How the Ovulation Cycle Influences Women’s Mental Health: My Journey to Cycle-Informed Care

When I started my private practice, I was all in.
I used modalities that got results …CBT, DBT (foundationally trained with the Linehan Institute), EMDR. I approached therapy the way I approach everything: with the goal of real transformation, not just coping skills.

As my practice grew, I began specializing in high-achieving women: bright, driven, compassionate… and exhausted. They came in describing symptoms that looked less like a DSM entry and more like a hormone textbook.

Sudden mood swings, crushing fatigue, brain fog, anxiety that spiked out of nowhere, sleep disturbances, headaches, bloating, irregular cycles…some mentioned night sweats, weight fluctuations, or feeling “wired but tired”

And I started to notice something: the patterns weren’t just psychological.

In session after session, I would see a rhythm I couldn’t explain with my existing tools. Progress, progress, progress… then an unexplained dip.

I chalked it up to the normal ebb and flow of therapy… maybe regression, maybe treatment resistance. But deep down, I knew this was different. This was cyclical.
But I couldn’t name it yet.

One day, while talking with a nurse practitioner I trust, she said it so matter-of-factly it stopped me in my tracks:

“Well, all the talk therapy in the world won’t give a woman more progesterone.”

That sentence rewired something in me. I couldn’t unhear it.

That moment didn’t just shift my focus — it defined my practice.

I enrolled in the Institute for Menstrual Health.
I learned the FEMM method for tracking cervical mucus.
I set up PubMed alerts for anything containing the words perimenopause, hormonal fluctuations, or mental health biomarkers.
I ran my own DUTCH test to understand what my hormones were actually doing.

I even caught myself explaining luteal phase progesterone dips to Putter, my dog — now my unofficial research assistant.

There were challenges. I had mentors telling me, “Don’t work harder than your clients.”

I stumbled over the words cervical mucus the first three times I said them in session. One client blinked at me like I’d just spoken Greek.

It was disarming. And, in my opinion, divine intervention.

Because something happened when I stopped trying to squeeze hormonal symptoms into a purely mental health framework and started letting them stand on their own. I could look a woman in the eyes and say:

“You’re not crazy. This isn’t all in your head. And here’s why…”

It wasn’t just belief. It was biological validation. And that changes everything.

Where My Practice Is Today

Now, my work bridges mental health and hormone health…
symptom stories and lab data, lived experience and actionable plans.

Clients aren’t just managing symptoms. They’re finally understanding them. And that makes the work deeper, faster, more sustainable.

I no longer wonder if I’m “missing something” in treatment, because now I know what to look for. I know how to listen to the body alongside the mind. And in a field where women have too often been dismissed, that clarity is revolutionary.

Because when women understand their cycles, they can reclaim their mental health, their confidence, and their power.
And that’s how we change the world.