For at least two weeks out of every month, my emotions rule everything I do. If they tell me to get into a screaming row with a complete stranger, or go to bed for three days straight, it’s happening. Indeed, this is par for the course for those of us with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), a hormone-driven mental illness officially classed as a disability.
PMDD affects about 5 per cent of those of us who menstruate. And PMDD makes me one of those “emotional women”. The kind of woman Kenny Shiels, manager of Northern Ireland’s women’s football team, was referring to when he blamed his team’s emotions for their recent loss to England. In his words: “I’m sure you will have noticed if you go through the patterns — when a team concedes a goal, they concede a second one in a very, very short space of time, right through the whole spectrum of the women’s game, because girls and women are more emotional than men.”
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