I Miss Me Before PMDD

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For anyone who's ever thought "I miss who I was before PMDD took over our relationship" - this episode provides the crucial insight you've been searching for. After taking my first break in four years of podcasting, I'm sharing the profound realization that led to my absence: I had completely lost myself in trying to prove my worth in PMDD relationships.

When we discover we have PMDD, many of us immediately launch into "fix-it" mode, researching every solution, implementing every technique, and burning ourselves out in the process. But beneath this frantic activity lies something more insidious - we're trying to prove we're worthy of love despite our diagnosis. The proving trap manifests as constantly over-explaining, apologizing unnecessarily, abandoning our needs, walking on eggshells, and seeking constant validation from partners.

This episode walks through the ten warning signs you're trapped in the proving cycle and explains why this pattern is so damaging to both your relationship and your nervous system. Your partner wasn't "vetted" to be in a PMDD relationship - they simply chose you out of billions of people because they saw value in who you are. When you shift into performance mode, you rob both yourself and your partner of authentic connection.

The challenging truth is that your self-worth isn't determined by what your partner thinks of you during your luteal phase. You weren't created to perform for love - you were created to receive it as you are. That version of you before PMDD took center stage isn't gone - just buried under survival mode.

Ready to break free from the proving trap? Check out my new Me Before PMDD toolkit in the show notes - it's filled with practical scripts, checklists, and identity reset tools I use with my private clients to help them reclaim their authentic selves.

Transcript

My Two-Week Absence Explained

Speaker 1 0:00

Well, today we are going to be talking about where I have been. If you haven't noticed, I have not released an episode in two weeks, which for me is a really big deal. I've been recording for so long over four years now and I used to release episodes that were twice a week by the request of a lot of my private clients. But taking these two weeks off, it's because I've been lost and I've needed to find myself, and I will never just put something out if it doesn't have value, if it's not gonna help you. And it's not that I haven't had anything to say. I've had a lot to say. I've actually, like, when I was going through my notes today about what I wanted to present to you, I had so many things, but I think, a lot of times in our journey because I share so much about my personal journey and I want to have you learn the tools as I'm learning them and implementing them, and because PMDD is different every single month, sometimes you need to see things through and sometimes you need to take time to recognize what's coming up for you. And that's really the place that I've been in, where there've been a lot of things that have come up for me that I wasn't expecting and I was kind of like wait, what do I do with this? I wanna be able to share this with you, but I want to do it in a way that's going to be helpful and it's going to be a way that I have researched and all of the things. So a lot goes into what I present to you. That rhymes. I've been rhyming a lot lately I'm going to figure out why but I just wanted to say that I've missed you. I've thought about you. I think about you every single day. You are my assignment. Any individual that has PMDD or a partner that has PMDD, you are my life's assignment. So if there's anything that I have recognized on this journey and gotten really clear about I don't know why I'm getting emotional it's that you know I do a lot of posts on social media and I, you know, at the end of the podcast I remember in 2022, 2023, I just had like a tagline.

Speaker 1 2:15

At the end I was kind of like saying, like please share this episode. You know, with anyone that I can help and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, which I still want you to do, apple Spotify, wherever you listen, because it helps other individuals that have PMDD or they're in a relationship with someone that has PMDD fine art, this episode, this show and because I know the impact that it makes, because I've heard so many people's like I wish I would have earlier. I wish I would have earlier, I wish I would have known about you earlier, because everything that you're talking about it's resonating with me and it's what has gone on in my PMDD relationship. But now the relationship's over because I didn't have the tools in time. So I will say and I'm not really gonna put it on a tagline at the end but please leave a review, please, you know, just be genuine. I will never tell you to do something that's not in alignment with the experience that you've had from being here and listening to me. But if this has helped you, I'm emotional today, which is I'm emotional today and I've been a lot of the days and so I kind of thought, oh well, maybe I'm not ready to record the podcast, because I've been in this state of having these real, real revelations, enlightenments, whatever you want to call it, when I opened up my books for the month of July and I had the opportunity to counsel so many PMDD partners and so many individuals that suffer with PMDD. It magnified the level of suffering that I know that's going on. It magnified the visibility, like I know the individuals are suffering. If you find my podcast like, I know that you're suffering and I know what that feels like and I think that's why, regardless of what happens, this is my assignment. My assignment is you. I care about you.

Speaker 1 4:13

So I was going back to my tagline. I used to say you share the episode and everything like that and make it super, you know, official and marketable, and I have. You know, obviously I run a business, so I have podcast producers and I have a business mentor and I have all and I have. You know, obviously I run a business, so I have podcast producers and I have a business mentor and I have all of these people.

The Assignment of Helping PMDD Sufferers

Speaker 1 4:29

But I noticed what happened about a year ago, almost a year ago, a little bit over a year ago that I started saying at the end of my podcast and this is very like, none of my podcasts are scripted, by the way and I started saying I love you. At the end I used to say, just, we got this, which we do, which is why I'm here but then I started saying I love you because my love for you has gotten so deep and so I don't even know if there's a word to describe it, because I feel like every single time I have a private session with my clients and I'm pouring into them, I am in it. I've been through so many experiences myself where I'm in it with you, and so when I say I love you, I genuinely mean it. It's definitely not something that I would say unless I genuinely meant it. Same thing in a relationship, but I love you because I know how much you're suffering. I know how much you're going through. I know how much you may be feeling really hopeless right now. I know how much that even meeting me and finding out about me or listening to this may be like your last ditch effort on your PMDD relationship. It may be like I've tried everything else and I'm here, and so this last couple of weeks and I've never taken this long of a break, and I know it's only two weeks, but I just wanted to make sure that when I came back and I poured into you because that's really what it is it's me pouring out what is going on with my life, which is how it initially started before I took on clients. It was all my life, all my experience, all what I was going through. Then, when I got my doctorate, it was all of my research from. You know, cognitively, what I've learned as a traumatologist and then also counseling so many PMDD sufferers and partners. It is just the fact that a lot of my clients say that like, oh, a lot of people don't know about it.

Speaker 1 6:29

My goal there's a lot of people in the PMDD space my goal was not solely for PMDD awareness. I know that a lot of people don't know about it and I I grieve that. I think that more people should. But my goal is to get you to a place where you don't feel like you are trapped and locked in because you have PMDD or because you're with someone with PMDD. My goal is to give you hope. My goal is to give you freedom, because I remember giving up hope and freedom and feeling like, well, I guess this is just the way that it has to be. I guess I'm just going to be in this miserable relationship because I'm the one that has PMDD and I have to deal with this, and so if there's issues that are going on in my relationship, it's probably my fault, because I'm the one with the disorder and I began to get into a proving mode, which is what we're going to talk about today.

Speaker 1 7:28

I began to try to work on myself, which I've seen a lot of my private clients do. They're like on this journey of working on themselves, like I found out that I have PMDD. So I'm going to Google every article, every program, every. You know all of these things and I'm going to work on myself. And when you get into that mode, you almost have already been through a lot of traumatic experiences with your partner, you've already went off on PMDD range, you've already said and done things that you feel completely guilty about, but you want to show that you're working on yourself. So you start to get into this proving mode and I saw this a lot with my private clients and I saw it with myself. I had been in this place so many times where I began to think, like I got this, like I just need to work on this.

The Trap of Proving Yourself

Speaker 1 8:16

And then, when I get to that point where I feel like I'm good enough to work on this or work on the relationship, I began to, but I wasn't doing it from an authentic place of I'm being myself in this relationship. I was doing it from a place of proving my self-worth to my partner and it is such a dangerous place to be. It's such a dangerous thing to do because I did it, and I did it for so long that I didn't even notice that I was doing it. And what I mean by that is I started acting within the realms of proving who I was and how you know, because when you have PMDD, you're like, oh, like you feel like there's a tick off of your self-worth, like I'm not as attractive, I'm not as desirable to be with because I have PMDD. So you feel the need to outshine in other areas. So I started to do extra in other areas and I burned myself out. But I almost prided myself on that. I'm like I'm doing this and I'm doing that and I'm doing this and I was doing so many things.

Speaker 1 9:24

The next couple of weeks we're gonna be talking a lot about the nervous system and what that looks like when you're in a PMDD relationship. But I was burning my nervous system out and I was trying to prove to my PMDD partner that I was worthy and I almost thought like coming out of all of these relationships that I've been in, like every time I went into a relationship, I had no idea that I was rewinding back to the beginning of proving myself again, and over this past couple of weeks, I realized that I had completely lost myself. And what I've been doing in this time that I haven't released anything is finding out who I was before PMDD took over my relationships. Because when PMDD took over my relationships, my identity, who I was, how I felt, how I looked, everything just transformed. I was like a completely different person in a PMDD relationship and I noticed that I took a break from dating for the last couple of months I think it's been oh my gosh, it's August already. Okay, so it's August. So about four months I've taken a break from dating to just find myself, cause I really felt very lost.

Speaker 1 10:39

I'm not a you know, an advocate of like repeating patterns. If you see something's not working, please don't try to do the same thing with a different person, because you're going to get the similar result. And so I was just like. I want to get to a place where I'm understanding the root of what's going on, like why do I feel like every single time I get into a relationship, that I get straight into proving mode, I become more of a people pleaser. I feel like I need to stifle down and not talk about things that really bother me, and I think that I need to be like. I need to be this perfect person and I need to present myself as like a sacrifice, like here. Here I am like like me, love me, all of the things.

Speaker 1 11:19

And it's damaging and it's dangerous because the realms of which you will go to prove yourself to your partner is horrific. It'll take you farther than you actually want to go and I know this from working with a lot of private clients and I was like why are you? I mean, I see them burning themselves out and I see them spinning their wheels and going through all of these self-help things and personal development and all of these things. And I am a very bite-sized individual, meaning if I'm going to give you a tool, it's going to be a small tool. It's not going to overwhelm you, it's not going to make you feel like you need to stop everything you're doing and go do all the things I'm going to. Just let you know. Okay, these are the holes that I see that are going on in your life, that are probably making you feel a certain way, let's try to add something into this, let's try to fill this hole.

Speaker 1 12:13

But a lot of times when you start to work on yourself, there's so much that you could find that you literally become overwhelmed with and you start to diagnose yourself with all of these things. I have OCD, I have ADHD, I have ADD, I have I'm on the spectrum, I have all of these things. I have bipolar, maybe I have a hint of bipolar, maybe I have this Like there's so many things that's going on in your mind when you're trying to work on yourself that you're trying to spiral to put another label on top of a label, and for me it's not about the label. Do I have premenstrual dysphoric disorder? Yes, absolutely. I'm not going to deny that and be delusional, but the cure for feeling better about having PMDD and being in relationships is not to stamp another disorder on top of it. It's not for me to find more things that are wrong with me in order for me to find clarity on it, because, just so you know from a doctor's perspective, for every disorder there is another treatment. It's kind of like when you take a physical medicine. You take a medicine and it has this list of side effects and they say it really fast on the commercials you can have a heart attack, you can have this, you can have this and all these side effects that it has, and then you find out that you have another disorder or another condition. So you take another medicine and you're piling all of those medicines on top of each other, but guess what? They all have side effects. So I think that individuals are really thinking that the more I get clarity on what I have, the better it is. But a lot of times, the more you try to search for another disorder, to stamp you, to label you, the more you're going to be dealing with the side effects of that, because mentally, cognitively, your brain is absorbing.

Speaker 1 14:02

Okay, I have ADHD, I have ADD, I have OCD. When I tell you and I'm mentioning those because they're very common you could have tendencies. I believe that I have tendencies of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. As far as cleanliness is concerned, when I'm in my luteal phase I get really clean. I will wake up really early and start cleaning the whole house and everything needs to be perfect and if something is not really, you know, intact like I feel anxious about having it fixed. And then I get really minimalistic and I start like getting rid of things. Like I do this every single month. Like you can imagine how smaller and smaller and smaller my environment has gotten because every single month I go through this ADD, adhd. I have a million ideas and I'm like, oh, let me do this, let me do this, and what about this? What about this? I'm a great starter. With ADD and ADHD, you're not really a good finisher because you're always starting another project. And ADHD, you're not really a good finisher because you're always starting another project. Do I diagnose myself with ADD, adhd, ocd, all of these things? I don't. I know that I have the tendencies. Again, I'm not living in Delululand, I'm not delusional, but I am aware that a lot of my private clients and myself have those tendencies. But when you take on the label of saying like this is what I have, then you feel the need to do all of these additional things, which, in turn, makes you more overwhelmed, makes you more stressed, makes you more frustrated. In turn, is going to impact your PMDD symptoms. So I'm very mindful of what I am taking on.

Qualifications for a PMDD Relationship

Speaker 1 15:41

So when I was on this journey of really feeling lost and feeling like what is going on with me? What was me before PMDD? That's literally what I started to work on. Who was I before I knew I had PMDD? Was it before I had PMDD? No, I've had PMDD for over 19 years. Did I know I had PMDD for 19 years? Absolutely not. So I was thinking of that version of myself that wasn't aware that I had PMDD. How did I act? I was so happy, so fulfilled, so in alignment with the core of who I am before I knew that I had PMDD. In alignment with the core of who I am before I knew that I had PMDD. And it took me, it was really hard for me to admit that and it took a lot of work for me to get to the point to admit that. Like before I knew that I had PMDD, my life was great.

Speaker 1 16:35

When I found out that I had PMDD, my life was horrible, almost cursed. It was horrible because then I looked at this label and I looked at all that it was associated with it, all of the symptoms, and it's almost like you're in the club and then somebody turns the lights on. I saw everything, and what was in the club was my anxiety, my depression, my fatigue, my night sweats. There were all of these symptoms that all of a sudden, because I was aware that I had this disorder, there was a light shining on it and it was forcing me to do something about it and I didn't want to. I desperately wanted to hurry up and fix it so that I could go back to my normal life before I knew that I had PMDD. And I went on this journey and I'm going to talk to you about what that looked like, because I love me without PMDD. Again, I told you I've been rhyming lately Um, I've been in relationships where I haven't known that I had PMDD, and did I go through ups and downs?

Speaker 1 17:37

Absolutely. Was I more resilient? Did I bounce back a lot better from the things that kind of tore me down before I knew I had PMDD? Absolutely, because I didn't stay in that place of like, oh my gosh, this is another PMDD episode. This is how it's going to be. I didn't know what was going on. Honestly, I was clueless. You know how that? There I think there's a saying and it's like ignorance is bliss, like when you don't know about something. It's almost like it's bliss because you're more happy not knowing, because you're not bogged down with the labels of what that means, like I talked to, I used to live in Hawaii for a lot of years for five years and I used to always be downtown.

Speaker 1 18:18

I mean, I lived downtown in Waikiki and I would always be on walk runs and just spending time at the beach Every day. We were at the beach and there were a lot of homeless people and I would see them and sometimes because everybody pretty much wears island gear like a tank top and shorts, like you, sometimes you don't know who's homeless and who's not, because they're fitting in with everybody else, like we're all looking like little beach bums and we're all happy about it. And I just remember meeting so many amazing homeless people at the beach and in Waikiki and Hawaii and just being like they don't even like they're homeless. They act like they're just at the beach, just like us. And I have my daughter she was younger at the time and we would just have like the most amazing time.

Speaker 1 19:04

And I really started to think about what it looks like when you add things to your identity that weren't there before, how you almost feel the need to shift into that identity and act how an individual who has this identity is supposed to act and don't do the things that cause damage that this identity does and you become hyper-focused and hyper-working on it. And I thought about premenstrual dysphoric disorder, because all of my clients are doing that Like once they find out, especially my hypervigilant PMDD sufferers. They're like I'm on it, I have PMDD, let me research every article, let me get in every program, let me work on myself. And they do that and leave their partners in the dust. They literally leave their partners in the dust because they're so hyper-focused on I need you to see that I'm a good PMDD partner and I can overcome whatever PMDD is throwing my way to be this version of myself.

Speaker 1 19:58

And you lose yourself. And then you become bitter and resentful because you're doing all the work and you're looking at what your partner is doing and all of a sudden, it's not acceptable. Even though your partner wasn't doing anything before, you weren't doing anything before, but now that you're actually doing something, you're like they should do this and they should do this. And you put on, you project all of these expectations on your partner and they're like what the heck is going on? They're completely overwhelmed. Yes, they're supporting your journey in PMDD, but they don't understand why, all of a sudden, there's this projection of expectations of what you're supposed to do, what it's supposed to look like, because now you're in a PMDD relationship. Do you know that before your partner even understood that you have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, they were just in a relationship. They were not in a PMDD relationship. They didn't sign up to be in a PMDD relationship. They didn't complete a course like the course that I have. My partner has PMDD, now what? Which is why I created the course. If you don't have it, you need to contact me. I've taken it down off of my website, but if you really want that course, please contact me. Dm me on Instagram, drrose, underscore InLoveWithPMDD. Same thing on TikTok, or you can email me, rose, at InLoveWithPMDD.

Speaker 1 21:16

If you are in a relationship with someone and they didn't know that you originally had PMDD, and now all of a sudden they know that you have PMDD, they're not qualified to be in a relationship with you based off of you. You know surveying them and kind of like dating them to be like hey, are you, you know, are you eligible to be with me in a PMDD relationship? They just were with you and then you discovered that you have PMDD. Or they discovered that you have PMDD and now you're just throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying to make it work and every month you're just wishing and hoping and praying that you make it one more month. They've not been through any training.

Speaker 1 21:53

I thought about this the other day because one of my billion jobs I do have like a billion jobs, I do a lot of things it's a human resources director and I was thinking about the hiring process. I was thinking about talent acquisition, my talent acquisition team. I have a big team that does strictly recruiting, strictly hiring. They're doing a lot of research on the position and they're doing a lot of research on the position and they're doing a lot of research on the organization and I allow them and encourage them to do a deep dive on the personalities within the departments that they're placing individuals in, not just what I see on your resume. So when I am doing the final interview, I allow them to do the preliminary interviews, the first couple of interviews. I have to do the final interview where I am actually offering them the job or making the decision not to offer them the job because it's not a good fit, or redirecting them to another department to where it is a good fit.

Speaker 1 22:48

I always say that if someone says that they want a position, what have they done to prove that they have been operable in that position or how do they have the potential to operate in that position and be trainable? So what I mean by that is going back to PMDD relationships. If you said to someone, oh, I want you to be a good PMDD partner. Like and a lot of times this happened like after you've already been in the relationship, what have they shown you that would prove that they're a good fit for the job? Are you even clear on what it means to be a good, supportive PMDD partner? Are you even clear on what it is that you need in a relationship with someone while you have PMDD? How would you ever hire someone? I would never do this. How would you ever hire someone to work for you to fill a role that hasn't proven a history or potential to sit within that role and it be profitable, and by profitable it being a desirable relationship where you're getting your needs met.

Speaker 1 23:52

A lot of you are in relationships with individuals that are not qualified to be a PMDD partner. They're not qualified to be in a PMDD relationship and a lot of times that's because they've never signed up to be in a PMDD relationship. They weren't vetted to be in a PMDD relationship. They were vetted to just hey, I just wanna be in a relationship with you. I like you, I love you, we have fun. I just want to be in a relationship with you. I like you, I love you, we have fun. We have similar values. Let's be together.

Signs You're Proving Your Worth

Speaker 1 24:17

When you add premenstrual dysphoric disorder to your relationship, there is a long list of things that need to be there, and if they're not there, the suffering is there. The absence of the tools is the presence of the suffering, and that's what I really recognize. And so the next time that you think about nagging your partner, going off on them, arguing with them, fighting with them about not being a supportive PMDD partner, ask yourself what have you done to help them? Because a lot of times, for the individuals that are suffering with PMDD, you are the one that has PMDD. What have you done to help your partner be a more supportive PMDD partner? Are you just expecting them to just learn it out of thin air? You don't even know how to operate within the realms of your luteal phase without support, so how are you expecting them to operate without support? They are suffering. Partners are suffering hard right now and they're holding a lot of it in until they can't, and then the reactions that they're having from holding it in are even more damaging, and I'll talk about that a little bit later.

Speaker 1 25:18

But all of my private clients that are partners, they're going through it and so if you're not in a place of like, hey, I want to be supportive for the journey that you're in from being in a relationship with someone who has PMDD, like I want to help you with that because I know that it's hard, it's not easy being with someone who has PMDD and I'm going to repeat that because I really want that to set in, because I know the ego and the pride and it's thinking about all of the qualities that you have outside of PMDD and you're like, oh, but I'm this, but I'm that, but you have premenstrual dysphoric disorder which alters your mood every single month, and you're dealing with an individual whose mood is probably not altered every single month. So you're always going to have that level of, you're going to have to have that level of humility to being like, hey, I know that we actually have issues in our relationship and I know that it's things that I'm working on, but this issue because I chose to be with you it's probably a PMDD issue, like, let's just be honest with this. Let's just be honest Out of 8 billion people in the world, you chose to be with this person. So this is for the individuals that have PMDD. You chose to be with this person.

Speaker 1 26:26

Why would you choose to be with this person and then all of a sudden feel dissatisfied, feel like you're not compatible, feel like you should just be single? Why is that? Could it be that you have PMDD? Could it be that premenstrual dysphoric disorder is distorting your reality of what's going on in your relationship and how you actually view your partner? Because I know, for me, if I'm choosing to add someone to my life, they need to be providing some kind of value.

Speaker 1 26:53

And at one point you thought that, out of 8 billion people in the world, that this should be your partner and I don't want you. No one forced you to be in this relationship and I think a lot of times you're. You know, for the individual that's suffering with PMDD, like you're treating it as like this thing has just been dropped on your lap, like, oh, I'm with this person, you chose this person, and so if you're complaining if you're not satisfied, if you're not being as supportive, but what part of you accepted this individual as your person? I had to go really deep to work on that and think about the people that I've chosen to be in my life, that I've chosen to be connected with and was like why did I choose them? Like, there has to be a pattern there and I encourage you to go on this journey because when you think about who you were prior to PMDD, I would think about that version of yourself and I don't mean before you had PMDD, I mean before you knew what PMDD was, and that you had PMDD and all these things and what made you choose that person? What does that version of you look like, was and that you had PMDD and all these things, and what made you choose that person? What was that? What does that version of you look like? And then, what made you choose the partner that you have? They must have offered something to you that you were just like. This is my person. And so what happens is when you get in relationships and you realize, okay, I'm admitting, you fast forward from that discovery process and said okay, I know PMDD is a problem For those individuals that are very action-based, like they're very proactive. They're like okay, I'm going to start working on myself.

Speaker 1 28:32

When I started to prove myself to my ex-PMDD partners, it was not good. It was not good because I was willing to burn myself out. I was willing to ignore my needs, I was willing to do anything that I could do to prove that I was worthy of being with this person. And I put them on a pedestal because in my mind, I'm like well, they're not the one that has PMDD. I am like so I need to make sure that I'm this and I need to make sure that I'm that.

Speaker 1 28:53

The intimacy went down because I was less vulnerable about how I was really feeling, because I almost took my vulnerability as a sign of weakness. I felt like well, I can't tell them that I'm not on my best, because then they're going to throw it in my face and then I'm going to feel less worthy and then I'm going to be like my poor PMDD partner, like I'm making them go through this again and again and again. And I went into this mode of. I just felt like I needed to do more because I was the one who had premenstrual dysphoric disorder. I really did and I said I need to prove myself, I need to prove that I can go out and that I could do the work. And I needed their validation, I needed their approval in order for me to feel worthy to be in a relationship with them. So I'm going to give you some signs about what it looks like when you're trying to prove yourself in your PMDD relationship.

Speaker 1 29:44

The first thing is you constantly over-explain yourself. I used to do this all the time where I feel like I need to justify every feeling or decision so that they don't misinterpret it and call it PMDD. I would be like, oh, I'm really tired, but it's not because I have PMDD, it's because, you know, I worked a long day, or oh, I did this Like I almost was over explaining myself to redirect my partners from making PMDD the problem, because if PMDD was the problem, then I was the problem. I identified as having PMDD. Therefore I was the problem.

Speaker 1 30:18

So I was always over-explaining myself. I didn't allow myself the grace and permission to have an off day. I didn't allow myself the grace and permission to be overwhelmed or stressed or frustrated, because I felt like I needed to prove that hey, it's not hard being in a relationship with me, it can actually be easy, and when I made it easy for my partners, it was always harder for me. It was always harder for me. It wasn't because a PMDD relationship is easy, because it's not. It was because I made it easy for them, because I felt like it was my job too. I felt like it was my responsibility too. So the next sign is that you apologize even when you didn't do anything wrong. Now, when I did this, I developed the three things that I tell you to always avoid Bitterness, resentment and unforgiveness.

Speaker 1 31:04

When I started to say I'm sorry for things that I didn't do just to keep the peace, I felt worse about myself. I felt like I guess I have to always be the problem. I'm always you know what to say Like I'm always the bad guy, like I'm always the one that has to be in any issue that we have. It's because of me. I didn't really let my partner know what I genuinely felt about the situation. There was no point. I knew that if I tried to defend myself and my point of view in the relationship, that it was going to cause a fight. It was going to cause an argument. So what did I do? I said, oh yeah, I'm sorry, babe. And then it was so horrible when they were like okay, yeah, that's okay. But it was horrible because I knew I didn't mean it. I was lying to my partner and saying that I was sorry about something that I genuinely wasn't sorry about, because I didn't feel like I had done anything wrong, but I wanted to just keep the peace. I wanted to keep the peace. I didn't want to be the one that say if things are going really good, I didn't want to be the one that messed it up, because every single time in an argument it's like we were doing so good and then you came in and so I felt horrible about myself and so I just started saying sorry and apologizing when I did nothing wrong. So that's the second sign that I felt the need to prove my worth.

Speaker 1 32:21

The third sign is you agree with things that you don't believe in just to avoid having another PMDD fight. I again this is abandoning yourself. All of these things that you're doing when you're doing these things are abandoning yourself. All of these things that you're doing when you're doing these things are abandoning who you truly are, at your core. You're abandoning yourself for the sake of the relationship and not in a noble way, not in a wow. You're sacrificing yourself for the sake of the relationship. That's amazing? No, it's not amazing, because you're abandoning the core of who you are meaning. Your self-worth is lowering, your self-love is lowering, your self-care is lowering and you're gonna start to feel like crap about yourself. You almost fear having your own opinion because you think that it's gonna be met with rejection. Your partner's gonna reject how you really feel about a situation, or they're gonna go off on rage. They're gonna fight, they're gonna argue. They're gonna to go off on rage, they're going to fight, they're going to argue, they're going to get defensive. You're fearing that. So you just start to agree with things. This is how you lose yourself. This is what I mean by I lost myself, because when you start to do these things and you recognize that oh wow, when I agreed with this, even though I didn't really agree with it, we didn't have a fight. So cognitively your brain is like that's a good thing. So now I'm going to continue to deny the core of who you are and just project who you feel like you should be in the relationship, and the next sign is you abandon your needs to meet theirs.

Speaker 1 33:48

I remember being in a relationship and prioritizing my PMDD partners morning routine, which I talk about all the time. And then I was in a relationship and prioritizing my PMDD partner's morning routine, which I talk about all the time. And then I was in a relationship with someone that didn't. They didn't, they didn't like that. I did the morning routine because they like to connect in the morning. So what did I do? Because I was trying to prove myself to my partner, I started to prioritize their needs over my own. I didn't make sure that I was good by doing my PMDD partner's morning routine. I made sure they were good by connecting with them and in turn, I suffered. I suffered so much because I didn't use the tools that I had already had in place to manage my PMDD symptoms.

Speaker 1 34:34

Even before I knew that I had PMDD, I had a morning routine because I knew that, hey, when I do these things, these things make me feel my best. I didn't know why. I just was like, hey, if I don't do this, I feel like crap, if I do do this, I feel great. So I developed this morning routine even before I knew that I had PMDD and when I got in a relationship with someone that was like we can sleep in, or oh, you don't need to get up and work out, or oh, you don't need to spend that time alone. I did it because I felt like I needed to prove myself. I'm like, oh okay, I mean, I'm with this person. This is not their thing, but now we're together, so let me just do this. I abandoned myself and I paid for it because now all of the symptoms that I would have had lessened by doing my morning routine were now there and I couldn't say anything about it. I had to hold it in and it made me have to suffer in silence, which leads to the next one, where you feel like you're walking on eggshells.

Nervous System Impact and Identity Loss

Speaker 1 35:34

You scan the environment to figure out what version of your partner you're going to get today. What version of you do you need to be today in order to meet your partner's needs? Everything was about them. I felt like if they're in a good mood, I need to be in a good mood, even if I woke up and I felt like crap, and I was like bogged down by fatigue and I felt like I didn't want to do anything. If they wanted to do something, I was like sure, babe, sure, yeah, let's go, let's do this. This leads into the people pleasing. I'm like, yeah, let's do it, not because I genuinely wanted to do it, not because I even enjoyed myself when I did do it, but because I felt like I had to in order to prove that I was good in a relationship with them. Because I felt like if I ever got to the point where I wasn't doing those things, they wouldn't want to be with me. They could just be with someone who didn't have PMDD. And that fear made me feel like I needed to prove myself. And so the next thing that you'll end up doing is you try to be perfect in order to avoid triggering them.

Speaker 1 36:29

I didn't feel in a lot of my relationships that I could be authentic to having any negative emotions. So every single time that I've gone off on PMDD rage and I've been so stressed and I've been so overwhelmed, it's because I've been holding in all of the little feelings that I had before that I didn't feel comfortable sharing, because I felt like I wouldn't be perfect. They would love, bomb me and say all these amazing things about me, like oh, you're so nice, you're so this, you're so that and I would live for that level of self-validation. I would live for them telling me how great I was, and so I felt like I couldn't do anything to make them feel that I was less great, because I would no longer get that love bombing, that self-validation, that feeling good about me being in a relationship, and I would just be like, oh, I have PMDD, but my partner thinks I'm amazing. My partner didn't know who I was because I was abandoning myself by denying the reality of how I was actually feeling. So it's almost like being in a relationship with a bot, like an AI bot, like I wasn't being the true core of who I am. I was being who I thought that they wanted me to be. I was being who they thought that they needed me to be, and so the next sign was you constantly seek validation or praise from them.

Speaker 1 37:47

I was stuck in this cycle for so long where I needed my partner to say nice things about me in order for me to feel good about myself. I relied on their affection, attention and validation to feel like I was enough, and I love hearing that I impact individuals' lives. I love hearing that I'm adored by a partner that, wow, I'm really happy that you're in my life. I'm really happy that I have you. You know I love you, I adore you, like all of these things. I like it does something for me, probably because my love language is words of affirmation.

Speaker 1 38:30

But what happens is when I feel like I needed to prove myself, I set a level of expectations. I would be with someone and get to know what are the times that they said those nice things about me, what are those times that they showed me that I was valid. Okay, so let me just repeat that cycle. Let me be that person that they need and want me to be in order to continue to get that validation that left me reliant on. If they gave me the validation, I felt good about myself. If there were times where they didn't and it didn't mean that they didn't think highly of me, but maybe they forgot, or maybe they would I would feel horrible about myself and I would be like a little puppy waiting for another treat. Tell me I'm great. Tell me I'm amazing. Tell me that I make your life so much better. It makes you desperate, it makes you clingy and it makes your self-worth go in the toilet, in the garbage, in the garbage. It's horrible.

Speaker 1 39:22

And the next time is you replay arguments in your head trying to see what you could have done better. There's so many times where there've been big blowups in my PMDD relationships and I've looked at it and I'm just like that was horrible. I can't believe we just went through that and I would just like feel horrible about it, like, oh, I could have done this differently, I could have said this differently. I was always the one that took 100% of the blame, even when it probably was like 60-40 or 80-20. It was always an imbalance, but I always went out of it when I was trying to prove myself as, like I'm 100% of the problem. So I would even look at some of the things that they would do and then I would be like, oh well, they only did this because I did this. I would make excuses for their behavior and say that they only did those negative things because they were in response to things that I did, making me 100% of the problem. And a lot of the times that gave a level of control, because it's like, hey, if I can control who's to blame, then I can fix it. If the other person's to blame and they're not willing to admit that they're to blame, then I have to sit there and wait for them. So, in my mind, it was better for me to just take 100% of the blame. Therefore, I could do 100% of the fixing it.

Speaker 1 40:38

And so the next sign is you suppress your emotions to seem easygoing or low maintenance. I have lived my entire being and being in relationships trying to be low maintenance in relationships. Oh, you don't have to pay my bills, you don't have to come and pick me up. I can come there, I can catch an Uber there. You don't have to do this. You don't have to buy me these gifts. I made it so easy for people to be good to me because I felt like if I made it harder, they weren't going to do it.

Speaker 1 41:10

So I was scared of expressing my needs, my desires, my boundaries, my expectations, because I thought that it was going to cause them to not show up as to who I wanted them to be. So if I knew that I wanted to be with this person, I felt like if I gave them my expectations and say, hey, if you want to be in a relationship with me, these are the things that you need to do, I felt like that was too harsh. That was like over the top. Like, who am I to do all the like? Now, looking back, I'm like, yeah, I deserve to have expectations. But I was literally thinking, who am I to provide expectations to a partner on how they need to be and removing them from my life if they're not choosing to be that way? I felt like I was going to end up with no one. It was that scarcity mindset If I put up these boundaries, then they're not going to stay.

Speaker 1 42:01

So I was scared of expressing my needs because I felt like if I really put it on the table of what I really desired and I've always been really clear because I'm very self-aware, I've always been really clear on what it is that I wanted, I needed, but I wasn't really clear to my partners on the requirement for them to be that Like, hey, it's kind of like if you're going on a rollercoaster, if you want to ride this ride, you need to be this tall. If you're not this tall, come back next year, maybe you'll be this tall. And that's a lot of times how it needs to be in relationships. If you want to be in a relationship with me, these are the requirements. Every tick that's on that little ruler that's saying how tall you need to be is a requirement that I have, and you have your own set of requirements, and I encourage you to measure me against your requirements. I measure you against my requirements and we decide if we're able to ride together, and it's as simple as that. And if we can't, if I don't meet up to your standards and requirements and you don't meet up to my standards and requirements, then how would we ever get on the ride together and it not become chaos? Somebody lowered their tick. You know how you have the thing where you need to be tall enough.

Speaker 1 43:33

Some people in these relationships are like you don't have all the requirements. Okay, I'm just going to let you on anyway. How many times have you seen that where the person is almost tall enough to go on the ride and then the attendant is like, oh, just come on, they're going to pay for that, because if anything happens while they're on their ride because they're not at the level that they're supposed to be at, you're going to be held liable for letting them on the ride when they weren't qualified to be on the ride. The same thing happens in your PMDD relationship, when you allow someone into your life that's not qualified to be in a PMDD relationship with you because you think that you could. Just it's going to give you a little bit of leeway. You're gonna be missing that one thing. That tick was there for a reason and if you let them on without them being fully qualified, you're gonna end up suffering and the relationship is gonna end anyway for that one reason that they were never qualified from the beginning.

Speaker 1 44:20

And the next thing is you're exhausted and you're anxious and you do not recognize yourself anymore. If you have been in the realms over I don't care if it's days, months, years once you get in a pattern of proving yourself to your PMDD partner, you're going to burn out. You're going to become exhausted. You're going to become anxious and hypervigilant to their responses or their lack of responses, and you're not going to recognize yourself because you're going to be so busy overworking instead of just being. You're overworking and proving yourself and your nervous system is on high alert all the time.

Speaker 1 44:55

And what happens cognitively right In your brain in your PMDD brain or in your individual brain if you don't have PMDD? As you begin to have an anxious attachment, your brain sees every response from your partner as rejection or rage. They think it's a threat to connecting, and so you develop a lot of these behaviors like people pleasing, apologizing, over-functioning, being hyper-vigilant. You develop that from trying to prove yourself to your partner. You're proving yourself to your partner. You probably have an anxious attachment style and for the trauma responses you know how they have the fight, the flight, the freeze or the fawn. If you are trying to prove yourself to your partner, you are definitely in the fawn mode and what that means is that the trauma response where you try to please someone, to avoid conflict or even abuse.

Speaker 1 45:50

You're like whatever I have to do to not have them yell at me, whatever I have to do to not have them go off on me, whatever I have to do to not even let them put their hands on me, whatever I have to do to not have them. Childhood trauma for our kids by seeing them go off. You're walking on eggshells and you're stuck in this pattern of feeling like you're the problem. You're like if I just try harder, things will get better and if they're angry, it must be my fault. You're damaging your nervous system because when you have chronic cortisol spikes, which is what your nervous system, the stress hormone, is you start to develop a lot of fatigue and you start to develop a lot of brain fog and you start to develop a lot of anxiety.

Speaker 1 46:31

And this happens in a lot of individuals that don't have PMDD the partners. You're like I don't have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, but I have fatigue, I have brain fog, I'm trying to function at work. I can't really function at work, I'm forgetting things. I've had individuals that have lost their jobs because of that. And then you have really bad, severe anxiety. And then you have this hypervigilance where you're constantly scanning for dangers For the individuals that have PMDD. You're on high, high, high alert. You're always like one step away from going off on PMDD rage One step away, one step away.

Speaker 1 47:05

And when you're in a relationship with someone who is one step away from going off, your nervous system can never calm down. And then so you get this loss of identity. You become an individual that is tied to how your partner sees you and how they validate you. If my partner says I'm great, then I'm great. If my partner says I'm a piece of crap, I'm a piece of crap. And so everything about your self-worth is tied to what your partner says about you.

Speaker 1 47:29

And so, when I really got to the root of feeling like I've been proving myself for way too long. I had to really dig myself out of that and it was a strategic process and I'm going to talk to you about some of the tools. But I did develop a program that's really, really going to help you with all of the little things, because it's not one thing that you do for this. You have to think about how long you've been proving yourself. What are the ways that you've been proving yourself, what are the things? You've been doing it with your words. You've been doing it with your actions. You've been doing it in your day-to-day life.

Finding Your Core Self Again

Speaker 1 48:01

So I created the Me Before PMDD Toolkit. With this toolkit, I'm going to put everything in there that's going to help you rewire your PMDD brain or, for your individual that doesn't have PMDD, it's going to help you rewire your nervous system into not feeling like you have to prove yourself to your partner. When you get out of this mode, you're going to see the relationship clearly and you're going to be able to do things in the relationship that are still good. But it's not gonna come from a place of proving right. It's not gonna come from a place of, well, I need to do this and I need to do that and I need to do this. You are gonna be in a place where you're gonna feel calm. When things are not going your way, you're gonna be like, okay, I have tools on how to handle this. So what I really want you to understand about being in a PMDD relationship is you really, really really have to stop trying to prove yourself to your PMDD partner so many times.

Speaker 1 48:59

When you're in the luteal phase, you're always looking for ways that you need to be a different version of yourself in order for your partner to accept you. This is for the individual who has PMDD and the individual that doesn't. You're saying things like I need to work on my PMDD more, or I need to work on being a more supportive PMDD partner. You need to do all of these things that are taking you out of the core of who you are. So you're not gonna be able to have the intimacy with your partner, because intimacy is that closeness with the true core of who you are.

Speaker 1 49:31

You're going to begin to get bitter. You're going to get resentful for feeling like, in order to be with this individual, I have to change who I am. If your partner cannot accept you for where you are in that journey. It doesn't mean that you're not compatible. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be together. It means that you're not having to change who you are. They need to understand that I'm in this place on the journey. Maybe you're working on your PMDD, maybe you just found out that you have PMDD, or maybe you're working on being a more supportive PMDD partner. That's fine, but don't be working on yourself so much that you become unrecognizable.

Speaker 1 50:09

You're going to get bitter and you're going to get resentful and you're going to look at yourself one day and you're not going to recognize who you are because you're going to be feeling like your identity is based off of proving yourself to your PMDD partner so much that you don't even recognize who you were when you first came into this relationship. Remember, you chose your partner and you chose your partner before any of this happened. So you need to make sure that you stay true to the core of who you are. Of course, you're gonna have bitterness and resentment and unforgiveness if you start to act so much out of character that it's not in alignment with who you want it to be.

Speaker 1 50:49

So don't fall for the trap of coming outside of yourself and feeling like you're not enough and you have to prove yourself to your PMDD partner. You should just be able to be who you are on this phase of your journey and allow them to support you and accept you where you are, because, if not, your nervous system is going to get overwhelmed cognitively, it's going to cause your PMDD symptoms to be worse and, as the partner, you're going to begin to have hopelessness and feeling like I don't know what more I could do. I'm just in this place and I just I want to be a more supportive PMDD partner or I want to be a better partner in this relationship while having PMDD and you're not going to know what to do. So remember, if you came into a relationship and you came into it trying to be loved and to receive love you weren't created to perform for it. You were not created to perform for love. You were created to receive it as you are, your worth is not in the hands of what your partner says that you are or that you aren't. That is within you. So if this episode really hit home for you, I invite you to start a new pattern within yourself, like I've had to do, like I've had to do within myself, of finding the core of who I am and really getting out of that realm of feeling like I need to prove myself to anyone else.

Speaker 1 52:12

So the link for the Me Before PMDD toolkit is going to be in the show notes and this episode was really for anyone who's ever said you know, I really miss who I was before PMDD took over our relationship. That version of you isn't gone. They're just buried under survival mode of what PMDD has brought into your relationship. That version of you isn't gone. They're just buried under survival mode of what PMDD has brought into your relationship. So this is why I created Me Before PMDD.

Speaker 1 52:36

This is not a healing guide. This is a toolkit of things that you can actually do. So you're going to get scripts, you're going to get checklists, you're going to get identity resets and actual tools that I use with my private clients that you can use when your symptoms start of feeling like you need to prove yourself to your partner. So, whether you're the sufferer or you're the partner, you're going to be in the place of when you feel like you're doing it and I'm going to give you the signs in the toolkit of what that looks like. You're going to have the tools of what you can do about it. So grab your copy at inlovewithpmddcom or you can click the link in the show notes, and I look forward to continuing to work with you. We got this. I love you.