Being a Woman Made Me Hysterical

Or at least that’s what they used to say

Photo by Gerardo Pantoja via Pexels

For as long as I can remember, we’ve been told that our mood swings are because of our hormones, that we’re “too emotional” to be taken seriously, that what we feel isn’t quite rational.

When I was a teenager, they wouldn’t stop repeating it to me, that I was too moody, that if I kept going like that I would end up alone. As if women were always supposed to be submissive and have no opinions about it.

But here’s what they don’t tell you: this isn’t new. This has been the narrative for over 4,000 years.

The word “hysteria” comes from the ancient Greek word “hystera” — which literally means uterus. From the very beginning, there was an assumption: if you have a womb, your emotions are somehow less valid. Your biology makes you inherently different. Your body explains everything.

The ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed that the uterus could wander freely throughout a woman’s body. Yes, really. They thought your uterus just decided to go exploring, and that’s what caused emotional distress.

To address this, women were hung upside down or exposed to different scents to make them sneeze — all in an attempt to coax the wandering uterus back to its “proper place.”

It sounds almost comical now. But behind the absurdity lies something deeper: for millennia, the medical establishment viewed women’s bodies as fundamentally problematic.

Essentially, any emotion a woman could feel — sadness, anger, frustration, exhaustion — could be labeled as hysteria. If you weren’t quietly compliant, you might be considered unwell.

The treatments varied. For some women, midwives were employed to manually stimulate their genitals. During what was called a pelvic massage, a doctor or midwife would induce what they termed a “hysterical paroxysm” — essentially, an orgasm.

For most women, though, the prescribed cure was simpler: regular marital sex, marriage, or pregnancy and childbirth, all activities considered “appropriate” for women. If you weren’t settled in traditional roles, there must be something wrong.

In more severe cases, women could be institutionalized or subjected to surgical hysterectomies. Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke, for instance, performed invasive surgeries including hysterectomies in attempts to “cure” female patients of mental conditions.

They were removing organs to address what were often just normal human emotions.

The Echo Chamber of History

Because here’s what they don’t tell you when they remove something from a textbook: the beliefs don’t vanish. They linger. They transform. They adapt.

The language has changed, but the pattern remains remarkably similar.

Today, a study published in August 2024 showed that women wait an average of 30 minutes longer than men to be seen in emergency rooms for the same complaints, and are less likely to receive pain medication.

In a 2024 survey by the UK Government, 50% of women respondents felt their pain was disregarded or overlooked. Half. One in two women felt unheard.

The terminology might be different now. We’re not called “hysterical” in medical charts anymore. Instead, women’s pain is often “pathologized in a psychiatric way” — attributed to anxiety, stress, or emotional issues rather than investigated as potential physical conditions.

Women reporting severe menstrual pain or symptoms of endometriosis are frequently told “it’s all in their head” or that such pain is simply “to be expected as a natural aspect of being a woman”. As if suffering is our birthright.

The average time to diagnose endometriosis in the UK is now 9 years, with most patients having to visit their doctor more than five times before receiving a diagnosis. Nine years of being told you’re overreacting. Nine years of your pain being normalized away.

And the medical consequences are real. Young women presenting with chest pain wait 29% longer for heart attack evaluation than men, even though heart disease is the leading cause of death in women.

Women were not required to be included in clinical research until 1993(That’s why it’s only recently that we found out women need more sleep.) That’s right, medical studies that shaped treatment protocols for decades simply didn’t include women. Entire textbooks taught physicians that women were less reliable narrators of their own pain.

The statistics are clear: women’s pain experiences are minimized or dismissed by clinicians, regardless of whether the doctor or nurse is male or female. This isn’t just about individual bad doctors. It’s systemic.

Nearly 95% of U.S. medical students said instruction on sex and gender differences should be included in curriculums, but only 43% said their curriculum actually helped them understand those differences.

We removed “hysteria” from the manual in 1980, but we never really removed the belief that women’s bodies are problems to be managed rather than listened to.

For a long time I demonized being a woman, because I had to do things just for being a woman; because I was labeled crazy, hormonal, as someone who overthought everything; because my period hurt so much, and I associated all that pain with being a woman.

I still catch myself doing it sometimes. Downplaying my pain. Apologizing for taking up space in the doctor’s office. Wondering if maybe I am overreacting.

But thanks to a long journey, I understood that my pain is not hysteria. My emotions are not symptoms of a wandering uterus. My experiences are not exaggerations.

I am not too much. I am not too emotional. I am not hysterical.

I am human. And that has always been enough.

Thanks for reading!

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