The Menstruality Podcast - 202. How Menstrual Cycle Awareness Can Transform PMS and PMDD (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Did you know that 3-8% of women and people with cycles experience PMDD, which stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder? If you are one of these people, or you are close to or work with someone with PMDD, this episode is especially for you. It’s also for you, if you - like me - have experienced intense, debilitating, dark and challenging emotional disturbance in the premenstrual phase of your cycle, often known as PMS or premenstrual syndrome. Today Alexandra and Sjanie explore the inner autumn of the cycle as a gateway to our power. As they share, our premenstrual symptoms aren’t a design flaw, but can be better understood as a truth-telling signal or a warning sign from the deepest part of ourselves about all that needs to be healed within us, and all that needs to be healed in our world. Part of the challenge we all face here is that we live in a world that dismisses and denies our cyclical experience, which creates a disconnect with our cyclical wisdom. In other words, what if it’s not the menstrual cycle that is the problem, but rather it’s a culture that pathologises, shames and denies the power and value of our cycles, and especially the power of the premenstrual phase? We explore:How the premenstrual phase of the cycle gives you feedback about your sensitivity and how to tend to it, so it can be in service to your power - because the world needs your depth of feeling.The emotional spirals that PMDD can evoke, where intense feelings arise, attack becomes your best defense, you lash out at others, and then, a couple of days later, often once your period has arrived, you have to pick up the pieces and negotiate the aftermath of self-hatred and shame.Why we all need to take what we feel in inner autumn more seriously. The premenstrual phase of the cycle is the emotional ‘novocaine’ wearing off, a time where you come to your senses, and you have heightened intuition and insight. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Welcome to the Menstruality podcast where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red Skool where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host Sophie Jane Hardy and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, change makers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. your community and the world. Hey there, welcome to this next episode of the Menstruality Podcast and a specially warm welcome to you if this is the first time that you're here with us

today. Did you know that 3 to 8% of women and people with cycles experience PMDD which stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder. If you're one of these people, or you're close to or work with someone with PMDD, this episode is especially for you. And it's also for you if you, like me, currently experience or have experienced intense, debilitating, dark and challenging emotional disturbance

in the premenstrual phase of your cycle, often known as PMS or premenstrual syndrome. Today, Alexandra and Shani are exploring the inner autumn, the premenstrual phase, as a gateway to our power. And as they share, our premenstrual symptoms aren't a design flaw, but can be better understood as a truth-telling signal or a warning sign from the deepest part of ourselves about all that needs to be healed within us and all that needs

to be healed in our world and our culture. Part of the challenge that we all face here is that we live in a culture that dismisses and denies our cyclical experience, which creates a disconnect with our own cyclical wisdom. In other words, what if it's not the menstrual cycle that's the problem, but rather a culture that pathologizes, shames, and denies the power and value of our menstrual cycles, and especially the power of the pre-menstrual phase? Hey, Shiny, Hey, Alexandra.

Shall we start with our cycle check-in? Let's do it through an emotional lens, emotional health. How is your cycle day impacting you emotionally today? Hmm. I love it when you bring a lens. Yeah, I am day 18 and really felt myself wake up inside my inner autumn. I felt it little whiffs of it yesterday, but today I'm really in. It's just in the nick of time, because I've been really in the throes of inner Samai and so many facets of my life. Like my children are in the summer term

at school, which means it is really full on with activities and events and plays and school trips and so on. And I'm very much in the sort of in the summer of my mothering life. So I think hands full. Really full with God so much. And I'd say red schools in a sort of summer, in a sense of we have I have more work than I can handle. And so while I was in the spring and summer of my cycle over these past days, I have just been milking it, like really rising to meet the demands of all this kind of summer energy in my life. And I can honestly, I don't think I've ever worked harder. I have worked so hard over the last couple of weeks. And that is, it's just really been so interesting to notice like, how the more and more I've been doing the more and more momentum, there's been in me.

And how intoxicating that momentum is. And I've just noticed my mind getting so high on all the busyness to the point where like a couple of days ago, I kind of observed my mind and I had the sense that you can hear, like my body was not getting the kind of care needed. And when you ask about mental and emotional health for me, and I suspect this is true for all of us. There is no mental and emotional health without physical care. And yeah, waking up this morning, I had a very strong inner autumn dream last night, which featured no other than Alexandra Pope. She was there kicking my ass in the dream. But it woke me up inside of this real reality check moment, which is what the inner autumn so often does. And yeah, and I just feel deeply what my body is needing right now, which is very simply to slow down. But it's actually more than that.

Like I need to be replenished. I'm dry. I need nourishment and that's not just physical. It's creative nourishment. It's emotional nourishment. It's all levels. So I'm taking that seriously because I know whilst as humans we have this incredible capacity to stretch, you know, we are like elastic bands, we can really push it. But then there's this very fine line between stretching and snapping,

and I can feel that edge in me. Like, if I don't like let go of the push now, you know, I could break. Yeah, that would not be pretty. So I'm taking it very, very seriously. Do you know what you're making me think of? Probably because I'm in the middle of my inner summer is once you and I went to a festival, and we sat in the sun giving each other foot rubs with oil. And it was the most amazing day. And I just wish that that I could bring some of that to you now. It sounds like you could do with a foot rub in the sunshine. that I could bring some of that to you now. It sounds like you could do with a foot rub in the sunshine.

Oh, yes. You're talking my love language, Sophie. Yeah. Yes, please. I'm on day 15. I haven't ovulated yet, I don't think. And it was the full moon yesterday, Alexandra reminded me in our meeting yesterday. So I was, you know, I'm full power in a summer full moon. And I've got a lot of energy. I feel emotionally resilient which is good because I'm very plugged into what's happening in the world. There's like terrible things happening in LA right now, there's terrible things happening in Gaza, have been for a long time but especially right now and so I'm really, I've got the energy to be really plugged in and active. So yeah, I'm feeling the pain in the world

and I'm feeling my strength to meet it, which is very welcome. And I'm also remembering back to when I used to be, used to suffer terribly with premenstrual, debilitating grief and rage and how this phase of the cycle felt so good because I'm like, okay, I'm safe here. I can do what I need to do. And then the descent would begin. And I didn't know what hell would happen. So I'm remembering that time in that, you know, like late 20s,

30s, early 30s self and sending her love back there. And she would have really liked to have to have heard this conversation. And actually the game changer for her was reading the Women's Quest book and learning about the inner critic and the pre-menstrual and that changed my life. So I'm so glad we're having this conversation. Yeah, how about you Alexandra, just after the full moon? You know how sometimes we do a one word cycle check in. Well, I have a one word. I've never not I've never managed it before which is relishing just relishing I woke up this morning I was lying bed because I woke up early and I was just relishing the fact I'd had, you know, enough sleep, and, you know, the lights coming up, I was just relishing this, such an exquisite moment, you know. And I was relishing the food that I would make,

you know, eat, you know, the next couple of days. So I was relishing all that. Then I was just relishing the place I'm in, who I am. And I was relishing Red School and all the, it was really lovely. And I can feel that driven energy on the edge, but it's not, that's not taking over. It's nice. So there's this sort of slowness in my being and there's taking in the sumptuousness, you know, just loving. I love this time of year because the English strawberries,

organic strawberries are in and there's no strawberry like an English organic strawberry and I wait for it every year. And then the organic stone fruit has turned up. Oh my God, organic apricots and peaches. I mean, really I'm getting high on all that stuff. And she's high on peaches. High on peaches and strawberries. Oh my god. I'm so lucky because my dad is mad for strawberries and on his allotment he has probably like 20 square meters of strawberry plants. No. I'm going to go and visit him. I'm going to come and visit him. They are amazing right now. So red, so sweet, the most delicious things and Artie just gorges himself.

So yes, I'm sorry. Wow. Yeah, yeah, very, very lucky. We are so lucky. Good. We're in a good place for this conversation. And we've got one inner autumn woman here with us, Shardy. Yeah, and I count as two because I'm in the inner autumn of my cycle, but I'm also in the autumn of my menstruating years. So I'm autumn to the hilt. And we've decided to break this conversation into two parts because it's huge. And today in this first part of the conversation, we're going to be looking at, like the context, understanding what PMS and PMDD are,

what the power of the pre-menstrual is. And then in part two, we're going to get more practical. Like how do we actually practice MCA in this phase of the cycle? How do we support PMS and PMDD? But to get us started, let's look at a simple, but huge question, what is PMS and what is PMDD? Yeah, so for those who are very unfamiliar with it, maybe just to start off with what the acronym

stands for. So PMS stands for premenstrual syndrome. And actually covers a very wide spectrum from physical to emotional to psychological symptoms that happen in the luteal phase, so in the second half of the cycle. And it can include anything from irritability, mood swings, sadness, anxiety, but also physical symptoms like bloating, breast tenderness, headaches and so on. Sometimes people consider the cravings they experience as PMS or mental challenges like difficulty concentrating or brain fog, for example, and it can affect how people feel like low self-esteem, et cetera. And then PMDD is really PMS amplified manifold. So PMDD stands for premenstrual dysphoric disorder. So it's much more severe and it's often very, very debilitating. And it affects, this is the statistic that I read

Sophie, something like three to 8% of those with the menstrual cycle, which is not a small amount, can I just say? Wow. So again, this can happen. I mean, this tends to be less physical and is much more about kind of intense emotional, cognitive symptoms. So severe mood swings, anxiety, panic, deep depression, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, rage, agitation,

can affect sleeping. So insomnia of course is very connected with this. And then again, difficulty concentrating with that huge amount of sort of emotional surge. Our mental faculties are generally very disturbed. And it's not uncommon for people to feel very dissociated and kind of D realized depersonalized. So this is actually PMDD is classified as a mental health condition in the DSM, which is the directory of mental health

conditions, that's considered a hormone sensitivity disorder. Yeah. We have this story, you put a call out in our community hub for people to share their stories and questions about their experiences of PMS and PMDD and we receive one from Claire and she describes her journey from PMDD to PMS. She says, I used to have severe PMDD, suicidal thoughts and rage etc ever since my first bleed. However, I would no longer describe myself as struggling with PMDD and no longer experience the intensity. I still get PMS, some months worse than others, but it feels more like something I work with and a welcome signal that something needs tending to.

Beautiful. Gosh, I'm so grateful she shared that story, Claire is one of the Menstruality Leadership Program graduates and it's really beautiful that we're starting the conversation off with that note of hope, because I think so many people experience this feel hopeless, and wonder if it's something that can be healed, or, you know, questions around whether they are actually broken, or if there's something fundamentally wrong with them. So yes, I'm very, very grateful for Claire's story. Thank you, Claire.

Yeah, I'm so grateful that Claire's had that experience and that I'm also to have profound gratitude for my personal journey with this because I was in a similar place to Claire for years and it affects every aspect of life, relationships, work, everything. Okay, so we've had the kind of official diagnosis, way of understanding PMS and PMDD. Can you walk us into how you understand it at Red School? Yeah, so to really understand PMS and PMDD beyond the label, I think we need to really understand the power of the pre-menstruum, the inner autum, which is the phase of the cycle in which these symptoms, I'm gonna say symptoms in inverted commas occur, because

we don't think of them as just symptoms, we really think of them as signals. And to understand the power of the pre mainstream, I feel like we need to step back and really understand the power of the whole cycle. There's so much we can say about the power of the cycle and all our work is about unpacking the power of the cycle. But in the context of this conversation of PMS and PMDD, I'd love us just to begin by framing this very particular power that the cycle power that the cycle has for helping healing and transformation to occur. So, Alexandra, maybe you want to talk us into this. Yeah, you know, I think of the menstrual cycle, well, it is this extraordinary sensing system, and it's picking up information, if you like, from what's happening within us. It's responding to all the elements

that make up us, but it's also sensing and feeling and responding, picking up what's happening outside of us. I mean, it is the stress-sensitive system within us, and it's sensing on this biopsycho and spiritual level. You've got all these different levels at which the menstrual cycle is responding and feeding back information to us. So we think of it as this incredible feedback system. It's many different things, but at the simplest level, it is this sensing system that's giving us information all the time. Think of it like that. So it's feeding things back to us. And the pre-menstruum is the quintessential hotspot really for that feedback. In fact, at any point in the cycle, where there's trouble anywhere in the cycle, that's feedback. But the pre-menstrual is the

quintessential moment for it. And the reason that's so is because if you remember, the first part of the cycle is very much this expansion in energy. And so you've got more resource, more buffering going on. It's like a growth spurt, and you're sort of filling up with chi and energy and all sorts of things on all sorts of levels. And then the second half of the cycle is this drawing in. So you and I, Sophie, are on a little bit of a high at the moment because it's all summer in our land. And Shani, in the way you were describing your experience, you could suddenly feel that going on in your system very subtly, where your system was acknowledging the shift in energy. And the shift in energy in the second half of the cycle is a retreating energy. It's the energy dropping now. And capacity, your capacity is changing. So your capacity expands, expands,

expands, and then it draws in and it draws in. And in that contraction phase, that drawing in phase, we become more sensitive and permeable and we feel things more. And so our deeper needs, the actual condition of our bodies. You see, so Shani was talking about her mind, so, you know, didn't have a body to worry about and she could get away with it for a while. But suddenly now she can't get away with it. Suddenly she's reallocing. Uh-oh. And because she's a genius at connecting to her cycle, she's able to clock this and start to make little adjustments within herself. Interstage left, the practice of menstrual cycle awareness. Yeah. So the premenstrual phase is that moment when the veils are sort of parting, if you like, and we're seeing into things. I mean, it's the other thing.

We actually have, of course, these powers that come on board where we have more sight, more knowing, and it's because of this increasing vulnerability that's happening. Yeah, I really like the imagery of a wave. So what Alexandra described there, the first half of the cycle is like this wave of energy washing ashore. And the shoreline, the beach is covered by that wave. But then when the wave retreats in the second half of the cycle, what's beneath the water is revealed. And that is very, very much what's happening here. So as Alexandra pointed out, what's being revealed is not just personal.

So, you know, our physical state, our diet, our levels of exhaustion, stress, the pollution in our body, et cetera. It's not just psychological. It's not just revealing the kind of trauma that's there or the lack of connection to ourself or the lack of safety we might feel and so on. It's also revealing the societal condition, you know, for, for example, how women are considered less than, you know, that, that dynamic is revealed, we feel it,

or for example, the lack of respect of the cycle, or the shaming we might feel all of that is surfaced. And it's also happening on a spiritual level. So there's a kind of the psychic powers we might hold, for example, are being amplified and revealed. So it's a lot, as you can hear, we are not just sensing ourselves, we're sensing everything. So that, hopefully, if you're listening to this, you can now really have a very different feel for what's going on with PMS. So let's just start with PMS and say from a the Red Cool School

perspective, we don't consider these symptoms a problem. As I said, like symptoms in an inverted comma, they're not the result of some kind of design flaw. Instead, they are this truth telling signal, this, as Alexandra said, this early warning sign that you might be, you know, where you're depleted, where your kind of lifestyle and health habits are lacking, where your boundaries have been crossed, where your needs are not being tended, and what needs to be healed. So that's a very different picture then of those symptoms. And similarly, with PMDD, what's happening there, while it's incredibly extreme,

While it's incredibly extreme, it's really helpful to understand that it's an extreme wake up call. It really is the cycle giving you this feedback about perhaps extreme levels of stress or fatigue in your system, or layers of unprocessed trauma, or perhaps the huge sensitivity that you have that isn't being cared for, or it could be feedback, as we said about the kind of culture that you're living in or the environment that you're in. It's just a much louder cry from, you know, I'd say the deepest part of yourself.

I do feel like this is coming from the part of you that is love. It's coming from the part of you that is whole, that is calling you home. Yeah. part of you that is whole, that is calling you home. Yeah, you use that phrase, Alexandra, that PMDD is an awakening of power. Yeah, I mean, as I'm listening to you and also just thinking about your experience in the past, Sophie, the thing I'm perhaps most acutely holding for people who are suffering with that you hold. It's exquisite in a way, but it's also excruciating when you're not resourced enough to be able to understand enough to be able to care for yourself and that sensitivity so that your sensitivity can then be something that is in service of your power, of what you bring to the world. And instead, you are simply battered by the overwhelm

of this level of feeling. I mean, just what you shared in your cycle check and Sophie about feeling the world so acutely. And here in the summer, you've got capacity to be able to engage with it. And in the pre-menstrual, especially in the latter days of it, it can take you out. Well, you can speak to that, Sophie-J. But I really want to name this extraordinary power that those who suffer very much in the second work at Red School is all about how to support you to meet and tend to and hold that so that the world needs your gifts, needs your level of sensitivity, your level of depth of feeling is needed, but for you to be able to contribute, you need to be resourced. Yeah, before I had this context, I thought I was mad. I thought I was, I have something

really wrong with me, that I was broken. And then when once I got this context, I started to see the trauma that was alive in me from like early sexual abuse experiences inside this patriarchal culture, but just from living as a woman inside patriarchy. And, you know, I've got the privilege of being a white woman and there's layers of protection there that come from me, but thinking of like folks of colour, women of colour, black women and all the different extra layers of challenge that come with living in white supremacy culture and you know and for those who are neurodivergent or exactly LGBTQ like there's so I had a lot of layers of privilege so I'm just acknowledging that too that it's just yes being inside a culture

that marginalizes your identity and yeah once I had the context I could start to experience it as power and then it was a long and messy journey but now my inner autumn has become my home, my sanctuary, my ground, this is who I am, this is where I really feel myself and I can't wait to get back there but and I recognise there are lots of people listening who do not feel like that at all and we have had loads of great questions that came in from the community, but one that came in that feels good to bring in here is, how do you distinguish then between kind of a healthy expression of the pre-menstrual

and inner-autumn and healthy in quotation marks and a problematic one? Where does just normal inner-autumn, normal inner-autumn experience start and then PMS begin and then PMDD begin? Yeah, you know, from our understanding of what's going on, we don't actually draw a distinction between sort of healthy and unhealthy. We really consider the experiences that you're having in the pre menstruum as part of a continuum of feedback. So there's no real clear division between what's healthy and what's

unhealthy. But there is definitely a distinction around whether or not you have the understanding that we're sharing here, and whether or not you have the capacity and the resource to be able to meet what is arising in your experience, and to be able to to be able to stay present with what's happening, because that is really part of the alchemy that's wanting to happen, is you bringing presence and sort of embodied presence to what is arising so that it can integrate. That's really key. And also it is everything to do with whether in those moments of intense experience or deep darkness or hopelessness, are you able to hold a thread of the meaning that's at work? Like however painful it is, what's, what, however painful what's happening is, are you able to stay connected to and

therefore trust that's what's happening is healing, that you are being guided back home to yourself. Because that, and I've certainly had this experience for myself in those very, very intense times, that if I haven't been able to hold the line to the deeper meaning at work, because that has given me a feeling of dignity around what's happening, rather than it being pathologized and me feeling like I'm broken,

there's something wrong with me and it's all helpless. I've actually felt that I am being changed, like I am being transformed. that power is awakening in me, something new is being asked of me, I'm being asked to kind of step into this new capacity of presence with myself. And it's so, these are just words I'm saying, but because of some of the experience I've personally had, I know that there is a difference between a wake-up call and deep embodied transformation. You know, a wake-up call is like a little knock on the door, you know, hello, oh, yeah. This is the power of the pre menstruum is much more like something that

comes to you in the dead of night while you fast asleep, and takes you takes all of you deep into this place in yourself. And deep into this place in yourself and all there is to do is surrender and trust it. Even as a part of you will be, the experience, it feeling really deeply unmanageable and actually being transformed and healed by the experience. I'm going to pause our conversation for a moment to share a couple of invitations. Firstly, if you're just discovering the practice of cycle awareness as a way to transform your pre-menstrual experience, we really recommend downloading the free Red School menstrual tracking chart at redschool.net forward slash chart to support you to get started with your own menstrual cycle awareness practice. And I also want to let you know that the doors

for the menstruality leadership program are opening again soon and I know some of you have been waiting for this and we'll let you know once registration is open both here and through the Red School newsletter you can join the newsletter at redschool.net. And in the meantime, Alexandra and Shani's Cycle Power course is the best way to prepare for the Leadership Programme. Lots of graduates share that they were really grateful to have had the context of Cycle Power and that it really supported them to get the most from the Leadership Training. So you can find out more about cycle power at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. It's also a great place to explore the inner autumn, the pre-menstrual phase of the cycle

in more depth. And here's a story from Abigail after she took cycle power. She said, my inner autumn has really shifted as I much more deliberately gear down and tune into myself with daily activities like journaling yoga or simply laying down alone in silence or with music to do nothing and breathe and be with myself. The breakthrough was choosing to honor myself by prioritizing my wellbeing, voicing my requirements and creating the time and space to carry out my self-care acts. So you can find out about the Cycle Power course at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. Let's get back to our conversation with Alexandra and Shani. I just really want to pick up on these two words embodied presence, because that's the key. It's your level of

capacity to stay, to have a degree of presence with your experience. So another way of speaking that is a degree of holding what's happening rather than it completely taking over everything, that just having this quality of presence to it. And of course, there'll be, you know, you lose it, but being able to then come back again to the presence. It is a dance, and the presence will help you to connect, will locate you, will remind you, oh yes, this is where I am in the cycle. You can sort of meta-communicate with yourself when you have a degree of presence. You can have some capacity to perhaps soothe or talk to yourself when there's a level of presence. And of course, we can talk further and how do we build that level of embodied presence? Because

that is a process. It doesn't just happen overnight. But that's the key to it being a it, you know, being a kind of a healthy inverted commas, awesome, or a complete mad PMS or PMGD experience. Could I share an example to land it? Yeah. Because menstrual cycle awareness is what's built the embodied presence for me, years and years. And so now I still have similar feelings in, I'll say on day 23, which was always been, it was always the hotspot of my cycle, particularly around my male partner, bless them. So, aid will say something and I'll think some version of, well, you're just being a fucking man again, aren't you? At me. And whereas 10 years ago, I would then, because of the unprocessed trauma,

I would then spiral down into a panicky rage where my body would get totally flooded, I'd get totally emotionally dysregulated, I'd start shouting, screaming, like wanting to throw things and then end up in a ball on the floor, totally gone and lost. Like you were saying Sharni, I didn't have any of that sense of thread of connection to the meaning for hours, just like just huddled on the floor. So now now because of all these years and because of the context I'll hear I'll feel that thought I'll be like take a deep

breath and I'll sit with it and I'll feel the heat of it in me yeah okay he is showing up in a way that isn't but he's a good guy I know he's a good guy but he's showing up in a certain way right now I'll bring some feedback to him later. Like not always that clean, but like some version of that. And that's how it's changed for me. It's not that the, it still triggers the feeling, but it's how I'm with the feeling. Yeah. Is that helpful to share that? Yeah. It's a super example. Very, very helpful. Yeah. And I think also you're Yeah. And I think also you're speaking to like, what is, um, oftentimes a spiral for people with PMDD of feeling these intense feelings and it hitting this place of deep wounding or deep trauma in them. And of course, when we hurting or when we feel that vulnerable

attack is our best defense. So we lash out at others, hurt others, et cetera. And then the spiral is that, you know, a couple of days later after bleeding, we're like, what have I done? And the people I've hurt and all the pieces of my life that are like on the floor. And so it can spiral very, very quickly into the spiral of actually shame, and feeling so fundamentally what's wrong with me, like what's wrong with you. And it can wear away

your sense of goodness and the sort of integrity of your beautiful, pure, wholesome, gorgeous being. And in a way that momentum needs to be interrupted and cycle awareness very much does that. I'm just sort of reflecting on some of the kind of deep roots behind PMDD. And, you know, we would say that it's the denial of the cycle that has birthed this eruption of reactivity that happens because we aren't honoring the needs of our cycle. So that's a cultural denial of the cycle. As you know, an attempt to suppress menstruation suppress the cycle. And the fact that without this knowledge, we are living at us

in certain like, odds with our body and disconnection with our body. So it's really, I think good just to name that the menstrual cycle is not the problem. Yes, culture or a system that denies the validity and value of cyclicity. Yeah, particularly the part of cyclicity, which is the second half the cycle, the via negativa, the waning of energy and all that, all the powers that that brings forward. Yeah, it's become a joke and I feel really, really bad. She's just PMSing like, and Claire wrote this quote, it's full of premenstrual fire, this one, about how the cycle has been pathologised and the premenstrual

has been pathologised. She says, PMS and PMDD is a hugely political and feminist issue. Women are not supposed to be angry or wild in the eyes of the patriarchy and our premenstrual experience is a huge threat to that. I often wonder what it would be like if we removed the stigma, shaming and pathologising I'm going to cry, ugh, of the pre-menstrual experience and how that might shift our experience from one of suffering to one of power. Yes, that was my journey. Yeah. Thank you, Claire. Yeah, I mean, let's unpack this because this is a place of power. We're saying this is a place of power, which seems like a wild and crazy thought in the face of the way the world understands the pre-menstruum currently and most of culture understands.

So let's unpack this, the pre-menstruum as a place of power. Well, you know, my favourite line, which I came up with. Always so humble. I'm so humble. Yeah, yeah. My middle name years ago, which was that I used to talk about the premenstruum as the Novocaine wearing off, you know, the numbing wearing off, aka the premenstruum is you waking up. You are waking up to yourself, the conditions of your life, to the conditions of the world. I mean, that's it in a nutshell.

It's this extraordinary coming to your senses. And I used to use the example of the emperor's new clothes. Suddenly, you're seeing through everything. And then, of course, you have that on steroids when you're getting closer to menopause, when you're in the late autumn of your menstruating life, you just see through everything. Everything is stripped away. And I am going to slightly just repeat something we've already said. And the thing is, because the premenstrual phase is not valued because we are dismissed, all those awful jokes we were just talking about. We discount or don't recognize that actually we are seeing things, we're seen as the problem. And indeed, we are the problem because we are disturbing the illusion of what we should be or what the situation is. We're shaking the foundation. So we're having our foundation shaken, but what we're then doing is we're disturbing everybody else around us.

And everybody else around us, what's what we do when we feel disturbed, we make the problem, the person who is the disturber, the problem. So they, you know, lash out at us. But actually, you're waking up. And really, the key thing here is to really start to think about how to care for that. So let's come back to this idea, you are coming to your senses, so you're feeling more deeply, you're sensing and you're knowing things. You've got this small... These are real powers we're talking about, this kind of heightened intuition because it's like you have this image of sort of concrete breaking up, you know, hardness, because all that first half of the cycle,

just hard, you know, all that doing and that, you know, and you've got lots of energy and you've got lots of doing power. It really flattens sensitivity, it flattens our sensing, it flattens our knowing, our intuition, our feelings. And that power, and those powers are great, I don't want to diminish them, as they fall away, where you suddenly, we just don't have them in the same way, then these other powers can start to wake up. But we discover them through feeling overwhelmed, reactive, because we're not pacing coming into this shift in energy. So yeah. I'm appreciating what you're saying, Alexandra, because in a way you're reminding us all to take very seriously what we're feeling and what we're experiencing in the pre-menstrual. And actually there was a question that came up in the community hub from a couple of people, both Mercy and Helen said, is my premenstrual anger or rage valid or am I just being hormonal? And I think so much of what

undoes us is that we are not taking ourselves seriously and we are dismissing what we're seriously and where we are dismissing what we're feeling. So this is like for those who experience PMS and PMDD, it's really helpful to understand that when your boundaries are being violated, you will really feel that, recognize that, realize that consciously or unconsciously, it'll come to you as feeling or thought. And this is one of the other great powers of the pre menstruum is it shows you where you are, your being is drawing a line between what's

okay and not okay. So you might put up with all sorts of things all month long. But the deepest part of yourself, remember, I said, this is a call home from the deepest part of yourself, the part of yourself that is love that does feel worthy, just goes, no, absolutely no. And then you feel rage or anger, you know, and maybe you feel completely mad. So I think that's really, really key to remember. And I don't know if you were wanting to carry on, Alexandra, but there's another kind of thread in terms of the power of the pre menstruum, which is very much to do with healing. And we have touched on this, but isn't it incredible that

we have this phase in the cycle that helps us to become conscious of what's been unconscious in us. I find that so beautiful to know again, it's from this deepest part of ourselves that says, Hey, look, this part of you that you've denied, suppressed or disconnected from wants to come home, wants to be remembered, wants to be integrated. So if you're somebody who's experienced a lot of trauma, a lot of childhood trauma, for example, you are much more likely to experience the symptoms of PMDD because that trauma is going to reveal itself. You might not even consciously realize that, but you will start to have all the feelings of itself. You might not even consciously realize that, but you will start to have all the feelings of it. You'll be in a kind of PTSD state.

And the intensity of your feelings don't sort of match what's happening in the situation you're in. It's completely disproportionate. Your partner hasn't taken the bin out and you are on the floor broken around how unsupported you are in your life. That's a sign of trauma, some past trauma of a very young part of yourself that didn't feel held or supported. So this is another incredible part of the pre-menstruum is it's inviting us into this psychological emotional integration.

Yeah, I'm just relishing. There is another thought I'm going to come to, There is another thought I'm going to come to, but I'm just wanting to track what we've named around this waking up and this capacity to feel and sense more. Yeah, this greater awareness, this sight we hold. And I loved what you were saying, Shani, about this is medicine, this is healing, this is a feedback moment that's an opportunity for healing. So built into our system of our being is this place of system of our being is this place of adjustment or readjustment so that we don't run away with ourselves, so to speak. We're pulled back into ourselves. So then there is this other kind of power that's available for us, which is really potent and powerful. And if you're conscious of the awakening, the sensitivity and all those lovely powers of intuition and so on, knowing, coming on board, and you're conscious of how you're getting feedback about your needs and the healing that's needed,

your needs and the healing that's needed. There is this other extraordinary force that almost kind of railroads its way through, which I can only call the truth-telling, the catalyst voice, there is an authority that you hold in the pre-menstrom. It's an extraordinary power, which then gets really amplified post-menopause because you come into the autumn of your life post-menopause. Well, that's a fuller conversation, but it really amplifies then. The pre-menstruum holds very raw, potent, truth-telling power. It's like a deep authority that you're holding. Now, it does require a lot of presence to be able to channel that power, but I feel a lot of the rage and so on that's going on is that power, in a sense, coming through, but we don't have the resource, the wherewithal, the knowing, the understanding to be able to know that and to channel it or use it. But it's a power that can change things. You can actually be

quite catalytic. You can penetrate through situations in the way that you speak, which does not happen in the same way in the other parts of the cycle. It's very distinct in this part of the cycle. It's fierce, it's penetrating, and it can affect others. And when you're congruent with that power, even though what you're delivering is not comfortable, because you're congruent with it, people can hear it and receive it, they are woken up by it. So you become in a sense, the wake-up opera, you are being woken up at your pre-menstrual phase. And if you know how to line up with that game, you know, you're sufficiently resourced, then you know, you're on the super highways or something.

Very dangerous, can I say? And needed. And very needed. Yeah, this is so connected to the fact that the pre-menstrom, Alexandra is also asked about us really getting real about who we are and our singularity. We can't compromise or play the societal game or try to fit in anymore or be nice. There's this incredible thing that happens in the pre-mainstream where we just don't want to and can't forsake ourselves and our, in a way, our individuality anymore. We really get hooked from societal conditioning, and this idea that we all need to be the same to fit in.

So I'm thinking of, you know, those with PMDD, you're very likely somebody who is somebody who is breaking the societal norms, you know, you are possibly somebody who is highly sensitive, maybe you're neurodivergent, maybe maybe you're an outlier in some way, culturally. And so you are going to feel the way that the culture pathologizes difference difference and pathologizes emotional intensity and pathologizes like, I don't know, like intuitive and psychic abilities. I mean, this is the other thing. So there's this incredible psychic spiritual power that comes on board here. So if you are somebody who has those kinds of gifts and you want conscious of it and you want practicing cycle

awareness or you're really being affected by the cultural dismissing of that kind of power, you might be feeling all kinds of distress in your system and not know why. Yeah. And you can't censor in the same way that you thought you were saying, Shardy. So I'm just remembering one very particular experience I had many, many, many years ago with my partner. Because I remember this, all my opinions or thoughts about it were suddenly rising up in me really, really fiercely. And I had another part of this brain going, don't say it, Pope, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it, Pope. But nothing was going to stop it. And it ripped out. And you see see now here's the interesting thing. It was actually very transformative. It really shifted something in our relationship and

I have never forgotten that. Yeah, it actually created positive change in how we were connecting and relating. Even though I was actually being, I was going to say rather, very critical of him, it had a very positive effect and I haven't forgotten that. So I'm just thinking about this quality of losing it. I'm going to say we have the power of losing it in the pre menstrual phase. But it can be also if we're not aware of that power, because it's like a high holy power boy, you know, if you're not kind of lined up with yourself in some way, then that losing it will be destructive.

Yeah. Yeah. then that losing it will be destructive. Yeah. Yeah. And in our next part two, we're gonna look into how to practice cycle awareness to build these muscles and the way that you've been speaking about, both of you of how to be congruent with this power that's moving through us and how that can support experiences

of PMS and PMDD. So we're going to get into the how-to and the practical in the next one. I would happily speak with you both all week long about this, but we will. Yeah, I'm going to bring in some boundaries for us and just close actually on a question from Annie in the community and she said, is full healing from PMDD possible or will I always live with it? And Sophie, one of the Menstruality Leadership Program graduates, she shared her experience and she says,

I was experiencing PMDD for years and no longer do. Reading Wild Power was one of the things that started to fundamentally shift my perspective and I couldn't resist enrolling onto the Menstruality Leadership Programme which really supported and fast-tracked my recovery. For me, working with my cycle intimately highlighted my neurodivergence and there was pure gold in the act of viewing my experience as meaningful. PMDD is a very natural response when we have overridden ourselves and our needs for so long and have been marginalized by society. I suppose my wisdom to share is that the reframe and the relationship I've built to myself has been everything as well as the belief that things can shift and change. That's such a super quote. Yeah, yeah. It'll

be so good to just get into more of the detail of how menstrual cycle awareness works and also just bring in some other very other practical things that really support healing that one can do for oneself. Yeah. Yeah, the thing I really love when I hear Sophie story again, is how she's speaking about making peace with her own nature as part of this healing that's happened for her. And that is one of the things that menstrual cycle awareness does is it really helps us to know ourselves and understand our nature and make peace with that at the deepest level. It's really is a story of such a personal journey of coming home to oneself. But maybe it's also worth just ending this conversation by

bringing back the context of this also being a collective healing that we're in. I think that's very, very important. This is a healing that isn't done in isolation. We're all responsible for restoring something here. And those who are suffering are, of course, the canaries in the mineshaft. Yeah, they're alerting all of us. MUSIC Thanks so much for being with us today. I want to remind you that cycle power is there

and available for you. If you would like to explore the inner autumn phase, your pre-menstrual phase in more depth, then be supported to create a really robust self-care practice around it. You can explore the course at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. And if you know someone who experiences really challenging pre-menstrual times in their cycle, please do forward this episode to them. Okay, that's it for this week. I'll be with you again next week.

And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.