I was out on maternity leave when 9/11 happened and about month later I went back to work. In addition to just being generally anxious in post-9/11 NYC (I jumped out of my skin every time I heard a loud noise), I was totally stressed out from lack of sleep and it was tearing my heart out every day to leave my two-month-old baby behind to go to work. I cried every morning on my two hour train commute into the city. I was a wreck. At some point I was prescribed Lexapro and it helped quite a bit. I wasn't weepy and I wasn't getting those fluttering adrenalin rushes.
The thing is, I now have to face the fact that my body and my emotions were telling me something important and instead of listening, I chose to medicate those feelings away. Even if I did need it to get through a difficult time, I stayed on the medication for far too long. I don't think I was able to properly grieve for my parents when they died. Things didn't get to me as much, but I ignored real problems in my lifestyle, my marriage, and my financial state--I made poor decisions at least partly because I was cut off from my own intuition.
For these reasons I relate very strongly to what Dr. Holland writes in Moody Bitches--I wish I had it available to me ten years ago. It would have given me the information I needed to make a better choice for myself; it would have helped me realize that there wasn't anything wrong with me--it was just the untenable situation I was in.
I would recommend this book to pretty much all of my women friends in their twenties, thirties, forties and beyond. It's a great book to read whether or not you are taking any medications, but especially if you are--medications for anxiety and depression as well as birth control, sleep remedies or hormone replacement therapy. All of these medications have side effects and will result in unintended consequences that I'm sure many people don't realize.
Some will see this book as a backlash against medications that are helping many women, but I don't see it that way at all. Holland isn't advocating an end to prescribing these drugs, she is only putting information out that there we need in order to make the best health decisions. There is no way that one in four women need to be on mood-regulating medications. I think this is a bad situation created by the pharmaceutical industry and living in a culture with upside down priorities.
I love Holland's holistic approach; taking care of our physical bodies in a natural way will help us achieve emotional health as well. She includes a lot of great information about the importance of good sleep habits, eating healthy, having good sex, and being exposed to nature. The goal is to move away from depression and anxiety while facing difficulties like sadness, grief and worry, which brings me to what I believe is one omission in Holland's book: religious practice. Holland does talk about meditation and yoga, but does not mention at all the positive effects on well-being experienced by people who regularly attend a church, synagogue or mosque (this is borne out by several recent studies). Religious service attendance promotes social interaction, involves meditative states in the form of quiet time, prayer and music and the teachings encourage charity, compassion and the cultivation of gratitude. Holland touts all of these as non-medical ways to combat stress, depression and anxiety. Faith also provides a powerful mechanism for coping with the inevitable bad stuff that happens in all of our lives. With all the negative attention devoted to religion in the news today perhaps it's easy for people to forget that going to a religious service weekly provides these benefits, but I think they have a place right beside the many others Holland explores so well in this book.
The thing is, I now have to face the fact that my body and my emotions were telling me something important and instead of listening, I chose to medicate those feelings away. Even if I did need it to get through a difficult time, I stayed on the medication for far too long. I don't think I was able to properly grieve for my parents when they died. Things didn't get to me as much, but I ignored real problems in my lifestyle, my marriage, and my financial state--I made poor decisions at least partly because I was cut off from my own intuition.
For these reasons I relate very strongly to what Dr. Holland writes in Moody Bitches--I wish I had it available to me ten years ago. It would have given me the information I needed to make a better choice for myself; it would have helped me realize that there wasn't anything wrong with me--it was just the untenable situation I was in.
I would recommend this book to pretty much all of my women friends in their twenties, thirties, forties and beyond. It's a great book to read whether or not you are taking any medications, but especially if you are--medications for anxiety and depression as well as birth control, sleep remedies or hormone replacement therapy. All of these medications have side effects and will result in unintended consequences that I'm sure many people don't realize.
Some will see this book as a backlash against medications that are helping many women, but I don't see it that way at all. Holland isn't advocating an end to prescribing these drugs, she is only putting information out that there we need in order to make the best health decisions. There is no way that one in four women need to be on mood-regulating medications. I think this is a bad situation created by the pharmaceutical industry and living in a culture with upside down priorities.
I love Holland's holistic approach; taking care of our physical bodies in a natural way will help us achieve emotional health as well. She includes a lot of great information about the importance of good sleep habits, eating healthy, having good sex, and being exposed to nature. The goal is to move away from depression and anxiety while facing difficulties like sadness, grief and worry, which brings me to what I believe is one omission in Holland's book: religious practice. Holland does talk about meditation and yoga, but does not mention at all the positive effects on well-being experienced by people who regularly attend a church, synagogue or mosque (this is borne out by several recent studies). Religious service attendance promotes social interaction, involves meditative states in the form of quiet time, prayer and music and the teachings encourage charity, compassion and the cultivation of gratitude. Holland touts all of these as non-medical ways to combat stress, depression and anxiety. Faith also provides a powerful mechanism for coping with the inevitable bad stuff that happens in all of our lives. With all the negative attention devoted to religion in the news today perhaps it's easy for people to forget that going to a religious service weekly provides these benefits, but I think they have a place right beside the many others Holland explores so well in this book.
