One of the common female ailments is painful menstruation. Considering that this is not inherent in the nature of the female body, one desires to find an answer to the question: “Why, for what reasons has this ailment appeared?” And the answer will guide us to paths of healing. In medicine, several names are used for this ailment: algomenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, algodysmenorrhea (or menalgia). Sometimes they are used interchangeably, sometimes they are distinguished, for example, by such a feature as “disruption of the menstrual cycle” (algodysmenorrhea) or “pathological process” (dysmenorrhea). But all these diagnoses have a common symptom: pains in the lower abdomen during critical days.
Dull or sharp, spasmodic pains can also be accompanied by nausea, headaches, general malaise up to fainting.
In medicine, it is considered “normal” if the pains appear before the beginning and end after the first days or with the completion of menstruation.
Very painful, where there is a loss of functionality, may indicate the presence of a serious disorder (inflammation or disease).
Usually, primary algodysmenorrhea, characterized without pathologies, diagnosed in non-childbearing girls, and secondary, appearing during and after inflammatory diseases of the reproductive organs, diagnosed in childbearing women, are distinguished.
Painful Menstruation: Causes
Lower abdominal pains arise due to uterine contractions, caused by an elevated level of prostaglandins. These are such necessary substances that participate in many processes of our body. In the case of this ailment, they increase the sensitivity of receptors to pain during spasms (convulsive contractions) of the uterine muscles. That is, they help the body give a signal in the form of pain that something is wrong.
In any case, even if your pains fit the “norm,” you should pay attention to this signal, and not just take a painkiller and be reassured. Since painful menstruation has its own reasons, which need to be removed.
Physical causes of painful menstruation can be inflammations, infections, tumors, genetics, strict diet.
Let’s delve more into the psychosomatics and psychological reasons.
Psychosomatics of Painful Menstruation
The normal course of this process depends on the normal balance of hormones. What can cause a failure in the hormonal system of women? It can be caused by taking hormonal drugs, malfunctioning of the endocrine glands (pituitary, thyroid, adrenal glands, ovaries) due to diseases or developmental anomalies, taking contraceptives, terminating pregnancy, stress. We are interested in stress here.
As known, hormone production by glands is connected with the human brain cortex. Strong stress and nervous tension affect the cortex, which regulates the work of the ovaries. Negative experiences lead to their malfunction and are reflected in pain in the body.
But, as we know, the location of the pain signal indicates which area is affected by stress. In our case, the pain is localized in the female reproductive organs, which suggests that stress, negative experience is related to self-perception as a woman. It remains to uncover these negative experiences.
Psychological Reasons
One of the main reasons for painful menstruation is the rejection of one’s femininity. For various reasons (most likely rooted in childhood, as gender self-identification begins precisely in early childhood), a girl does not like the role of a woman, she does not want to be a woman, wants to be a man. Such girls can be identified by boyish-male behavior, character traits, dressing style (always trousers, men’s clothing models, hatred of dresses and skirts), short haircuts, etc.
The first reason may be related to the second: guilt. It might also come from childhood: parents wanted a boy, but a girl was born. Thus, the girl tries to justify the parents’ expectations and be a boy (in fact, this is very serious stress for a little girl, especially if she repeatedly heard the story from her parents, especially the mother, about how they were waiting for a boy, had already thought of a name, and called her by this name even in the womb). Of course, now with the help of ultrasound, such psychological stress can be prevented, but do parents always accept the gender of their child? They wanted a different gender. So a person lives with a feeling of guilt all their life and suffers until they analyze, understand, forgive, and free themselves.
These negative experiences can go further, turning into hatred, denial, rejection of the feminine in oneself, which can manifest as serious disorders.
The third reason, unfortunately, can also be an echo from childhood: beliefs have formed in the mind that genitalia and related menstruation are something dirty, sinful.
The fourth reason, again, is associated with a childhood perception of the state of close people. It is the identification with the mother, namely, with her state during critical days. Hence the conviction and fear-expectation (she has painful ones – and I will have such too).
In conclusion, let’s focus on another menstrual cycle disorder, as it may have the same psychological reasons.
Delayed Menstruation on Nervous Grounds
Amenorrhea is the complete absence of menstruation. If this occurs in young girls who have not had their first menstruation and subsequent ones, then the reason usually lies in childhood stresses and psychological traumas.
As for adult girls and women who previously had menstruation and then it disappeared, here the reason is in life troubles, stress, and nervous strain, fear (we do not consider such reasons as dieting and so on).
It is known that negative experiences can lead to both a cycle failure and a delay due to stress for up to 1 month. If the psychological trauma was deep, then the delay can be more than 1 month up to a year and so on (depends on individual characteristics). Although prolonged absence of menstruation, as noted by medicine, indicates ovarian malfunction (see above about endocrine glands).
Paths of Healing
- First, find and realize the cause. If you do not remember yourself (childhood stresses), competent psychologists and psychotherapists can help.
- Secondly, forgive and let go.
- Thirdly, enjoy life. If you were born a representative of the fair sex – it means it was necessary, and this fact must be accepted. Look at yourself from another, “untraumatized” side. I think you will be pleasantly surprised to see a beautiful and gentle girl with a loving heart, who was ready to deny herself for the love of close ones (for example, to parents expecting a son). You naively thought that it would be better, but it turned out not. You cannot reject yourself, you cannot reject what is given to you by God. You can accept and be thankful.
Wise people say that our souls before birth in the body themselves choose the list of life lessons for their development. Alas, we have to go through them, even if they sometimes seem harsh, cruel (especially childhood traumas). But through them, we learn Love, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Mercy, Wisdom (telling ourselves that we will never do this to our children or others).
I hope that this article will serve as a hint for someone.
Lada
