The mental health impact of endometriosis we still aren’t talking about
This isn't a post I planned to write. But I got off a call recently and couldn't quite let it go, so I thought I would share my reflections here.
I spent a chunk of Monday afternoon being interviewed by a PhD researcher studying psychosocial interventions for people with endometriosis. She mentioned it had been hard to find practitioners to speak with about the mental health impact of the condition, which is a whole problem in itself…
Her finding me was especially apt considering the government recently published its Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England and finally named at policy level what most women with conditions like endometriosis already know: their pain gets dismissed, minimised and normalised.
That’s not to throw shade at medical professionals, because it’s a systemic, structural problem. But to have a researcher in 2026 struggling to find clinicians who take menstruality seriously enough to even have this conversation is mind blowing to me 🤯
Endometriosis and mental health: how it actually shows up
We talked a lot about things I see constantly in my work.
No one arrives saying "I have endometriosis and it's affecting my mental health”. They come in talking about relationship difficulties, feeling ‘lazy’ (I could write an essay on why I loathe and reject that word) or feeling the guilt of snapping at their partner.
When we zoom out another picture emerges. It looks like agony, cycles, seasons, flare-ups, dismissal and years of being told it's normal to be in pain. It fucking isn’t.
But, if you spend years being told you're overreacting, it kinda makes sense that you stop trusting yourself.
Why endometriosis affects relationships
This is where endometriosis usually enters therapy (often without announcing itself).
Pain does not exist in isolation. It affects how someone shows up in intimate relationships, family dynamics, work, and friendships.
Chronic pain can lower tolerance, heighten irritability, make closeness feel difficult, disrupt sexuality and desire, and bring shame into the body.
Many women carry enormous guilt about the impact this has on their partner. They feel guilty for withdrawing, guilty for snapping, guilty for needing care, guilty for not being the version of themselves they want to be…
And then comes the profound relief of finally being believed. Sometimes that moment of being truly seen and believed is where repair begins.
Siloed endometriosis care misses the bigger picture
Something that enrages me a bit (lot) is that we can't and shouldn't separate what's happening in the body from what's happening in someone's relationships and sense of self. The biopsychosocial model isn't a new concept and yet somehow in 2026 the medical profession can still treat them in silos:
Body over here
Mind over there
Everything else a bit further over there
This fragmentation can cause real harm. The average endometriosis diagnosis now takes nine years and four months, up from eight years in 2020. We went bloody backwards! I'm not naive about what the Renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England does and doesn't mean, and words on paper won't undo decades of dismissal.
That’s why this research, which actually centres women's lived experiences, feels to me like somewhere worth putting energy. It’s not just about symptoms or diagnosis timelines, but what it means to live inside a body that hurts within a culture that has too often taught women not to trust it.
If you've ever walked into a room and talked about your relationship, your mood, your guilt, your exhaustion… and walked out with no one once asking what's happening in your body, this is for you. Not because therapy is the answer to any diagnostic failures, but because you deserve a space where none of it gets treated as separate. Where the agony and the relational fallout and the self-doubt that came from years of not being believed can all be in the room at the same time.
If you're living with endometriosis and wondering whether therapy could actually help, that space exists. It just shouldn't be this hard to find.
