Women as Medical Mysteries: Over-Pathologized and Under-Researched

For centuries, women have been labeled as crazy, too emotional, too paranoid, too much - treating intuition, trauma, and assertiveness as problems to be diagnosed or corrected. We continue to pathologize women, yet fail to properly research them.

I explore how these patterns show up in the various stages of a woman’s life: adolescence, postpartum, menopause - times to be celebrated, but are instead shamed. We go into the very misguided medical research (or lack thereof), and the way women are often dismissed and gaslit when their knowing is spot on.

I also share my personal experience of finally being given a diagnosis after years of the medical system ignoring my condition and manipulating my gut instinct.

This conversation is about questioning systems, recognizing the lack of support women receive, and how unraveling what we’ve been taught about women creates a better world for all of us.

Highlights:

(03:20) - Why women’s emotions get labeled as instability

(07:33) - Deconstructing Postpartum Depression and what might actually be happening

(14:41) - What isolation and a lack of support really cost mothers

(18:18) - The contrast of what Menopause means in other cultures

(23:15) - My “mystery” condition solved after decades of medical gaslighting

(26:45) - The medical device invented in 1878 still used in its original form for women’s care today

Additional Links:

Read Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Manmade World by Elinor Cleghorn

Resources:

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This Podcast is proudly produced by Wavemakers Audio