Your Period Cycle 🤝 Your Mental Health

I don’t know about you, but I learned nothing useful in sex ed during high school. In fact, going through a doctoral program in clinical psychology, I barely learned about the period cycle, even though we had just gotten a new disorder in the DSM-5 that related to this (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder; PMDD). I’m just now starting to learn about what a normal cycle should be, including the mood shifts that we’re possibly considering to be clinical symptoms in psychology.

I now believe that understanding your cycle is an essential part of women’s physical and mental health. I’m still learning but I will share a bit of education.

Phases of a Woman’s Cycle

Menstrual

The first day of your bleed is considered to be the Day 1 of your cycle for tracking. The bleeding typically lasts between 2-7 days. You’ll likely have low energy and desire to be social and some physical symptoms (e.g., breast tenderness, cramps).

Follicular

For the 7 or so days after your period, you should feel more energetic, sociable, and creative. It’s like emerging from hibernation.

Ovulation

Ovulation is the day that your egg is released (the main day that you could get pregnant). You should feel more motivated, powerful, and have a higher libido. For a 28-day cycle, this would be around day 14.

Luteal

This is the last phase before your bleed, which should last about 2 weeks. For the first week, you should feel calm and potentially have similar energy levels to the follicular phase. During the last week, preparing for your period, you might feel more vulnerable to stress and lower energy again. You’re actually more vulnerable to getting sick at this time.

Tracking Your Cycle

All the experts so far have recommended tracking your cycle and then scheduling activities around it (if possible) going forward. There are a lot of high-tech wearables and apps, or you can just write out what you notice about yourself and take your temperature with a basal body thermometer. Although the average cycle is 28 days, yours could be longer or shorter, with the range being 21 to 35 days.

The experts I’ve been learning from recommend taking this information and actually tailoring diet and exercise to the cycle. They also recommend using it to know when to challenge yourself and when to soothingly isolate based on the stage of your cycle.

Your Cycle & Your Physical Health

From what I understand so far, if your cycle is not following these parameters or has any extremes (e.g., super heavy bleeding, horrible cramps), it might be a sign of a larger health issue. I don’t mean that you secretly have cancer or are at risk for a heart attack; rather, that your body is just not functioning optimally.

It’s not normal to have a cycle that is longer or shorter than the 21-35 day range. (Less frequent periods can occur when someone is underweight.) A period actually should not involve super heavy bleeding. In non-Western cultures, problematic and impairing premenstrual syndrome (PMS) symptoms are actually not common.

Also, many commercial period products are bad for your health.

Your Cycle & Your Mental Health

It’s completely normal for your emotions to change throughout your period cycle. It would be most expected to have emotional lability during the luteal phase, especially in the days leading up to your period. Which leads me to question, are there women being diagnosed with depression and other mental health conditions just because they happen to see their doctor, psychiatrist, or psychologist on a few off days during their cycle? And, are women themselves thinking they have a problem with their emotions due to lack of knowledge of normal fluctuations in emotion during the cycle?

(Ahh, these questions sent me down a rabbit hole and if you want more in-depth data, I can provide it.)

PMDD

PMDD is a disorder of emotional lability/ depressed mood during the days before a period. In working with women dealing with these symptoms, tracking their cycle and applying basic cognitive-behavioral strategies for depression has been so helpful that they generally have not needed anything further once starting a plan like this.

Hormonal Birth Control & Mental Health

Although women are often prescribed birth control as a method of managing strong emotions, the pill can be associated with mood changes and intolerable side effects. I’m sure most women can share stories ranging from feeling “not right” to having problematic mood swings related to starting or changing birth control methods. Also, did you know that the bleed that happens while on birth control is not a real period? So, the pill might make it difficult to truly get to know one’s cycle.

Hormonal birth control is not the only option. There are several new birth control methods (some high tech, some for men!) that might be considered. Also, although we think of birth control “starting” in the 1960s, our ancestors have been using methods for centuries that we may be able to rediscover.

To-Do

Get to know your cycle and the relationship between your cycle, emotions, and behaviors. You might start to realize some things that are so much more normal than you previously believed and others that you never noticed and may actually be a cause for concern and intervention.

As I say so often, you have to take charge of your health because no one else will! You are the expert on you. Women might for real be able to take over the world with this knowledge... maybe that’s why it’s been kept out of sex ed!