Speaker 1 (00:00:20):
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.
(00:01:18):
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. All right. Hello, this is Jess from her Mood mentor, and today I'm going to get real. I'm nervous to have this conversation. We're going to be talking about self-harm, the link to PMDD, the surprising and disturbing research that has come out recently in this area, linking self-harming behaviors and suicidal ideations to PMDD.
(00:02:22):
And I want to share a little bit about my experience with this. It's something that we touch on a lot in our social media platform because we believe that PMDD awareness is suicide prevention, but it's different in a long form conversation. We can get a little bit more into the weeds, and I want to share what I've recognized living through PMDD, undiagnosed and misdiagnosed for 17 years, and then what I've learned in the last six, seven years, working with the population, working with the women, going through this, and the patterns that I've been able to identify that result in these tendencies getting stronger and stronger over time. And my dad is here. Hi, to have this conversation with us.
Speaker 2 (00:03:09):
I'm really looking forward to this one.
Speaker 1 (00:03:11):
Yes, because it really plays into the importance of a support network as you're going through what you're going through, and it will all make sense why he's here. But just to dive into the conversation I want to share, and before we dive in, again, we're talking about self harm. We're talking about suicidal ideation associated with PMDD, premenstrual Dysphoric disorder. Yes, this is the PMDD PEP Talk podcast. This might not sound so peppy here, but again, we have to have these conversations. We have to talk about this because women are losing their lives to this condition, and I don't see enough people just full on facing the conversation. So if this isn't a conversation you want to listen to, if it's too triggering, save it for later. You can bypass this one. If you are feeling any active or passive thoughts around this. Again, make sure to reach out to your network. The suicide hotline internationally is 9 8 8. If you need to dial that and talk to someone that is there for you. We are not clinical counselors
Speaker 2 (00:04:22):
Here. I sold office supplies.
Speaker 1 (00:04:24):
He has no credentials in this area. We cannot facilitate you through crisis. We have resources that we can direct you to. This is more a conversation about the experience and the precursors is what I want to say, the precursors that I have seen to the self-harming behaviors that develop over time. So
Speaker 2 (00:04:47):
Can I interrupt real quick? And I'm the dad, so I'm coming at it from the dad's point of view. So as you watch this video, if anything resonates to you but you don't know how to talk to your dad, the dad, I'm not the brother, I'm not the boyfriend, I'm not the husband, and I'm not the mom, then you can show this video to dad and that might help bridge the understanding because I had zero clue. Go ahead.
Speaker 1 (00:05:12):
Which is why he's here because we're going to get into that. But first I want to share just the really shocking statistic that came out in a 2022 study in BMC Psychiatry. This was a survey of 2,689 people. 99 were PMDD patients that were, wow, 599 were PMDD patients that were confirmed. The study is called Prevalence of Lifetime, Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors, and a global Sample of 599 patients reporting prospectively Confirmed Diagnosis with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It's a mouthful, but if you want to look it up, we will link it in the show notes. This is the research that we are citing, and this is the research that shook not only the PMDD world, but everyone else that's coming into the PMDD world learning about it is going to be shocked by these statistics. Again, this is just one study. We definitely want more research to explore this topic, but it is very disturbing, very eyeopening and very accurate.
(00:06:36):
I will say from again, me living through this undiagnosed and misdiagnosed for 17 years and then me working in the community for going on, I'm in my seventh year, so I'm going to read these statistics. So just buckle up, take a seat because it's not pretty. Out of those 599 patients with PMDD, 72% of individuals with PMDD experience, suicidal thoughts, 49% have made a specific plan to end their life, and 34% have attempted suicide at some point. 34%, let me repeat that, have attempted suicide. So when I say PMDD awareness is suicide prevention, I'm not hyping this up here. This is reality. So we really need, there's a lot of trigger warnings around these conversations. There's a lot of, this isn't so pretty to bring up and talk about. This is necessary. We have to have these conversations. We have to bring this into the light because what we're going to get into next are the precursors to that, and one of the primary precursors that I see is that this is hidden, that we are experiencing this condition. While some of us can mask better than others, we aren't fully communicating the intensity that we are experiencing psychological symptoms that come along with PMDD, and by not sharing that, we're putting ourselves at risk, our lives at risk actually, because we're not getting the support that we need ultimately. Anything you want to add to this so far?
Speaker 2 (00:08:23):
Well, my gosh, I could go on for hours about it, but I think that we do things in life thinking that everybody else is going through what we're going through. Do you kind agree with that?
(00:08:37):
That this situation happened and this is how I feel it should be, but yet, if you had a hundred people and you gave them the same situation, you get a hundred different answers. And let's face it, we all do something stupid. It's like, good God, I don't deserve a house to live in. I'm stupid, blah, blah, blah. And then it goes away and you move right along. If this is happening 30 times a day over a two week period every single month, that is not normal. So when you talk about, to me, when you talk about is it suicidal ideation,
Speaker 1 (00:09:09):
Let's use
Speaker 2 (00:09:12):
And now let's switch it too. We want to harm other people.
Speaker 1 (00:09:16):
Well, that's a conversation for another day.
Speaker 2 (00:09:18):
No, but now you're going, the people that are watching this that are thinking about self-harming themselves, if you flip that where you didn't want to harm yourself, you wanted to harm other people, that's going to be foreign to you to listen to this, right? Because it's all about you want to harm yourself and that's not normal, and then you want to harm other people. Well, that's not normal either. So if you knew somebody that wanted to climb the clock tower to hurt other people, you would say, oh, you need some help.
Speaker 3 (00:09:46):
But
Speaker 2 (00:09:46):
You're the same person that's wanting to harm yourself, and you don't say you need the help because you think that's just the way everybody is, and that's not the way God created you. That's not the way you want to live your life. That's not the way your parents and the people that love you want to live your life. And I'm going to jump way far ahead. You were what, 27 before I ever found you were 30? No, you got married. You were like 31 years old before I ever knew. I knew that she had some self-harm, but I thought it was like a one and done type thing. So we had from 13 to 30 at least, that I had no earthly clue. I knew that she had sabotaged lots and lots of stuff, which is also a form of self-harm, but I did not know the extent of the self-harm thoughts that were going through your head a lot,
Speaker 1 (00:10:40):
Right? And we're going to get into what our retrospect on that is. But this, I'm also bringing this conversation up because we just did a story share interview with one of our graduates from our program, and after we finished the recording, she launched into talking more about it and how part of her wins going through the program was that she is now communicating with her family about what she's going through and sharing these things and how much that has changed her experience of managing and reducing her symptoms. And this is a woman in her twenties. And so it reminded me of the experience that I had with my family where again, I never told them. And so it went on a lot longer than luckily it went on for our client that I'm mentioning here. But it just reminded me how important it is to have this conversation, how important it's for me to share my experience, my client's experiences, and then allow me to share the patterns that I'm seeing down in the dirt working with these women every single day, having conversations single day with women who are going through this.
(00:11:55):
I have a different perspective than a lot of other people because they don't work with the PMD community and live and breathe this day to day. So I have recognized some things I think are going to be really helpful for you, and I'm really curious to hear if this resonates, please reach out, send me a dm, leave a review on how this conversation has impacted you for the PMD PEP Talk podcast. Reach out to us. We would love to hear if this resonates, what comes up for you if you're willing to have this conversation with us, because this is one conversation, many more need to be had, but I cannot overemphasize enough how important it is that we are here today, that we're having this conversation and painting the picture of how a woman goes from feeling like themselves for two weeks and then feeling like a different person and how that escalates into wanting to delete themselves from the world.
(00:12:56):
It is a process. It plays out. And while there can be a light switch experience with PMDD of, I feel like me now, I don't that Jekyll and Hyde, the reason we're so commonly misdiagnosed as bipolar, there's a lot more to unpack underneath this that leads to that 72% of individuals who experienced suicidal thoughts versus the 49 who have made 49% who have made a plan versus the 34% who have attempted. And I think if some of these women would've had this education, this conversation before, it would change the way that it has played out for them.
Speaker 2 (00:13:39):
Well, and that's a very small sample.
Speaker 1 (00:13:41):
There's
Speaker 2 (00:13:41):
330 million Americans. There's easily 180 million women. You're talking 500 and less than 600 people that participated in the study. You're talking less than 200 that officially had
Speaker 1 (00:13:54):
PMDD. No, 600 had
Speaker 2 (00:13:56):
Oh, 600 still. It is not even a percentage. It is not even a 0.001. And Jessica's talking from her point of view to the women, I'm here for the dads because I'm here to tell you it's 2025 and my life is perfect. I mean, I would not trade.
Speaker 1 (00:14:16):
It is not perfect.
Speaker 2 (00:14:17):
It is perfect for me. I am so happy. Everything in my life is great. I've been retired for five years, retired four years before I was even eligible for social security. Everything in my life is perfect dad. But if she was not here, there would be nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:14:37):
Yeah, I know this is going to be a really emotional conversation if you're watching on YouTube. We're embracing right now. He's hugging me because it's really hard for him to know that I was going through this for so long and I didn't talk to him about it or my mother about it. And he is looking back now and he's feeling the pain of that reality and also seeing what if I acted or what if any of my actions resulted in me actually deleting myself from their lives from the world. It's a hard conversation to have. And there's no shortage of tears that may come out in this, and this is going to be a little longer. We like to generally keep our chats to around 20 minutes. This may take a little bit longer.
Speaker 2 (00:15:29):
And you have no Kleenex. All we got is little pieces of paper.
Speaker 1 (00:15:32):
Yeah, I should have brought Hank in
Speaker 2 (00:15:33):
Here. I didn't think I was going to be cry.
Speaker 1 (00:15:36):
Well, this is the real deal.
Speaker 2 (00:15:39):
This is for the dads.
Speaker 1 (00:15:40):
Yeah, for everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:15:43):
Maybe the little brothers older grip.
Speaker 1 (00:15:45):
It's for everyone. So you're getting to see some of our A DHD dynamics laying out here. So I think we already talked about the study revealing the shocking link between self-injurious thoughts and behaviors and PMDD, so you have that foundation. Something else I want to point out that's very clear in the research, we'll do separate episodes on this, but there's a huge trauma link between PMDD and trauma, whether it be childhood trauma, young adult trauma, adult trauma. And because of the trauma link also I think underpins all of the research that's out there around severe premenstrual symptoms and PMDD and your HP axis dysregulation. You're like, what does that mean? HPA access, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis is an endocrine axis that controls your stress response system. If you're watching my dad's face, he's like, can you
Speaker 3 (00:16:50):
Say
Speaker 1 (00:16:50):
This in a normal way? It's your fight or flight response. It's how you're responding to stress. And we see, because PMDD is not a hormone imbalance, not that we can't have hormone imbalance alongside PMDD, it is a sensitivity in the brain to the normal fluctuations of sex hormones. And this axis is tied in with your hypothalamic pituitary ovarian axis, which is making you have a cycle. There are some simple way to put this crossed wires. Some things are not firing adequately, and so trauma obviously is going to be linked to your stress response, but the stress response, the ability to handle stress, the ability to navigate stress is also tied to PMDD. So I just want you to know that there's a lot of research that's underpinning trauma and your stress system dysregulation to PMDD, and that absolutely plays into self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. I don't need to paint that picture.
(00:17:51):
You understand that, right? That's coming through. Okay, so before we get into talking about my story more, I want to share some of those patterns that I'm seeing living through this and then facilitating growth and healing and symptom reduction in management for many, many women over the last seven years. And this is going to be perfect, but hang in here with me. One of the things that I see, one of the patterns is that rarely do you just wake up and want to exit the simulation. You want to remove yourself. One of my clients said it like this, delete themselves. And I thought that was such a kind of fun way to talk about a not fun thing. You don't wake up and just want to die. There is a culmination of pain and suffering that drives that urge to increase, increase, increase over time.
(00:18:59):
Confusion plays a lot into that. Absolutely. The confusion of what is happening is this normal. I've tried everything. I've not gotten a diagnosis that fits the confusion, absolutely underpins self-interest, thoughts and behaviors because you have no hope. You start to lose hope. You don't know what to do, you don't know where to go, and the confusion is going to drive. So the lack of education and the lack of understanding around how hormones impact our moods is a precursor to suicidal ideation. Another major precursor that I see, and I think this comes kind of first, is that those psychological symptoms that come alongside PMDD, so you ovulate, these symptoms start happening for many. Sometimes they can come a little later in the cycle, but it's going to be during that luteal phase. So we're talking 7, 10, 14 days that you're experiencing these symptoms, which that's another precursor.
(00:20:04):
The amount of days that you're navigating This reduces your resilience to navigate it as those days tick on and as you are worn down, that is going to be another precursor. How many days of the cycle, every single cycle are you experiencing these symptoms? Another major precursor that I see that's going to come along with the symptoms, obviously if we're experiencing psychological symptoms, anxiety, depression, fatigue, brain fog, feeling out of control, feeling easily overwhelmed, the thing that I see most commonly as you're experiencing those negative symptoms and they start to compound, there's a massive negativity bias that comes along with PMDD. And in that negativity bias is what are called in psychology, automatic negative thoughts. Ants. This is something we exclusively work so much on with our one-to-one clients. We have an entire lesson, an entire workbook available to you. If you're looking for support around this, the workbook is available to everyone.
(00:21:13):
The lesson in PMM DD rehab is there where we're talking about PMDD and self-sabotage and how automatic negative thoughts play into this. So we have lots of resources for this. It's so important. You cannot, I don't think fully reduce and manage your symptoms without doing this type of work, but with that negativity bias, and I don't need to tell you, I can see you nodding your head in your car while you're cleaning the house, listening to this. I see you right now. The automatic negative thoughts come in, and those automatic negative thoughts are going to be most commonly directed toward yourself, but then they're also going to be commonly directed towards those closest to you. And these are the thoughts of, I'm not pretty enough. I'm not skinny enough, I'm worthless. I fail at everything. I am useless. I can't do this. If we narrow it down, it's I'm too fill in the blank, or I'm not fill in the blank enough.
(00:22:04):
And then the thoughts that are then projected on those closest to you are the same there too. Fill in the blank. They're not fill in the blank enough. And then what happens? Because you are already in a low energy, low mental health state is the rumination. Now, I see this as much stronger in clients who are experiencing A DHD alongside P-M-D-D-O-C-D alongside PMDD. But what happens is those thoughts click on during the luteal phase when peppy estrogen is no longer here, progesterone is coming on board. You're having that negative reaction to those hormone fluctuations, and those negative thoughts get a grip in your mind. And they're not just negative thoughts about your life, they're negative thoughts about yourself, what you're capable of. It just starts to spiral. And just like you cannot hit a hammer on your leg 25 times in a row and get a bruise, you will get a bruise.
(00:23:07):
You cannot think I'm worthless 25 times in one minute. And then one minute becomes two minutes. Two minutes becomes 20 minutes, 20 minutes becomes an hour. An hour becomes seven hours. Seven hours becomes 14 days. Okay, 10 to 14 days. You can't have those thoughts and not end up with self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. It's just the automatic negative thoughts are one of the biggest, one of the most primary precursors to suicidal ideation. And I've never heard anyone talk about this, and that's why I'm getting so worked up and so passionate about it because I feel like it is a huge gap in what's being offered. And we talk about this gap a lot. We talk about how PMDD falls at the intersection of mental health and gynecology or the medical profession, and there's a referral process happening where you get referred to counseling, then you get referred to your doctor or gynecologist.
(00:24:13):
You get referred to counseling and back and forth, and women are falling in between this gap. And while the automatic negative thoughts do fall in the mental health realm, they're not seeing what's really playing out for someone with PMDD because they're not living through it. So they're not able to bring this awareness through the profession to the degree that they should be, I think, in my opinion. But living through this, that is huge. So what happens that then plays out is you start having these automatic negative thoughts about yourself, your life, those around you. It's fueling low, again, fueling that negativity bias that's already there. It's then fueling feeling out of control. It's then fueling the overwhelm, which is further dysregulating your nervous system, your stress response system, and then you behave out of that state. So then your behaviors, how you're showing up to work, how you're showing up in your relationships, how you're showing up for your self-care, confirm those beliefs.
(00:25:18):
I'm worthless. Well, I can't even feed myself well. I can't even perform well at my job. Well, I'm a terrible wife. I'm a terrible sister. I'm a terrible daughter. Because you're suffering with these symptoms in confusion without a way forward. And then because you're suffering so badly, often in silence, your behaviors are confirming your beliefs, and it just chips you down, chips you down. Then we're days three into this. Now we're day five into this. Now we're day seven into this. Now we're day 10 into this. Now we're 14 days into this. You're ready to delete yourself. So I am trying to paint the picture of how you get there. Again, if you live through this, you don't really need me to paint the picture, but I think having the conversation, putting the words out there can make you think about this differently, can take some pressure off of yourself of feeling like I'm broken.
(00:26:11):
Something's wrong with me. When you start to see, this is a pattern that not only I lived through, but hundreds of clients that I work through live through this pattern, and we help you facilitate. Now, again, we don't work with crisis. We don't work with actively women who are suicidal. We have a support network or referral system for that. But we do have resources to support you in navigating the stages before you get to, Hey, I really need an intervention here. And again, before we jump in more to my story, and my dad comes into this, I want to talk about the self or self-interest, thoughts and behaviors. Because yes, we're talking a lot about suicidal ideation here, but so much more plays into this that you may not be realizing. So I want to talk, I want to list out some of the other forms of self-harm that you may be engaging in that you might not be labeling as self-injurious thoughts and behaviors. Just to again, shine light on how this is playing out for you and in what different realms. I hope this is helpful. Would that be helpful for me to share that?
Speaker 2 (00:27:20):
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (00:27:21):
Okay. So some forms, and even as I was making this list, I was like, Ooh,
Speaker 3 (00:27:26):
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (00:27:27):
Yep, that did that. Doing that sometimes still. Okay, so we're coming into this conversation with curiosity. We're coming into it with compassion for ourselves. Let's try to let that judgment step aside, because again, we are in fight or flight when we are navigating these symptoms. And I want to remind you that when you are in survival and you are in survival in the luteal phase, if you're living with PMDD, you are literally fighting for your life to make it through every cycle. You are bracing and bracing for impact. You are living in fear of what's to come for the next cycle. And then when this cycle is over, you're in damage control mode, picking up the pieces, apologizing, putting your life back together. My dad's pointing at me. I went through this damage control cycle for years and years. And when you are in survival, you are focused on yourself.
(00:28:24):
You can, and I know narcissism is a gross word. It's overused, it's thrown around too much. It doesn't feel good to ask ourselves, in what ways am I being narcissistic? I don't know what other word to use for it. But when you are in survival mode, you are very focused on yourself and surviving. And so the behaviors that can go alongside that are not necessarily tied to your top values, the things that matter the most to you and the way that you want to be behave. You are reacting. You are not responding to these symptoms. This isn't something you're consciously doing. It's unconscious. So we have compassion as we have this conversation. And if you're in it, you're in it right now, and you might not be able to see the forest through the trees. But again, at a higher level, having come out of that fight or flight state with these symptoms, now facilitating a healing journey for those going through PMDD, I can see this very differently.
(00:29:21):
And we have to understand and give ourselves that gift of, this isn't how I want to be. This isn't who I am. This is a response to the symptoms that I am living through, and it's hard and I want to make different choices. So with this education, with this understanding, I can start the process of building awareness to then understand, to then take action. So tangent, but let's get into the forms of self-harm and how this can play out. So different types of self-sabotaging. Obviously there can be physical types, right? Cutting was one of my go-tos. People pull their hair, people burn themselves. There's a lot of physical ways we can directly inflict harm on our bodies. Another way that we can self-sabotage and self-harm is being in that flight response and constantly running. I think I moved countries and then I think I moved six different states
Speaker 2 (00:30:27):
At least
Speaker 1 (00:30:28):
I moved multiple times, pretty
Speaker 2 (00:30:30):
Much simul. I mean, there wasn't a whole lot of notice in two years. I'm going here, no, next week I'm going here,
Speaker 1 (00:30:37):
Pack my bags, leave quitting jobs, leaving relationships. Some of that, again is normal, but when you get into this pattern of that's your coping mechanism, running in that flight mode is going to be self-sabotaging. If
Speaker 2 (00:30:53):
It wouldn't fit in her Subaru, she didn't want to own it. She could load up every single thing in her Subaru and move to a different state. And I was so proud of her.
Speaker 1 (00:31:05):
He had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 2 (00:31:06):
No clue. I just thought, man, she's living the life that I'd like to live. I had no earthly idea, dad. I had no idea
Speaker 1 (00:31:16):
That that was the pattern I was running from myself. I was running from the messes that I created. I was also in fight mode. So I would create conflict with the people I worked with, with my boss, with obviously all my partners, with my friends.
Speaker 2 (00:31:32):
And I would side with her when she would discuss it. I took her side,
Speaker 1 (00:31:37):
Well, of course,
Speaker 2 (00:31:38):
Well, I didn't know the other person
Speaker 1 (00:31:40):
Side, but eventually you start to see a pattern of like, oh, this isn't really, this doesn't seem normal. Okay, so again, we're interspersing my personal experience here a little bit just to paint the picture. But the running, the fighting, another very common self-sabotage thing that comes out of those self-injurious thoughts. A behavior is disordered eating. Another big one, listen closely. Isolation. One of the most common forms of self-harm and self sabotage that I saw with myself and with my clients and students. Did you want to say something there?
Speaker 2 (00:32:21):
No, not yet.
Speaker 1 (00:32:22):
Okay. So isolation. Isolation. Isolation is a form of self-harm. Refusing help can be a form of self-harm as well. Another one very prominent in many of my clients is going to be and myself, setting unrealistic standards. Having really high perfectionist type a, first daughter tendencies, we could put it that way. But setting unrealistic standards and being a hyper perfectionist is a form of self-sabotage. Another one that I navigated is engaging in risky behaviors across the board, whether it be driving, whether it be with sexuality, whether it be my dad's holding his ears, whether it be with substance abuse, all risky behaviors. There are more, it could be overspending over shopping. It could be any kind of illegal type of activity. Something sometimes we see is going to be like shoplifting, things like that.
(00:33:36):
Risky behaviors. And then another common form of self-sabotage that we see is going to be excessive exercise. I think even totally being sedentary can also fall into a form of self-sabotage that can play a role. Restricting sleep and stuff like that can come in. But I think that's more of a unconscious form of self-sabotage because people are struggling with night sweats and nightmares with PMDD, and so they're not getting sleep. But that's not as much of a behavior that you're acting out. It's a consequence of the symptom. But it definitely can drive the suicidal ideation to be stronger because you need to sleep to function mentally. So recap just where we currently are. We talked about the massive link between PMDD and the research that came out in 2022. We talked about how PMDD is tied to trauma and nervous system dysregulation. We talked about the precursors to self-interest thoughts with one of the most outstanding is going to be those automatic negative thoughts.
(00:34:49):
And then one more thing I want to tie in here that we didn't touch on yet, is how you start to feel like a burden. You start to feel shame and guilt. And this is how that spiral just continues to suck you down. When you're dealing with symptoms for half of the cycle, half of the month, you start to feel like those around you would be better off without you there because you're not able to parent in the way that you want to. You're not able to show up in your job and the way that you want to. You're not showing up in your relationship and the way that you want to. Maybe you're causing conflict like I was. You start to think and tell yourself the belief that it would be easier for myself and everyone else if I just wasn't here. And that is a consequence that comes out of these symptoms happening for so long.
(00:35:37):
Trauma, building up around the symptoms, the confusion, the fear, the frustration, the lack of education, the lack of hope moving forward. All of these things you're starting to see, we covered so much here are perpetuating the prevalence of life lost in this condition. And I am just constantly drumming the drum here of how important, having deeper conversations around this is to prevent women from losing their lives to these conditions. We need to have these conversations. We need to sit here and cry together. And we needed to talk through how are we getting to that place? And then from understanding and having the awareness of how we got to that place, that's where we can then take action. So that's all I have to say so far on that. Where do you want to jump in?
Speaker 2 (00:36:30):
Well, I'm going to jump in that I was aware of a lot of the actions. I was not aware of the suicidal ideations, but I knew, first of all, you're a very beautiful, two weeks out of the month, you had a great personality, smile real big, got a killer smile. And there's something called the law of attraction. So when she was like that, everybody wanted to be her friend. She could walk into a room and the room would get quiet, and everybody was looking at her when she was five, when she was seven, when she was 14 to today. Alright, so again, I'm talking to the dads. I had no clue about the self-harm. I knew the destruction that she was leaving. And we talked a little bit about throwing a little rock into a lake and watching the rebels. This was like a industrial helicopter dropping a boulder into a flathead lake. I mean, it just created huge waves. And there has to be something called PTSD. We all have it where we said something that we thought was funny and it wasn't funny, and we feel bad about it years and years
Speaker 1 (00:37:43):
Later. That's not PTSD, that's not what PTSC is, but
Speaker 2 (00:37:47):
That's not the stuff that you did to destroy the relationships 20 years ago. Comes back into your mind. You have hindsight. It just stacks all of the stuff that you did over however many years, 15 years. And the fact that stuff like that goes through your mind that much and you don't act on it in a way, it makes you a superhero because you do understand that it's going to go away here in a few days. And then maybe you repeat the process again.
Speaker 1 (00:38:20):
Eventually you might recognize the pattern.
Speaker 2 (00:38:22):
And again, I, I'm coming at it from the dad's point of view. If she would've told me this stuff when she was 15, when I would cry, my dad would say, quit crying, or I'll give you something to cry about. Alright. Not exactly helpful for me to tell 'em the next time that I was crying. I don't know how I would've responded, but I do know how I respond now because not only am I proud of her just because of the way she is, I'm proud of her because I got that relationship back. And I'm massively proud that you've decided now that you have got the tools for yourself, rather than just taking those tools and keeping 'em to yourself and not letting anybody see it, you're now able to share it with other people. Now, I wish there was just a pill, right? There's not, although I'm sure many of you are self-medicated, I got several friends of mine that are a hundred percent disabled soldiers and they're all self-medicated.
Speaker 1 (00:39:20):
Well, it's going to be, it couldn't potentially be a form of self harm
Speaker 2 (00:39:23):
And self
Speaker 1 (00:39:24):
Sachar. The self-medication.
Speaker 2 (00:39:25):
Yeah, because the doctors aren't going to help you. Now granted, everybody's a little bit different, but whenever you look at it from 10,000 feet, we're all pretty much the same.
Speaker 1 (00:39:37):
But what we want to focus on here is how I went about 17 years navigating those thoughts. Obviously maybe I wasn't conscious of them earlier, but when it got to me putting holes in my skin that's pretty serious or starving myself, you start to see what more is underneath this. This is where the bipolar diagnosis came in where my mom put me in the car and told me she was taking me to lunch and admitted me to a psychiatric ward because apparently he just told me she read my diary. But she also I think saw, oh, we saw the wounds that I was inflicting on myself and in my life, but yet I never could bring myself, just like my client in her retrospect, after going through our program, never could bring herself to tell her family, to tell her direct support system the thoughts that were really going through her head.
(00:40:38):
And I've had many other client calls when we've been doing group calls where we talk about this and the women on the call say, I now have communicated that these thoughts go through my head. The people close to me know and I can reach out and just say, some of them have safe words that they can say and they get the support that they need. So I think before we get into how important it is to have that support, hearing from you a little bit about what it was like to hear. Yeah, I saw you suffering. I saw you struggling. I saw all of these erratic behaviors and it was confusing to know what was a teenager and what was a 20 something year old girl because I didn't have a sister and stuff. But then to learn once I was stable, I had been thinking thoughts for a long time that it would be better if I here, it would be better for mom, it would be better for you. It would be better for everyone around me if I had just taken that upon myself.
Speaker 2 (00:41:41):
So I'm going to jump in real quick. As the dad, no, that would not have helped at all. It would've just messed up.
Speaker 1 (00:41:48):
Yeah, would've not been great. Would've been very hard. But we tell ourselves those automatic negative thoughts. And at the same time, we're not reaching out to our support system and saying, you would not believe the thoughts I'm having. You would not believe the things my brain is telling me. And hey, could you just confirm that that's not true? Because even if I would've came to you and said, Hey, I'm thinking it might be better for you if I wasn't here, how would you have, obviously we can't say it's retrospect, but what do you think would have been different? How could you have been there for me differently than you were? Yes. You always were available. You answered the call, you talked me through it. You
Speaker 2 (00:42:33):
Worked at Metro Supply at Hallmark JC Penney. We were around each other a lot. You had ample time to tell me, I had ample time to ask the question. It was not, it wasn't in the playbook. Alright. I just had no idea. How would I have responded? Like she just said, I don't know. But it is an evolution. Let's say when I found out you were 30, if you would've set me down and said, if since I was 13 years old, I've had these thoughts, to me that's like planting a seed dad. And you have to be a diplomat at that point in time and tell your daughter how much you love him. If your son comes to you and says it's the same thing, you just tell 'em how much you love him and then you work off of it. I think I would've been much more protective of you. I probably would've drove you to school, probably would've picked you up. I probably would've not let you out of my sight after a few weeks because you have to digest it. And for the people that have already used her services at her mood mentor, you know what I'm talking about. But for all the people that are feeling that way, whether you're a teenager or a college girl are going through a divorce now and you got kids or you're doing other things for self-harm.
(00:44:03):
Yeah. You have to talk to the people that are the closest to you. And I think that would be the hardest people to talk to.
Speaker 1 (00:44:10):
Well, and I think what stood out to me too is that we had this conversation, so I'm 36 now. We had this conversation I think when I was 31, so you've percolated on it over time. But it was surprising to me how much that affected him and continues to affect him, that he didn't know that we will be having conversations and he just still is processing. I'm sure it makes you feel like, I wish I could have been there for her more. I wish I would've known that. It's something you emotion have to go through.
Speaker 2 (00:44:48):
Okay, so first of all, look up on the internet, elephant Rock State Park in Missouri, because that's where we were. We were at Elephant
Speaker 1 (00:44:55):
Rocks. It's like a core memory for you.
Speaker 2 (00:44:58):
Oh, absolutely. I told you that. I had no idea where the conversation was. I had no idea the conversation was going to go there. And again, I'm trying to just stick with my role here is coming through it. As the dad, how would I have handled it? It would've been a process. So when you told me I would've handled it one way, but that was just planting the seed and then I would've grown with it and done more to try to help you. Because what I actually did was I took her little brother and we became best friends. So I went from her little brother. I went from her being my best friend to her four and a half year younger brother being my best friend.
Speaker 1 (00:45:46):
He abandoned me.
Speaker 2 (00:45:48):
I abandoned her. It was just easier
Speaker 1 (00:45:49):
Sense.
Speaker 2 (00:45:50):
It was easier
Speaker 1 (00:45:51):
Because he didn't know what he was going to get. He didn't know what mood I was going to
Speaker 2 (00:45:54):
Get. Well, I knew I was
Speaker 1 (00:45:55):
Going to get, I was not very nice. I was unpredictable. And so he pulled away at times when it would've helped me for him to be there in a different way. But how could he have been there because I didn't tell him. And so I think it's weird to talk to all of these women and have them having the same experience now that we've already had, but it has strengthened our relationship so much more. It has really transformed our ability to look back at what we went through together with undiagnosed and misdiagnosed PMDD through a new lens. It has changed everything. And it was literally just me saying, I didn't even talk about in that interview at Elephant Rock that we were doing together or that conversation that we were having. We were doing an interview for his podcast, but I was talking about how PMDD is tied to suicidal ideation. Well, he didn't know that because he didn't know anything about PMDD. And so I was still educating him. And then I went in to saying, yeah, and I also experienced that. I didn't go into any detail. It was pretty much that was what was said. And that again, was a life-changing moment for him that he has still been processing four or five years later that we continued to work through
(00:47:18):
Because it's like I dropped a bomb on his perception of what was happening in the past. He saw me struggling. He saw me suffering. He never knew. And he says this, I never had one thought, never one inclination that you ever felt that way.
Speaker 2 (00:47:37):
No, I couldn't understand why somebody had absolutely everything going for him. I mean, there might've been five other boys and girls in the entire school that had as much going for 'em as you did, could just burn everything down. And I never made the correlation that it was every couple of weeks that it happened. But like I said, you were 31 when we had the conversation. Your PMD started at age 13, so that's over 14 years, which meant for seven years of her life, if you could just stretch out that seven years of her life that she felt like that. So I feel stupid that I didn't,
Speaker 1 (00:48:13):
He's doing the math that if I was symptomatic for half of every month, that adds up to a seven years. Again, we're not doing the math perfectly here, but yeah, a huge chunk of my life was spent navigating those thoughts, surviving those thoughts, fearing those thoughts coming in, recovering from those thoughts all without the context of an accurate diagnosis. It was still no diagnosis. You're fine. This is just getting your period. You adjust to, that was what one gynecologist told me. Then later it was you're bipolar and you're treated with anti-psychotics for that. But again, the anti-psychotics actually worsened my symptoms, which then led to more self-harming behaviors and thoughts. And so you have a different perspective looking back. But I hope that us being here today, having this hard conversation, sharing what we've been through, sharing the links of how this plays out, not only in the research, but in the trauma and the stress response dysregulation, and then also the precursors that I've pointed out.
(00:49:21):
There are more than that. But the ones that I pointed out about the automatic negative thoughts, the amount of time that you're navigating these symptoms, and then how that layers into the shame and guilt, how you're in survival mode. Your behaviors don't match your values. All of this, it just grows and grows and grows and grows to then it's easier each time that you get into the luteal phase and you have the symptoms, you're that much closer to taking action because you've been worn down for that much longer and you don't see a way forward. So I hope that this not the most PET B-P-M-D-D pep talk episode we've done, but I hope the conversation does circle back around to hope when you start to connect all of these dots that we're helping you connect here, and then share our experience, how it went, and then also how it still is continuing to unfold and ultimately strengthening our relationship.
(00:50:22):
And I really hope that it encourages you that if you are having some of these thoughts and feelings in repetition, that you get the support that you need. You find the way to start sharing what you're going through with those around you so that those people that you love and they're there can support you and can be there for you because they want you to be here. They absolutely will do anything to help you through this. Even if they have to figure it out and it's sloppy, they're going to be there beside you rather than you isolating from them with another self-injurious behavior and getting further away from getting the help and the support that can ultimately get you to your goal of reducing and managing these symptoms. And again, we have many resources here available for that, and we have a referral network that we can share with you depending on where you are in the spectrum of needing support with this specific topic.
Speaker 2 (00:51:27):
Again, going back to the dads, what we were talking about every two weeks, 15 years, 14 years is a total of seven years. If we were to stretch everything out, we went through it also. So it was not just Jess, it was her little brother, Kyle. It was her mom, Linda, and it was me, Chris. We all were going through it. We just did not know what to do. And I would talk to my friends about their daughters and it's like, yeah, we don't have that problem at all. Our daughter doesn't do it. Our daughter doesn't. Again, Jessica's pretty when you're pretty, people pick on you and they sabotage stuff. And I came up with every other excuse because I had never heard of PMDD and like you mentioned, you're 36. I didn't find out till you were 31. We didn't have this relationship at age 30.
(00:52:22):
We did not have this relationship at age 29. We did not have this relationship at 28, 27, 26, 20. Our relationship basically ended by the time you were 14, 15. I gave up definitely by the time you were 16. I just thought, yeah, here Kyle, come on. Let's go to the movies. Let's go for a drive. Let's do this. Let's do that. I did not. No. So if we would've had that information and then somebody else had her mood mentor, then we would've done whatever it is that we could have done to help her out. Because I do have friends whose children have committed suicide, boys and girls, maybe it was a one car accident, maybe it was all these other things that could happen, and I just saw what happened to this day, to their life. I mean, there's just a giant hole in their soul.
Speaker 1 (00:53:20):
No one
Speaker 2 (00:53:20):
Wants this and it's never going to heal. It's never going to go away. It always as fresh today as my grandmother was 85 years old, her brother got killed at like age 22 in World War ii. We could never have a discussion with the sisters even when they were in their eighties where they just did not cry. And we're so sad about Roy Poe getting killed in France, and it doesn't go away. So if you're watching this seek help somehow some way, dad, do anything that you can because your earning potential is going to go down, your marriage is going to go down, your relationship with your other kids, your friends, everything goes down. If that happens and you don't want it to happen, and there are hundreds of thousands of women that are going through this, and they're just diagnosed as being bipolar, crazy, all the other negative things that can be there. And then actually, I think you all are Superman to have that much thought and not to act on it because there's more to your life than that. Now. There's hope. Now there's things that you can do and just look at you.
Speaker 1 (00:54:39):
I think the term that you use is unrecognizable.
Speaker 2 (00:54:44):
Oh, I didn't recognize it.
Speaker 1 (00:54:48):
No. I mean when you and mom talk about my life now, then my life seven years ago, you say, my life is unrecognizable to how it was from the age of 13 up until I was 28, 29, things started turning
Speaker 2 (00:55:04):
Around. You're way more of a seven to 10-year-old than you were of
Speaker 1 (00:55:09):
14. Well, it's kind cool to see my clients as they're healing. They say, I am coming back to myself. I am.
Speaker 2 (00:55:18):
This is the real happy you.
Speaker 1 (00:55:20):
Yeah, it's deep work to I say heal. There's no cure. I'm not talking about cure. Reduce and manage your symptoms is healing. It's deep work to do, and we're 53 minutes into this conversation, but it was a deep one that's starting to paint the picture of the ground level understanding before you get to taking action. But I have this conversation. I share my story. I continue to do the work that I do despite the challenges as there are many, because ultimately I see women transforming their lives in the way that I've transformed mine through learning to reduce and manage their symptoms. They're getting their lives back. They're getting relationships back. They're creating their hopes and dreams that they believed would never be possible for them, just like I believed it would never be possible for me because something was wrong with me. Something needed to be fixed all along.
(00:56:22):
I didn't know that all of this undercurrent of how my hormones were impacting my moods were happening and how severe the end of that spectrum gets. Now we have the research right to back that up. We have more solid ground to stand on the importance of this to stand on the reality that it's not just me. Another thing that I think is really important to point out here before we end the conversation is that I also, by not talking to my friends about what I was going through, I didn't correlate it with my menstrual cycle. I thought, I literally, and this is so painful for me to say, I looked at myself at 27 and had that perfectionist, looked at my friends and thought, how do they own homes? How are they married? How do they have children? How do they have doctorate degrees? I cannot get out of bed or function normally for two weeks of my life.
(00:57:16):
I thought I actually truly believed. I just wasn't trying hard enough. I had no idea that people didn't want to unlive themselves for two weeks before they got their period. I thought that was the norm, even if I didn't have the understanding, the words, the clarity, I just thought I was not trying hard enough. And that is one of the reasons why looking back, I know I isolated. I know I didn't ask for the help that I needed because I felt like I was failing. I did not. I'm getting emotional about this. I did not know that it wasn't normal to have those thoughts and have those feelings and not being able to maintain relationships. So how could I have asked for help, but yet if I would've gone to any of my friends and be like, Hey, are you losing your mind for two weeks before you get your period?
(00:58:11):
And then they say, yeah, nope, not really. Don't have that. Then I could have had the context. And this is why the education is so important, and that's why we first and foremost at her moon mentor focus on education. Because you can't release yourself from guilt and shame. You can't change your story without the education first because the education creates distance between what you're going through and who you are as a person, and you can't heal without creating that distance. So I'm going to wrap it up here. This was a lot to digest. Please reach out. Please share your thoughts. If any of this resonates, I would love to hear from you. Please know we have so much support, so many resources available to you to help you navigate whatever stage in this that you are in, and you're not alone.
Speaker 2 (00:59:03):
Dads, stepdads, grandfathers, brothers, husbands, stepbrothers. You might want to watch this twice after your daughter tells you about it, so you can kind of digest it so you can say the right thing. I know we're what, right at an hour I, it'll be the best two hours of your life if you've lived through what we lived through for
Speaker 1 (00:59:27):
15. It was 17 years. I don't know how we're messing the math up, but yeah, I think maybe I got my period at 12, 17 years, and 27 was when I
Speaker 2 (00:59:38):
Started.
Speaker 1 (00:59:38):
28, I started learning about what PMDD was. So
Speaker 2 (00:59:43):
Yeah, so
Speaker 1 (00:59:45):
The
Speaker 2 (00:59:45):
Mathematics, thank you dads. Again, I am coming at this strictly from the dad point of view. I'm not a woman, and I got all my own stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:59:55):
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (00:59:56):
Yeah.
(00:59:57):
But I do love you. We live in St. Louis. She lives in Montana. We get to see you a couple times a year. I looked forward to it the entire time, where before I just actually dreaded you coming home from high school. When she went to college, she wanted to go to a college that was an hour away and we're like, no, that's just way too damn close. Then she picked out another college that was like 45 minutes away. I was like, no, that is entirely too close. And then we found one that was, what, four hours away? And it's like, yeah, it's about right.
Speaker 1 (01:00:33):
Well, it's repelling. The experience is repelling for you, and it's repelling for those that are close to you. And so it fuels those beliefs. It continues to confirm the beliefs, and it continues to drive the isolation where a conversation, an honest conversation happening, preferably maybe not during your luteal face, trying to have this conversation when you're not in your symptom window, can go smoother. We always encourage that. You can use our symptom mapping kit to start to identify your symptom patterns so that you can start to build awareness and start to make changes in your day-to-day life around when your specific symptom pattern arises and what the severity looks like and what the symptoms are. We always recommend starting that, starting there with all of our students and clients. So that's a free resource. You can grab below a great starter point. If you're a parent with a younger person going through this, you can talk to them about doing it.
(01:01:30):
You could try to pay attention to their move patterns and notice if it is following a cycle. That's the way that you seek A-P-M-D-D diagnosis is with that symptom mapping data. There's no blood. You're in saliva, genetic, or imaging test to say, you listening to this right now have PMDD. It's a diagnosis through exclusion. So there some work to be done on your part, but the work is worth it. The work is always worth it. The expectations you have of what's going to come out of it will never match the expectations that you have. But I can tell you after, like I said, working with hundreds, going through this myself, that sometimes what comes out of it is even better than you ever could have expected. Because I didn't expect to come out of healing and reducing my symptoms and having a rock solid, awesome relationship with my dad that I hadn't had for decades.
Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
Decades.
Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
And here we are doing this together and having these conversations together and really therapeutically healing ourselves through the process of sharing and educating. So thanks for listening to us. Thanks for hearing our story. Thanks for being here. And we wish you the best in your journey because it can get better. I
Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Promise you it can get a lot better. Thank you.
