Teaching the Art of Mastering the Mental Side of the Menstrual Cycle!
Welcome to Menstrual Mental Health!
Let me introduce myself
I’m a menstrual mental health coach, specializing in providing in-depth education on the mental health aspects of the female cycle to women, adolescents, and families. My coaching approach challenges conventional social norms and instead emphasizes cycle homeostasis, cycle-based decision making, and a unique method for processing unprocessed trauma, enabling individuals to transform from hurt to healed by leveraging the power of their cycle. With my guidance, you can learn how to harness your cycle for personal growth and wellbeing rather than concealing its truth.
If you are on this page, it’s probably because you have some questions about how you’ve been feeling.
It’s possible your emotions have felt like a roller coaster, someone has mentioned looking into hormone based moods, or maybe you have been diagnosed with PMDD, BPD, Bipolar, or other mood/personality disorder and still have questions. I am going to provide you with a lot of information, but if you are curious about PMDD, from the CLINICAL information from Women's Health on what defines PMDD, click here.
Here’s a bit about my journey.
As I got into my 30’s I feel like I was the woman having freak outs more often, and spent a lot of time rationalizing away my actions, apologizing for them, or even feeling entitled to them based on the emotions that I was feeling.
I grew up never having any discussion on my cycle.
My childhood was so unconventional, there was definitely no menstrual education at all, especially mental.
Throughout my adolescence and into my 20’s, I just assumed any of my up and down emotional stuff was due to my chaotic emotional environment. As I got older I started to question that though.
Sometimes even feeling as though I wanted to bottle my blood on the good days, so that I can understand what was “wrong with me”, and fix it on the bad ones.
It was that thought that started this journey.
In our society, PMS jokes are the norm, we all know how the emotions in a woman change throughout her cycle, and that’s how we deal with it. And I get it. We use humor to lighten and deflect from what can be a really awkward situation. So I decided I wanted to learn more. I thought I would try to dig into it all, but in a more conventional way. And so I went to my OB/GYN to ask how much of what I was feeling was or could be cycle related, only to be told “everyone feels that way”, don’t worry about it, and that if I just take a Prozac for a couple of days during PMS, AND get out my credit card for some retail therapy all would be fine.
Prozac and shopping.
That was it. No education, no possibilities.
I tried the Prozac for that month, but knew in my heart that it wasn’t the answer.
Over the years I tried different counselors, different tactics, and eventually I took measures further into my own hands.
I started doing everything I thought would help me in becoming my best self. I began learning about mental health, doing all kids of workshops, reading personal development books, and taking in information every way I could. I loved it all so much that eventually I became a Life Coach, certified in mindfulness, CBT, a Doula, which for the most part, made me a “better” mother, a “better” friend, and what I thought was leading to a better human.
All of these things I did definitely were good for me, each thing helped me grow as a human, mentally and emotionally, and grow in my business, but also I was doing these things partially coming from a place of lack, -to fix some thing that I felt was still broken.
Like I was what needed to be “fixed”.
If I just learned more.
If I just did more.
And I felt really good, most of the time.
But then I would fall into these pits, and it would feel like everything I did wasn’t working. Especially if I was going through a lot.
After my relationship failed I started feeling more frustrated, crazy, aggravated, and depressed, on the roller coaster of emotions, feeling lower and lower because no matter how much work I put in, I could never seem to get “better” and make it stick. After a while I just started to feel doomed, like when you feel you’ve failed yourself, your family, or like you’re just failing at life in general. Then there are the moments you feel better, you feel on top of the world, you’ve finally made it, you’ve got this… and it happens again. That roller coaster of emotions, intensified by trauma.
Sometimes made me fully question my confidence, and my ability to do my job.
I was a great life coach, but I honestly almost quit.
If I knew all these things that I had been taught, and I was still feeling like this, I thought there really must be something wrong with me.
And then one day I realized a truth.
All the counselors that I ever went to, anybody that I ever asked, all the information I digested, not one person talked to me about the complex simplicity of learning and tracking your cycle. And none of them had ever thought to bring up the way that our mental and emotional lives run so intricately with where we are in the cycle, not even when I asked them.
One female psychiatrist that I asked even said, I’ve heard of people having Menstrual Mental Health problems, but I really don’t know anything about it. I asked her if she’s heard of PMDD, and she said yes, but she doesn’t even know what it stands for. Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a severe, sometimes disabling extension of premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
Although PMS and PMDD both have common physical and emotional symptoms, PMDD causes extreme mood shifts that can disrupt daily life and damage relationships. PME a new dignosis and is when they are finally admitting how the cycle “Exasperates” any diagnosis.
I learned so much about it all, but then I learned a new way of understanding it and “treating it”.
That’s when I realized, it’s not a PMS vs PMDD vs “Other diagnosis” etc.
It’s not about a diagnosis at all.
It’s about a deeper understanding of self, and learning the things we were not taught about our inner emotions, and energetics of being a woman.
It’s about tracking in a very different way.
It’s about the peaks and valleys and learning what they mean.
Learning that the luteal phase is a literal magnifying glass to the subconscious.
And so much more.
We have to do better at educating ourselves and others.
Sometimes we talk about the blood that comes out of us, but we don’t talk about where we’re bleeding inside or where our problems, thoughts and fears, both conscious and subconscious, past and present, are magnified in us in different ways every month.
Learning this has changed my life.
Everything made sense.
All my training came full circle, and is so powerfully aligned.
This is the place where I learned the most about who I am, what I want, and how to be my very most authentic self.
Aligned, comfortable, clear.
Not perfect, but truly happy and full of self love and understanding.
This is now my life’s work.
Educating women, therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, OB/GYN, general practitioners, adolescents , school nurses, husbands, etc is my BIGGEST goal before more women are misdiagnosed, self misdiagnosed, or continue feeling lost in a world where we should be better understood by all.
If you are ready to learn more about yourself, and your cycle, reach out anytime.
