Julie Holland - Moody Bitches - The Truth about the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having and What’s Really Making You Crazy...

Also by Julie Holland Also by Julie Holland Copyright Dedication Introduction Part One Moody by Nature One Own Your Moods Two Bitchy Like Clockwork Part Two Mating, MILFs, Monogamy, and Menopause Three This Is Your Brain on Love Four Marriage and Its Discontents Five Motherhead Six Perimenopause: The Storm Before the Calm Part Three The Moody Bitches Survival Guide Seven Inflammation: The Key to Everything Eight Food: A Drug We Can’t Resist Nine So Tired We’re Wired Ten A Sex Guide That Actually Works Eleven Your Body: Love It or Leave It Twelve You. Need. Downtime. Conclusion: Staying Sane in an Insane World Appendix: Naming Names: A Guide to Selected Drugs Notes Glossary List of Searchable Terms Acknowledgments About the Publisher

Weekends at Bellevue

Copyright Copyright Dedication Introduction Part One Moody by Nature One Own Your Moods Two Bitchy Like Clockwork Part Two Mating, MILFs, Monogamy, and Menopause Three This Is Your Brain on Love Four Marriage and Its Discontents Five Motherhead Six Perimenopause: The Storm Before the Calm Part Three The Moody Bitches Survival Guide Seven Inflammation: The Key to Everything Eight Food: A Drug We Can’t Resist Nine So Tired We’re Wired Ten A Sex Guide That Actually Works Eleven Your Body: Love It or Leave It Twelve You. Need. Downtime. Conclusion: Staying Sane in an Insane World Appendix: Naming Names: A Guide to Selected Drugs Notes Glossary List of Searchable Terms Acknowledgments About the Publisher

Thorsons

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

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Published in the US by Penguin Press 2015

First published in the UK by Thorsons 2015

© Julie Holland 2015

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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Julie Holland asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007554126

EBook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007554133

Version: 2015-02-20

For Sara Starr Wolff, teacher, therapist, and gardener, who wanted what she had, and said what she meant. And for her son, Jeremy, whose shining love and acceptance allow me to blossom.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Also by Julie Holland Also by Julie Holland Also by Julie Holland Copyright Dedication Introduction Part One Moody by Nature One Own Your Moods Two Bitchy Like Clockwork Part Two Mating, MILFs, Monogamy, and Menopause Three This Is Your Brain on Love Four Marriage and Its Discontents Five Motherhead Six Perimenopause: The Storm Before the Calm Part Three The Moody Bitches Survival Guide Seven Inflammation: The Key to Everything Eight Food: A Drug We Can’t Resist Nine So Tired We’re Wired Ten A Sex Guide That Actually Works Eleven Your Body: Love It or Leave It Twelve You. Need. Downtime. Conclusion: Staying Sane in an Insane World Appendix: Naming Names: A Guide to Selected Drugs Notes Glossary List of Searchable Terms Acknowledgments About the Publisher Weekends at Bellevue

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Part One Moody by Nature

One Own Your Moods

Two Bitchy Like Clockwork

Part Two Mating, MILFs, Monogamy, and Menopause

Three This Is Your Brain on Love

Four Marriage and Its Discontents

Five Motherhead

Six Perimenopause: The Storm Before the Calm

Part Three The Moody Bitches Survival Guide

Seven Inflammation: The Key to Everything

Eight Food: A Drug We Can’t Resist

Nine So Tired We’re Wired

Ten A Sex Guide That Actually Works

Eleven Your Body: Love It or Leave It

Twelve You. Need. Downtime.

Conclusion: Staying Sane in an Insane World

Appendix: Naming Names: A Guide to Selected Drugs

Notes

Glossary

List of Searchable Terms

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Introduction

Women today are overworked and exhausted. We are anxious and frazzled, yet depressed and burned out. Our moods and libidos are at a rock-bottom low, our vital energies drained as we struggle to keep up with work, family, and hundreds of “friends” online. We blame ourselves for how bad we feel, thinking we should be able to handle it all. We dream of being perfect; we even try to make it look effortless, but we were never meant to be so static. We are designed by nature to be dynamic, cyclical, and, yes, moody. We are moody bitches, and that is a strength—not a weakness.

We evolved that way for good reasons; our hormonal oscillations are the basis for a sensitivity that allows us to be responsive to our environment. Our dynamism imparts flexibility and adaptability. Being fixed and rigid does not lend itself to survival. In nature, you adapt or you die. There is tremendous wisdom and peace available to us if we learn how our brains and bodies are supposed to work. Moodiness—being sensitive, caring deeply, and occasionally being acutely dissatisfied—is our natural source of power.

Yet we have been told just the opposite. From a young age, we are taught that moodiness, and all that comes with it, is a bad thing. We learn to apologize for our tears, to suppress our anger, and to fear being called hysterical. Over the course of women’s lives, the stresses and expectations of the modern world interfere with our health and hormones in ways big and small, and the result is the malaise so many women feel. There simply is a better way.

Moody Bitches opens the playbook on how we can take hold of our moods and, in so doing, take hold of our lives. By integrating timeless wisdom with today’s science, we can master our moods. If we can understand our own bodies, our naturally cycling hormones, and how modern medicines derange our exquisitely calibrated machines, then we can make informed choices about how to live better.

Women’s hormones are constantly in flux. They ebb and flow over a month-long cycle and they wax and wane throughout decades of fertility, vacillating with particular volatility during adolescence and perimenopause, the spring and autumn of the reproductive years. Compare this to men’s stable hormone levels throughout most of their lives. Our hormonal variations allow us to be empathic and intuitive—to our environment, to our children’s needs, and to our partners’ intentions. Women’s emotionality is normal. It is a sign of health, not disease, and it is our single biggest asset. Yet one in four American womenare choosing to medicate away their emotionality with psychiatric medications, and the effects are more far-reaching than most women realize.