Gaslit By My GP: How I Healed Unbearable Periods Myself

I burnt out this week. Like full blown shut down, back to something I haven’t felt for a loooong time. Migraines, IBS, strange aches, hair falling out; basically every single day I diagnosed myself with a new illness and was convinced I was dying.

But yet, also addicted to doing, one day I would be on my screens until 2.30am (still having to wake at 6am for school runs) the next day going to bed at 10pm and so it went on again, and again.

I have very good practices (I truly enjoy) that keep me on track day to day; meditation, movement, good nutrition. It all went out the window.

And when you are off the wagon it is very hard to get back on.

That’s what I’m doing now. Taking tiny steps day by day to get back on that wagon. Which had me writing today’s post….

I didn’t go to the doctors for multiple reasons, one of which I have not shared with you yet. That time I was gaslit by my female GP.

The fact she was a female just hit even harder.

I had been on the contraceptive pill for 11 years before I decided to have my daughter. As soon as I came off, I consciously tried once (planning everything around having a water sign baby of course!!) and was pregnant from that one try (which surprised me and also left me not fitting into my wedding dress but that’s another story!).

After having my daughter (at 30 years of age) I decided I did not want to go back on the pill. Simply because I didn’t want to be disrupting my cycles with hormones or putting medications into my body that could have a consequence.

My periods returned, at first with no issues but a couple of years in (probably the stress of being a new mom and lifestyle changes, lack of sleep etc) my periods slowly became unbearable.

And I mean unbearable.

Heavy bleeding, dizzy spells, unable to be in bright lights or around too much noise, my senses were so heightened and the fear, the fear was all consuming. Fear at the bleed, how much there was, fear I would faint, fear I wouldn’t be there for my daughter, fear there was something very wrong with me internally. I was a mess and an overly emotional one at that.

So I went to the doctors, which is not something I do lightly. I explained what was happening and how I was really struggling to cope each month.

The female doctor smiled- as in an eye roll- and offered me the pill which would sort it all out. When I refused she was visibly irritated, her response was ‘that’s just what it’s like to be a woman’.

I’m sorry WHAT? Apparently there was nothing wrong with me, I could take the pill or carry on as I was. They were the two options. She stared blankly back at my face- a face desperately trying not to collapse into a blubbering mess.

Surely as a woman herself she knew what I was describing was not down to being a woman. It felt like feminine betrayal.

I knew she needed me out and on to the next patient but I refused to believe that women just suffered, No. My body was communicating to me loud and clear that something was wrong. And so I refused to leave her office. She eventually offered me a scan- but it would have to be an internal scan to see if there were any underlying issues. Great, OK, that is what I will have to do.

I waited months for the scan. Went (petrified). Was told there was nothing wrong with me.

Hang on, what?

I know there is because when I’m trying to shop in Boots to get nappies with my 2 year old I feel like the strip lighting is going to make me pass out. I was having bouts of anxiety like I had never experienced in my life, I would get so weak during menstruation that I could barely function and the clots…. and the blood… well.

I couldn’t/ wouldn’t accept this as normal… because I’m a woman.

(This doctor’s appointment led to no diagnosis- something I was not willing to accept and a previous doctors appointment, when I was 18, led me to a diagnosis I was also not willing to accept, being allergic to the sun! You can read all about that one here)

This was the true start of a physical and spiritual healing journey. One I will forever be on but one that also within a few months rectified the problems I was having.

I’m 45 now- soon to be 46 (Cancer baby!) and can honestly say for the last 13 years my periods are like clockwork, have no- zero- symptoms at all and mostly I never know I am about to come on. It just seamlessly happens with no discomfort, no heavy bleed, no anxiety.

After that doctor’s dismissal I made a promise to myself that I would not be living like this forever, that I would do whatever it took to heal myself.

Below is everything I actually did, including the foundations that changed it all, the one supplement I couldn't live without and what I'd tell any woman sitting in that doctor's office being told this is just how it is.

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