Hormones are to blame for a lot of our mood swings and anxiety. They are pesky, often misunderstood, and hardly welcome internal chemicals. While they have true importance from our primal histories, hormones can make us women feel less than ourselves each month and as we age and hormones begin to change.
Hormones Explained
Which hormones affect women specifically? Here are the main culprits: Estrogen, Progesterone, and Testosterone (along with Follicle Stimulating Hormone and Luteinizing Hormone). Throughout the month, women’s bodies have fluctuating levels of each hormone, causing our moods and behavior to change.
Too much or too little of any of the hormones can cause mood swings, breast tenderness, anxiety, depression, general pain, changes in appetite, too much or too little energy, bloating, ugh. It just goes on and on. It’s rough sometimes being a women and dealing with these hormonal changes!
How to Balance Your Hormones
Mainly, we just need to relax. Self care, self care, self care. Did we mention self care? It’s so important. Having a counselor to lean on during more trying times of the month can help. How do you know when those times will be? The first part of learning how to balance your hormones is to track your moods and cycle. This was, you can start to expect when you’re going to be low-energy and want to stay home (progesterone), and when you’ll be super high energy and ready for anything (right after your period, due to the luteinizing hormone).
Also? You know these!
Eat healthy
Drink water
Get enough sleep
Call and connect with your friends and family
Get in touch with your creative side
Walk or run outside
Read, read, read
Learning to Live With Hormonal Changes
Knowing that some things are truly physical (like your hormones), can help you be kinder to yourself when explaining your moods sometimes. That said, it’s still your responsibility to make sure you take care of yourself to protect your relationships and keep your stress levels low.
Consider coming in for a counseling session with us where we can plan ahead and try to make negative reactions from hormones a thing of the past. Learn tools to deal with the stress of your cycle and find support to make sure you have a release scheduled on the calendar when you know the times when every single thing is going to be getting on your nerves because of hormones. Counseling can help! Click below to easily book a consultation online with us.
