What It’s Like to Live With PMDD
I’m living my life two weeks at a time
I spend half my life not being the real me.
I’m a sex blogger, which means I rely on feeling creative, horny, and positive to do my job.
And because of that, I have to do most of my work in about two weeks out of every month.
When I feel good, I cram as much writing, recording, and research as I can in that short window, because I know I’ll come crashing down after.
I even know exactly when the crash is going to come. Because I suffer from PMDD, it’s predictable.
PMDD stands for Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It’s a condition that is sort of like PMS but much, much worse.
I’ve had it for as long as I can remember, but I wasn’t aware of it. I knew I felt like hell for about two weeks a month, but I never knew why.
I used to think they were just random mood shifts. Other times, I’d project my feelings on things in my life. I’d assume it was because of bad sleep, too much stress, or letting my healthy eating habits slide a little too far.
Most of the time, though, I’d blame my husband. I was in a shitty mood and I’d get annoyed easily. I assumed it was his fault I felt the way I did.
I’m really not proud of myself for that and I look back on it with a lot of regret. But I had no other explanation for why I felt the way I did.
And I wouldn’t get an explanation until I really started tracking my mood and my cycle. A few months ago, I uncovered the pattern. My mood crashes weren’t random — they were cyclical.
Last week, after a consultation with my doctor, I finally got a formal diagnosis for the condition that’s been affecting me my whole life.
There’s no solid consensus on what causes PMDD (or PMS for that matter), but the going theory seems to be that women like me can’t get enough serotonin during parts of our cycle.
Not surprisingly, that drop in serotonin comes with a whole bunch of miserable symptoms, like extreme mood swings, sleep disruptions, physical discomfort, irritability, fatigue, and feelings of despair.
But looking through lists of symptoms doesn’t really give a full picture of what it’s like to live with this condition. When it hits, it feels like my whole world shifts and I lose myself.
My PMDD Hell Weeks
The day I ovulate is almost always my best day of the month.
I get a burst of creativity and productivity. I’m excited about almost everything. I get a horny spike and have some of the best, most adventurous, and most satisfying sex.
I want to reach out to everyone, build connections, start a dozen projects at once.
I feel overjoyed and in love with life.
And then I go to bed and it all comes to an abrupt stop.
The day after I ovulate, I wake up feeling terrible. And I’m going to stay that way for about two weeks.
My mood fluctuates every day. Some of the days are characterized by anger and frustration. On others, there’s a cloud of depression, sadness, and despair hanging over me. The worst days somehow manage to mix all of those emotions together.
While my PMDD symptoms are in high gear, I’m a person I would barely recognize if I hadn’t lived with her most of my life.
My Self-Esteem Plummets
The first thing that hits me is the negative self talk. I don’t have the most positive internal monologue, even on a good day. But when I’m in Mrs. Hyde mode, it goes off the charts.
I almost never reach out to friends because the voice in my head keeps telling me that no one wants to hear from me and that sending a text to anyone would just bother them.
I second-guess some of the articles I drafted during my good weeks and hesitate to publish them. If they’re too personal, I feel like no one has a reason to care about my experiences. If they’re informative, I ask myself why I think I’m qualified to give anyone advice.
Some of the articles and podcast episodes only make it online because I set a publishing schedule ahead of time and I feel compelled to stick to it.
I also have a hard time with the hate mail and mean comments I get. On my regular weeks, I laugh most of those off. When they’re especially nasty, I hit the block button and move on with my day.
But when my PMDD symptoms hit and my serotonin is low, I can have a hard time dealing with them.
I might get angry at the assholes who feel compelled to say really rude things to me, and the hurtful comments will cut deep. They’ll get to me because it just amplifies the negative self-talk that’s already going through my head.
Anxiety Turns to Depression
The other really noticeable thing is the anxiety.
I have a low level of generalized anxiety at all times, but on a good day I can mostly ignore it by focusing on other things. During my PMDD hell weeks, though, there’s no way to suppress it.
I feel a constant free-floating dread about nothing in particular. I spend two weeks feeling like something terrible is about to happen to me, even when I’m just lying in bed watching stuff on Netflix. It’s like I know the other shoe’s about the drop, even though there wasn’t even a first shoe.
My brain tries to rationalize the anxiety by pinning it on something, and that turns into massive feelings of guilt. I’ll beat myself up for just about anything — not taking enough photos of the kids, not doing more housework, not giving my husband enough sex or affection, not keeping up with friends.
It’s not long before all that self-imposed guilt turns into a full-on depressive episode.
I get in a deep funk that often lasts for the second week of my PMDD. During that time, I’ll lose interest in a lot of things. I can barely bring myself to do the things I normally love to do. Even simple, relaxing things like taking a long bubble bath or watching my favorite shows feel like chores I have to drag myself through.
In that mode, I can barely read. On some days, I’ll muster enough concentration to read one or two blog posts. But that’s about all I can manage. I practically disappear from my online world until I feel better again.
I Get Very Sensitive (And Not in a Good Way)
Those two hellish PMDD weeks also make me feel incredibly sensitive.
I get irritable, and a lot of the things my husband does that I normally find cute, sweet, funny, or even arousing start rubbing me the wrong way. And all the dumb little things that irk me but I can normally brush off will really start getting to me.
I’ll often ask him for some alone time because I know I’m in the wrong headspace. I know I’ll take some of the things he says the wrong way, get defensive, or start to question his actions.
I love him dearly, but when I’m too grumpy or depressed, I know it’s sometimes better to spend more time by myself.
I Go Into a Creative Slump
My work suffers a lot during this part of my cycle. I basically start losing all the things I need to create the kind of content I like to put out.
My creativity is shot because I’m spending so much time ruminating that I can barely come up with any new ideas.
My motivation flatlines. I’ll try to do the bare minimum so I can meet the schedule I’ve set for myself.
On some days, I can push myself enough to work on an outline or draft a short piece. But often, I’ll just manage to edit something I wrote before, publish it, promote it on social media, and then crawl back under my blanket.
I try to avoid doing a lot of writing, too. Not just because I don’t have the motivation, but because my sex drive is a lot lower with PMDD. I almost never get the horny feelings that give my writing a bouncy voice and a positive attitude. And because I lose a lot of interest in sex and porn, I barely get any research done while the symptoms hit me.
On top of all that, I get a heavy brain fog that’s difficult to cut through. At its worst, I struggle to string enough thoughts together to even draft an outline. Even when it’s less severe, I have a hard time articulating my thoughts. I know what I want to say, but it’s hard to get it on the page.
When I look back on my older articles, I can tell which ones were written during a jag of PMDD. I can see it in the topics I chose to write about, in the way I wrote them, and in the overall quality of the articles.
Living Life Two Weeks at a Time
Those symptoms last about two weeks, and then I’m back to normal. At least, I am for another two weeks or so before it all starts over again.
The prognosis for PMDD isn’t great. I might never overcome it completely. I might always fall into sad, grumpy, listless moods for about half the month.
The best I can do is get a better hormonal balance through lifestyle changes and hormone replacement therapy and hope that it lessens the severity of the condition.
In the meantime, I’m doing whatever I can to work around it.
I’ll do my best to take advantage of my good weeks.
That means doing as much work as I can so I don’t have to do as much when the PMDD resurfaces. I try to write an article every day. The ones I don’t publish, I’ll save for the bad weeks.
When I can manage it, I’ll write outlines and set them aside. That way, on the less terrible PMDD days, all I have to do is flesh out the ideas I’ve already saved in my word processor.
I’ll make sure to spend lots of time reading up on sex, catching up on porn, and experimenting sexually so I have more material to draw on and work with, even when my interest takes a dip.
I prioritize working on pieces that feel more vulnerable or involve more research, because I know how hard those are to write when I’m just not feeling it.
And I’m working on a schedule that will allow me to record an entire month’s worth of podcast episodes during my good weeks.
I’m also learning to lean in.
I used to treat my PMDD symptoms like they were problems I had to fix. I tried changing my schedule to take advantage of the energy I had in the mornings. I tried pushing myself to work out more, thinking the endorphin high might help. I tried to schedule sex and masturbation for the same reason. I tried to sleep more. I tried to sleep less.
Nothing helped. And now that I understand what’s going on with my body, I know why. There’s no sense in fighting these moods because it’s a losing battle. I’ll go through an extended emotional crash no matter what I do.
So now instead of trying to make myself be happy, push myself to be productive, and pressure myself into having sex, I just accept where I am and try to get through it as smoothly as I can.
I’ll let myself have more comfort food than I normally do. I’ll go easy on myself if I decide to spend entire afternoons watching TV. And I’ll remind myself that there’s no reason to feel bad if I go a week without having sex, because feeling shitty about it helps no one.
I’m getting better at asking my husband for alone time when I need it and hugs and cuddles when I need those. And he’ll check my notifications for me so he can filter out the rude and mean comments when I just can’t handle them.
Sometimes, I feel like I’ve painted myself into a corner.
Because of PMDD, I’m a wife who turns into a completely different person half the month and my husband has to adapt to it.
I’m a mom of four who doesn’t have all the patience and energy it takes to be the kind of mom I want to be half the time.
And I’m a sex blogger who spends half her life with a low libido.
But at least now that I have a diagnosis, I can name what I’m going through. That’s been incredibly validating. I still feel terrible half the month and I’m not myself during those weeks, but at least I know it’s not because I’m a fuck up.
As soon as I hit that point in my cycle, I can’t operate at full capacity anymore. But understanding that means that I can work on being the best mom, wife, and blogger I can be with the limited energy and mood I’ve been given.
And when things get really dark — when the depression, irritability, and brain fog set in — it’s comforting to know that it’s only two weeks. That’s all I have to ride out before I can feel normal again.
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