After twenty years of unexplained symptoms and a lupus diagnosis given and then taken away, I turned to Norse mythology — and to Sweden’s debate about women and ADHD — to ask what women silence in order to function, and what happens when the silencing stops working.
Some time after my stern and rational grandmother died, I picked up her copy of Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. It is a wonderful archetypal roadmap that wants to help women break free from cultural conditioning through the image of the wolf. I found my name that she had written on the first page. I wondered why she had picked me, out of seven grandchildren, to give it to — but I was even more astonished that she had read it herself. She was very far from a woman free of cultural conditioning. Perhaps she was more complex than I was able to see.
At the time I was lost on my lupus journey, so I took it as a synchronicity. Lupus means wolf in Latin, and the book is about the wolf. But what is a lupus journey? It is a search of more than twenty years through unconnected, mischievous bodily symptoms: a butterfly-shaped facial rash that comes and goes, fingers that turn white and numb, joint pain, eyebrows that have fallen out, hair loss, a collapsed lung and fatigue. Yet there is still no diagnosis, because one medical criterion is missing.
For the past seven years I have been increasingly irritated with the medical system — and surprised at myself for longing to be diagnosed with a serious illness. As a Jungian, I naturally love to look at fairytales and myths, and Rumpelstiltskin, for those who know it, offers a wonderful image. The little man can only cause harm as long as he remains unnamed. When the queen discovers his name, his power over her is gone (in the Grimms’ version he is so furious that he tears himself in two).
Reality is not so simple. When people get a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease, or any condition for that matter, the symptoms don’t magically disappear, but can be managed. Until then, you are simply an unreliable witness to your own body — or the worst thing a woman can be: hysterical.
I sometimes think of this as a legacy of nineteenth-century Paris, where women with emotional, physical and unexplainable symptoms were committed to the Salpêtrière, photographed and displayed in front of audiences. I can only imagine their suffering, and the long term consequences: generation after generation of women promising ourselves never to allow that to happen to us again. So we stay quiet, and bite down.
Two camps
Since I am Swedish, I have closely followed the current debate about women in midlife being diagnosed with ADHD. Right now there seem to be two camps. On one side are the women who take medication and describe a wonderful silence in their heads after years of feeling disorganised, unreliable and unfocused, together with the doctors who diagnose and treat them. On the other are the women who describe emotional and cognitive flattening, together with the doctors who question the idea of ADHD as simply a dopamine deficiency.
Let me be clear: I am in neither camp. I am right in the middle, trying to do something all Jungians learn from the very beginning — the art of holding the tension of the opposites, so that what Jung called the transcendent function can arise. It is a fancy term, and sometimes difficult to explain. In the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, Jung was asked whether he thought there would be a nuclear war. As a collaborator to Jung, Barbara Hannah, recalls in her memoir of Jung, he answered: “I think it depends on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in themselves.” If enough could, he thought the worst catastrophe might be avoided. What it simply means is resisting the pull towards polarization, so that something else — a third solution of a kind— can arise.
The wrong proportions
Back to my lupus journey — and I promise I will make the connection to ADHD. After years of unexplained symptoms, I went to a new doctor to find out why my eyebrows had all fallen out. She listened, took a few quick notes and said: “Well, I think you have lupus.” She put me on medication, and wrinkled her nose slightly when she heard about the doctor who, two years earlier, had dismissed my hair loss with “Oh, you women!” She sent me to a dermatologist to confirm. He reversed her diagnosis, because my facial rash didn’t have quite the right proportions for lupus.
That was the last straw. I thought to myself: you talk to your clients about holding the tension, so do it yourself. See if a third arises. Comforted by appropriate medication to protect my organs from future damage, a diagnosis of alopecia and an uncomfortable cream for my scalp, I began my own investigation — through myth.
A chain of impossible things
It turns out there may be some clues in Norse mythology, and in biology. Fenrir is a wolf (remember, ‘lupus’ means ‘wolf’) who will one day help bring about the end of the world. But he has a difficult childhood, growing up among gods who fear him, until they bind him with a thin, silken chain made of impossible things. He is the son of Loki, the trickster — just as lupus specialises in playing mischievous tricks on the body. And he stays bound, silently with his jaws propped open by a sword, until the end of the world.
As I looked into the impossible things in his chain — the roots of a mountain, the breath of a fish, a woman’s beard, to name a few — I started to think about the impossibilities that bind women today: Be capable, but not intimidating. Independent, but don’t make others feel unnecessary. Ambitious, but don’t neglect your family. Attractive, without seeming to try. Emotionally available, but never difficult. Have a solid opinion, but also keep quiet. That image of Fenrir, his jaws propped open by a sword, captures the feeling of these impossibilities: a mouth forced open, yet unable to close, to bite or to speak. Silenced.
Too loud to exist
So here we are with silence again. With the image of a propped up Fenrir, I came across biology that made me again think of the women with ADHD describing their heads as finally quiet. Women have two X chromosomes, and early in the embryo’s development one of them is largely silenced — otherwise its genes would be too loud, a double dose. The molecule that does this is called Xist, pronounced “exist”. Forgive me the symbolic reading I simply can’t resist: biology explains to us that one of a woman’s chromosomes is too loud, so in order for women to exist, it is silenced.
And here is the twist. In 2024, researchers at Stanford found that this silencing machinery itself may help explain why autoimmune diseases are so much more common in women. When male mice prone to autoimmunity were engineered to produce Xist, they became more susceptible to a lupus-like disease. In image terms, the body turns on the very thing that keeps one X quiet.
I am aware that a medical doctor reading this would huff and puff, because I am simplifying heavily, and I am not saying this explains anyone’s illness. Still, I can’t let go of the image. Could it be that, in order to function in society, women have learned to silence themselves — and that something in us eventually turns against the silencing? And that when it does, we search, once again, for ways to become quiet?
I know, I know — some of you will be loudly protesting here (it’s great, be loud!) But try to stay with the image for a moment. In my practice with women who have autoimmune disease or ADHD symptoms, I often find it helpful when we follow what they experience as ‘restless associations’, ‘unexpected connections’ or simply daydreams (imagination) or intuitions. It so often leads somewhere new, to a different relationship with what is going on.
‘Attention’, as the French say — be careful here: I am not debating medication. It is not either/or, and I am terribly grateful for the medication I receive. But I am wondering what we as a society consider a well-functioning mind. Our culture prizes concentration, efficiency and measurable achievement. These are useful capacities, but not the only forms of intelligence. I am not sure concentration alone would have given us the theory of relativity: Einstein traced it back to a daydream he had at sixteen, of riding alongside a beam of light. Or Frankenstein, which Mary Shelley said came to her in a waking dream. Neither came from a quiet, orderly head.
Riding the wolf
In my encounter with Fenrir, I also met Hyrrokkin: a giantess who is given very little space in the written sources of Norse mythology — perhaps because she did not fit the ideals of those who wrote the stories down. She comes riding in on a wolf with vipers for reins. Four of Odin’s berserkers cannot hold her mount. She does what the gods could not — launches a great funeral ship into the sea — and then rides off again. At the risk of sounding very Jungian and mystical, learning to speak ‘Hyrrokkini’ is what is helping me hold the tension of the opposites I described earlier.
So, to women with ADHD or autoimmune disease, medicated or not, diagnosed or not, or simply wondering about the impossible things that bind us: here are a few first thoughts on how to move from being chained like Fenrir to riding the wolf like Hyrrokkin.
Make some noise. The first thing woven into Fenrir’s chain was the sound of a cat’s footfall — the sound of not being heard. So instead we speak, disagree, ask questions and take up space without apologising for it. From “I’m so sorry I’m late” to “Thank you for waiting”. A cliché, but still.
Outgrow the mirror. The second was a woman’s beard. Maybe Hyrrokkin had facial hair, maybe not. That isn’t the point. We don’t have to conform to an image of how a woman should look, behave or age. As we grow older, we are allowed to become unfamiliar to ourselves. Change is a good thing and I have been surprised at how much I enjoy the slightly alien look that no eyebrows provides.
Dig down. Third: the roots of a mountain. We need to dig down and get curious about what lies beneath the roles we inherited. What belongs to us, and what have we been carrying for others? The latter part we can work on letting go of.
Use our strength, and accept help. Fourth: the sinews of a bear. Sinews give both strength and flexibility. Hyrrokkin uses her power when it is needed, but she also lets others hold her wolf. Strength doesn’t mean doing everything alone because it seems faster. We need to ask for help when we need it.
Learn to say no. Fifth: the breath of a fish. A fish has no breath to give. What have we learned to tolerate that leaves us breathless? Not every demand deserves our compliance (not even the important school bake-sales), and no relationship should require us to disappear into it.
Speak our souls. Sixth: the spittle of a bird. Birds don’t spit, but they have always carried voice and song. Let’s find a language for what we experience, even when it is hard to explain. Write, paint, speak, dream — or let an image arrive before jumping to conclusions or solutions.
I sometimes wonder whether my grandmother knew all this. She stayed quiet and bit down, as so many women of her generation had to. And yet she read a book about wild women, and left my name on its first page. Perhaps that was her way of handing me the reins of the wolf and for me to add my own ingredient to it.
So to the impossible things that still bind us — the soft chains, the “oh, you women”, the rash with the wrong proportions — I have one thing to say:
Bite me.
