Speaker 1 (00:20):
PMDD shaped my life for 17 years before I could name it, I spent those years searching for answers, questioning my sanity, and desperately seeking treatments that actually worked. My painful journey had an unexpected twist. Helping others heal from PMDD became my life's purpose. Hi, I'm Jess, a board certified nutritional therapist coach, the founder of her mood mentor and your host. This is PMDD PEP Talk, A weekly reminder that your suffering is real, your experience is valid, and your future is brighter than your symptoms suggest. Each week, we're going to explore the truths about PMDD that nobody talks about, the kind of truths that shift something deep inside you and make you think maybe there's more possible than I imagined. Whether you're in the depths of luteal darkness or riding the clarity of your follicular phase, you're exactly where you need to be because here's what I know for sure.
(01:18):
Healing PMDD isn't just about managing symptoms, it's about transforming your life. This challenge, as brutal as it can be, is an invitation to know yourself more deeply and live a more joyful purpose-filled life. PMDD might feel like your whole story, but it's just a chapter and you get to write what comes next. Welcome to PMDD, PEP Talk, quick pep talk, pause. Remember that everything we talk about here is meant to educate and inspire. Always team up with your healthcare provider for personal medical advice. All right, now let's get into it. Welcome back, or if this is your first time, welcome for the first time today, we are going to be talking about one of the most common things I hear from the PMDD community, and it's really a mindset problem. So when it comes to reducing and managing PMS and PMM DD symptoms, like when it comes to any health condition or any mental health condition, there's some mindset work that needs to be done.
(02:29):
And this can seem nebulous and maybe a little bit of woo woo, but it's so important when it comes to PMDD because there's so much negativity that is tied in with PMDD. And I hear this saying, and I used to say this, so first I just want to validate and acknowledge how common and frustrating it is to feel this way and to have this mindset. But the saying is, I've tried everything and nothing's worked, or some version of that. So let me know if you've felt this or if you've said this. It's so common. I hear it all the time for my students and clients, and I really just want to start to deconstruct this limiting belief. But in order to do this, I want to introduce you to mindset work. To get started, there was this woman named Carol Dweck. She was a Stanford University psychologist in the seventies, and she had a book in 2006 that was very popularized called Mindset, the New Psychology of Success.
(03:38):
And she comes forward with this idea about two different mindsets, and we're going to get into the core distinctions between these two mindsets because I think laying that foundation of understanding is really important before we start to deconstruct this whole limiting belief, this whole idea of I've tried everything and nothing has worked. So in Carol Dweck's work, she says there are two mindsets that she sees in her work as a psychologist, she sees people that are utilizing a growth mindset and people who are utilizing a fixed mindset. And so this, I've tried everything and nothing worked, falls into the fixed mindset category because it's decided. It's determined there's nowhere to go next. It's a dead end. After I've tried everything and nothing worked, okay, guess there's just no hope for you, then guess there's no way forward. That's how it feels to live with BMDD.
(04:47):
Again, I want to validate that this is so common, but we're working to challenge this limiting belief and this fixed mindset. So let's talk a little bit about fixed mindset. So you can start to recognize these in your day-to-day. See where else you are utilizing fixed mindsets over growth mindsets. So a fixed mindset is about your belief, your belief about your abilities, your intelligent, your talents, believing that these are static, unchangeable. A fixed mindset can often also lend towards avoiding challenges for fear of failure. I'm in the luteal phase while I'm filming this, so you can tell I'm struggling to connect my brain with my words and my voice. So stick with me here because I still need to film podcast episodes and film videos when I'm in my luteal phase, and I want you to see what that looks like firsthand. So little A DHD, tangent.
(05:48):
Back to fixed mindsets. People who hold more fixed mindsets can take criticism very personally. This can also be common with rejection sensitivity dysphoria that comes along with PMDD. People with fixed mindsets tend to give up easily when facing obstacles and often used phrases like, I'm just not good at this, or I can't do this, or I've tried everything and nothing has worked. So let's contrast that with a growth mindset. When we have a growth mindset, we believe in our abilities, we believe in our intelligence, and we believe in our talents. We believe that they can be developed through our efforts, learning and practice rather than their static, fixed and unchangeable. So there's a hopefulness with a growth mindset. We also see with growth mindsets that these people who are having more growth mindsets view challenges as opportunities to grow, that they learn from criticism and see failure as an opportunity to growth rather than a representation about something about their character or who they are as a person.
(07:05):
They embrace challenges and persist in the face of setbacks, people who are employing a growth mindset, and then they can find inspiration in others' success rather than being threatened by other success. And with a growth mindset, we're going to use phrases like, I can learn to do this. Mistakes help me learn. And maybe we shift that I've tried everything and nothing worked to, there's more I can try and I'm hopeful that something will help. That's just off the cuff. But something like that, that's important to shift, recognize the mindset we're having, recognizing the language that we're repeating in our heads, and then working to shift that over time. But being aware of these two mindsets is really helpful as we're setting out to challenge and deconstruct the limiting belief that you've tried everything and nothing has worked. So when it comes to PMDD, pretty much everything feels impossible during the luteal phase when you're symptomatic.
(08:11):
But I want to put it in perspective in that we're always learning more about PMDD. More research studies are coming out, more resources are being created by people like me. So there's always more. Also, even working with A-P-M-D-D expert, they're not going to know every single thing under the sun. I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of endless different protocols, endless different remedies that you could use from all different forms of medicine. We can move into Chinese medicine, we can move into western medicine, we can move into homeopathy. We can move into so many different realms of medicine and approaches tons of different modalities with counseling. So lots of options, and I want to share a personal example of discovering new approaches. So when I started out on my PMDD journey, well, first of all, I lived for 17 years undiagnosed and misdiagnosed. So I didn't know PMDD was a thing.
(09:22):
I tried antipsychotics, SSRIs, antidepressants. SSRIs are antidepressants. I've tried birth controls, different forms of antidepressants other than SSRIs. And when I finally got the PMDD diagnosis, I was so relieved because it was like, oh, okay, now I have an accurate diagnosis, so maybe I can access and receive more accurate treatment. But then I was handed over the same solutions. Oh, you have PMDD, you can take an antidepressant or you can take birth control. Those are the only options. So I was really stuck in a limited mindset of I have tried everything and it didn't work most of the time, it made things worse for me. It worsened my symptoms. So that's where I landed with this limiting mindset of I've tried everything and nothing's worked. What I didn't understand is that I had tried everything within one realm of medicine that one type of practitioner was offering.
(10:25):
I didn't realize that there were so many more options. So this all or nothing thinking is very dangerous and it's very easy to get stuck in this all or nothing thinking if maybe you don't have support to help you understand the vast array of approaches that you can take to any health condition or you don't have anyone there coaching you through limiting beliefs. So I hope sharing that story was helpful, but now I want to break down kind of the next stage of deconstruction with this sentence. I've tried everything and nothing has worked. Okay, well first we have to define trying and what you were trying. So this is a source of intervention. We're trying things, okay, what were you trying? Were you trying things that you randomly saw on the internet that are maybe very irrelevant to you and your life and your symptoms? Or were you trying personalized recommendations from a practitioner? Not saying one is better or worse. I'm just saying, what were you trying and why were you trying it? Let's get clear on that. You could make a list of these things that could be helpful.
(11:57):
Again, I want you to think then in all of the things that you were trying, were they generic recommendations or were they tailored to you? Not only your specific symptoms but your life and your interests? So when we're working through lifestyle and diet changes with clients and say we're working on blood sugar regulation, I could give you 10 different recommendations for helping support more stable glucose and insulin levels. Those recommendations are going to be dependent on a lot of factors, all of which are specific to you and your lifestyle and your interests. So we need to look when it comes to blood sugar regulation, I could give you tips in sleep. I could give you tips in diet. I could give you tips in stress management. I could give you tips in movement, but that's all going to be dependent on what your status in all of those areas are, what your interest is and what we really feel like is driving blood sugar dysregulation for you. So if I give you just a random tip without considering all of those factors, it's probably not going to work for you in the same way that it would if I personalized it to your life, your symptom drivers.
(13:20):
And then there is the factor of considering going at it alone versus working with a qualified practitioner. So you're trying things on your own. You maybe don't know how to implement the suggestion. You don't really know the range of options for that suggestion. So say we're working with, again, let's just use the blood sugar regulation example since we're talking about that. Say we're working in nutrition. Say we're working to use nutrition to stabilize your blood sugar. Well, again, there's going to be so many options there. We have to evaluate what's doable for you, what is going to make the biggest quickest difference for you and say that you are vegan, that's going to completely change the recommendations if you weren't vegan. And were trying to use protein as a tool to regulate your blood sugar. So I'm getting into the weeds a little bit there, but I just cannot emphasize enough how vast the realm of trying even is.
(14:31):
So think about that when you're saying things like, I've tried everything and nothing has worked. What does trying mean? How have you been trying it? Is it personalized to you? Are you doing it alone? Next, we need to look at the quality of implementation that you were using to try it. So what was the consistency? Were you consistent with trying? What does consistency look like for you? If you're somebody living with a DHD and we're talking about consistency, it's going to look very different to a neurotypical person's consistency. So when you were trying the thing, how consistent were you and what does that mean for you? Then what was the duration of the trying? Did you try it for two days? Did you try it for a week? Did you try it for two weeks? Did you try it for a month? Did you try it for three months?
(15:25):
When it comes to lifestyle and diet change, these things take time. So duration really matters. Were you implementing the trying tactics properly? I can't tell you how many students and clients come to work with me and they're working on sleep hygiene and or movement, and they have the wrong idea about using lifestyle and diet tools to support the female body. They're doing HIIT workouts every day of the week, or they're just trying to sleep as much as possible. Again, just random examples, but there is proper implementation to some of these protocols, some of these tactics that you're trying.
(16:19):
And then we also have to consider the role of tracking and documentation. So it's hard to know is something helping? Is it neutral? Is it making it worse? There's kind of a spectrum there. So if you're not collecting the data to get a baseline before you start trying something, I like to use symptom mapping for this. You can see your symptom pattern over the entire course of the menstrual cycle. You get a baseline, and then we target symptoms based on that baseline. If you don't have that information to start out and you're just going on this willy nilly, I think I know what's going on. I think I know how I feel, and then I'm trying something and I'm trying to tell if it's working or not. You really don't have a foundation to know if it's working or not, if you're not collecting that data.
(17:08):
And again, that can be challenging for a lot of us, especially those of us with a DHD. So we have to find a way to make this work for you, but you're really setting yourself up. You're really not giving yourself a fair chance if you say you tried something, but then you have no unit of measure to tell how that something impacted you. You're just going off of based of what you feel, and a lot of factors impact how you feel. So many factors. And so it's just not true. You're not founding that belief of I tried everything based on factual evidence. And then it's also really important to have support and accountability. So as you were trying these things, did you have support and accountability? In what role did that play in the duration, in the quality of your try, your ability to be consistent in the way that that looks and works for you.
(18:16):
All of these things are really important. Another thing we need to consider here is the context and timing of your try. So like I said, a lot of factors impact how you feel. So say you tried something during a very stressful time in your life, someone died or you were removing or you were starting a new job or you had just lost a job. There's a lot of other lifestyle factors that are happening at the time of you trying something that can impact the outcome of your try. Also, what hormonal phase were you in when you started trying the thing? So there are four phases of the menstrual cycle. We're trying to reduce and manage symptoms that haven't in the luteal phase and maybe into the menstrual phase. So you need quite a bit of time of trying something to see, okay, how does the trying work when I'm in the menstrual phase?
(19:21):
How does the trying work and feel when I'm in the follicular phase? How does the trying work and feel when I'm in the ovulatory phase? How does the trying work and feel when I'm in the luteal phase? And then if you only try it for a week or two weeks, you're not actually seeing how that impacts your entire cycle. And when it comes to follicular development, it takes 90 days for the follicle to mature and to prepare the egg that you're ovulating each cycle. So that means a stressor that's happening to you now or something that you're trying now could impact you for the next two, three menstrual cycles. So we really have to zoom out and take all of this into consideration. There's a lot of complexity happening here if we're really trying to evaluate the statement and question the statement of, I tried everything and nothing worked, and if it's true or not, which I think you're starting to see by the fact that we're deep into this conversation and this video, but the hormonal state and the cycle phase in which you try something and the duration of which you try it, considering that the menstrual cycle has those four phases and is 28 ish days long, varies for everyone.
(20:42):
Another huge factor to consider. And then you want to zoom out and see what other factors could have impacted the success of that try. There's going to be more, how much stress were you under? How was your sleep at that time? How many endocrine disrupting chemicals were you exposed to? What was the season of the year in your light environment? Because trying something in winter is not going to be the same as trying something in summer. If you're out there getting UVA and UVB rays, which are giving you more endorphins and you're feeling better overall, again, so many factors, we can't even get into them all. And this short chat here. And then once you're evaluating all of that, when it comes to your try, you want to ask why something that didn't work before?
(21:34):
Why wouldn't it work? Now our bodies are changing. Our lives changing just because you just tried something in the past and it didn't work. Then considering all of these factors that we just covered about the try and the complexity of the try, do you understand that things can change and something that didn't work in the past might work now, work now, something that worked in the past might not work. Now. Your bodies and your life circumstance change over time. So we really have to consider that context and that timing of the try. We have to consider going back the implementation, the quality of the implementation. Then we have to go back to the source of the intervention where we're getting the recommendation, and then after that, we're still deconstructing this limiting belief. Let's dive into working what works. I tried everything and nothing works. What does work mean to you? So let's start out with kind of setting some realistic expectations here. What are you looking for when you want something to work or when you say something didn't work? What are you looking for? What does work mean to you?
(23:00):
I've asked people in my community what work means to them and they say, cured, okay, I get it. You want to be cured, but if you're going into trying something with an expectation that for it to work, it means you will be cured of your PMDD symptoms. Oh, I hate to say this because this is PM DD pep talk. We're trying to pep you up here, but you're going to be disappointed forever. Nothing is ever going to work because there's no cure to mood, to a mood disorder. You can learn to reduce and manage your symptoms. And I mean, this is so nuanced. We can do a whole nother talk about cure. I have a lot more to say.
(23:48):
Maybe there is a cure, but there's no treatment within Western medicine that can cure you of PMDD. So you have to question your expectation and maybe do some mindset work around that expectation as you're setting up to try things. What is really important to know about the human body is that symptoms are a message. Symptoms are information. Symptoms aren't there to make you suffer and to make you feel as bad as you do, although that's what they are doing. They're communicating something about your body and your organ function and the state of your health. So it's really important to understand that small changes can make a big difference. That doesn't feel true when you're in a pm DD episode. When you're very escalated, it's going to feel like the remedy needs to match the severity of the symptom, right? I'm in full-blown panic attack. I need to take a cold shower to shock myself out of it.
(24:59):
Or a lot of my clients just say, I need a lobotomy, or I need an ectomy to remove my organs. I need some severe intervention. I need a strong pharmaceutical medication to match the intensity of my symptom. But that's a misunderstanding of the human body. That's a misunderstanding of what symptoms are. And that's good news because small changes can make a big difference. So when we're thinking about redefining what work means for you if something is working or not, we have to hold that the truth, that small changes can make a big difference. And even though you're having very severe symptoms, making small tweaks can over time create a big improvement in both the severity of your symptoms and the duration that those symptoms are lasting for. And again, coming back to redefining what work means, we have to think about the fact that progress isn't linear.
(25:59):
So many clients and students come to work with me and they want to see this just trajectory of health, just like their symptoms are continually reducing and getting better, and they're managing them better forever, and it's just this upward trajectory. I get it. We want that. Of course we do. But that's just not how healing works. It's more of a two steps forward, one step back. And you also have to understand, and you really need to get that foundational reproductive health education because you need to know that every menstrual cycle is unique and a huge complexity of factors play into the quality of your menstrual cycle, the quality of your ovulation and the severity of your symptoms each cycle. And then we zoom out for that time that it takes for follicular development thinking three months of an impact. So progress is not going to be linear. And just because you improve your symptoms one month and then you have a harder time the next month, that's where you need that education to be able to zoom out and say, why And what can I do and not get mired the hard part, easier said than done, not get mired in another limiting mindset of it's not working because it's not that simple. It's just not, probably is not the truth.
(27:30):
And then when we're talking about working what works, I've tried everything and nothing works. How are you measuring your success? And this is where the importance of baseline symptom mapping comes in. And then we need to think about, okay, so if we're talking about what works with PMDD, there are different types of improvements that we might see. We might see symptom reduction, we might see improved recovery time. We might see better relationships. We might see enhanced self-awareness, on and on and on and on. I could just keep going for days there about what you might see as an improvement. So this is why it's really important to define and then if need be, redefine what works means to you.
(28:22):
The tools for assessment when you're looking to measure your success, I'm going to recommend symptom mapping. This is a free resource that I created for you. You can access this in our PMDD rehab community, and it's going to help you measure your progress more objectively over time. It's going to provide documentation for you should you be seeking out a diagnosis, and it's going to provide the documentation for you of your baseline. And then from cycle to cycle, as you're implementing targeted changes, you can see on the page what is shifting as far as your symptom duration and your symptom severity goes. It's not necessarily directly going to reflect some of those other types of improvements, which you can learn more about what those can look like and how to achieve those in the PM MDD rehab course. And we talk about this a lot in our pm DD rehab community calls, but you're really looking for patterns over time.
(29:28):
So to really wrap up our little pep talk here on reframing, I've tried everything and nothing works to, I haven't found my right combination yet, or I'm still finding my way in feeling better with PMTD that has hope. I've tried everything and nothing works is a closed door. So you need to reframe that sentence for yourself. Now, knowing what you know as we went through dissecting both understanding what I've tried everything means and dissecting and understanding what work means so important. And so I really encourage you to continue to hold out hope while you're acknowledging the challenges that come along with a reproductive mood disorder. And then for a call to action for you or your action steps, what I really want to encourage you to do is to start symptom mapping so you can get that baseline symptom pattern charted out. And then to really start to work on sit down with a pen and paper or open your notes app and just if you're one of us who said, I've tried everything and nothing works, start to flesh out what that means to you.
(30:55):
What have you tried? How did you try it? Who was recommending it to you? Was it generic? Was it personalized? What was the consistency and duration of your try? What was the context and timing of your try? And then go in and start to journal on, start to work out. Start to meditating on what works means to you and remembering that small improvements make a big difference. And that progress is not always linear. And that baseline measurement is so important. If you're really trying to quantify the improvements in your symptoms and remembering that all improvements working doesn't equal solely reduced symptoms and severity or duration, it can also equal better managed symptoms. It can also equal having more energy, having more time, having more joy, having more pleasure works can look differently for everyone. That was a lot. Thanks for riding that wave with me. Management really is a journey. It's not a destination. So I'd love to hear your takeaways from this chat, and I would love to hear how things start to shift for you as you turn more towards a growth mindset than a fixed or limited mindset.
