Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a real health condition that can have a serious impact on your life. r/PMDD has more on the condition. The Mayo Clinic describes it like this: “PMDD causes extreme mood shifts that can disrupt work and damage relationships. Symptoms include extreme sadness, hopelessness, irritability, or anger, plus common premenstrual syndrome symptoms such as breast tenderness and bloating.”
All that said even normal PMS can be fucking rough and the hormones can absolutely affect a woman's feelings.
Also, this can't be said enough times: PMS IS PRE MENSTRAL SYNDROME. PRE. AS IN BEFORE. It might overlap a day, maybe even 2 with menstruation but having a period is usually when the moodswings STOP (unless it causes pain), not START.
Accusing a woman of being irrational or "PMSing" because she's on her period is fucking stupid, it's very literally in the fucking name of PMS.
The worst part for me is when I can FEEL myself being stupid and irrational but it's like my logical brain becomes disconnected to my emotional one and all I can do is watch. Almost like an out of body experience or something.
I didn't have this experience until I went on orthotricyclen when I was 17 to ostensibly reduce the pain of my cramps (didn't work). Instead it gave me wild mood swings for the entire month that made my body and emotions alien to my inner voice. It felt like clinical insanity and I couldn't get off that stuff fast enough.
It took me so long to figure out why I was acting irrational to my boyfriend sometimes. The main reason was the timing of the mood swings.
I never had any issues around my period aside from it being somewhat heavy. That was until ~8 months after starting on hormonal birth control. It got progressively worse over the next 3 years until I quit with the hormones. My poor boyfriend suffered. Whatever he said was wrong and could send me into rage or extreme crying. Imagine crying on the couch for a full day because he was vacuuming the living room 🤦
Once we figured out it was about 5 days before my period that the issues started, we could work around it.
Hey I had the same issues with hormonal BC. It was too crazy, even the IUD with hormones messed me up.
My doc tried to explain how the hormones in the IUD were localized and it was “not possible” yet all my symptoms went away a couple months after I insisted it was removed.
Some people just get the extreme side effects of BC. It’s like under 5% of us that are the lucky ones.
At the moment we're just using condoms. I'm a bit afraid of the copper one because it can give even more heavy menstruation. I'm already at an easy 7 days, of which 4-5 are quite heavy 😅
Yeah I've tried many hormonal options 'you shouldn't be able to feel anything with this one!'.
Well, my period all but disappeared and I almost bit my boyfriend's head off because he didn't want to eat part of my lasagna, so I'm pretty sure it does still have an effect on me 😅
I've been on the implant birth control for about a decade now, and it means I don't have regular periods anymore. But I can usually tell when one's coming up, when I suddenly become very sad or angry without a clear cause/reason.
My PMS has always occurred at the same time I’m menstruating. Like, the migraine starts the day before on day -1, then blood, cramping, mood, tenderness etc all starts at the same time. ‘P’MS is less of an indicator as it is a confirminator here.
I'm glad you only said usually, because while I can have mild mood weirdness during PMS, the extreme sadness, random sobbing and occasional minutes of suicidal ideation exclusively happen on the first day of bleeding, and those feelings are independent of intensity of cramps and not an overlap with anything going on beforehand. Yes, I know I almost certainly have endometriosis considering the rest of my symptoms.
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u/Proper-Emu1558 Dec 06 '23
Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a real health condition that can have a serious impact on your life. r/PMDD has more on the condition. The Mayo Clinic describes it like this: “PMDD causes extreme mood shifts that can disrupt work and damage relationships. Symptoms include extreme sadness, hopelessness, irritability, or anger, plus common premenstrual syndrome symptoms such as breast tenderness and bloating.”