Episode Details

Today we’re exploring how to bring cycle awareness to psychotherapy and mental healthcare. 

Our guest is MaryClaire Decker (known as MC) who is a Registered Psychologist. MC created Mindful Cycles after seeing a gap in mental health care, and after her own struggles with chronic menstrual migraines reinforced the need for an approach that works with our cycles, not against them. 

At Mindful Cycles, she combines evidence-based therapy with an understanding of cyclical health to help women and people with menstrual cycles navigate their mental well-being with greater self-awareness and resilience.

We talk about how menstrual health symptoms change across the cycle, the neurological and hormonal shifts that cause mental health symptoms to worsen in the second half of the cycle, how to adapt therapeutic approaches based on the phases of the menstrual cycle, and the incredible impact of cycle-informed trauma therapy.

We explore:

• Three reasons why mental health care hasn’t been cycle-informed so far; menstrual stigma, the patriarchal, colonial historical context of psychotherapy and the huge gap in research when it comes to women and people with menstrual cycles.
• Why we risk pathologising people’s experiences, or even misdiagnosing them when we don’t take the fluctuations of the menstrual cycle into account, for example; 25% of people who eventually get diagnosed with PMDD are misdiagnosed with bi-polar disorder first. 
• The beneficial impact of cycle-informed therapy for anxiety, depression, PTSD and trauma, addictions and other mental health challenges. 

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Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
MC Decker: @themenstrualpsych - https://www.instagram.com/themenstrualpsych