PMDD

Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder is a life threatening reaction that is under-researched, misunderstood and generally represents a gaping hole within menstrual research and care.

PMDD influences all aspects of life to an extreme, affecting health, career and relationships deeply.

Having experienced PMDD from age 13-23 I have fully committed to providing people who are suffering with freedom from the acid grip of PMDD.

You deserve understanding, answers and solutions: let’s make that happen together.

HOW PMDD FEELS:

Feelings of PMDD include:

  • Overwhelm

  • Like you’re a different person 50% of your cycle

  • Acute depression

  • Rage

  • Increase in ADHD symptoms

  • Rumination

  • Heightened emotional / social sensitivity

  • Increased sensory challenges

  • Fatigue

  • Craving foods

  • Despair / disarray

  • Body aches

  • Suicidal ideation

  • Self harm

  • Flashbacks

  • Meltdowns

  • Hyperactivity (mental / physical)

  • Doubting relationships

Let’s talk about it

My intention with the podcast is to have a casual, FaceTime with a friend approach to discussing the heavy experiences of PMDD, AuDHD, and health in general. I want us to be able to talk, understand and learn how to navigate these challenges in a way that suits us and feels really great.

My research led me to understand the effect emotions hold on physical health, and how working with the subconscious mind can resolve these emotional injuries that keep so many of us sick, sad and stuck,

After years of being terrified of health, I fully claimed my responsibility in finding a solution: hypnotherapy.

Resolving PMDD is one of the greatest initiations and achievements of my lifetime thus far. I made the impossible possible.

MY EXPERIENCE:

From 13-23 PMDD threatened my life, every month.

I thought it was ‘just hormones’ as a teenager, praying to turn 18 as soon as possible so the pain, despair and grinding depression would vacate my body. This was not the case. It only got worse. I lived a half life for a long time, stuck in a cycle of making progress until the harsh tides of PMDD returned: destroying everything. I discovered PMDD via instagram (psychiatrists, psychologists and inpatient psychiatric facilities hadn’t even mentioned menstrual cycles).

The discovery of PMDD led me to apply my passion for researching the truth towards health. The real journey had begun: the reclamation of my life.

After finding the right GP to diagnose me with PMDD (ngl this took a month as I was very direct to healthcare professionals by that point) I was unsurprised yet disappointed to only be offered birth control (I’d tried everything already) and anti-depressants (I’d tried everything already, and just about lived to tell the tale).

I (skim) read every book, blog, industry professional and video I could find. Consuming everything from Lisa Lister, Maisie Hill and Alissa Vitti’s mainstream classics - all the way to Womb Awakening by Seren Bertran and Shakti Woman by Vicki Noble.

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

Research into PMDD
Is underfunded, biased and not overly inclusive. The studies are small and limited in their scope (hence claims such as 10-93% of women w/ADHD experience PMDD).

The situation at hand is that while science is scrounging around taking it’s sweet time to find ways to profit before investing in research: there is a health reclamation taking place.

The Scientific Method focuses solely on data, ardently avoiding the human experience. Which is fascinating, as PMDD is such a primal, visceral experience that is hugely emotional. Unfortunately, the Scientific Method has been designed to bypass emotions in favour of numbers. So here we are, with millions of people seeking solutions that are unavailable to them via the mainstream approach.

My approach to PMDD has been a purely Empirical, and very open minded. I have researched, read, discussed and actively engaged with input adjustments to find the solutions that completely eradicated my symptoms. I tried herbalism, nutritional therapy, functional medicine, CBT, DBT, reiki, shamanism, acupuncture - all of it masked symptoms. Until I took into account my emotional body, nothing sustainably shifted.

PMDD Theories
Symptoms are increasingly being researched.

Currently causes of PMDD being explored are:

  1. Progesterone intolerance

  2. Chemical imbalance

  3. Thyroid dysfunction

  4. “aberrant response of central neurotransmitters to normal changes in gonadal steroids during the menstrual cycle.”

  5. “Abnormal response to normal hormonal changes”

  6. Estrogen dominance

  7. Histamine intolerance

  8. Metabolic breakdown

  9. And so on.

The experiences/reactions on this list are signs and symptoms - not the root cause.

When we work with the subconscious mind, we can identify why this reaction was created - and re-wire the response to resolve and clear.

THE EMOTIONAL REALITY OF PMDD

We don’t ‘have’ PMDD, as much as we don’t own a sneeze. PMDD is a label assigned to a barrage of intense, unrelenting feelings

My clinical experience with clients is creating a fascinating pattern of behaviours, beliefs and actions that are making the reality of how PMDD develops very clear.

Epigenetics teach us of how 1% of our genes hold any influence, what decides whether or not genes we inherit expresses is our environment.

Environment includes relationships, the community we grow up within, the words we hear, the beliefs we develop and the behaviours that we learn from our care givers.

The subconscious mind is a video camera that is recording constantly, and making adjustments to our beliefs, behaviours and reactions accordingly. The subconscious mind is here to keep us safe, regardless of its decisions making logical sense.

My own experience of utilising Rapid Transformational Therapy to resolve PMDD was eye opening. I entered my session believing that PMDD was happening to me, that it was a punishment that I deserved - and left understanding that the PMDD was there to keep me safe. As a child I struggled to get my emotional needs met and felt that I needed to stay quiet - so my subconscious mind created a response to this (PMDD: extreme emotional response) to get my emotions noticed and cared for. Well, it worked - however I was not a child any longer and my emotional responses during the second half of my cycle were causing deep damage to my life.

Working with my subconscious mind meant that I could utilise psychology and Neuroplasticity to rewire the neural pathways within my mind - and create a new response. I could express my emotions in a way that worked for me today, allowing me to truly release the PMDD response.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is only increasing in how common it is, yet the support for this trauma response is also thin on the ground. PMDD is experienced by those with womb spaces with an active reproductive hormonal cycle. It has historically been the case that women are especially silenced when it comes to their emotions and feelings.

From an early age we learn that it is best to keep quiet about how we feel - and so our subconscious suppresses our intuitive emotional responses and rewires in new ones. For some of us, this becomes the foundation for PMDD. I often find with my clients that PMDD is a cyclical form of PTSD: with all of the experiences and emotions coming up every month asking to be recognised and processed.

Few of us have been guided and supported in learning how to express and process our emotions - so we respond to this internal uprising with panic, fear and the onslaught of symptoms we develop to try to siphon out the pain we are experiencing .

When we work with the subconscious mind we can go into the past, resolve what’s causing us pain and move our mind towards clearing the PMDD response.

PMDD is an invitation from our bodies

Asking us to be present, accepting and understanding of what we have survived, experienced and been affected by.

When we tune into our bodies, we can create a safe haven of trust, patience and presence.

From this place, balance and healing can take place.


PMDD and PTSD

Before investing in functional medicine, bio-identical hormones and a supplement order that costs hundreds: consider working with trauma.

The scientific approach of researching PMDD exclusively through numbers, data and graphs is the safe option - it’s easier to monetise and scale. When we bravely strive to work with the emotions that we are directly experiencing, shifts can begin to take place.

My clients often have tried so many options, but the idea of working with themselves and the emotions they experience seems almost trite. Still, the threat of what the next PMDD cycle will bring looms heavy and so they give it a try. The PMDD clears, freedom is gained.

We have been conditioned to value external resources when it comes to helping ourselves. We believe that we are broken and need fixing - that the answer can only come from outside of us.

When I started my research and experiences into healing PMDD I did not trust myself and truly saw myself as a broken, massive problem. After nothing was working and my symptoms were only becoming more severe, I knew it was time to do something truly wild: working directly with myself.

Our emotions are energy in motion. These emotional energies directly influence our bodies, how our genes express and the reactions that take place within us. We could spend years researching data, graphs and numbers - or directly work with the emotions we are experiencing every month.

PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder - is a response that the body creates to try to keep us safe after experiencing traumatic events. The majority of us experience multiple traumas (this can range from being shouted at as a child, to severe abuse). The event does not discern what is traumatic, our response does. PTSD is a response mechanism that we create. This is good news, as what we can create we can re-design and resolve.

The modern world does not make space for PTSD. The modern world is not welcoming to big expressions of emotions, especially from women. We learn this very young, and our subconscious minds create reactions to this knowledge accordingly. PTSD is closely linked to PMDD, some theorise that they are the same response - PMDD being a cPTSD response that takes place on a cyclical basis.