The Impact of Period Pain on Mental Health

and some tools to help you navigate it

Pain is a bit of a pants word to be honest. It doesn’t actually describe anything. If you you say to anyone you are in pain, the next question they will ask is what is that like and you then have to get descriptive.

Different things in the body will produce different types of pain, and pain in and of itself is a helpful diagnostic tool because it shear presence is a beacon that something isn’t ok in the body.

Sometimes you might know whey you have pain, take a headache for example, there are various types of headache. One if we are dehydrated, one if we have neck and shoulder tension and a different kettle of fish with migraines. It helps us tell the difference.

Imagine then if we all thought headaches were normal. I bet there are those of you out there that get migraines that have been told it’s just a bad headache. As a migraine sufferer myself, its a lying down in the dark for the rest of the next couple days, no screens and no relief from the pain if I don’t get the pain meds down my neck fast enough. Its pretty miserable and I can right the next couple of days off - thankfully I don’t get them all that often.

So why is it period pain has been made so acceptable? Why is it we are teaching our children that period pain is a normal part of having periods? Why are those that have periods putting up with pain? And what is the impact of that lie that period pain is normal pain? Because there is no such thing as a normal level of pain.

The NHS says chronic pain is pain that persists for longer than 3 months - affecting over one third of adults in the UK. Either as part of another health condition, or despite investigations and treatment.

So why is it that period pain gets dismissed? Because as a global society we believe it to be true that periods are synonymous with pain (which is true for a large amount of people), however it isn’t true that you get periods and if they are painful it’s normal.

Sadly, even in our medical system gaslighting and misogyny hinder being taken seriously. Which is one of the factors it takes so long for diagnosis of conditions like Endometriosis and Adenomyosis take such a long time to get. Often women and those with periods are sent away with a prescription of pain relief, or started on synthetic hormones without any further investigations into why the pain is there in the first place. This can help in the short term but it isn’t a cure, it isn’t getting to the root of the problem.

Period pain can and often does happen outside of the period, generally it happens every month and it certainly tips into chronic pain very quickly. Yet is isn’t seen or valued as that, its just dismissed, played down and reduced - sometimes with the suggestion its all on our heads, as not everyone feels this way!

Pain is exhausting, it changes you, people are very different in pain verses not in pain. Resilience of all levels is reduced, you can’t speak the same way, you can’t think the same way and you sure as hell can’t carry on trying to do your activities of daily living in the same way. Work, school, socialising, exercise, sex, eating, moving even breathing sometimes hurts. Show me anyone who wouldn’t be tested by that.

Mental health can and does go down the pan very quickly when we are in pain or anticipating pain, trying to avoid it, worried about it. Not having it and then waiting for it. It starts to take over lives. Which anyone can attest to that lives with chronic pain that is recognised, they are offered support, and not just dismissed because that would be unethical.

And yet… a high proportion of women and those that have periods will confirm that getting a health professional to take them seriously about their pain has been very taxing, and that alone has caused large amounts of stress. Just getting in front of the right people can be exhausting, and I would go so far to say that in some gases my clients have felt like there has been gate keeping happening by their GP’s

I would like to remind you that all health professionals work under they hippocratic oath of ‘first do no harm’. If you don’t feel like you are being listened to you aren’t. In not being listened to harm is happening to you, you are being dismissed and your symptoms reduced to what another perceives as normal.

McCaffery's 1968 definition of pain was simple—“It's whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever and wherever the person says it does.” I don’t believe when it comes to period pain medicine takes this stance at all. It’s still very much along the lines of Hysteria levels of thinking. As Naomi Wolf puts it “Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria.”

It is one of the the things I hear the most doing what I do. “Thank you for listening to me, I had started to think I was going mad.” You aren’t going mad - your pain is real and it isn’t normal.

Please take these two quotes with you for any dealings with medicine and don’t be afraid to stand your ground and advocate for yourself fiercely. I often find when armed with that mentality it is when we are met with the right health professionals.

I also like to remind people of the BRAINS acronym when faced with a medical decision or needing to get a second opinion

B - Benefits - what are the benefits to the options I have been given

R - Risk - What are the risks to me and my actives of daily living

A - Alternatives - Are there alternatives or other options - there ALWAYS will be!

I - Intuition - What does your gut say?

N - Nothing - can you wait and see? Give yourself some time to decide on what to do next.

S - Smile - Be polite but assertive. We don’t get anywhere being aggressive.

If you would like to get some more pointers on this you can get a copy of my book - Periods aren’t meant to Bloody Hurt here