Why You Change With Your Cycle — And Why It’s Important

If you've ever felt sharp, social, and unstoppable one week and withdrawn, raw, or short-tempered the next, you're not imagining it, and you're not broken. Your menstrual cycle isn't just a reproductive process,  it's a natural physiological rhythm that consistently shapes mood, energy, focus, and how connected you feel to yourself, other people and the world, all month long.

Most of us were never taught this. Simply, we vaguely learned what a period is in school and then got left to make sense of  the blood, the fog, the vulnerability, the sudden bursts of clarity and creativity completely on our own. We made sense of these experiences without the context of the cycle. At best we experience our feelings as random, chaotic or unpredictable. At worst, for the rest of our menstruating years, our cyclical psychological and physiological shifts get labeled as "being dramatic," personal failings, or something to just push through. In therapy, that mislabeling can lead to real problems: misdiagnosis, unnecessary shame, and treatment plans that don't actually fit what's going on in your body.

From a depth psychological perspective, the cycle is interesting because it offers a recurring embodied experience of a universal human pattern: emergence to fullness then decline to transformation into renewal.

Your Cycle Is a Psychological and Creative Rhythm, Not Just a Biological One

"It's not just a metaphor, it's a fact. The [womb/uterus is a] place where invisible things come into existence. Even if you're not having children, that same creative power is still alive in you. Your womb brings ideas, desires, and visions into form. It's how we create everything from babies to businesses for lives we dream of….The womb is your creative center”- Chanana McGarry

It is known on a collective level. A large-scale 2022 study, tracking millions of menstruating people, found that the menstrual cycle predicts shifts in mood and behavior even more reliably than the day of the week or the season. Neuroimaging research shows that brain regions involved in emotional regulation and stress response — the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex have distinct functions across your cycle's phases. This isn’t new information. Menstruators have been in relationship with and supported the experience of the menstrual cycle since pre-history. Archaeological, anthropological, and mythological evidence suggests that in many ancient and prehistoric cultures, menstruation was understood as a potent and meaningful bodily process rather than a private or pathological event situating menstruation within broader symbolic systems that linked the body to lunar rhythms, seasonal change, and communal life. These early interpretations framed menstruation as a collective and symbolic phenomenon, embedded in ritual, myth, meaning, and relational life.

And yet, cyclical patterns related to the menstrual cycle are still rarely part of the conversation in therapy rooms. When they're addressed at all, it's usually through a narrow, symptom-focused lens: PMS, PMDD, something to manage or medicate. That's important work, and it matters for people who need it. But it also leaves out something bigger, the idea that your cycle might be trying to express or offer something generative, not just to inconvenience you.

“Soul needs body as much as body needs soul. Each out of its context without the other, an abandoned fragment of what it is.”- Marion Woodman.

What Menstrual Cycle Awareness Looks Like in Practice

“We live in a society that places profound value on literacy, building entire educational systems around it. We understand that the ability to read and write is not just a skill but a form of access, power, and self-determination. A person who can’t read can’t advocate for themselves in the systems that govern their life.” -Chanana McGarry

Menstrual cycle literacy is your birthright. Knowledge is power; and in service of self-growth and awareness, self knowledge is power. Get to know our thoughts, energy patterns, communication patterns etc.

Womb communicates information. It is influenced by the environment, it is stress sensitive. In 2006, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a joint clinical report that established the menstrual cycle as a key indicator of overall health, the 5th vital sign, alongside body temperature, pulse (heart rate), respiration rate (breathing), and blood pressure. Meaning, it communicates vital health information via symptoms. 

Don't be a passive participant in your sexual, mental and physical health. Become aware of and care for this 5th vital sign. It is responding to our internal and external worlds, providing information and perspective about ourselves and relationships.

“Once you have this knowledge, it can’t be taken away; once you have this sense of empowerment over your life and your own sovereignty it just changes your whole position in the world.”- Chanana McGarry

Menstrual cycle literacy is the practice of listening, interpreting, and honoring the cyclical intelligence of the female body as a daily, embodied skill.

Menstrual cycle awareness (MCA) is a way to engage in literacy. MCA is the practice of paying attention, daily, without judgment, to what's shifting in your body, mood, energy, and relationships across your cycle. Over time, patterns emerge. What once felt like unpredictable chaos starts to look like a rhythm you can actually work with and deepen relationships with.

“When we take ourselves seriously, we accept the responsibility of knowing and loving our body”-Marion Woodman

Many people find it helpful to think of the cycle in terms of four inner "seasons":

• Inner winter (menstruation): a natural pull toward rest, reflection, and slowing down

• Inner spring (pre-ovulation): rising energy, clarity, and a sense of new beginnings

• Inner summer (ovulation): peak expressiveness, connection, and confidence

• Inner autumn (premenstrual): heightened sensitivity and a sharper instinct for truth-telling and boundaries

None of these phases is "the problem" phase. Each one carries its own kind of intelligence, even the ones that feel uncomfortable.

Why This Matters for Therapy

Bringing cycle awareness into therapy doesn't mean every session becomes about your period. It means your therapist has a fuller picture of you, one that can help map out your cyclical, phase-related patterns and attend to these parts with respect and curiosity.

For many clients, simply understanding why a certain week feels harder is enough to soften the self-criticism that so often piles on top of it. You stop asking "what's wrong with me?" and start asking "what is this pattern telling me, and how can I support myself through it?" That shift alone can be enormously relieving.

The mouse-soul is nothing but a nibbler.

To the mouse is given a mind

proportionate to its need,

for without need, the All-Powerful

doesn’t give anything to anyone.

Need, then, is the net for all things that exist.

A person has tools in proportion to

his need.

So, quickly, increase your need, needy one,

that the sea of abundance

may surge up in loving-kindness.

-Rumi

Getting Support

If your mood, energy, or relationships seem to rise and fall in a pattern you can't quite explain or if you're tired of feeling like your body is working against you, therapy that holds the context of your menstrual cycle can help. You deserve care that sees the whole rhythm of who you are, not just the parts that are easiest to name. Your unique creative cycle is waiting to be remembered!