Jessica Woodville | Memoir & Musings

By Jessica Woodville

There was a time in history when women were locked away for feeling too much.

Rage? Hysteria.

Sadness? Hysteria.

Pain with no easy explanation? Definitely hysteria.

The diagnosis, of course, was rooted in the Greek word hystera—womb. The uterus was blamed for everything: wandering, inflamed, or misbehaving. Centuries passed, but the sentiment stuck. Women were taught that to suffer was womanly. But to speak of that suffering? That was madness.

We like to think we’ve come a long way.

We haven’t.

Today, hysteria has a new name: anxiety.

The Smile That Ends the Conversation

I’ve lost count of the times a provider—often well-meaning—has asked me some version of:

“Have you tried an SSRI?”

“Are you sure it’s not just anxiety?”

“You might be catastrophizing.”

These words, always offered like a life preserver, when really they feel like a muzzle. Once the label anxious is applied, the rest of the story no longer matters.

Forget the months of nausea that come like clockwork.

Forget the dizziness, the fainting, the strange lab results that never quite fit.

Forget the trauma history. Forget the fight to survive.

You’re anxious. End of story.

But that’s the thing. It’s not the end. Not even close.

The New Hysteria Wears a White Coat

We’ve changed the name, softened the delivery, maybe even swapped padded rooms for prescriptions—but the dynamic is hauntingly familiar.

In the 1800s, women were confined to sanatoriums and “rest cures” when they dared to feel too much. In the 1900s, we were told our ambition made us unstable. Today, we’re handed a pamphlet for mindfulness and a low dose of Lexapro.

Do some women need that? Of course.

Do I, sometimes? Absolutely.

But the problem isn’t the diagnosis—it’s the way it’s weaponized. It’s used to dismiss, to explain away, to control the narrative before it’s even fully spoken.

Especially when the patient is a woman.

Especially when she’s endured trauma.

Especially when her symptoms don’t make sense in a 15-minute appointment slot.

What We Carry

In my memoir, I wrote about the years I lost to this pattern:

Symptoms dismissed.

Specialists shrugging.

A chart full of labels, but no one connecting the dots.

I had been sexually assaulted. I had survived abuse. I had raised daughters through illness and chaos. I had nearly died from a rare reaction.

And still—when I came in with dizziness and vomiting, all anyone saw was a woman under stress.

“Anxious.”

“Stressed.”

“Maybe a little depressed.”

And they weren’t entirely wrong. I was anxious.

But not because my brain was malfunctioning.

Because the world had taught me, over and over again, that it wasn’t safe to feel, or speak, or even exist fully in this body.

What if anxiety isn’t the disease, but the symptom of a deeper truth we’ve never been allowed to name?

What We’re Really Asking For

When we say we’re not okay, we’re not asking for a chemical solution to a systemic problem.

We’re asking to be believed.

To be listened to.

To be taken seriously before our bodies collapse in protest.

Not every panic attack is irrational.

Not every illness is in our head.

Not every woman who cries in a doctor’s office is unstable.

Sometimes we’re just exhausted from carrying it all alone.

The history of “hysteria” may have been erased from medical textbooks, but its spirit lingers—in eye-rolls, in misdiagnoses, in the assumption that we are fragile, emotional, unreliable narrators of our own experience.

Not Hysterical. Not Broken. Just Done Being Silenced.

Here’s what I know now:

My body has never lied to me.

It has begged. It has whispered. It has screamed.

And for far too long, I was taught to doubt it.

But I am no longer willing to accept a label that shuts down the search for truth.

Call me anxious.

Call me complicated.

But also call me what I really am:

Wise. Resilient. A woman whose body kept the score until someone finally read the page.

If you’ve ever been told “it’s just anxiety” when your soul was screaming for something deeper—this is for you.

You are not alone.

You are not crazy.

And you are not, and have never been, hysterical.