Ode to Crankiness

I read this in a book recently. The book is Great with Child by Debra Rienstra:

Dr. Joan Borysenko proposes that this greater sympathy and perceptiveness [during a woman's premenstrual and mentrual times] have an actual biological basis. Women are in fact more empathetic during the prementrual and menstrual phases of their cycle, she argues,

"Things that may be bothering us, but that we are unwilling to confront, tend to come to light as if they are being flushed from the unconscious to the conscious so that we can attend to them."

Attending to these signals and dealing with them honestly, then, is the key to turning premenstrual crabbiness into a healthy kind of psychic "housecleaning." She continues:

"This emotional housecleaning is wrongly viewed as bitchiness or complaining, but when seen rightly and heeded, it may be a valuable stress releaser and guide to what we need to change or pay attention to so that our lives will run more smoothly. This is the benefit to feeling down. Additionally, since intuitive capacity, empathy and interdependent perception are also right-brain functions [which are enhanced in the premenstrual/menstrual part of the cycle], it follows that the premenstrual and menstrual phases of our cycle are indeed times of enhanced wisdom."