The Impact of PMDD: A Personal Story

Since childhood I have already been an extrovert and super active child, so when my teenage years arrived no one really took my growing problems seriously. With no support from adults I was taught that I’m just naturally hyperactive and easily getting aggressive and overwhelmed.

It’s a ‘teen’ problem that’s how I was taught. ‘Just get it together ‘, ‘you’re so dramatic’, ‘look she’s having a tantrum again’. These are things I was told years over years, so I just thought I’m a bad person. It took me until I was 24 and moved to a different country without any ppl who knew me to realize that what I was experiencing didn’t occur regularly.

For the first time I talked to a doctor about it and got the pill (also out of other reasons like heavy bleeding, unregular bleeding, pain and skin problems). After just three months I realized that especially my aggression and high tension always became uncontrollable 1-2 weeks before my period and then out of nowhere I was a normal human being again when my period came.

I felt like adults have thrown 10 years of my life out of the window by not taking my symptoms serious when I was younger. My own parents didn’t even once consider that my period could be at fault. I had to research everything myself, understand myself first before I realized I had pmdd.

As a teenager I just believed what the adults said, I was just a helpless case, I would never be a lovable human being, bc I’m hyper aggressive and emotional. Now I finally know when to watch out and when to try and minimize social contacts to not give those emotions a trigger to explode.

Knowing myself has changed my life, even though it is indeed still more than complicated to deal with the symptoms and make ppl understand (especially at my workplace as I’m living in a country where ppl think mental and also menstrual illnesses don’t really exist und you just have to suck it up and work). But it’s getting better and I want to understand even more about my symptoms and how I can make that phase each month easier for myself!