What to do when hormones wreak havoc …
One question about my body bothered me a lot in general but especially while I was writing my book. It informed a lot of the research. It’s this: “How much of me is me – and how much is my hormones?”
Given how integral and powerful female hormones apparently are, in terms of everything from our mental health to our changing mood – are our characters truly characters? Or are they just the outward expression of inner hormonal turmoil? Are we really anxious or just hormonal? Angry, elated, trepidatious or just hormonal? And by extension: what about the choices we make? Are we living our lives according to free will, gut instinct, knowledge and experience? Or just whatever oestrogen, progesterone and (to a lesser, but in no sense negligible, extent) testosterone, would have us do that day, because it suits their agenda?
“I’m experiencing a symptom of menopause no one’s talking about,” a friend said, recently. “Where, mid-conversation, I get up and walk away from people who irritate me.”
“Is that menopause, though?” I said. “Or is it a realisation life is short and you do not care to waste a minute more of it on substandard conversation? Not your hormones kicking in, but good sense?”
So which is it? Hormones or character? Hormones or gut instinct? Hormones or sense?
Maisie Hill, period coach and author of Period Power and Perimenopause Power, believes the influence fluctuating hormones in our menstrual cycle have over both our mood and our actions, is often underestimated. We tend to focus on PMS – premenstrual syndrome – when our sex hormone level is incredibly low, which can make us feel fragile, underconfident, tired and/or FURIOUS. But the fact is, our hormones are fluctuating through the course of an entire month, and the impact on our mood and character can be as dramatic at any other time. Here are a few examples:
“Oestrogen peaks a couple of days before we ovulate,” Hill explained. “Oestrogen makes us feel more positive, more energised. We are most fertile at this point, so whether we want to conceive or not, our hormones are driving us towards mating behaviour. We’re going out, curious, interested, flirty: ‘Who can I mate with?’ And testosterone is encouraging us to take risks: ‘Look at that guy! Look at that one!’ Testosterone urges us to engage in that slightly riskier behaviour, more likely to result in having sex and conceiving.
“Immediately after ovulation, we go from feeling capable, confident, loving what we look like in the mirror, to: ‘Oh my God, why did I say that I can do that? How can I possibly do that?’ There can be that really stark difference.” At this juncture, Hill explained, progesterone has taken control, and progesterone (“which is ‘pro-gestation’, clue is in the name” the hormone expert Dr Nicky Keay told me) wants to keep you locked down and at home in the aftermath of ovulation, in case you are pregnant. Because a progesterone-inspired lack of confidence gives any new pregnancy a better chance, you feeling suddenly sad, shy, unattractive and risk averse. Cue baths and early bed times.
I asked Hill about female anger, in PMS, and of course, in perimenopause, and menopause. Is that all it is, I say. Our body’s fury at being denied the oestrogen to which we’re basically addicted, and which makes us feel gorgeous and confident? She says, absolutely not.
Oestrogen is the thing which makes us women apologise when someone else bumps into them in a supermarket; the thing which makes us ignore a sink filled with the dirty dishes which our partner was supposed to wash up.
“My take on it is, our hormones help us access that anger. But [anger] is always there.” Oestrogen can have a masking effect on our anger, Hill says. (So we see the work through oestrogen-coloured glasses, I ask her. “Basically,” she says.) But when we have less oestrogen, our anger is released. That anger, furthermore is not hormonal – it is legitimate, and it is real.
Hill thinks releasing anger throughout your life is immensely necessary, as a sort of rehearsal for menopause. “Women often don’t know how to be angry. I see women struggling with confidence, identity, resentment, anger – they just haven’t had the opportunity to practise those things before they get to menopause.”
I have to say that, from the moment I started weekly boxing training with a group of other women, from the very first time I smacked a gloved fist hard against a punching bag, my understanding of how angry I was, and how incredibly important it is to honour that, then release it – was a revelation! My experience of perimenopause and menopause has been, relatively, sort of easy (I hesitate to say that, because I know how painful it can be for other women, but it’s true), and I am quite convinced boxing is a major contributing factor in that.
After many conversations with experts from all fields of women’s healthcare, I have a sense that, while hormones have a staggering impact on every aspect of our experience of the world and our bodies, they are not, in any sense, all we are. Sometimes, their fluctuations are actively useful in bringing us closer to the people we need to be and the anger we need to feel. Understanding them better, and our individual experience of them, is incredibly useful. But we should always remember that our capacity to navigate the extraordinary hormonal load to which we’re all subject, to function perfectly regardless, is truly impressive in itself.
How The Female Body Works (New River) is out now.
