Moody Bitches

Women today are overworked and exhausted. We are anxious and frazzled, yet depressed and burned out. Our moods and libidos are at a rock-bottom low, our vital energies drained as we struggle to keep up with work, family, and hundreds of friends online. We blame ourselves for how bad we feel, thinking we should be able to handle it all. We dream of being perfect; we even try to make it look effortless, but we were never meant to be so static. We are designed by nature to be dynamic, cyclical, and, yes, moody. We are moody bitches, and that is a strength not a weakness.
 
We evolved that way for good reasons; our hormonal oscillations are the basis for a sensitivity that allows us to be responsive to our environment. Our dynamism imparts flexibility and adaptability. Being fixed and rigid does not lend itself to survival. In nature, you adapt or you die. There is tremendous wisdom and peace available to us if we learn how our brains and bodies are supposed to work. Moodiness being sensitive, caring deeply, and occasionally being acutely dissatisfied is our natural source of power.
 
Yet we have been told just the opposite.  From a young age, we are taught that moodiness, and all that comes with it, is a bad thing. We learn to apologize for our tears, to suppress our anger, and to fear being called hysterical. Over the course of women s lives, the stresses and expectations of the modern world interfere with our health and hormones in ways big and small, and the result is the malaise so many women feel. There simply is a better way.
 
Moody Bitches opens the playbook on how we can take hold of our moods and, in so doing, take hold of our lives. By integrating timeless wisdom with today s science, we can master our moods. If we can understand our own bodies, our naturally cycling hormones, and how modern medicines derange our exquisitely calibrated machines, then we can make informed choices about how to live better.
 
Women s

Dr. Julie Holland has had a private psychiatric practice in Manhattan for twenty years. Her nationally bestselling memoir, Weekends at Bellevue, was based on her nine years running the psychiatric emergency room of America’s oldest public hospital. Dr. Holland is an expert on drugs and the brain and appears regularly on the Today show and CNN. She lives in New York’s Harlem Valley with her husband and two children.

Library Journal: 
In a frank style think good friend who s a doctor Holland examines how prescription drugs work in relation to the stages of women s lives. This guidance is aligned with recommendations for healthy diet and exercise practices that naturally equalize the body s systems.  

Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom:
"Feeling moody or bitchy doesn't mean you have a substandard brain or a psychiatric-medication-du-jour deficiency. In her groundbreaking new book, psychiatrist Dr. Julie Holland tells you exactly how to work with your unique brain and body chemistry and embrace and upgrade all of your feelings."

Laura Corio, M.D., author of The Change Before the Change: 
"Not just informative, Moody Bitches is funny and provocative. An important guide to health and well being for women of all ages."

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock: 
"This is the most important book on being a woman since Our Bodies, Our Selves. Scientific yet compassionate, Dr. Julie Holland provides actionable, state-of-the-art advice on how women can navigate through an ever-changing hormonal landscape. She not only gives women new command over their bodies, but also shows how extreme moods and emotions might better be listened to than chemically suppressed."

Gabor Maté, M.D., author of When the Body Says No: 
"Dr. Julie Holland gives us a deftly written, deeply insightful exploration of women's hormonal fluctuations, sensitivities, and mind states not as pathology to be medicated but as an expression of their true selves. Moody Bitches is both engrossing theory and a practical guide enabling women to remain natural in an unnatural world."

Cacilda Jetha, M.D., and Christopher Ryan, Ph.D., coauthors of Sex at Dawn:
"This book should be read by moody bitches everywhere and the befuddled bastards who love