Managing PMDD with Elizabeth Ferreira | Being Well Podcast

hello and welcome to being well i'm forrest hansen if you're new to the podcast this is where we explore the practical science of lasting well-being and if you've listened before welcome back this is normally where i would say that i'm joined by dr rick hansen but instead we have a very special episode today and i'm joined instead by my lovely partner elizabeth ferreira so elizabeth how are you doing today i'm really excited to do this episode with yeah we've been really looking forward to this yeah no i'm very excited i feel a bit like ooh i'm in the podcast you made it to the main roster yeah no totally uh we've done a couple of these for patreon but this is your first time doing it for the kind of main edition of the podcast i'm really looking forward to talking with you about this because today we are going to be talking about pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder otherwise known as pmdd so pmdd has a bunch of symptoms that include anxiety severe bouts of depression and even suicidal ideation it's essentially a very very severe form of pms and it afflicts about 1 in 20 women though it's really really challenging to find exact numbers on this sort of stuff so there's a pretty good chance that if you don't have it yourself you know somebody who does and now everybody knows somebody who does because elizabeth has pmdd and that's why we're going to be talking about it today to give a little bit more info about elizabeth she's a graduate student at the california institute of integral studies where she is studying somatic psychology she's in her last year uh it's been really really cool to talk about podcast related material with somebody who is training to be a therapist and has been really useful for me personally so thanks love yeah absolutely we'll start on a sweet note so okay to kind of frame our pmdd episode here today um i think that it would make sense to just sort of start with your personal experience like what's it like having pmdd oh um yeah having pmdd is really challenging i think the best way to talk about it is to just kind of begin with my experience with it how it started so um as a kid i was always a bit depressive so once puberty hit you know it was really normal and i think this is a normal story for most girls that are you know moving into womanhood where oh it's just pms oh it's normal to get you know the blues and it's normal to feel this way um but after the first year of my period i really started to feel very different um and it was this slow creep of feeling like for one week out of the month i was just not myself so it started with i would have pretty severe bouts of depression i would become very irritable um especially with the people that i was closest with things that i normally found very interesting and that i wanted to do i had no interest at all yeah um and as more years progressed it started to get more severe like suicidal ideation and um it got very intense uh for a moment yeah so my mom was kind of tracking this and at the time she was dealing with her own mental health and so she took me along to see a psychiatrist and she went through this list of pmdd symptoms and she was saying well you have to have five or more and i had every single symptom that was on the list and it was kind of a shock of oh wow i i have a thing totally um so then as i got older um there really wasn't much given to me that i could do is either you get on birth control or you get on antidepressants and neither of those i really wanted to do because even though that one week out of the month was horrible the rest of the weeks i felt really great i felt like myself yeah and i didn't want to trade out my good days for potentially elongating the bad days um but for a long time it just felt like i had to live with this monster that would come and visit me every month and it caused me a lot of pain and i really affected the relationships that i had uh particularly romantic relationships yeah yeah to kind of do our due diligence here i think that you gave a great rundown of the experience of having pmdd to just kind of quickly go through the diagnostic criteria um as always with our podcast be kind of careful about self-diagnosis but something that we've really found elizabeth and i when talking to various friends of ours who have really bad symptoms of pms but they may not be aware that there's actually kind of a different category here for pmdd that might explain a lot of the experiences that they're going through and for some people having this moment of being like oh like you were saying it's not just this normal thing that happens this is a unusual and specific thing or a more severe form of a thing can really help like create some self-compassion and just let you know that you're not crazy and that the experiences that you're going through are really real so some of those include things like mood swings increased irritability or anger depressed mood anxiety and tension a decreased interest in your usual activities you've named a lot of these already and then some other additional things a hard time concentrating is a very typical symptom as elizabeth a lack of energy changes in appetite uh both overeating or under eating could be um possible issues then hypersomnia or insomnia you can't sleep or it's incredibly easy for you to fall asleep another one that i know is a big one for elizabeth periodically feeling overwhelmed is a very very common symptom of pmdd and then various physical symptoms that include things like breast tenderness or swelling joint and muscle pain bloating weight gain all of that and exactly as you said you're supposed to have five of these for it to be like a formal diagnosis in addition to some other things but if you just kind of look at that checklist and you've known for a long time that you have a particularly bad time around your period um and you start hearing that list of things and you just go yep yep yep it's a pretty good indicator yeah yeah um as someone who experiences all of those symptoms that were listed and i want to be very clear i still experience these things monthly um but i really want to [Music] give compassion and space for the fact that i think issues that are around women's cycles or disorders or conditions kind of get overlooked by the larger medical system in their severity and like this is not normal pms this is not just oh because it's on your cycle you can handle it or um try to push yourself to you know act normal or feel normal like you normally do um it is incapacitating and a lot of women that i have spoken with or that i've you know seen talk about pmdd is that it really feels like a completely different person takes over and it's like this slow creep so you're not always conscious of it because it happens incrementally and then all of a sudden something happens one day and you are just thrown into the ground and you cannot do anything and it becomes this like mantra of just make it to my period just make it to my period yeah um so it's it's heavy it's a lot and i really want to make that distinction that people with pms can have some of these symptoms but these are incapacitating symptoms yes yeah no it's a great point the severity is way higher um i do also just want to like affirm something that you were saying there if if this were a visible condition this was a point that you made to me the other day yeah if like your arm fell off once a month and it took a week to regrow we would treat this very seriously everyone would see it happening to you they would all go wow this is a huge problem that you're experiencing let's accommodate the situations around you to help you with this um but that's not the way it works it's an invisible ailment i can't tell i mean physically at all when you're going through this or not we've gotten a lot better in terms of like creating symptoms that that help us kind of work through it as a partnership and we'll talk about some of those in a second and additionally just like to make the obvious point you know if every week or sorry if once a month a significant percentage of men went through these kinds of challenges like the whole medical establishment would orient itself extremely differently around this so i just think it's helpful to like have those two caveats in there yeah for sure and and thank you for you know voicing that because i have felt even though i was formally diagnosed and i would tell people what i have even people that i worked with in the workforce there was a real lack of understanding the gravitas of what i was telling people and even in my social groups friends no one really understood really what i was talking about um and it is like that it's like a part of you gets chopped off and it only takes time for it to grow back yeah so i think that it would be kind of helpful here to talk just a little bit more about your personal experience what it feels like to you when you're going through like a bad pmdd episode if you're comfortable talking about it yeah so it almost always starts with a buzzing like um you could call it anxiety but that's compounded by the fact that i cannot focus on one thing at a time so my brain feels very scattered and there's a lot of oh you should you should you should and i also become incredibly sensitive to criticism and the fear of rejection it becomes overwhelming uh so i start to you know hear tone uh maybe even like in conversations we have where i assume you're mad at me yeah or i think you're being really critical um so that's kind of the first step then i almost always start to have some body dysmorphia where i i notice the bloat the like soreness uh my jaw gets incredibly tight and um i i kind of feel uh like i'm vibrating and that vibrating feeling and all of these kind of start to tell me oh wait maybe maybe something's going to happen um then depending on the month because my pmdd can swing i either have no appetite or all i want to do is eat um i either sleep for 12 to 15 hours or i sleep i don't sleep at all um and then usually it gets to a moment where my inner critic gets so intensely loud that i cannot function i i can't study i can't write a paper i can't uh watch an entire youtube video that i really like all the way through um and the only thing that i can kind of do is bounce from one thing to the other in this sort of manic thing because i'm it feels like i'm trying to run away from the thing that's about to hit me then the the crash of the wave at the apex of it it feels like the entire world is collapsing it feels like no day will ever be good everybody hates me you know i'm a piece of you know crap um that's like the voice in my head and i really struggle with feeling like well what's the point yeah and then the suicidal ideation kind of comes in where you know you just kind of have a feeling of life would be easier if i wasn't a part of it and usually what ends up happening is and i think this is something that you can see this is when it becomes visible is um i get triggered by something and then i am not in control of my emotions yeah i i start saying things and it's like all the tension that i've been feeling up until this point just explodes out of me and you know i feel so sorry for whoever has to be standing there when that happens yeah um and then usually the tail end of it is feeling an immense amount of shame and guilt for not having been in control of that experience yeah and then your period comes and i feel amazing it's like it's like i'm in the garden of eden i have all this focus i love everybody and even though i'm maybe cramping and maybe even having like a heavy period it just feels so good yeah um yeah so it's a pretty night and day experience yeah and that's uh just to kind of put a pin in that that is the hallmark of this condition is that almost the moment your period comes maybe not quite the moment but within a day or two of that happening night and day difference all of a sudden the world is rosy again all of a sudden you're um you're emotionally intimate with your partner again like the whole thing and it can often create in the people in the system sometimes when the person who's going through these experiences is kind of early in their process with it or they haven't taken on some of the practices that can help it or they don't have a social support system that supports them in dealing with it whatever it might be it can create kind of a whiplash experience where one day things are so grim and then the next day they are so much better um and one of the things i've really noticed with you as you learned that this was a thing and you started to take on more and more and more practices oriented around supporting your experience and making it you know as good as it can be while you're in it kind of raising the floor on the experience having more months where it's okay because another hallmark is that sometimes you have bad months and then sometimes you have months that are totally fine um one of the things that i've really experienced is that it's gotten harder and harder for me to tell when you're in it so that kind of like whiplash effect that that can you know put some pressure on the relational system around you has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller over time and i just want to ask you about that like what are some of the practices that you do that have really supported you in taking this on and then making it kind of as good as it can be well the the doing answer is exercise i have to go to the gym and i have to exert myself um particularly during that week um i never want to you know everything in my head tells me to just like sit in bed and cry and you know be smothered by your pain and sorrow um good time yeah you know it's yeah [Laughter] um but exercise has been a huge coping mechanism and it actually makes my symptoms much less severe yeah um and and for me uh personally pmdd can really trigger my rage and so being able to just go to the gym and smash weight around and listen to you know metal music it's an outlet and it's a safe way for me to direct that volatile energy that i feel inside um the other thing is having a mindfulness practice around my pmdd um and what i mean by that is in the true sense of i'm watching it and cultivating more of a sense of my higher self that can watch the episode happen so that i don't feel completely taken over by it um so before that my identity was really attached to the pmdd when it happened i could not tell the difference of me versus what was happening to me so as i started journaling and tracking every day how i felt and particularly every day what i noticed i started to see a pattern and i could see it on my calendar where it was like oh every day on this date it was a really bad day and it happens about this week out of the month um and so getting a sense of when it would happen started to give me more resilience and preparatory um action yeah so kind of before my pmdd hits i slow way down um i really lean on my practices i meditate more i take slower mornings just to kind of brace myself and prepare um and also inside of it when i'm going through it i really try to maintain this other voice that is just watch it just stay in the observing position um and when it's a really really awful day when i'm having that complete you know the floodgates open i found it very nourishing to just get on my computer and type out every thought that i'm having just let the word vomit out and often by the time i finish writing however many pages it is i feel so much better um so those are kind of you know some of the stuff that i do yeah yeah and i think that for particularly like in my watching of you it feels like the whole tracking element of it has been such a central practice yeah and like keeping a very detailed calendar as you do almost every day where you do either some form of journaling and also um you have your planner and i've seen you fill in like emotional states into that planner based day by day basis i've seen you uh fill out different weeks with like anticipatory you know pmdd question mark to plan ahead like this is around when i should be aware of it and it feels like that's been a very kind of central block in the whole thing also at least within our relationship and my relationships with other people um being visible like voicing what is happening to me has also been really helpful um using us as an example earlier in our relationship i would try to hide it from you i would try to either just not be available that week because i didn't want to put you through that and i think that's the story that also pmdd makes you believe was like oh you're suffering so bad right now that it is unlawful enough ethical for you to put this on people you care about yeah and that isolation actually makes it ten times worse because the only voice you have in your head is the bad one yeah um so it's been really helpful for me to be able to just come in and tell you hey i'm in a pmdd episode and also feeling from you a lot more spaciousness and going okay this is where i give her more time this is where i don't put too much stuff on her um and so yeah that's also been really helpful and very new for me to have external support in a way that i've never had before yeah which is really great i'm so glad i know i mean it makes me feel great and i think that that social support element whether it's from a partner it's from a friend group it's from a parent regard you know wherever you happen to be in your in your life cycle with either having parents who are very in your life or maybe having children in your life or whatever it is kind of just calling upon those different forms of social support can be really helpful yeah one of the things that i've seen you do is really kind of externalize your pmdd experience would you mind talking about that a little bit yeah okay let's get into it let's you know let's let's be exposed yeah so i am just a very spiritual person um that is informed by my background and also the culture that i was raised in but that's just something that i need and it really helps with my mental health yeah so i have a magical practice uh so i do spell work there's a bunch of jars around the house like it is pretty witchy i'm not gonna lie um between the jars and the plants you know you've really got it going on in here it's the whole apothecary experience yeah isn't it so juicy it's pretty nice it's so nice i'm not gonna lie yeah it feels so good um okay anyway let's get back to the point um so for me when we moved in together uh i lost my job i lost all of my coping mechanisms that kind of helped me put a lid on the pmdd and get through it this was right at the beginning of the pandemic for some context that was when we moved in together yeah so not only did i move in with my partner for the first time where you get zero alone time but also my entire world got flipped upside down yeah and i was in a pretty dark place um and i didn't know how to cope with my pmdd like now i was in a new environment and it felt very disregulating so i started going down the rabbit hole and kind of leaning on some things that i had always felt an aptitude towards and i started meditating every day i started doing full moon and dark moon rituals which really were just a set time on the calendar that i got to have a me day yeah like a deep meditative experience yes go through the whole process around it you do a lot with rituals of different kinds which again kind of return to that tracking and like the calendar and feeling that consistency and all of that those have all been super powerful for you and having in my head oh i'm doing this to commune in a spiritual way uh makes me actually do it you know if if i didn't have that i probably wouldn't do it as often as i do so essentially one day i just was really feeling like my pmdd kept happening to me like no matter what i did it was not getting better i really started to feel it push up against you and i wanted to do whatever i could to just take control of the situation so i did a jar spell and it sounds really silly i know but for me spellcrafting is essentially a somatic way of um interacting with your intention yeah so all the herbs and all of these you know little gemstones or whatever that i used they all have a corresponding intention and they engage my senses where i can touch it i can see it so for example rosemary a lot of people can say that it is a protective herb i can smell what protection smells like i can touch it i can look at it i can see it interacting with the other ingredients or intentions that i'm using and for me that's really psychologically healthy and it helps me to really believe that what i'm thinking is real so that night i wrote a list of the things that i no longer wanted and i called in the things that i wanted and put this dry together and it's still sitting out on our shelf and it's been a year since i've done that and the the anchoring that that seemingly little silly jar does for me is a lot because it made me feel like i had some level of control over what was happening and that i had the power to make change and regardless if you know the next couple months i still had some really awful pmdd episodes i could look at it and go oh yeah but i did that i felt agent in my experience and over time i have felt my pmdd become more controlled um and you could you know say that's because i found new resourcing that really helps me um but yeah having that practice and having that spiritual lens also gives me a feeling that like what i'm going through that my suffering is for a greater good and for a greater purpose and when you can zoom out of yourself because pmdd zooms you into this like one little narrow piece of everything's awful you're awful we'll never get better if you can zoom out even an inch into thinking there's something bigger than me and what i'm experiencing is for this like greater thing it brings me a lot of peace and purpose so that i no longer feel like oh this thing is happening to me it's like oh this is happening for me and i get to learn from it and i get to really have a lot of compassion for other people who maybe are going through something similar yeah yeah and the self-compassional element i think has been a huge part of it one of the ways that i've seen you externalize is by literally turning pmdd into like a character outside of yourself you know i forget what the name you gave it like sally sally the pmdd monster there you go up sally's here today because again it makes it not so much about like this is your nature it makes it this is a thing that is happening to you and after fashion i think that the the jar spells the practices the the stones the herbs the plants you know whatever yeah exactly um these are always you know secular spiritual for you to to get a reminder on a daily basis of what your deep values are and what you really care about i mean as people who listen to the podcast now i'm a pretty secular agnostic guy as elizabeth knows i'm a pretty secular agnostic guy she clearly a little bit different um and you know that that historically has not created much friction inside of our relationship if anything it's been like a beautiful and collaborative thing um but one of the things that i've really appreciated about how you talk about those practices in general is with that framework of like maybe something else is going on maybe it isn't but even if it is just the physical realm even if it is just the externalized practice of writing down deliberately this is what i want and here's what i'm going to take on in order to get there that is a very powerful practice and having the physical object in the space that is going nope nope you don't get to forget you don't get to forget here we are we're poking you it's right there you know there's the commitment is huge it's awesome and i i truly authentically think that it's such a useful and powerful practice yeah and just to piggyback off of what you're saying i am a huge believer in that it doesn't matter what keeps bringing you back you know if if you have to go out in you know some robes and yell at the moon you know once a month and rage you know great more power to yeah yeah if that if that allows you to do it every week you know and if say it's something different something as simple as every day i do yoga if that's your way in awesome um i'm really agnostic and i'm not critical on the resources that people need in order to have you know mental health and also a sense of control and peace and calm and i know my path is not for everyone but this is the path that has worked best for me great points mm-hmm great way to put it um i want to ask you a little bit more about some of the internal practices that you do like the psychological stuff basically the stuff inside the coconut okay uh that tends to improve your experience because i've definitely found it's an obvious point but like as your overall mental health has improved your pmdd has also gotten better yeah the two of them have traveled together a little bit it's kind of like one of the things that rick likes to talk about sometimes is improving the climate so that when the bad weather comes along it's not as severe and i've definitely found that you've taken on a lot of real serious psychological work as like a general statement that has had a big impact on both your pmdd and just your overall you know psychological high performance if you want to kind of put it that way and your emotional well-being and health so are there some specific things that you've done that have made a big difference for you yeah therapy go to therapy kids for starters i've been elizabeth this is a pro therapy podcast um no so at the peak um when you know we kind of had a coming to jesus moment of elizabeth this is serious yeah and i was like oh yeah it is um i started seeing a therapist and i started seeing a hypnotherapist and so i was doing therapy twice a week for a couple months um and the therapist really helped me kind of start to calm my system because i was just like completely blown out charged [Music] and we started to unpack some of my trauma and other things that were probably not helping my overall mental health and the hypnotherapist was a very unique and interesting experience um she came from a jungian perspective which i'm a fan of young so spicy but essentially um it was like a guided meditation where i was really put in um these really positive sceneries in my mind and i'm very visual when i meditate so it felt very teleported like i was teleported to another place where i didn't feel all of these things that i have to feel in my everyday life and so she knows who she is and i'm internally grateful for the help that she gave me um and she'd give me probably she gave me probably the most useful phrase that is now my mantra when it comes to pmdd and it was the key that i needed in order to shift the way that i looked at it and she said one day after i just was like losing it i was crying i was saying all of these things like i hate this i hate this and she said well i'm curious if maybe you saw your pmdd as um the time where you cannot escape all the things that you have been suppressing for the entire month beforehand and i was just like wait what and in my head that just snapped something where i thought whoa what if i view this as how lucky am i that my body forces me every week out of the month to process and i don't have a choice in it yeah it my body is so wise that i have to look at it and i have to feel it and when i started looking at it in that perspective it gave me a sense of calm and also purpose to the experience that i had never had before where now this wasn't a thing i was running away from this was a thing that i started to in some ways look forward to because okay it started to also be a clue on where do i need to write these things out and take them to my therapist you know totally yeah um and so as that developed and i started taking that mantra on every month i also started to really learn more about what i need in order to have that steady foundation of mental health and i just need a lot of spaciousness hmm like what is what does that look like well the first thing is i need to be very specific with what my responsibilities are like what i have to do every day and i need to feel like i am in control and in charge of my time because during that week i don't feel in control of anything and so if i'm asked to run a workshop or do a school final or whatever yeah um it's not gonna happen like like i'm gonna freak out um and that usually tails into my good days after where i'm just like stressed and kind of dealing with it afterwards so it really means being spacious with my time where once i know that that week's happening i don't plan anything with anybody i try to get all my schoolwork done beforehand that way if i just need to sit in the middle of the room doing nothing i can do that and also having the autonomy and control as my career develops to be able to take that time so that i can show up for my clients and for the people that i really want to help so fortunately you're in a position right now in your life where you can take that space you're currently going to graduate school you know we're just going through a pretty long summer break right now where there's a lot of spaciousness then just in general in the practice that you're headed toward ideally in a private practice environment you get to control your time a lot you kind of get to choose who you see if you're fortunate enough to have enough clients that you know you can be deliberate and be thoughtful about it and in general those are just situations where you can control your time a lot but i know that you've also been in situations at times where pmdd was happening and you had stuff you had to do you know life moved onward and it's really good to have that general advice around when possible take time for yourself but it's not always possible for people so when you're going through that experience even as it's improved over time as you've tracked it you've prepared for it you do your best to stay in movement you're doing your exercise uh you've done some quality intention setting around it you've externalized your stuff when you're like in it yeah particularly if you also have to be accomplishing something and you can't just shut down are there things that you do internally that make that more bearable i do the exact opposite of what my brain is telling me to do okay what does that look like um it looks like i kind of start acting um okay like i pretend that i am a totally different person okay you take on a persona yeah yeah um you know and this persona is sort of my type a persona where you know i don't care what you need to do you're gonna get it done yeah um and it's a bit aggressive but i need it to be aggressive in order for me to move through all the mental obstacles and walls that the pmdd is like putting up in front of me yeah so it kind of feels like i become this warrior that every day is having to slay the dragon in order for me to write a paper or an order for me to get to that appointment and it is hard yeah it is like slaying a dragon every single day and and this is the thing that i really want to make clear um in my experience with pmdd you need to be able to take time during that that week that you're experiencing it now you can go several months not doing that and doing kind of what i said i did where i become a different person and i'm like fighting the dragon but it will come like the dragon always comes back for you and sometimes it is way worse and so i've tracked that the longer that i do that every month like if i do two months in a row of taking on that now i'm just gonna plow through this i have a extremely debilitating uh episode after so it's not sustainable and the only thing that i've experienced that is sustainable is being very real and honest with myself of going no like i'm not lazy and this isn't a product of you know me being too sensitive it's that my brain and my body are literally putting on the brakes and i have to listen to it one of the things that i've seen you do as a practice sometimes where you feel like you can't believe your brain and you mentioned this a little bit earlier on but i think it really has to do with this is that you really ask people and you get like specific feedback from them that helps you kind of disconfirm what your internal monologue is saying to you like you will ask me specifically forrest are you angry at me right now because i feel like you're angry at me and i'll be like no i i thought we were just doing dishes or something like he does a very inoffensive kind of thing going on and and you're just certain that i'm like pissed at you yeah because that's the stuff that's going on inside of your head and and it's not you it's a thing that's happening to you and it's all of the hormones and the neurotransmitters and this then the other thing freaking out and it's putting it inside of your experience and you're really good about that you ask people often whether you know are are you mad at me what exactly do you want me to do what do you need from me is a question that you ask like and sometimes when you get a little overwhelmed you'll essentially ask for help you'll be like hey what do i need to be doing right now yeah and you'll go through these very specific questions that tend to make things a little bit better yeah no that is absolutely true and um i think the real shame and killer of of this thing is that it isolates you yeah and i think that's the most dangerous thing you can do with it is trying to cope and deal with this on your own um because you're just going to be in a room by yourself with sally the the mdd monster that's just you suck and this is all bad and the world hates you and so having people you trust outside of your pmdd be with you in it give you sort of an anchor and an external voice that you can attach to and that also really helped me separate my sense of i from the pmdd when i was in it um i think that's a really important point by the way right there yeah separating your sense of i from the pmdd i think that's maybe one of the things that you've done that's been the most important because it's such a way to attack the shame that's associated with the experience yeah yeah you know and look i am more of a type a person than you know i appear to be throughout my daily life um but it's really important for me to achieve and to be successful and you know i from the family that i came from it was always you know being a contributing citizen to society and all of that and it has been so painful for me my all of my adult life so far to feel like i've always been slammed from my success where if i didn't have this thing i would have been in grad school years earlier you know i would have whatever and you know that's that's all not real you know that's my brain giving the pmdd so much power over me yeah and like yeah i do have very real limitations during that time um but i can learn to use it to my benefit i can learn to use that time as like a break that i take from this type a personality that really you know wants to do well and take everything on and particularly in the career that i've chosen having introspection and knowing thyself i think is going to be a huge foundation in the work that i do with other people yeah no i think that that's super true um and i've seen a huge change in all of these things as time has gone on and i kind of want to ask you about that so how are things kind of for you now like what does a more typical pmdd episode look like how often is it bad roughly of course there's going to be a huge amount of individual variation here but just kind of getting one take on it well um i want to give a caveat so pmdd is under the depressive mood disorders in the dsm-5 so because of that it's also affected by seasonal depression and i have that on top of pmtd so my pmdd is better now because we're in the summer and i'm not in school currently i have a lot of spaciousness and time and i feel very resourced and i have very little stress um and that really helps me to have less severe episodes yeah um and i am prepared i am and i am also preparing myself for the stress that this next year is going to have where as the fall hits and the winter rolls in i'm going to be a bit more low in my mood i'm going to be more stressed out because i'm starting practicum and my last year of grad school so um i i'm sort of gathering my tools now um to prepare myself to yet again fight the big smog dragon that i know is coming for me november come december yeah so to really answer your question i'm just in a cycle where my pmdd is not that extreme um and i think like it's helped and benefited by all the internal work that i've been doing but i'm really not going to know how it's going to go until it hits me sure yeah yeah particularly given the unique stresses that you're entering into which you haven't experienced before because you haven't been in your last year of graduate school before so and and i think it's hard to say because pmdd is so dependent on our hormones and our cycle you can't ever assume that you have it figured out you have to constantly be a little bit on guard and a little bit curious about oh how's it going to manifest this month because then you're going to be ready you know if you assume oh september's going to be the same as it was in august it's not it's never going to be yeah and you're going to be caught off guard and all of a sudden you're going to find yourself one day crying in front of your laptop over a paper you have to write and relying on your dear partner to get you through it [Laughter] we've we've lived that life yeah yeah um oh man she was so funny yeah i think that you're making a great point here that kind of underlies a lot of the stuff that we just talked about on the podcast in general which is that what often happens with people is they're facing a certain kind of challenge like something hard is going on in their life and so they take up all these great practices that help them meet that challenge and then who who would have known it the challenge gets better wow we're meeting the challenge in this really effective way we're taking on all these practices we're doing all this work and then because it's better they fall off the wagon and they stop doing the practices as frequently and they get a little lazy about the tracking and maybe they're not externalizing things quite as much they're not taking on those agency experiences you know whatever and then all of a sudden things get worse again and it's very natural when that happens for it to feel really devastating because it's been good for a while and so all of a sudden feels like oh my god i thought i had solved this problem and now it's just back yeah yeah no this thank you for saying that because it's made me also have like kind of a self realization in this moment of um i fell into those pitfalls all the time yeah and it really was a lack of consistency because i thought oh it's cured i'm cured you know and i mean i've done a lot of things in the past i've tried diet i was on testosterone and progesterone for a while um just as a caveat i personally never chose to try antidepressants um but i did try other things and it was always through this lens of there must be the magic pill or the magic thing or i outgrow it that then it's over and i'm not gonna have to deal with this and that's just not true yeah and i think mental health is a job yeah it is for sure that is our view on the podcast for sure and if you have you know a condition or you identify as having a disorder it's it's not like this thing that you're going to be able to forget or or throw into the corner no it's a career and so for me my pmdd i treat it like a career yeah where i have these things that i have to do every single day regarding it even when i feel great i have to do them yeah um and you know with careers they grow they change you learn more you try things oh this worked this time this didn't and um you know it's sort of like its own entity that you have to be along the ride for and like i can assure you that it gets better but it gets better because you work at it every single day yeah well i think that was a beautiful roof there elizabeth that was very inspiring i was very like ooh did i rinse you gave me the tingles it was really fantastic no i loved it um and i think it's just like a great a great encapsulation of the whole territory where it is a practice it's a thing you're doing all the time it gets better but it changes you know some months are going to be a little bit better some months are going to be a little bit worse and as we kind of come to the end here if you could give people just like one piece of advice about this what would it be find the practice that you can have a daily relationship with so again i don't care what gets you through the door and i don't care what the door looks like that you're going through all i care about is that you are curious about it every single day and that you're excited for times out of the month that you take to really spend some time with yourself and whatever gets you to it being a habit whether you need to be like me where it becomes more of a ritual you know you go out on the dark moon you feel witchy you come out you smell like mugwort and incense you know like or whether that is you know or or whether that's simply you you know every wednesday you sit in a meditation group yeah like whatever it is do that thing and don't be ashamed and don't feel guilty for your way through the door yeah do we have a little bit of time to do one yeah a little extra we do and i can drop it in somewhere do you want to talk about something else well i would just think it's really valuable for you being a partner to talk about how the pmdd has affected you um because i've looked through a lot of youtube to try you know to learn about pmdd and i see a lot of men who really struggle with it um and a lot of relationships end because of it yeah for sure so i think it's helpful for you to just like take some time to be like really honest yeah yeah okay well great all right um [Music] i mean being frank when when it was really bad things got really tough like it was really bad for a minute in there and um it's challenging because for for you at times it was about a seven to ten day period where it was just very challenging to um have a normal interaction essentially every interaction became about being with somebody who was in a very depressed state or a very angry state or a very frustrated state and it put a lot of pressure on the relationship i would say um and that pressure was one of the things that motivated us to a place of like okay how do we really deal with this in a super focused way there are going to be people in your life where they bring a kind of psychological challenge into the relationship that for whatever reason you just don't want to deal with like you're you're just not there you know you're not there inside of the relationship it's been a relatively short partnership you like the person but you don't love the person and you're like wow this is just a lot for me right now and i think that sometimes it can be okay for people to be really honest with themselves about that and kind of what they're willing to take on inside of a partnership i don't mean that in a callous way i mean in just like a very practical and functional way but we really loved each other you know and i really loved you and um we've been you know obviously we've been together at this point for like four and a half years and when we moved in together we had been together for three years like there was a lot of water under that bridge it was very important to me to preserve the relationship so i was very invested and i think that if you're very invested it can absolutely work and i think that it would have kept working even if things had stayed in a bad place we just would have really had to modify some of our systems around it um some of the things that were really helpful for me are essentially just like the other side of all the things that you said being really prepared um is a huge part preparation is enormous not scheduling things for the time where i suspect you're going to be in kind of a rough place emotionally understanding that they're that it's not your fault you know if i get a reaction from you maybe it's not because of something i did maybe it's just because of the place that you're in of course take appropriate responsibility if it's your fault it's your fault you know don't be a dick all of the standard caveats apply but just in those times being like wow i'm i'm really sorry that you're going through this became kind of my like standard operating phrase and really also moving into a place where i'm not activating your shame yeah i think that a very very important practice for partners who are interested in supporting somebody through pmdd is being extremely attentive to [Music] understandable but misguided judgments that you might have about the experience that they're going through because things can get hard interpersonally it gets very easy to get frustrated and to be like you know to have to have an energy around it of this is your fault um and i think that there have been times in the past where you know after three or four bad months in a row i was just like you know oh my god you know can we can we not do this and the answer of course is like well it's not your fault it's not a choice that you're making and really getting clear about that internally i think is extremely important for partners yeah like to bounce back because i know i've been speaking more towards people who have it or who may have it um my advice for partners out there who are with someone who has pmdd or who maybe are thinking that maybe their partner does because sometimes it's very hard for the person experiencing it to know or to track um like my mom had to tell me that something was very abnormal um know that however bad you are feeling your partner feels it a hundred times worse yeah and they are doing their best to keep it from you yeah and the stuff that seeps out shows you just how much suffering they're going through um so the more compassion that you can hold even when your partner cannot be compassionate towards themselves is really supportive and helpful yeah yeah no i think that's been a huge part of our relationship with that um and increasing awareness on on my part of that fact where it's like okay you're feeling this but you're feeling this a degree removed from your experience of it um and it really does just clarify like how tough it can be for people and how much of a challenge it can be to go through yeah but there's hope but there's hope but there's hope you've shared a lot of really really good practices today um i will recap some of them in a second in our little outro but again elizabeth thanks so much for doing this with me today i think this has been really helpful for people i hope so and you know i enjoy being a helper and i feel so special you let me on your podcast yeah hey i hope that people really liked it obviously it was a little bit different but i hope that people had a really great time listening as good a time as i had recording it because obviously i like talking with you a lot so this was really lovely and today we talked about pmdd

Channel: Forrest Hanson

Views: 88,768

Keywords: pmdd, Psychology, mental health, mind, brain, therapist, psychologist, being well, being, well, forrest hanson, therapy, mindful, compassion, mindfulness, confident, confidence, resilient, calm, anxiety, anger, intimacy, intimate, forgive, forgiveness, family, meditation, trauma, self-help, self, help, relationships, relationship, love, brain science, science, fear, behavioral psychology

Id: g4EAYa1Rwdc

Length: 57min 56sec (3476 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021