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. 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.
(01:56):
Hello, and welcome back to PMDD PEP Talk. Today we have a juicy conversation, maybe a little bit of a controversial one, and I'm so excited to have it with you because the words that we use matter, how we talk to ourselves, how we think about things, how we are perceiving our experience, shapes it. So today is really a mindset conversation and a boundary with self setting conversation. Okay, little pim, my tiny little poodle has a lot to say about this topic if you can hear her barking in the background. But what I see everywhere, I see it everywhere. I've used the hashtag I have, but we got to unpack this conversation because it irks me. It gets under my skin. I don't align with it. I don't like it, and I see it everywhere. The PMDD Warrior label, the language that's used around fighting your symptoms, battling your symptoms, mounting a defense, you against your body, and I get it when you're suffering, it can feel like you're at war with your body, with your symptom, with yourself.
(03:16):
But what if I told you that this warrior mentality is actually hindering your healing process, potentially even making your symptoms worse? Because there's a paradox. The more you fight, the more you're fighting your body, the more your body is going to fight back and your body inviting you. We have to reframe our perception to understand what's really happening with our symptoms. So today we're unpacking why this whole PMDD warrior trend and positioning yourself as a warrior against PMDD might be the very thing holding you back from healing. And when I'm talking about healing, I'm not talking about curing. I'm not talking about disappearing your symptoms, okay? I am talking about reducing and better managing your symptoms, becoming a more whole with your experience. Because believe it or not, you do not want to disappear your symptoms. Your symptoms are ation, which we're going to be unpacking here.
(04:14):
So I wanted to get down there with you. If you're like, no, I love the p mt D warrior language, there is an appeal to that, right? You want to feel strong. You want to feel resilient towards this symptoms. This language is so common because it feels empowering when you've been dismissed, when you've been gaslight, when you've been told it's just PMS. If the medical system has failed you, a warrior can feel like taking your power back. It can validate the severity of your suffering. Like, yes, this is a battle. I'm at war with myself. There can be bonding with the community. Right? Under that hashtag, you can find a lot of discussion and resources and communication around PMDD. There's a community bonding that can happen with a shared identity. There's a community bonding that can happen around a shared identity of fighting, suffering, waging war against something bigger than yourself.
(05:16):
There really can be an identity element to the warrior language. Social media reinforces it. I've reinforced it, begrudgingly no longer, but graphics, merchandise. It's perpetuated continually in our community, this warrior language, and there is an appeal to it. I get it. I didn't have such a problem with it in the beginning, but the more, the longer I've been in practice, the more women we've supported, just the more damage I see being done by attaching yourself to this mentality and this mindset and perpetuating it, and the warrior stance really actually represents an adversarial relationship between you and your body. It positions your body as the enemy. It positions your symptoms as something to defeat, suppress or overcome, and your success is measured by winning against your own biology. This is a core problem. You can't win a war against yourself. It's a very warped way of perceiving and living through the experience that I feel is damaging.
(06:40):
Now, am I taking it to a high degree by making a podcast episode on this and having a conversation about it? Yes. Maybe it's not affecting you that much. Maybe it's not a big deal. Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, but this is the core of how you're relating to yourself, and if the core of how you're relating with yourself is at war and the core of relating to your body is at war, I feel it's very problematic. Now, I get that this kind of comes out of a cancer realm, like fight against the cancer, like a pathogenic overgrowth of something. I can see the argument being a little stronger in that realm because it's something you can really get in remission from. It's something that you can test and see in lab work, psychological symptoms. PMDD hormone sensitivity is not the same, and I don't think we should just mirror and put that type of language and understanding onto a condition that is very different. That's that's kind of my TED talk on that aspect of it. So the cost of the warrior mentality is high because it puts your nervous system in a chronic fight mode. War language equals threat language. Your nervous system doesn't distinguish between metaphorical war and an actual threat. Constantly positioning yourself as fighting keeps you in a sympathetic activation and PMDD already disregulates your nervous system, so that warrior mentality just continues to compound it. Healing requires safety. War requires vigilance. You can't heal in a body that thinks it's under attack constantly.
(08:31):
There's too much disconnect between what's really happening and what you're perceiving is happening. It also creates resistance instead of receptivity, which is really a key distinction. When you're at war, you're rigid, you're on defense, you're closed off. Healing requires openness, curiosity, flexibility. You're going to miss important information about your body that it's trying to communicate through the symptoms by being at war, you're pushing through instead of listening, you're disassociating. You're pushing down instead of getting curious and understanding what the symptoms are trying to tell you. For example, forcing an intense workout when you're highly depleted or in your luteal phase and you're so dysregulated because I won't let pm DD win verse honoring your body's need for gentler movement. This is like an example of yes, sometimes we do need to push through and sometimes we do need to listen to the body, but if we're at war, it's going to make it a lot harder for us to see those signals and listen to them and respond versus seeing everything with resistance, with needing a pushback.
(09:51):
Something else that happens here is it separates you from your body. The warrior stance is you versus your body. This creates an internal fragmentation. This perpetuates automatic negative thoughts like my body is betraying me. It's I'm a victim to my body. I'm a victim to these symptoms. These automatic negative thoughts, this type of perception is not helping you heal. Healing PMDD requires integration, not separation. You can't be at war with a part of yourself and expect wholeness healing. The ideology of healing is to become whole with the experience. When we talk about healing instead of dealing with symptoms, we are not talking about curing. We are not talking about disappearing your symptoms. Again, I can say this over and over and I will forever because I want you to get it into your body, and I want you to start to know it in your body versus just hearing it and knowing it in your head.
(10:51):
You don't want to disappear the symptoms. Yes, you want to reduce and manage the symptoms, but the symptoms are not the problem. The symptoms are not an attack. The symptoms are a communication, and you can't be at war with yourself and become whole. Healing literally means to become whole with the experience. So the truth is your body isn't the enemy. These symptoms aren't the enemy. They're the message. Another thing that happens with this warrior mentality and the cost of the warrior stance or belief that you will be suffering because of if you continue to perpetuate these beliefs in this mentality, it's going to continue to perpetuate shame and self blame. If you're a warrior and you're still symptomatic, you must not be fighting hard enough, right? It creates moral judgment around symptoms. I should be stronger.
(12:01):
It turns a natural biological process into a personal failure. Now, is it natural to have severe symptoms to hormone fluctuations? No, but the cycle is a natural biological process. The reaction that your body is having to it, not exactly healthy or natural per se, but it starts to become a personality flaw, like a fundamental personal failure. When you can't change this experience for yourself, it also ignores true systemic factors, toxin exposure, stress, underlying infections, history of trauma, nervous system dysregulation, low nutrient status, on and on and on. Getting into those symptom drivers that we assess in your introductory session, your symptom assessment. When we're looking at that 320 question symptom assessment to see what is driving your symptoms to be as bad as they are, it's ignoring all of that because it's perpetuating this shame and blame that you're at war, you are fighting, you're not fighting hard enough, you're not strong enough to wage this defense against yourself, and when you lose the battle, you have a bad cycle.
(13:26):
You feel like you've failed. So see how this whole one simple hashtag p md, do warrior one simple way of thinking about the symptoms really can have so much underneath it that is holding you back from healing. We talked about this a little bit where it's ignoring the root cause factors, but the warrior language completely ignores root causes. It focuses on defeating the enemy, not understanding the symptoms. The enemy are your symptoms, and you're focused on defeating them rather than understanding what they're trying to communicate. This leads to symptom suppression rather than investigation of what's driving the symptoms. You also miss the whole why. There's no why question. Why is my body responding this way to hormone fluctuations? What is causing the severity of these symptoms? Why are these symptoms lasting for so long? No answers are coming through the warrior language. It bypasses the deeper work that's required.
(14:33):
Nervous system work, trauma work, inflammation work mindset work like we're talking about here, on and on and on. You can't fight your way to healing. It. Also, and this is kind of controversial maybe, but I do think it reinforces a very male model, a male medical model that we have been raised underneath, right? It's the same type of system that has ignored women's pain for so long, telling us to fight our own bodies, telling us we're overreacting, telling us we're just hysterical. There's also a major masculine energy to the warrior mindset, conquer, control, dominate, right? What's missing in this equation is the feminine energy of receptivity, cyclical wisdom, intuition, curiosity, all these expansive rather than contractive energies that we're bringing to our healing process. Your cycle and your symptoms aren't a problem to solve or a war to wage against. They're information to integrate. So pathologizing through using warrior language, it's just not helpful.
(15:55):
It's just not helpful. I don't think it's helpful. If it's helpful for you, great, but I hope that through this conversation you may see some light of where is this potentially, where's some holes in this mindset and this perception of the symptoms and what is it doing for you potentially on a deeper level to continue to perpetuate this mentality against your body? Your body is trying to communicate to you. Symptoms are messages. They're not the enemy. Every single symptom can be tied back to body system function, low nutrient status, a variety of things. These are the body's alarm system, these symptoms. So what, instead of fighting the alarm, you investigate what it's alerting you to, right? When our check engine light comes into our car, we don't smash the dashboard and get angry and go to war with it. We ask questions. We get the manual out seat. We see what does this mean? We take it to a specialist. We see what is this check engine light on for? What is it communicating that needs to be shifted?
(17:12):
So to give more specific examples, if inflammation is a major driver, there could be something in your diet or environment that's triggering you. If rage is a major driver, we need to look at blood sugar regulation. We need to look at boundary setting. We need to look at your sleep habits and hygiene. I mean, we have an entire series on Instagram that's linking symptoms to potential drivers. So you can go into that series and you can look at, okay, if I'm having this symptom, what are some things that my body could be trying to communicate to me through this symptom? And there are so many pieces of the puzzle that are getting glossed over when you're at war rather than getting investigated. Really important to note, the menstrual cycle is technically a vital sign. So yes, the symptoms are communication, but every aspect of your menstrual cycle falls into the vital sign category.
(18:11):
So right up there with your other vital signs, if you went into the hospital and you were having an emergency situation, they would t track your vital signs, but they would never ask you about your menstrual cycle. Yet. In 2015, the American College of Obstetricians in Gynecologists declared the menstrual cycle of vital sign. In 2016, the American Academy of Pediatrics did the same because they recognized, hey, young women's menstrual cycles from the start, every single quality from the length of their bleeding, from the length of their cycle, from the color of their blood, from the flow of their blood, from their consistency of their blood, from the length of each of their different cycle phases, all is communicating information about the overall health of the entire body.
(19:01):
This matters so much because your cycle gives you information about your overall health. It is a vital sign in females for your overall health. So irregular, absent or severely symptomatic cycles are telling you something about your hormone balance, your stress levels, your nutrient status, the inflammation in your body, your thyroid function, blood sugar regulation, nervous system, health, on and on. So what happens when you start to listen instead of being at war, curiosity replaces the combat. You start asking, what is my body trying to tell me? Instead of, how do I make this stop? You gather data instead of waging war. An example of this that plays out is it's so magical. This has been one of the biggest healing shifts in my journey. When instead of turning to myself and against myself and feeling broken and hopeless and fundamentally flawed, those thoughts never enter my mind anymore.
(20:03):
You know what enters my rage? Symptoms were increased this month. What was different? Did I have more stress? Was my sleep patterns interrupted? Did I have more caffeine? What was my blood sugar regulation? What was my hydration like? What was my mineral intake like? I'm doing a screening mentally. Never am I going against myself, who I am as a person, what I'm capable of. This is a massive shift for A-P-M-D-D brain where all you do is hate yourself, want to delete yourself, feel guilt and shame for yourself, for your symptoms, for your reactions to them, and this warrior mentality underpins that whole route of perception. So breaking that and changing that and understanding what their symptoms really are and that their breadcrumbs leading you towards what's actually driving your symptoms and how to reduce and better manage them, this shifts massively. No longer are you a warrior against your body.
(21:06):
You're a witness to your healing. You're a act of participant in actualizing the best version of yourself because you're no longer going against yourself, and you're actually able to make progress and feel better and see true symptom reduction and management, which comes with true improvement in your quality of life. You become an observer. You're not a combatant. You become curious, not judgmental. You move into a collaborative relationship with your body, not an adversarial one, your body, and you become on the same team working together to figure this out. You're acknowledging your suffering without identifying as a warrior against it. Language shifts matter. Instead of fighting your PMDD, try understanding your symptoms, supporting your body through hormonal shifts. Instead of being A-P-M-D-D warrior, try being A-P-M-D-D navigator, A-P-M-D-D healer, someone living cyclically. Instead of battling your symptoms, try listening to your body's messages instead of, I won't let PMDD win.
(22:16):
Try. I'm learning what my body needs instead of my body is betraying me. Try. My body is asking for something different. So we want to move into embodiment over combat, coming back into your body, connecting with your body instead of fighting against it. Somatic practices are huge here. Being able to feel sensations and meet your body's needs without judgment. We have to build interoception, which is going to be really a lot harder. For those of you who've been detached and disassociated, for those of you like me who are on the neurodivergent spectrum, who are going to struggle with rebuilding a connection to interoception, this is a fancy word for being connected to your body's signals and meeting them to embody. We also need other practices like breathwork movement, massage, rest, nervous system regulation techniques, but the ultimate goal is safety over victory, compassion over conquest. How you talk about yourself and your symptoms matter. Self-compassion research shows that it supports healing. Self-criticism does not. This is hard, and I'm doing my best is very different than I need to fight harder.
(23:51):
Treating your body like you treat a scared suffering child, not treating it like the enemy, is the shift that we need to make here. We talk about this a lot in PMDD rehab where we're parenting. We're moving into more of a parental role rather than an adversarial warrior role against our symptoms and our body. We really want integration over opposition. We want to start seeing you as a whole person, not a fragmented me versus my PMDD self. Your symptoms are a part of your experience. They are not separate from you. This requires shadow work, like what are your symptoms revealing about your unmet needs, unprocessed emotions, unsustainable patterns. This requires a major reframe. PMDD isn't something you have, it's something you're experiencing in response to multiple factors that are driving those symptoms. We want to help you really step into cyclical living in order to work with your hormonal rhythms rather than against them.
(24:54):
We want you to start expecting different things from yourself in different cycle phases, because if you're holding the same expectation for yourself every cycle phase, you will be disappointed. That's not how the female body works. There's an ebb and flow, and we want to lean into that rather than push against it, we have to honor that ebb and flow rather than demand a consistency that's not aligned with our female biology. We also have to break. The luteal phase is the bad phase. It's actually a very important vulnerable, introspective can be magical phase, and the follicular phase U isn't the good you. It's more outward facing because of how estrogen impacts your brain in a persuasion event to actually get you to create life and become pregnant, right? These hormones are impacting your behavior, and that's where that reproductive health education comes in is so important for you starting to heal that warrior relationship with yourself.
(25:56):
Understanding what's you and what is hormone driven behavior, and understanding that both of those are you and both of those are valuable, and it's what's a part of the female experience and what's a part of your personality. We have to break the enmeshment that PMDD has created in your mind of these two u's, and a hierarchy of value between the two. So what actually supports healing is creating safety over strength. Your nervous system needs to feel safe in order to heal, which it can do if you're at war. We need to lean into co-regulation and creating safety and connection with others. We have to address our environment. We have to create predictability in our routines. I just glossed over environment, but reducing stressors, toxins, chaos. There's so much to unpack and creating safety over struggle, but healing only happens when your body beliefs the threat is over.
(26:53):
So if you're living and breathing a warrior mentality, the healing is hindered. We have to, again, foster curiosity over control. We have to investigate versus suppress. We have to do root cause exploration with our symptom assessment, our specialized lab testing, our review of your symptom mapping data, your pattern of presentation, all of that needs to be targeted, assessed, and really uncovered and working with practitioners who see you as a whole person and see your symptoms as a whole system rather than going in and cherry picking things, the whole body is connected. The whole body needs to be addressed together. We need acceptance over avoidance, and we really need collaboration over conquest. So I am being repetitive here with some of this, but I want to really dig in and really have you walk away from this episode understanding how we need to create space for change.
(27:58):
And when you're using all your energy fighting the reality that you're living in, you cannot do that when you're viewing medical interventions or protocols as weapons instead of support. You cannot do that. We need to be asking what you need, not how do I fix this? We have to work on integration of all aspects, and I get it. There can be some potential pushback, you can say, but I do have to fight. No one else will advocate for me. But there's a difference between advocating for yourself and being at war with your body. You can fight for a diagnosis for treatment, for respect in medical settings, but you could even fight systemic issues with a lack of research, a dismissal of women's pain barriers and insurance. But don't internalize that fight as a battle against your own biology. We want to direct your warrior energy outward at systems, not inward at your body.
(29:01):
Now, you might be like, Ugh, Jess. This just feels like toxic positivity. But this isn't pretending that everything is fine. Witnessing and curiosity includes witnessing the pang, the anger, the despair, what's actually happening, calling it out, being present with it, integrating it. You can acknowledge how hard this is without positioning yourself at war. The suffering is real with PMDD, but the warrior stance just adds another layer of suffering on top. And maybe you'll say, well, the warrior identity, it helps me feel strong. You can be strong without being at war. Strength often looks like softening, surrendering, asking for help. Listening, true power comes from integration, not constantly being in combat. You're in fight or flight enough. We do not need more of that. You do not need to fight yourself to prove that you're strong. You might say, well, but some days it really feels like a battle.
(29:55):
Feelings are valid, and you get to choose your identity. You can feel like you're in a battle without adopting a warrior mentality, and slowly you want to shift the feeling like you're in a battle to a different type of perception. A curiosity perception, right? I am having a hard day is different than I'm a warrior in an ongoing war, one allows for change, the other locks you into a perpetual fight state, flight state. So some practical exercises to reframe this warrior mentality that is likely holding you back is noticing your language. Pay attention to the language and the metaphors that you use when you're talking about yourself and your symptoms. Get curious what would change if you saw your body as an ally, rather than being a victim to it, to the symptoms or being against it. Start asking different questions instead of, how do I beat this? Ask, what is this teaching me? Instead of, why is my body doing this to me? Ask, what does my body need from me? And then using embodiment practices, getting present with yourself, placing the hands on the body.
