The shadow-side of Summer (a.k.a when your ovulation feels miserable)
Image: Oscar Keys via Unsplash
If you’ve done any kind of reading on menstrual cycles, or followed any accounts on social media, you’ll almost certainly have come across the notion that Inner Summer/Ovulation is a time when you should be feeling amazing. But in my experience, and judging by the feedback I get whenever post about it over on Instagram, that isn’t always the case.
Ovulation is the star of your cycle. But it can also be a black hole.
Ovulation is the main event of your cycle. Without it, you can’t get pregnant or experience a period and regular ovulation is an indicator of good general hormonal health. Coupled with the facts that oestrogen is known as a ‘feel-good’ hormone and plenty of people do feel good here, it can feel like it’s the only way for ovulation to be experienced. It isn’t.
Ovulation can feel exhausting. It can feel unsexy, disconnected, pissed off and basically too much. If this is how you tend to feel, you’re not alone.
So what the heck is going on?
Ovulation is a pretty big event cycle-wise. Your hormones are at their highest and when oestrogen reaches its peak, it triggers the release of an egg for fertilisation. Biologically speaking, this is what your body and cycle are always gearing towards: reproduction. Once the egg has been released, oestrogen drops off quickly, allowing progesterone to take over. In an ideal world, this would be a seamless event of rise, release, and fall, like the graph below shows.
Credit: Crystal Kennings
Except, we don’t live in an ideal world and ovulation is a delicate thing. It’s easily interrupted and delayed by a whole load of factors including stress, illness, medication and travel (I go into this more in my post about tracking ovulation). When this happens, your body will try to ovulate, meaning oestrogen will peak….and instead of releasing the egg, it’ll drop again. And peak again. And drop again. Picture a car that keeps on stalling. Or being on a rollercoaster that keeps trying to pull itself up the slope. It can feel exhausting.
Just because something is labelled as a ‘feel-good’ hormone, doesn’t mean it will feel good to everyone. It’s like coffee. Some people love it and can drink five espressos in a day with barely any adverse symptoms, while others only have to smell it and they start feeling jittery.
While oestrogen can feel jittery and exhausting to some, it’s only part of the picture. There’s the aspect of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to consider too. Ovulation is known as Inner Summer - and just like summer in the natural world, our inner world might mirror being in full bloom, expansive and generally all-round-gorgeous. This is usually seen as a time when we can do more, be more available, create more, want sex more and generally be more.
The fact is that most of us live our lives as if we’re in inner summer all year round.
And this just isn’t sustainable. When things get too hot in nature, things get burnt out. The earth scorches and forests blaze, and this can happen with our emotions and psyches as well. Cyclical living has helped me to go from experiencing that burn out to being able to enjoy the full summer bloom, but it’ll likely always be my vulnerable spot in the cycle. When we start to respect our energy and how it fluctuates, we respect and appreciate the fact that summer can’t last forever (however much we wish it could) and that there’s value in the other seasons as well.
There are some other factors that could be contributing to the development of Summer Shadows:
Trying to conceive - if you’re trying for a baby, ovulation can be a place of hope, fear and pressure. Hope that this might be the month your baby is made, fear that it won’t and pressure to have sex on time. It can be stressful which, as mentioned, can actually exacerbate the issues of feeling unsexy, exhausted, sad, tender and vulnerable.
Disconnection from pleasure - technically, pleasure has its home across the cycle, but because your body is gearing up for possible procreation, ovulation is a time when it’s most likely to switch your attention to finding a mate (i.e. having sex). But just because all that is happening doesn’t mean you’ll be in a state to do anything about it. Many women (myself included) were cut off from experiencing pleasure for a whole host of reasons - even identifying pleasure in and of itself can be tricky. Being caught between your body trying to do something and having the physical and emotional intelligence to react to it can be confusing and can have a huge impact on self confidence.
Not honouring your bleed - menstruation is the opposite pole to ovulation. So if inner summer and ovulation is a time when your body wants to do, then menstruation is a time when it wants to be. Most of us would love nothing more than to down tools and disappear from the world while we have our periods. Unfortunately in the world as it is, this isn’t likely to be easy (although it can be done with planning - check out my Big Bleed post). We still have jobs to do, families to raise, partners to live with…and when we see TV adverts insisting we can still rollerblade and go running on our periods, it can feel like we have to be doing those things when, in reality, all we need to be doing is resting. Resting on your bleed is a way to re-tank your energy quickly, and efficiently, leaving more of it available for the high intensity of ovulation.
Overwhelming yourself in the days after your period - this can be easily done especially if you’ve rested well during your bleed. The urge to get out and do things can be real (and is thanks to oestrogen rising in your body), but it’s just like hiking up a mountain. If you go too hard, too early, you’ll get exhausted before you reach the top.
Those are just a few reasons that aren’t linked to hormones, as to why you might find yourself feeling flat at ovulation. They might not be spoken about often, but they are there and they do exist! If you’re looking for ways to rebalance your Inner Summer energy, then check out my Summer post for tips.
If you’re struggling with your cycle and would like to see how coaching can help, schedule your free 30min call with me or check out my menstrual cycle coaching space.