How-To Information for Modern Life
When lobotomy is not an option, what do you do when feeling cranky, irritable, and bilious one week out of every month? Well, you can take the Pill. You can take an anti-depressant. You can give it up and just be cranky, irritable, and bilious. Or you can reframe the discussion.
Turn it on its head by stopping the resistance. Resistance is making the whole thing worse than it needs to be. Quit approaching the menses as a hellish period to be endured with the fewest felonies possible and start embracing it. It’s a form of self-deception, yes. Who cares? Think Manchurian Candidate.
Old: I’m psychotic!
New: I’m letting my Inner Bitch romp and play!
Old: I hate this endless weeping!
New: I get to feel so wonderfully intensely once a month. What a treat!
Old: Oy, the water weight!
New: If I didn’t blimp up now, I won’t feel so thin in about 4 days.
Old: I’m evil for eating that whole carrot cake!Â
New: I get to relax my hyper-vigilant weight obsession once a month and actually eat. If I didn’t have hormones, it wouldn’t happen.
Old: Why am I so crazy??!
New: Wait.I am reading everyone correctly. It’s the rest of the month I should be worried about.
Periods in Your 30s and 40s
Have you noticed your cycle is changing as you get older? Anecdotal evidence says it does – and often symptoms you already thought couldn’t get worse get, uh, worse. Common complaints of women in their thirties and forties include the intensifying of previous minor annoyances: like, if you always gain 12 pounds of water-weight, you’ll now gain 20. If you’re already a PMS sufferer, the evil may begin earlier in your cycle and last longer. Crying jags, unhinged sentimentality, touchy paranoia also seem to get a tad more forceful. It can get so bad you finally enter into the 9-9-9 premise: Nine a-symptomatic, relatively decent days a month. Nine hellish days bloating and hungrily prowling the fridge, awaiting your period. Nine hellish days in full-bore PMS, actual period time, and then recovery – making amends to friends and loved ones.
What Your Gynie Will Recommend
If That Fails, The Gynie Considers
Essential PMS Goodies