Why Psychology Must Make Space for Women’s Cyclicity

I do not know for certain whether women’s cyclicity, or awareness of the menstrual cycle, was ever included in defining what is normal for humankind as a whole, especially in terms of psychology and social needs. In Western culture, I do not think it was.

When I think about mental health and women’s cyclicity, I imagine a woman looking for help. She reaches out to the doctor’s office during the proactive follicular phase, when she feels her bravest. She has to wait two or three weeks for an appointment, and by then, she will be in her premenstrual or menstrual phase. In one case, she is exhausted. In the other, she is quiet and withdrawn. After the long-awaited appointment, she books another one. The receptionist tells her that the doctor will see her in a month. However, in four weeks, she will likely find herself in the same emotional and physical phase again, the premenstrual or menstrual timing with its own set of perceptions, reactions, and attitudes. And again, she will have to come back in four weeks. What do you think will not happen? The doctor will not get to see her other versions of herself, her other reactions, and her other responses to the same life situation that brought her to their chair. That is how healing becomes unnecessarily long, painful, and expensive, and therapy is ineffective.

Is there a difference in how female and male patients are treated in psychology and mental health care? I ask.

Did we create space for women’s cyclicity in mental health without pathologizing it and without ignoring cycle-based emotional changes? I ask.

Is there a place for women’s cyclicity in the systems that define psychological “normal”? I ask.

Who shaped what “normal” means in psychology, philosophy, and models of human behavior? I do a quick search of the first names of prominent authors in psychology from modern curricula, and the names I find are David and Nathan, James and John, Elliot and Ronald, Robert, Daniel, and Steven—names that keep shaping modern psychology textbooks and academic frameworks.

Then I take a broader philosophical view of life, purpose, and the world’s order. Who were the thinkers whose views shaped not only our past, but also the directions we still follow in philosophy and theories of human cognition?

A quick search gives me Plato and Aristotle, Immanuel and John, John and Thomas, Jean-Jacques and Robert, Peter and Ludwig, Bertrand and Karl, Simon, Thomas, and Nagel—the foundations of Western philosophy, ethics, and epistemology.

Where are women’s views, life perceptions, and experiences? How different would philosophy be if women were given the space and time to share their cyclical understanding of life?

I have to dig deeper and specifically search for women authors in psychology, feminist philosophy, and gender studies. And I find Laura and Judith, Simone and Hannah, Martha and Susanne, Carol and Shelley, Angela and Elizabeth, Bell and Susan, Ann and Mary, Barbara and Alice. All recent, like women did not think before.

I consider searching in religion too, but I already know what I will find.

Until now, there has been no intentional place for women’s cyclicity in mainstream psychology, psychiatry, or mental health diagnostics. As a result, we have a meaningful gap in mainstream psychology, an informational vacuum, and no neutral language developed for women’s cyclicity within a framework of emotional health and cycle psychology. Because of that, I believe women often receive the wrong timing of help rather than the wrong kind of help in therapy, counseling, and mental health treatment.

And humankind, like a glass, is only half full until we add women’s cyclicity to it.

By Evgeniia Iakovleva on early luteal phase.

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