If you suffer from really bad cramps and the pain is accompanied by vomiting and fainting, you won’t need to be advised to stay at home until the worst is over. It is better to miss, say, a couple of hours’ work in the morning than to have to be sent home in a taxi because you have dropped like a stone by the coffee machine. If it’s the aching miseries you have to cope with at work, the best advice is to plan ahead as early and as often as you can. Use that chart you have been keeping, so that you can predict when you are going to be likely to find life difficult. If you suffer from serious mood swings, it’s a good idea to warn your friends and workmates in advance that for the next few days you’re going to be tricky. It can also help you to live through a particularly bad patch if you know in advance exactly how many hours or minutes you have to endure any irritation or provocation before a rest break or lunch hour will give you the chance to remove yourself from it. It’s a little easier to cope with mood swings if you can get off somewhere else and spend time with a different group of people. With thought and planning this sort of change is often more possible than you’d think.

But if, after all your careful planning and all your warnings, you still find yourself in the middle of a row, try to remember how useful it is to relax. Try to drop your shoulders, unclench your fists, or breathe in a lower gear. It could give you a valuable moment to regain control before the row gets even worse. It will certainly make you feel calmer, if nothing else. Of course, it won’t always work, because our emotions can run so high at period time. But it’s worth a try.

If your particular mood plummets to depression, you won’t be in a very good position to help yourself. The trouble with depression is that it makes you slow and clumsy, so that your work is noticeably below standard, and that in itself will depress you further. One of the best tonics when you’re down is to be justly praised for work you’ve done especially well. But sadly, very few employers seem to understand how very valuable praise is, and even fewer are skilled enough to give it and mean it. It’s easy enough to find fault, of course. And if you’re suffering from a change of mood, you’ll be making mistakes and be wide open to criticism. If you’re a boss yourself, you’ll be far more likely to praise the women who work for you, but it will be more difficult to persuade your superiors that they ought to praise you. Perhaps your good example will inspire them. Failing that, try praising them. It might give them the idea.

Many women find it helps to wear their prettiest clothes or dress in their favourite colour. Others say it helps to take special pains with their make-up or their hair — this is something that women who need to wear uniform can do to cheer themselves up. Far from being vanity, this is often a means of ensuring that you feel worthwhile and normal. Although it has to be admitted that if you are really deeply depressed you won’t be able to take an interest in anything, even (or especially) your appearance.

It often helps to warn your bosses that you might be off-beat for a few days, but honesty like this can have a bad effect too. It could blight your hopes of promotion, for plainly, if an

employer has to choose between two equally capable candidates for promotion and one admits to times when her work will be below par, he will choose the other person. So if you are interested in getting on, you either have to hide your difficulties from your boss, or admit to them but take great care that you are noticed when you are at your best and working exceptionally well. Never wait modestly for them to notice you. It’s a busy world and they probably won’t. You must blow your own trumpet, loud and clear. I can almost hear some mothers from the past saying ‘Nice little girls don’t show off!’ But I’m afraid successful career girls, and boys, do. They have to.

Finally, no matter how miserable, off-balance or quick tempered your moods may be making you, take heart and keep your eyes open. You’re not the only one and at least you have the comfort of knowing that you are trying to do something about it. If you look around you will see plenty of other people in bad moods — moaning or nagging or puce with anger. And a lot of them will be men!

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