Hormonal: How Hormones Drive Desire, Shape Relationships, and Make Us Wiser

Product Information

The inability to acknowledge that yes, we ARE like other animals, men with higher testosterone levels do commit more violent crimes, women who are pregnant DO get emotional, and PMS made her quit her job (again)--these are hormonally based behaviors but again, for reasons that go beyond bizarre, we are not allowed to talk about this—that our hormones influence our BEHAVIOR and in rather strong ways, because WE ARE ANIMALS. All we have to do is tap into this powerful evolutionary mechanism to better understand ourselves and our bodies. We're not allowed to make the point that even our economic system, capitalism, is based on “mine's bigger than yours Ronnie” or as it is these days, my button's bigger than yours. In women, who have endometriosis, all the extra prostaglandins being released where the rogue womb like cells have grown can make other sites of pain in the body worse. Our reproductive systems are designed to grow babies and constantly prepare for them–even if we don’t want them – and the hormonal fluctuations behind our reproductive processes mean that the workings of our inner world are often in collision with the outer world and all the expectations we perceive it to have of us.

We cannot ignore biology, but there is something important to consider in the way we talk to ourselves and others about how we feel and how that might affect our sense of ourselves. What if we feel, say and do during those times of the month when we are quick to say we are being irrational, needy or defensive is the most 'real' we are?We need to try to do better as women to remind ourselves of the changeable beings we are by design; to accept that it is literally impossible to be a certain way all the time.

I have always been shocked at the way I and many other women have been treated by the medical community. This is the kind of information that would have been useful to learn as a teen, but I’ll take learning it in my 30s over never. HORMONAL explores everything from contraception to PMS, in relation to anxiety, depression and taboos about hysteria and the ‘hormonal’ woman. Your hormones have a lot to answer for, and you'll struggle to find someone to give you a better schooling than UCLA professor Martie Haselton.

There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.