Holland cries, resist the meds, express your feelings, and, while you’re at it, avoid hair dye and breast implants. In stepped Big Pharma to persuade women that modern life demands “a new normal in terms of invulnerable posturing and emotional blunting.” Rise up, Dr. It is wholesome and it is healing.” Adding a touch of sociobiology, she continues: “By evolutionary design, women’s brains have developed to encourage empathy, intuition, emotionality, and sensitivity.”Īlas for female brains, emotionality and sensitivity don’t work too well in high-pressure urban and corporate contexts. “Reclaiming your authentic, natural self is liberating. It is a sign of health, not disease, and it is our single biggest asset.” Her authority for this claim is not science, but feminine spirituality. She argues that “women’s emotionality is normal. Julie Holland, a New York psychiatrist, thinks that’s “insane.” In “Moody Bitches,” she advises women to accept the wisdom of their hormone fluctuations and not medicate their moods away with drugs like Prozac or Xanax. In the tradition of Our Bodies, Our Selves, this groundbreaking guide will forge a much needed new path in women's health - and offer women invaluable information on how to live better, and be more balanced, at every stage of life.One in four American women takes psychiatric medication, compared with one in seven men. In Moody Bitches, she shares insider information about the drugs we're being offered and the direct link between food and mood, and she offers practical advice on sex, exercise, and sleep strategies, as well as some surprisingly effective natural therapies. Psychiatrist Julie Holland knows there is a better way. And even if we don't pop a pill, women everywhere are numbing their emotions with food, alcohol, and a host of addictive behaviors that deny the wisdom of our bodies and keep us from addressing the real issues we face.

Yet millions of American women are medicating away their emotions with psychiatric drugs whose effects are more far-reaching than most of us realize.

If we deny our emotionality, we deny the breadth of our talents. Moods are a finely tuned feedback system that allows us to be more empathic, intuitive, and aware of our own capabilities. But our bodies are wiser than we imagine. A groundbreaking guide for women of all ages that shows their natural moodiness is a strength, not a weakness.Īs women, we learn from an early age that our moods are a problem, an annoyance to be stuffed away.

Moody Bitches by Julie Holland