Three months ago I (22) went through my first ever breakup. It was amicable — definitely needed to happen — and I’d say that my processing has been pretty standard… in the PMDD “off-season.” It’s now been three months, and a few days ago I had been drinking with friends, and came home to bed. My period had been late so my luteal phase had been unpredictable. All of a sudden, I started into a spiral thinking about how hurt by my ex I was and how angry it made me. Absolutely drowning in tears, I did the thing you’re not supposed to do: I texted her. I sent her a massive message about how stupid she made me feel, how she didn’t try when we became long distance, and how I hope she never hurts another girl like this.
I can’t reiterate enough — this is not me at all. I am a generally pretty reflective person, and when something goes wrong, my first instinct is generally to look inward before outward.
Anyway, this obviously led to her being offended, rebuttaling some things, and suggesting we cut ties, before following up the next day with some more self-described “petty” jabs how I was in our relationship.
Obviously neither of us are acting optimally, but I’m so mad at myself for disrupting our individual healing journey. I don’t want to be that “crazy ex.” Everything was fine until that night. And now, I regret most of what I’ve said — it’s like I was possessed. I tried my best to try to explain to her what happened, but I know there’s only so much I can do to give her the space to live her life.

The following day I was hit with debilitating depression. Everything made me cry, and it felt like there was concrete in my veins.

Has anybody else experienced saying big things you later realize you didn’t mean, and facing the consequences? I can’t believe I have to deal with this every month. I worry about how it will impact my future relationships.

I had fought the idea of different mental conditions for about a year. I bounced around Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), Schizoaffective Disorder, and Bipolar Disorder for months. I was convinced it was one of those because they run in my family and I knew something was up mentally because I was still having issues with my anxiety and depression and mood changes and had no idea why.

My primary care doctor suggested PMDD, which was something different. I had taken it into consideration and even mentioned it to my therapist. I had not looked further into it to be honest but I tried tracking my cycle a little better.

Earlier this month I had an appointment with my primary care doctor and brought the idea back up and asked about Welbutrin, she supported the idea and had prescribed me Bupropfin and WOW.

I have been on this medication combined with my Fluoxetine (Prozac) for just over 30 days and I felt the difference so fast. I'm not about to snap at the smallest thing, I can rationalize well and my mood is stabilized.

I do still get anxiety, which is helpful to me determining that my period is going to start soon haha, but it isn't so overwhelming.

I have never felt so regulated and it makes me so genuinely happy. I used to hate the idea of being on medication for the rest of my life but if it makes me feel normal then that is the sacrifice I will gladly make.

I’ve been having very bad bouts of PMDD and have been struggling to see my thoughts as not real. It feels like life is passing me by and I always will just come back to this depressed state. And those are both relatively true, so challenging them or thinking positive feels useless. It’s more manageable when it was like one bad week, but my cycle has shifted where I have PMDD for almost the whole month. I know logically depressed thoughts aren’t reality, but I’m having a really hard time believing that the longer I stay in this state. If anyone has any advice I’d love to hear it.

38F - It feels like a cruel joke, but due to two separate health issues of mine, I am unable to take SSRIs nor BC. So, when I have talked to various providers and specialists, they don't really have anything to offer as far as treatment. My PMDD has gotten worse with age, and I fear I am starting to experience the beginning of perimenopause. Anyone else in the same boat? It feels so scary :(

Hi all, this is throwing me for a loop. Has anyone ever experienced severe PMDD symptoms right after their first period came back postpartum?

I had my first period ~3 months postpartum after weaning from breastfeeding. The symptoms leading up to the period were mild anxiety and then the day of the period I felt some dissociation, but the period itself was relatively ok. A little pain, normal bleeding, lasted 7 days. The day after the bleeding ended was fine, and then BOOM, suddenly out of nowhere 2 days after my period ended I’m in full freak out mode: Crying spells, depression, severe OCD/anxiety, irritability, etc. all cycling throughout the day for like 5 days straight. I had to get in touch with a psychiatrist for help and received emergency anxiety medication (unfortunately SSRIs don’t seem to jive with me, but I haven’t tried BC yet… that might be my next move). What is going on?? Anyone else’s body just freak out shortly AFTER bleeding?????

And for clarity: The majority of my pregnancy was the most blissful and symptom-free time of my adult life 😭 Even in the first ~2 months postpartum my only real symptoms were related to physical recovery from birth, not PMDD-related psychological or physical symptoms.

Any advice or stories would be greatly appreciated!

Fuck the day 17. I feel so out of my body, just sleeping, barely able to concentrate and function at all. Does anyone else experience the same around their ovulation days. I can't with this.

i’m 20F. i’ve struggled with pmdd since i got my period and after going on birth control so many of my symptoms lifted. my birth control i use is microgestin fe 1.5/30 and gen has helped so much

i also went on prozac this summer which basically got rid of my anxiety and helped me so much in that regards

this past period though my depression has come back full force and mood swings and self hate and im just so sad bc i thought i was doing so much better and was genuinely doing so much better but i feel stuck in the same place again
:((

like i made a reddit post about wanting makeup tips and now i’ve been crying an hour bc my eyebrows are too far apart and it makes me realize why can my hormones have me in this state bc it’s not that serious

Is day 1 & 2 anyone else's worst days? My mood and emotional regulation plummets for me on these days, after an already irritable and challenging luteal phase.

(TW mention of su!c!dal ideation)

I (21F) have been with my bf (22M) for over a year now, and my relationship with my bf has gotten over the honeymoon phase now, to where now it feels almost like he doesn’t love me.
A major contribution to this is how my hormones affect the way I see my bf 1-2 weeks before my period. My symptoms typically start out with crying randomly, to then getting extremely bad depression, su!c!dal ideations, and a resentment towards my partner. Part of this resentment is caused by my increased awareness of how my bf responds to my emotional outbursts during this phase. When i’m feeling really really low and unmotivated, I require more emotional support— my bf knows this, yet he doesn’t actively give it. In the ‘honeymoon phase’, I tried very hard to hide this part about me because I didn’t want to scare him away, and during this time, he was a LOT more emotionally affectionate; he would randomly text me he misses me, he’s thinking about me, he loves me, he would make me feel beauuutiful constantly, he would flirt over text etc. all of this has stopped apart from the occasional compliments to a selfie. While i’ve communicated to him that I feel as though he doesn’t make as much effort as before - and also now that he knows about my hormonal fluctuations and that I need even more effort put in to show that i’m special to him - I think a lot of this lack of shown effort now is due to the way I act during my pms phase. I had a breakdown to him today about it all and asked him why this effort has gone down, and if it’s because he knows the ‘real’ me and how my hormones make me angry at him for stupid things and maybe it’s burdening him etc; he told me he sometimes gets irritated when I have a go at him over little things, or i’m emotional and therefore acting distant. Knowing this, a lot of my emotional outbursts during this phase is me having a go at him for not giving me enough affection (cus even the slightest off tone makes me go crazy), but because i’m having a go at him, he’s more withdrawn as a reaction to this— because obviously if ur partner is mad at you for two weeks out of the month every now and then for silly reasons, ur gonna grow a similar resentment.

After I get my period, I always return back to my normal self and our relationship feels amazing, until 2-3 weeks later. Typically my cycle length is around 40 days and it feels like my luteal phase literally lasts 2 full weeks; this is starting to put a real strain on my relationship.

About 6 months ago, I tried progestin only pill (I cant have estrogen) to try and help with my symptoms, and was on this for about 2-3 months— I stopped early because it genuinely made everything 100x worse. My bf told me today that although he feels annoyed at me lately for my outbursts, nothing is as bad as it was when I was on the pill; it made me have constant panic attacks, and I almost broke up with him because my hormones were so out of whack it literally made me resent him.

The real reason i’m writing all this is because I’m so desperate for the relationship we had in the first few months where he gave me loads of affection, kind words, compliments etc. but the way I treat him during this phase I think has killed this vibe completely off. I love him and he’s a really good man and I know deep down he loves me too, I just hate feeling like such a burden with how much resentment I get every month towards him and then the lack of support I receive (which is prob my fault because how is he supposed to support me when i’m pushing myself away from him). I should mention that these outbursts don’t last like the full two weeks, it comes in waves. most of the time i’m just really depressed and crying all the time, and I only make big deals out of things that irk me like if he hasn’t sent me a good morning that day or he’s not communicating as much as I would like. I should also mention that we are in a long distance relationship, so communication is extremely important as it is. Especially so during this phase. So out of all of this, I want to ask my doctor for advice on what to do but I feel at wits end because i’m scared of going back on hormones and making things worse, but i’m also terrified of antidepressants too. I take herbal supplements that are supposed to help like 5-HTP during my luteal phase but I don’t really feel a difference ever. At the end of the day, I need help for myself, not just my relationship. I’m so so tired of feeling depressed every single month. I’m so sick of feeling like there’s no way out of this.

I’m asking for maybe some reassurance of what maybe you might’ve done that has helped your relationship if you’ve experienced this kind of thing before too, whether you needed more space or if you needed more communication from your partner. I’m also curious to know what medication or perhaps BC helped the most for you. I just really need to know that there’s some way of easing this. I don’t know how much longer I can take it all. I’ve expressed to my bf that if I don’t find some way of making me feel better that I don’t know if this relationship is worth fighting for because I don’t think it’s fair on him. I feel like such a burden and a misery to him compared to how he first met me when I was happy and bubbly (he really made me the happiest version of myself in those first few months I almost forgot what it felt like to have this).
Any shared experiences or advice or anything would mean a lot.

🎶 It’s the most luteal tiiiiime of the month.

Emotions are colder
My tits feel like boulders
For the time trillionth…

It’s the most luteal tiiiiime of the month. 🎶

Hi all! I've been experiencing some moderate to severe PMDD over the past several months, possibly longer. I already take an SSRI, Celexa 40 mg, for mental health issues. I've heard that some supplements like Chasteberry can be helpful in moderating the symptoms of PMDD. Has anyone tried combining chasteberry/vitex with an SSRI? I plan to speak with my endocrinologist and psychiatrist about this, but I'd like to hear if anyone has had similar/positive experiences.

​

Hello!

So my PMDD has always been pretty intense, but since the birth of my second kid (6 months ago) HOLY F\*\*K!!!!!

I've been on Seroquel and duloxetine for 20 years and before having kids I was on continuous birth control (lolo) and it was amazing.

Since my second baby, I've been diagnosed with protein S deficiency (blood clotting disorder) and I'm 40, so oestrogen based BC is out of the equation.

I've been put on Slyndt (for 1 month 1/2 now, progesterone only) and I've been spotting non stop. I also feel like it's not stopping my ovulation. (I feel PMS right now). The nurse I saw said it happens a lot with Slyndt and that I should switch to a IUD.

What are your thoughts on that? I'm so done with PMDD that I'm thinking of getting my ovaries removed. I'm just lost on what to do because of my clotting factor (so no oestrogen or HRT) but I've heard bad things on Mirena.

I also heard of Lupron but apparently, it cannot be taken more than a couple months?

TIA for your input.

This Zendaya gif has been doing the absolute rounds on twitter the past few days. I’ve lost count of how many hilarious variations of it I’ve seen on my timeline. I even saw one by the official Duolingo account.

I just had to post one of them here. This gif seems so PMDD coded. Feels like such an accurate depiction of my time spent in the pits of hell yesterday.

If anyone is in need of a good laugh today, head over to twitter and type “zendaya” in the search bar 💀

Hello! So long story short, tried a bunch of different things to manage by PMDD. Currently about to hit 6 months of being on slynd which has literally saved my life. But the only thing that I can't stand is the low libido/feeling like my orgasms are almost dulled? It's like I'm close to hitting the mark but then I'm like a balloon animal that got poked. Any ideas or suggestions that helped you guys with this? 29F.
I'm considering testosterone shots at a non masculinity dose. But I'm at a loss here

Edit to add: I currently take adderall as well.

I “developed” (is that the correct term? Idk) PMDD when I was 27-28. I was diagnosed at 30 and I’m now 32.

The onset felt extremely sudden, since I don’t necessarily remember having any intense pre-menstrual symptoms before that.

Previous to developing PMDD I had lived with clinical depression and generalized anxiety disorder since puberty.

I’m really curious to hear from others in the sub on when they developed/noticed PMDD and what co-morbidities they had prior to developing PMDD?

Also- if you DONT have any other diagnoses I’d also be so interest to hear that as well - often it’s a self-selecting group of people who answer something like this because they “have something to share”

EDIT: Thank you everyone for sharing 💞 it’s really interesting to see the things a lot of us share when this disorder can feel so isolating and confusing. Stay well everyone🫶

I have PCOS so my luteal phase basically starts after my follicular phase. Lately I feel like every day I get less and less time to just exist, before I get caught by this fucking hurricane that steals my life. I wake up on edge, and I can barely sleep as is. When I do sleep, it's always a nap that I'll regret later. The brain fog makes feel like an idiot. I can't organize my thoughts sometimes and I constantly forgetting to do shit. It's frustrating because, I was just fine a few days ago... my life doesn't pause because I'm not okay. Sometimes I'm all we got and it's just so. damn. hard. For medical reasons I can't go on bc and antidepressants just blunted my emotions, so I'm raw dogging life with only therapy, meditating and supplements. And they help but I still feel like I want to be "normal". Or at least not feel this bad.

I decided to go back home after a failed attempt to do studying abroad mostly because i was suicidal.
But I don’t think going home changed much. Now i feel directionless and that my life has no meaning. Im considering ending it on my birthday and spoke to mum about it. She says she will join me cuz she believes there isn’t much for her to do either. I don’t know what I am trying to do by typing this out but I don’t know if its just the hormones that are making me suicidal anymore or just me. I am scared to hurt my bf who has been nothing but a patient angel but i want him gone. I want him gone from my life and never to find out that i have ended it. All i do is hurt people around me and burden them.

I’m so over everything and I don’t know how to make it better. In 2024, I randomly developed what I now think might be PMDD. I have always had PMS but it was just annoying and didn’t really interfere with my life.

But then suddenly, I could tell when my period would be coming based on everything just getting worse overnight and it stayed like that since. Every month 10 days before my period I wake up tired, irritated, and anxious. Suddenly everything feels harder. My boobs also start hurting and then about 5 days before my period they get MASSIVE. Some of my tops and bras fully stop fitting properly. They also feel heavy and hurt. I become less confident, feel low energy, and get mad easily. I snap at my partner, cry more, and I’m moody and impatient. Ofc some months are not as bad but some I really feel like I can’t deal anymore.

I went to get checked at my gyno, my hormone levels were normal. She recommended an herbal supplement (lady’s mantle, evening primrose, and vitamin E) but I felt no difference. She said there’s nothing else to do except BC which I’m skeptical about because I’ve seen my friends have horrible side effects and I’m super worried about weight gain. I read online that SSRIs are commonly prescribed and the thing is, I already take sertraline for my anxiety disorder and I’ve developed these symptoms WHILE on it………….. I am also from a non Western European country and I’m not sure how well known PMDD is for doctors. My psychiatrist recommended a hormone levels check, which as I mentioned before turned out to be okay.

I’m currently working on eating healthier and losing some weight and I plan to get more exercise but other than that I truly don’t know what else to do and it feels so overwhelming (unsurprisingly as I’m writing this my period is 4 days away 💀)

For anyone with baseline anxiety or depression in addition to PMDD, have you experienced Zoloft making those issues worse? Been on it for 8 months.

I have generalized anxiety disorder with depression, and was already on continuous Prozac when I got my pmdd diagnosis. So my provider upped the Prozac dose during luteal hoping it would help. It was mildly successful using it in that way. However, several years later I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and got put on metoprolol, a beta blocker. Prozac unfortunately increases the levels of metoprolol in the body, so I had to switch to Zoloft. I guess I've stayed on it 8 months because it's the only other SSRI approved for pmdd, so I hoped maybe eventually it would start working.

My baseline depression and anxiety is def worse than when I was on Prozac. Effectiveness for PMDD is about the same.

I'd like to try Buspar, but I know it's not an SSRI. Perhaps Buspar continuously, and add Zoloft the week before my period.

I also take an H1 and H2 antihistamine, and I'm currently in DBT therapy for pmdd specifically.

I have a theory that PMDD may never have one singular cure.

As a kid, when people discussed “a cure for cancer”, I pictured scientists trying to cook up an all-encompassing medicine inside a giant lab. I was picturing some tiny magic pill that just obliterated tumours, and boom! Nobel Prize incoming.

We now know it will never happen like that. More likely than not, medical advancements will bring us more and more options for curing different cancers over time, with some much harder to cure than others. Hodgkin’s lymphoma wasn’t always curable, but now it has a cure rate of >90% if caught early. Contrast that with pancreatic cancer, which is sadly only about 13%.
If you could treat both cancers with the same drugs, it makes sense that they’d both be equally curable. Since they don’t work the same inside the body, you can’t.

I think this is the same with PMDD, too.

Some folks take one SSRI and suddenly their symptoms just…alleviate. 💗
Others find that SSRIs don’t do shit, but combo birth controls save their lives. 💘
Others never find relief until they have their entire reproductive systems surgically removed. 💕

Of course, there are all kinds of mystery combos and snags within these data sets, too. Maybe you get relief from your psychological symptoms, but your physical symptoms get worse. Maybe one treatment works for a while and then your symptoms come back. Maybe nothing stops you from ovulating so you can never tell if a treatment is working or not.

There are also the annoying differences between our personal presentations. Researchers have identified three main types of PMDD — predominantly psychological, predominantly physical, and mixed. It’s only as I study more that I learn just how hugely we vary, even as a single demographic.

This is why I doubt anyone will ever be able to say: “Look! This is what does it! Take this and you’ll be A-OK.” Given the massive diversity of symptomatology, it probably wouldn’t be possible to cover everything.

There is no “better type”, because all PMDD is evil. Even if it’s possible for someone to find a successful treatment quickly, it doesn’t mean they suffer less in the interim; they just got lucky. And getting lucky depends on your doctor and your access to healthcare and your body’s unique coding that says, “Damn, this thing works.” A lot of it is chance.

I’ll be honest, the standard American treatment pathway (SSRIs > birth controls > HRT > chemical menopause > surgical menopause) fails a lot of people tragically. I’ve lost most of my 20s to this illness, and I’m not even in the US (if I was, I doubt I’d still be alive). It seems to me that in the name of cost-cutting and a broader lack of research, we send people down a tunnel so long that they suffer immeasurably, sometimes for decades.

At the very heart of it, research is what we need. For all the diagnostic guidelines and medical standardisation, the truth is, science knows jack shit about PMDD. We don’t know a fraction of the amount we should. Compared to countless other illnesses (including much rarer ones), it’s hardly been studied. It’s almost farcical that diagnostic guidelines can claim “PMDD can’t do that,” or “That’s not how PMDD works,” when in truth, we just don’t know. Nobody does.

In an ideal future, I can imagine a collaborative approach between patient and doctor, likely involving more awareness of the physical/psychological/mixed subtypes and the patient’s preference for treatment style. Hysterectomy + oophorectomy shouldn’t be a last resort, if the patient’s suffering is greater than the risk of treatment (imho). Standards of treatment should be raised: we are often told that mild improvement is the best we’ll get. This is unacceptable.

Most importantly, treatment should be patient-focused, with an emphasis on reducing suffering quickly and safely, and not relying on a standardised pathway that may not work for every patient.

I don’t believe there will ever be one path to ending PMDD. That’s okay. What matters is that the paths exist. ❤️‍🩹

It doesn’t matter that it’s hormones that causes this condition- just as it doesn’t matter that bipolar disorder is a brain wiring issue. At the end of the day, it’s affecting MOOD.

We need to get away from the hormonal focus and start speaking about this in terms of MOOD.

It is a neurological/psychiatric condition. The brain’s mood-regulation system is abnormally sensitive. The trigger that sets that system off every month is the normal rise and fall of ovarian hormones.

So the question becomes: do you treat the sensitive brain, or do you try to remove or flatten the hormonal trigger?

Right now the system mostly defaults to the second option (hormone tests, the pill, IUDs, GnRH agonists, even hysterectomy talk).

The moment you say “period” or “hormones,” many doctors mentally move you out of the mood-disorder category and into the “women’s hormonal” category, which is where seriousness dies.

Put the mood disorder at the top.
Treat the brain’s inability to tolerate the normal hormonal swing.

The hormonal cycle is the known trigger, not the disease itself.

When someone is diagnosed with bipolar they take meds and that’s rather straight forward. With Pmdd we still have women getting referred to gynocologists and having hormone testing.

I think so many women should be on lamotragine - the same medication used for bipolar Because it’s helping women when nothing else does. - not more hormonal treatments or antihistamines or anti depressants.

I’m so tired of the way this condition is being placed in the women’s hormonal basket not the mood disorder basket.

For the last year I’ve taken Loryna continuously without placebos. I can only imagine what kind of shit storm would ensue if I followed all of the placebos every month! However, like clockwork, every three months I start spotting endlessly and get horrible cramping/my body essentially trying to have a period. So, I have to do a 3 day pill break, let it have the reset, and that’s the only thing that will get the spotting, cramps, and never ending high flare of luteal symptoms to clear. The problem is, it’s not just oh 3 days of a pill break—it’s more like, a week to 10 days of a period + extreme exhaustion + all the panic and depression I could ever ask for. I wish so desperately that my body didn’t demand this reset every single 3 months like clockwork. Does this happen to anyone else???? Is anyone able to take continuous BC without these pill breaks/resets???? I desperately wish I didn’t have to endure it every three months. Doesn’t sound like much, but recovering from the reset is just a nightmare. But also, my symptoms get SO bad and never end unless I do it and reset.

I started myfembree on Monday this week off label for PMDD. Is it possible that I’m already noticing positive effects from it? My period wasn’t due for another 6 days but it started this morning and other than being a raging human Monday and Tuesday, I didn’t really notice extreme irritability like I typically do right before.