Women’s health is a curious thing. It’s not unusual to come home from a GP appointment with an unshakeable sense of disappointment, and often more questions and frustrations than you had in the first place. Symptoms are often diminished or disregarded altogether; women are consistently treated as inadequate authorities on their own health. It was only in the 90s that it became common practice to include women in clinical trials, meaning that the very metrics by which we determine physical health are inherently flawed. What this has caused is a profound sense of mysticism when it comes to problems relating to women’s health, particularly hormonal problems.
For as long as I can remember, women older – and, I thought, wiser – than me would laugh and sigh knowingly whenever I brought up feeling tired or unhappy, citing “hormones” as the culprit. They were right, as I later discovered, but not in any specific way. This uncertain rhetoric that I and many others grew up with around the way hormones work meant that they became shrouded in mystery, assuming the status of a kind of hazy force, a grim reaper which hovered above, ready to descend and wreak havoc at a moment’s notice.
This was in the days before cycle tracking, now made popular by aesthetically pleasing apps and memes about the luteal phase, in which every month felt a bit lawless. Of course, everyone knew the basics: you should expect, in the days leading up to your period, to well up at seemingly trivial things like TV adverts about life insurance for the over 60s, or catching your jumper on a doorknob; to crave chocolate and bread and have a higher propensity than usual for snapping at your parents. These confusing but often amusing side effects of changing hormone levels would disappear with the start of your period, and could be neatly pathologised by the label ‘PMS’. But what wasn’t clear was what you should do when these symptoms didn’t disappear right away, but lingered for longer, and manifested themselves in more serious ways than crying over daytime television. Or even that there was a name for it.
Not a lot of people know what PMDD is. I didn’t for quite a long time, and it was only after extensive googling, often in the middle of the night, that I discovered what it was. It’s frequently described as a more severe type of PMS, which can have a greater negative impact on your daily life. Feelings of panic, hopelessness, and a general lack of emotional equilibrium are amplified in the week leading up menstruation, and often persist for longer afterwards. Clinical definitions, as is often the case, don’t exactly capture the iron grip PMDD can have on your life, the extent to which it gets inside of your head and takes firm hold. It looks different for every person who experiences it; for me, it can feel a lot like being underwater one day, smothered by a kind of muffled, static silence, and resurfacing the next, to bright light and sharp sensations, where everything feels intense and overwhelming. It can cause sufferers to feel sensitive to rejection, lack self esteem, and generally just feel like they’re losing control of their emotions. And then, gradually, it subsides, slipping out of view – almost as if it was never there.
This is part of the problem with the condition: it can make you second-guess your emotions and instincts ad infinitum. During moments of happiness, where life feels like it normally should – where the ups and downs are there, but are manageable – it’s hard to believe that you ever felt what you felt at all. This kind of self-gaslighting isn’t necessarily helped by GPs who, even though they were (hopefully) well-meaning, seemed all too eager to consign my symptoms to general anxiety, and recommend going for a walk and doing some breathing exercises; or, that favourite catch-all solution, the pill.
Thankfully, there is a side of me that is quite determined (read: stubborn), and I eventually found a doctor who seemed to understand my attempts at explaining the extremity of my mood swings and the places my brain often led me to. She sent me a 15-page document about PMDD (which I’m fairly sure is aimed at medical professionals, but there’s nothing an Oxford student loves more than a bit of extended reading) and prescribed me medication to help stabilise my mood. The experience reminded me that one of the most powerful tools at your disposal is being able to do your own research. This is something that, as Oxford students, we perhaps take for granted: we regularly tackle essay crises and in-depth discussion, embracing our curiosity and trusting our own instincts. But this doesn’t have to be confined to the academic world – it can help de-mystify whatever you’re currently dealing with, and that can only be a good thing.
