She visited five GPs, all male, after the first one commented: “Oh, it’s just PMS. Eventually, after what she calls a “mini-breakdown”, she realised that the recurrence of all these symptoms was linked to her menstrual cycle. For instance, she might spend two weeks each month putting right the damage from the previous week: the fights with loved ones, the untidy home, the slippages at work. She thought it might be bipolar disorder, given the cyclical nature of her ups and downs. Her family noticed her increasingly strange behaviour as well. Henaghan would get bloated and fatigued, sleep excessively, and – as a keen gardener – shop erratically, for instance buying plants that were out of season. Though the psychiatric symptoms were the strongest, there were odd physical patterns as well. “It would be a case of if I could go to sleep and never wake up. But she did fantasise about leaving things behind. “I would essentially do a disappearing act so I wouldn’t have to be around people,” she says. She woke up each morning with enormous anxiety, leading to social withdrawal.
“It felt like getting on a hamster wheel and not being able to get off,” she recalls.Įventually work got to be too much and she took an uncharacteristic short leave of absence.
She was working for the UK’s Home Office while training to be a barrister, and wondered if the frequent stress and anxiety she was experiencing were just products of overwork and getting older. As a 30-year-old, Caroline Henaghan was busy.
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