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The Hormonal Phase Gap
Why her good days can look like his indifference. Why his flat mood can feel like her criticism. One hour that explains a pattern playing out in your workplace right now, and gives people the language to stop misreading each other.
What it is
A concept developed by Rhu Strand, Functional Wellness Practitioner, through her own original observation, not yet named or described anywhere else. In perimenopause, oestrogen doesn't decline evenly. It surges and drops, sometimes within the same week, creating a genuine wave of good days and harder days. In andropause, testosterone follows the opposite pattern entirely, a slow, gradual decline of around one to two percent a year, with no wave at all, just a long, flat erosion most men barely notice happening to them.
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When these two patterns sit side by side in the same team, something quietly corrosive happens. Her good day makes his flatness look like a choice. His constant flatness makes her low day feel personal, like criticism aimed at him. Neither person is wrong about what they're noticing. They're both missing the same piece of information.
Why it matters at work
This isn't just a relationship pattern, it plays out just as clearly between colleagues. The teammate having a visibly good week wonders why others aren't making the same effort. The colleague running flat for months wonders what they've done wrong when someone else's mood shifts overnight. Read as personality or performance, it drives exactly the kind of friction, misjudged reviews, and quiet resentment that no policy document ever catches, because nobody's naming what's actually happening underneath it.
Her good day makes his flatness look like a choice. His constant flatness makes her low day feel personal
A note on who this is for
The wave and the flatline described here are common patterns, not universal ones. Hormone experience can look different for trans and non-binary colleagues, particularly where hormone therapy is involved. This session welcomes everyone navigating hormonal change, whatever that looks like for you, alongside specialist support where that's the right fit.
What people leave with
A pattern named
A clear, shared explanation for something many people in the room will already recognise, just without the words for it until now.
A new lens on friction
Language to spot the Hormonal Phase Gap in the moment, instead of reading it as someone's effort, mood, or character.
The Tactical Pause
A simple technique to stop, close your eyes, and breathe, given a name and a place in every session so people actually use it under pressure.
What comes next
For organisations who want to take it further, a clear introduction to the Menopause and Andropause Workplace Programme.
Gosport, UK
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