I personally hate it when I read any kind of judgement on women with Endometriosis and when we get lumped into a category. I find it puts just another stigma into having Endometriosis which we really don’t need!
However, I did read a profile by Jenny Birdsey which seemed to just hit me and make me question, whether indeed we do have some things in common for having Endometriosis and more importantly if those “personality traits” were actually more hormone-related than specific to us, as women.
It’s a long article and feel free to read it if you like but I thought I would summarise some of the points she mentions, which really stood out for me:
- We have a strong mental constitution. We are high achievers and very competitive with ourselves. Yes for me!
- They pull energy to override the pain and fatigue. We put on a brave face and carry on. Was totally true for me!
- We tend to gravitate towards jobs which require perfectionism, competition, excellence, long hours and heavy responsibility. Ummm yes!
- We like things done “our way” and have certain structures and things in place we want others to follow. Oh dear! Yes!
- A need to have control over things. I totally do this with my diet!
- Inability to take care of ourselves and tend to be very nurturing of others or those around us. Oh yes! Taking care of my readers!
- She feels misunderstood and unsupported. This drives her to seek approval, acceptance, recognition. HATE that I do but I know that I do!
What is interesting about this article is that Jenny believes that many of these “personality traits” are linked to not having enough progesterone in the body. A few weeks ago, I wrote about my personal experience with recognizing that I am always rushing and feel like I am running out of time and that this too could be attributed to low progesterone! All very interesting!
I have worked out that many of these feelings and thoughts stem from something which I have found hard to accept about myself, which is a belief that I just wasn’t enough. It was a challenging one to recognize and perhaps you share these thoughts too. Please tell me if you do, so I don’t feel so alone in sharing! I did find that EFT really helped me shift a huge part of that thought pattern within myself to keep striving so hard and pushing too much.
I am not sure if the thought pattern comes first, which then drives up our cortisol and makes our hormones all out of whack or if it is indeed the progesterone making us drive ourselves so much. I think for me, I would say that the thought pattern definitely came first!
The essence of what to take out of this article…
- Take better care of ourselves
- Slow down enough and give yourself some space to breathe
- It’s okay not to be perfect cos nobody is!
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I also feel that I am not enough. I thought this stemmed from my dad leaving when I was young. But I see now that it is also tied to the endo. Because it forces me to slow down, or sometimes has me stuck in bed, so I am not able to do all the things I want to, and to BE the person that I want to, so I feel again, that I am not enough. This pattern keeps coming back in my mind. I’m not sure how to stop it.
Check out the Israeli nutrician Ilana Rogel. She has published quite a few books so far. Not sure if they got translated though.
She says: “Every illness is a creation”.
She claims that our personality conflicts affect our health and that each kind of a conflict shares the same illness as an outcome between all people.
I went to her with my endo and…she told me all of the above…
She says each type of food we are eating has its own type of energy so she creates a special diet with food that will help you change your behavior.
For me-
Gluten, dairy, sugar, most types of rice (except for basmatic), mushrooms, corn, all fruitsbut one green apple/pear.
Of the bean family I was only allowed to have sprouted mash, sprouted azuki and red lentiles.
Also add omega 3, no poultry. Red meat/lamb twice a week, fish twice a week.
All food must be cooked and warm.
The only veggies I could have cold were acocado and some sort of lettuce.
Eat every 2-3 hours. Tons of tehini from organic sesame seed.
No additives etc.
B12, iron, vitamin D, calcium and prenatal.
3.5 months after I finally concieved.
Trying to stick to this diet ever since, though during pregnancy I let myself have some pizzas etc…
Thanks for sharing and congrats on the move. I love moving and usually feel better and more optimistic about the future 😉
Try the progesterone for a short bit anyway and see how it goes.
Mel, I so agree with you! I needed to read this today, and I think so often that I’m not good enough etc. etc. not a good partner, not good at my studies, not good at exercising etc. etc…..it goes on, and it takes over. No wonder the body feels paralysed by these types of thoughts. Luckily I’ve started to pay attention to it, and am doing EFT too. Just wanted to let you know I feel the same ha ha. 🙂
And very interesting comment about the progesterone. Lately I’ve been using a wild yam cream on my legs every night, and my last period was literally painless. I don’t know if its that or a miracle, cos I’ve just moved house and gone through lots of stress so I expected the period to be really painful, but it was amazing. So I think ill keep going with the cream, till it runs out and see how I feel.
Best regards,
Svetlana (lana)
Could be 😉 Would be nice if they were cos then some of them might go away – causing us so much uneccessary stress 😉
Omg those are all me…and I think the stress of feeling like that just makes everything worse…Omg…thats a little freaky….I say as right now I am holding down a job alone as everyone is on vacation….so you mean these traits are symptoms!!! Amazing…