Wheeeeeeeeee ...
In case you haven’t realised by now, I’m one of those people whose lives resemble a rollercoaster ride, all ups and downs and loop-the-loops! I’m not quite sure how I feel about this – part of me would love to be calm, content and reliably stable (like my other half), but if I’m honest there’s another well-entrenched part of me that thinks it would be really quite dull! I thrive on the excitement and melodrama of the rollercoaster ride, the “oohs” and “aaahs”, the screams, the knuckle-biting, the flying-by-the-seat of your pants, heart-in-your-mouth, hands-over-your-eyes type of life! Or at least, that’s what I used to believe.
The reality is that, whilst it might be what I’m familiar and comfortable with, it’s not doing me any good at all. Not to mention the impact it has on my family and friends. (Sorry!) Having hit the big 40, it feels as if I’m now starting to pay the price for a life lived on adrenalin. I can’t remember the last time I felt properly well. Nothing major, just the kind of low-grade aches and niggles that somehow take the edge off things. Which is why I’ve started looking into the impact of hormones on a woman’s health.
For years I have blamed my rollercoaster ride on PMS and, more recently, postnatal illness. But I’ve just read a fascinating book that has prompted a bit of a re-think …
It’s called ‘Healing Our Hormones, Healing Our Lives‘, by Linda Crockett, who appears to have devoted her entire life to exploring the curious ways in which women can be screwed up by their hormones, and how we can be ‘cured’! It’s a bit heavy and hard to read, but I think this is pretty much what it boils down to (my take, anyway):
- hormones affect pretty much everything for a woman, changing her reality from day to day (this is something that also comes across really strongly in another book I’ve read recently called ‘The Female Brain‘)
- hormonal conditions – like PMS, endometriosis, polycystic ovaries, etc – don’t just reflect physical problems but emotional ones too
- consequently you can’t treat them just by treating the physical, you have to address the underlying emotional ’stuff’ as well … otherwise it will keep coming back to haunt you
In Linda’s view, women often find it easier to see something like PMS as being a purely physical problem that they can blame on their hormones. Then they don’t have to ‘own’ the emotions expressed during that time – the sadness, fear or anger, for example. Instead, she sees PMS as something that can happen during the time of the month when a woman’s hormones naturally (and for good reason) conspire to make her more withdrawn and introspective. This puts her more in touch with feelings that are actually bubbling away under the surface the whole time. When these are difficult, painful feelings, they may rear their ugly heads as what we call PMS. (Or at least that’s my understanding!)
So that’s why the starflower oil, evening primrose, B vitamins, hormone patches, etc, etc, have never quite done the trick! Time to go deeper and find my own ’soul-utions’, as Linda calls them … Or, alternatively, just accept that I’m a raging lunatic who manages to successfully hide the fact – well, sort of – for half of every month!
It's not me, it's my hormones!
WHAT DID YOU SAY?!!
