, and they have defined the following things as the most challenging and prone to make us feel stressed out:

  Moving to a new house or apartment

  Death of someone close to you

  Divorce in your family

  Problems with money in your family

  What are some other things that can be stressful?

  Breaking up with someone or having a fight with a close friend

  Having romantic feelings for someone who doesn’t feel them back

  Being teased or bullied for being different

  Pressure from parents to do well in school

  Difficult relationships with siblings or other family members

  Having a family member in the military

  Hearing in the news about some of the stuff that’s going on in the world

  Even though these things are not as stressful as death or divorce or moving or money problems, they are still stressful, and they can affect us in big ways.

  What Is Stress?

  So what exactly is stress? What does it do, and how does it change us?

  The word is sometimes used to describe the pressure of, say, a bowling ball resting on a flimsy table; the table is under the stress of a super-heavy weight—that’s physical stress. Emotional stress is not so different. It’s the pressure we feel when we’ve been put in a really difficult, challenging situation. Stress affects the body and the brain, and stress can also affect the way we deal with people around us and the things we have to do, even if they have nothing to do with the actual thing that’s stressing us out. So being stressed about one thing can turn into being stressed about a lot of things; in that way, stress kind of grows.

  Stressful situations can be physical, such as being approached by an angry dog who looks like he’s ready to attack you. Or stressful things can affect feelings and behavior, such as the loss of someone we love. When we are challenged physically, our brains get the message that something needs attention and that we have to do something about it, usually right away. There is a part of the brain called the amygdala that is responsible for us feeling fear and knowing what to do when things are scary. So if we are approached by an angry dog, this triggers the amygdala, and it says, “Yikes! Holy moly: DOG!” The next thing that happens is our amygdala starts communicating with the rest of the brain to initiate things that will help us protect ourselves from this threat.

  If you’ve ever heard of the expression “fight or flight,” you have an idea of what your brain is responsible for when it feels it’s under attack. The body sends extra blood to our muscles so that we can either use our muscles to defend ourselves (if we choose to fight) or to run away (if we choose to engage in getting the heck out of there, also known as flight). Our brains send information to our hearts to pump extra blood, and this raises our heart rate and blood pressure. Our brains also send hormones, such as adrenaline, norepinephrine and cortisol for energy and to give us the confidence to protect ourselves, into our blood. These hormones and the increase in blood flow to the heart explain the fluttery feeling you might have experienced if you’ve ever been scared or threatened. (It also happens when you see someone you have a crush on, but for slightly different reasons!)

  So our bodies perceive stressful things as threats that need to be fixed one of two ways: by fighting or by running away.

  Here’s a diagram of some parts of our brain and what they do.

  But what about emotional stress? How does that get handled by our brains and bodies?

  To the brain, emotional stress is actually not that different from a physical threat. When we encounter an emotionally threatening or stressful situation, the brain gets a message: stressful situation happening! And even though emotional or psychological stress may be different from a one-time event such as an angry dog approaching you, the brain still starts sending out hormonal messengers into the body to start protecting us from what the brain interprets as an emotional attack.

  The difference when we experience an emotionally or psychologically stressful situation is caused by the fact that the brain keeps trying to support us for however long a situation is happening. For example, if you have a family member in the military, you are going to have some strong feelings about it. You might feel sad, and you might miss that person. You mig
ht be scared for their safety, and you may take an extra interest in the news so you can see if the place they are stationed is ever mentioned. These are all real concerns, and they are stressful for sure. Your brain will be on alert for a long time—until your loved one comes back from the military. It’s not a one-time thing; it’s a prolonged stress.

  The amazing thing about the brain is that it can provide support in ways that will help you be able to function at school and at home so that kind of prolonged stress won’t take over your whole life. The brain can process more than one thing at a time! The way it does this is by allowing us to be distracted, even for short periods of time, by tasks at school, parties we’re invited to and daily things that need to get done such as chores and being a productive part of activities. In this way, we can have something we are stressed about going on while we also can enjoy things and continue our lives even with this constant stressful thing going on in the back of our minds, as it were.

  Here’s the catch, though: everyone’s brain works slightly differently, and everyone reacts differently to stress. So for some people, the death of a family pet might make them feel devastated for a week but then they can get back to “normal” life and mostly feel unaffected by it. They might still miss their pet and get sad from time to time, but for the most part, they will feel fine about it after a short time. This is totally normal. For other people, the death of a pet might stay with them for a long time. They may feel sad for months. This is also totally normal.

  The differences in how people react to stress depend on a lot of things. Genetics and what kinds of personality features you inherited from your parents come into play. So do the environment and how your family taught you to understand feelings and what to do with them. Your reactions also depend on things you have control over, such as emotional skills you can use to help you get through hard times. In addition, stress is cumulative, which means when stresses happen, they add up, especially if you didn’t work through previous stresses completely. So stressors can pile on top of each other and produce even bigger reactions than we might have had if we were only dealing with one stressful thing at a time.

  Do Boys and Girls Feel Emotions the Same?

  It’s important to know that even though male and female brains are not identical, the processing of stress and emotions is not terribly different in boys versus girls. So even though a lot of people might assume that girls get more upset about things than boys, much of the way we think about boys and girls comes from our culture, not from our genetics or our brain anatomy. Stressful situations have the ability to impact boys just as much as girls. If you lose someone you love, your brain processes that as a loss whether you are a boy or a girl. If someone calls you hurtful names or consistently targets you and bullies you, it’s very painful. If you feel people don’t understand you and you have a constant sense of feeling different, that’s a big deal. And if you like someone who doesn’t like you back, it hurts your heart, no matter what. Crying would be a normal response to any of these things—no matter if you are a boy or a girl. It is a cultural expectation that “boys don’t cry.” But they can, they do, and they should. Crying is an important mechanism for expressing sadness and grief, and there are even studies showing that the stress hormone cortisol is released when you cry, which is part of what can make you feel better. So why do girls tend to cry and boys don’t? It really boils down to the kind of encouragement or discouragement boys are given in a particular culture and family to express feelings. It is completely normal for boys and girls alike to experience every single emotion there is: sadness, joy, rage, fear, disgust, anxiety—you name it, and boys and girls alike feel it! So if you ever worry that you are “too upset” about something stressful, don’t stress about being stressed; those are normal feelings, and it’s healthy to feel them. Holding things in can cause you mental and physical pain later on. They say feeling and strong emotions are like urine: you can try to keep it in, but sooner or later it’s going to come out! So don’t be afraid to let those feelings out! And talk to a parent, friend, teacher or an adult you trust.

  THAT’S WHAT HE SAID . . .

  “Anxiety has been a constant for me in my life. For years, I minimized my emotional experiences by intellectualizing them. I’d have an emotion such as, say, anger and would decide that whatever caused it was not worth getting into an argument over. So, I would ‘decide’ not to be angry. I used this approach for years—and through therapy, I realized that avoiding emotional experiences was creating a deep well of anxiety in me. I now work hard at experiencing emotions directly, in the moment, and sitting with them even if they make me uncomfortable. I’ve learned to do a variety of breathing exercises that help me sit with them, and I write in a journal. Most importantly, I have learned that expressing emotions by simply saying something like ‘I am angry because . . .’ helps me process whatever emotions I have.”

  What Does Emotional Stress Look Like?

  If we are in a stressful situation that is not about fight or flight but is instead about something emotional, here are some of the things that we may experience, especially if the stress continues for a while or if we are having a hard time understanding how to handle the stress.

  Changes to our bodies:

  We may lose or gain weight. Some people eat more than they usually do when they are stressed; some people find it hard to eat.

  We may feel achy or tired a lot.

  We may find it hard to concentrate or think straight.

  Sad feelings:

  We may feel hopeless and lose interest in things we previously had interest in, such as hobbies or friends or activities at school.

  Life may seem “blah,” and we may feel like just hanging around rather than going out and doing things. Even getting out of bed or getting dressed can feel like a chore. It may even feel as if we are trudging through mud just to get up and get going.

  Angry feelings:

  We may feel irritable, short-tempered and angry, sometimes for no apparent reason or out of the blue.

  We may feel like hurting ourselves or other people, or throwing or even breaking things. These symptoms and feelings are the body and brain’s reactions to stress. Over time, these feelings can get stronger and stronger, and unless we find ways to deal with them, we can do damage to our bodies, our brains and our relationships.

  When Sadness Becomes Depression

  Sudden weight loss or weight gain accompanied by prolonged feelings of tiredness, hopelessness and losing interest in things we previously loved doing can also occur in a condition called depression. Depression is different from sadness, and if you are feeling sad and hopeless for longer than 2 weeks, talk to a doctor, parent or trusted teacher about it and tell them you think you may be depressed. In addition, if you find you are feeling intensely sad with nothing stressful going on, talk to someone. There is help for you, and it’s very important to talk to someone early on in depression so you can get the help you need before it escalates into a bigger problem that may be harder for you to handle. You can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. The Trevor Project also provides mental-health resources specifically for LGBTQ youth, and you can find them at www.thetrevorproject.org or call them at 866-488-7386.

  THAT’S WHAT HE SAID . . .

  “My most effective treatment for depression is a good night’s sleep. While awake, I can spin and spin into increasingly dark places emotionally, but when I fall asleep, it’s as if my brain resets. The moment I wake up, I feel clean of all darkness, and for this reason, the moment I wake up is the best time to combat depression with positivity such as making a mental list of things I am grateful for.”

  Coping

  One of the most important things to understand about emotional stress is that there are ways to make it better, even if i
t seems like nothing will make it better. It’s called coping. Sadly, a lot of us don’t know how to cope in healthy ways. Instead, we may turn to unhealthy ways to cope to try to make ourselves feel better. Here are some common coping mechanisms.

  ANGER

  Stress can make people feel angry, even if there’s nothing that anger can do to make the stress go away. Anger can be a useful emotion when it signals to us that something is wrong or upsetting, and it can motivate us to do things to change the situation. The thing about emotional stress is that it doesn’t always go away if we get angry at it. And sometimes people take their anger out on others by yelling at them, hitting them or being mean to them with words and actions. This does not lessen the source of the stress, and in fact it can lead to more stress, even if it makes the angry person feel better in the moment. Being abusive or taking out your anger on others actually triggers more stress in your body over time, so if you see yourself doing this when you’re stressed out, take a deep breath and try to come up with some other ways to cope with what’s upsetting you. Talking to someone you trust can help a lot, and most everyone has had angry feelings, so know that you’re not alone.