Why Breaking Up Won’t Fix PMDD Stress

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Ever feel like one tiny comment can tip your whole relationship over? PMDD can make the ordinary feel unbearable, not because your love changed, but because your stress response did. We pull back the curtain on how the luteal phase cranks up the body’s alarm system—spiking cortisol, shrinking emotional tolerance, and distorting what you think your partner means—so neutral moments read like rejection and everyday chores feel like cliffs.

We walk through real‑life flashpoints, like time management clashes and airport anxiety, to show how different nervous systems handle stress. You’ll hear a simple shift—explaining the why behind your behavior—turn rigidity into care and defensiveness into teamwork. We dig into the intimacy gap that opens when fatigue pushes you into autopilot, and how two‑minute check‑ins can keep connection alive without draining your last bit of energy. Instead of chasing a stress‑free fantasy, we focus on building a responsive plan: safe time‑outs for rage, short body resets to lower baseline arousal, and weekly “release the pressure” rituals that stop micro‑triggers from stockpiling.

Using the balloon metaphor, we map how unaddressed stress accumulates all month and pops during PMDD. The fix isn’t a breakup or silence until it blows; it’s steady processing while your brain can still think clearly. We share tools to align on hot zones before they heat up, trade roles when energy dips, and name what’s happening in plain language so your partner stops feeling like the enemy. By seeing stress as a shared opponent and PMDD as a filter—not a verdict—you can protect your bond and move through the luteal phase with more clarity, compassion, and control.

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Transcript

Stress, PMDD, And Misconceptions

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So today I want to talk to you about stress and PMDD. So a lot of times when we think about the fact that stress really impacts us in our PMDD relationship, we think that the first thing that we need to do is remove the thing or the person that's causing us the most stress. And this is why we get into the PMDD monthly breakups because we begin to think if I could just be single, if I didn't have this stressful environment with my partner, then I wouldn't have these stressful symptoms. And so we think that we need to remove our partners, remove the relationship in order to live this peaceful life. And what I can tell you from counseling hundreds and hundreds of PMDD partners and PMDD sufferers is just because you remove the partner, just because you remove the relationship doesn't mean that you're not going to have premenstrual dysphoric disorder symptoms. And I think this is a common misconception because when you think about PMDD and all of the things that you have to go through, stress is caused by your PMDD relationship. So you think by removing the relationship that it will reduce the stress that's in your relationship. It'll reduce the symptoms that you're having without really recognizing that the stress that you have in your relationship can be solved, can be minimized by just addressing the issues that PMDD really brings up. What I always tell you is PMDD rips the blanket off of all of the issues that you already have in your relationship. And does it cause some issues as well? Absolutely. When you're in your luteal phase, your ability to be stressed is magnified. You are hyper-vigilant to anything negative, and anything negative will cause you stress. And what really happens in your body is your stress response when you're in your luteal phase and you're in PMDD, it's magnified. And what do I mean by your stress response? It's your built-in alarm system. It's your body's reaction to you feeling overwhelmed, to you feeling threatened, to you feeling unsafe. These are all the symptoms that you already have when you're in your luteal phase. You feel overwhelmed because every to do little things takes more out of you. I remember last week I was just, you know, thinking about all the things that I had to do when I got back because I was out of town. I've been traveling a lot this year. Actually, you know, this year, as is it's already, it's just January, but the last couple of months, I've been traveling a lot. And when you think about, oh, when you come home, you have to wash your clothes, you have to repack if you're going on another trip, you have to put things away. Those are simple things that I would normally do in my follicular phase and not even think of. But when I'm in PMDD, when I'm in my luteal phase, it just seems harder. And looking around and seeing all of the things that I have to do, meaning if there's clutter in my environment, it makes me feel overwhelmed and it makes my PMDD symptoms worse. So what I will say to you is you have to recognize that when you are in your luteal phase, you are going to be stressed and overwhelmed because anything that you do in your luteal phase is going to be hard because you you're kind of in that realm where they're they're saying you should take things slow and they're saying that you should rest. And what I mean by they is when people tell you to take things off of your plate, I feel like it's easier said than done. Anybody can say, oh, you just need to rest and relax. But for individuals like me, which I call hyper functional, hyper-functioning PMDD sufferers, I still need to get things done. I cannot sit there and just watch things just be sitting there because it's almost going to make me feel worse. Because then I'm going to feel guilty because I'm looking at things that need to be done and they're not getting done. And so it's not going to make me feel relaxed to do nothing. So, what do you do in that realm where you're feeling stressed and you're feeling overwhelmed? And then your partner comes in and they're like, hey, can I take something off of your plate? But you're kind of so overwhelmed that you don't even know what it is that you need them to do. You just know that you need them to do something. So just that mindset of feeling like you're overwhelmed, it almost makes you look at your partner differently. You almost look at like, I'm doing all of this, and what are you doing? Like the ego comes in and it starts reminding you of all of the things that you're doing for your partner, all of the things that you're doing for the relationship. And there's a level of dissatisfaction that comes because you're comparing what you're doing to what your partner is doing because you are overwhelmed. Meaning you could have been doing the same activities, the same chores, the same things that you had to do the week before, but you didn't worry about how much energy it took out of you because you weren't stressed and you weren't overwhelmed. But the luteal phase causes you to look at the same actions that you're doing and you're feeling like it's taking more out of you and you're feeling like your partner should be doing more. And then that's when you feel unsafe because you feel like, why am I with a partner that's allowing me to do all these things and they're not even willing to help me? And then you get into the mindset of I don't have a supportive PMDD partner. When you're feeling supported, you're feeling more safe. And so when you're feeling stressed, you're feeling unsafe. So that is your stress response. It is your body reacting to that. So this is why it magnifies the physical symptoms that you may have. I know for me, I get a lot of anxiety first thing in the morning because I immediately my brain goes to all of the things that I have to do. And then all of a sudden, my to-do list is massive. And I feel like I don't have the capability with the energy level that I have because I'm I'm struggling with fatigue, that I don't have the energy to do the things that my mind is telling me that I need to do. So there's this push-pull between your body and your mind. And so what I want to help you do today is to manage and navigate and give you tools for your stress response, for the way that your body is responding to the stress. Because am I going to tell you that I'm going to eliminate the stress that you have in your life? There's no way that I can do that. There's no way if anybody ever tells you that they're going to eliminate the stress from your life, that that's a lie because it's not something that they're able to do because everybody is dealing with different life stressors. When I have my clients one-on-one, we meet weekly because different things happen in your life. We just went through a big holiday season and then the kids went back to school. And there's that's a lot of stress and a lot of logistics. And so what happens is when you measure your stress response to your partner's stress response, that's when you can begin to bump heads, right? So I entered into this new relationship recently, and it's been a couple of months, and I've really just been taking time to study my partner to just navigate, you know, what his stresses are versus what my stresses are, because what I noticed is that things that stress me out don't stress him out. And things that stress him out don't really stress me out. So then there's this imbalance of like, why aren't you taking my stressor seriously? So you start to kind of look at them because you're trying to drill in the things that you find stressful to your partner. And that may not be the things that really stress them out. So you have to learn and study all the time about what are the things that stress them out because it's gonna impact the both of you. Things that stress him out are is gonna stress me out eventually because it pours over. You're in an intimate relationship, you're connected. And so one of the things that really came up for the both of us is time management. So I already knew that time management is not my friend, it's not my thing, it's one of the things that I actually struggle with the most, but it's one of the things that he easily gets stressed out about because he likes to be on time. He doesn't like to make people wait and he doesn't like to wait. And so I was like, oh my goodness. I remember thinking to myself when I was in my Ludeo phase, as a matter of fact, and I was like, this is gonna become a problem because I tend to not like to be very rigid with my time, very strict with my time when I'm not working, when I don't have clients and I'm not in a work environment. I like to be more free and more carefree with my time. Like I always tell you, I'm an Enneagram 7, I'm a free spirit, I'm a Sagittarius, I like to be spontaneous and I like to go. And I don't like to be put in the box of timelines if I don't absolutely have to. And I tend to downplay certain rigid times. I'm like, okay, I can give a buffer of five minutes here, a buffer of five minutes there. For him, that stresses him out. Okay, he likes to be early. For example, when we go to airports, oh my goodness, he likes to be at the airport two to three hours before. I remember thinking to myself, what do people do when they go to the airport two to three hours before? I'm literally the person that goes to the airport, I'm boarding, and I'm getting directly on the plane because they're probably either calling my name or they're they're actually boarding when I'm going. And I do a lot of international travel as well. And I've, you know, I try to come a little bit earlier for those flights because they have stricter guidelines as to when you can get on and off the plane. And I've learned that the hard way from missing flights and having to pay for it. But it's just one of those things where I'm like, I'm not gonna let somebody else stress me out over time when it comes to maybe I'm going on vacation or maybe I'm going to see clients or they're different things. I just, that's just not one of those things that I feel that I want to stress about. Well, a way that he mitigates his stress response and keeps his stress levels down when he's traveling is he's never late for a flight because he's always there early. So what he likes to do is go into the flight and go to the lounge. So when you go to the lounge, I've never even like I very I very rarely step foot in a lounge. And I remember that was like one of the things because we were friends before. And so I was like, I would always joke, be like, were you at the lounge? And he's like, Yes. And he goes there super early, three hours before, two hours before the flight, and he has a full meal and has drinks and just relaxes his body, his mind. And then by the time he's getting on the flight, he's just like still having more time to sit at the gate. And I remember thinking, oh my goodness, like I would be sitting there thinking of all the things that I could be doing while I'm sitting there in the lifestyle. I was just like, okay, I am it's not a matter of who's right and who's wrong when it comes to certain things. So I think a lot of times when you're trying to navigate the different stressors between you and your PMDD partner, be careful not to blame your PMDD partner for what is important to them, for what stresses them out. Like, don't minimize what stresses your partner out just because it doesn't stress you out. And I remember I had to be very careful with that. I'm like, him being on time is very important. Is it very important for me? Not so much. I remember we would be on FaceTime and talking in the morning, and I would be headed into the office, go in the office on certain days, and he'd be like, Oh, don't you need to leave? Don't you need to go? And I was just like, that's fine. We can keep talking. Like, I'll get there in a minute. And I prioritize my connections and my interactions with people in real time more so than a timeline. And so this is something that I know, you know, especially running a business, like this is something that you need to be on top of. But when I'm doing leisurely activities, like if I say I'm going to, um, I think one of our first arguments was when I was saying I was wanting to go to Costco and get groceries. And he was like, Costco closes at this time and we need to make sure that we're there. And I remember thinking, like, if I don't go to Costco today, I'll go tomorrow. Like I remember really minimizing the timeline. But what I noticed and what gave me a lot of compassion for how he is, is because when we did have a disagreement about it, he said, you know, I'm only this rigid with time because I want to make sure that you get everything that you need. I want to make sure that you have everything that you need to have. I want to make sure that you get whatever it is that you need to get done, done. And so this is why I'm being so rigid with the time. And so I thought about that. And I was like, a lot of times when we're getting offended by our partners or we're getting triggered by our partners, we're not understanding the behind the scenes of what's really going on in their mind. A lot of times our partners are trying to do things for us, and but it's not coming off that way. Like it was coming off that way for him. And I was just like, what's the big deal? Like, why do you need to be so on time? But when he really explained it to me, it was all for me. So I was able to have a level of compassion. And this is why I think that you need to communicate your stressors to your partner in a way that they can see that you are not the enemy. You are not trying to go against them. You are not trying to override them. You're not trying to stress them out. You're not trying to make them overwhelmed. You're not trying to make their PNDD symptoms worse. You actually could be trying to make their life better. But a lot of times when you don't take the time to explain it, it can come off, especially if your partner is in their luteal phase. It can come off as you being dismissive, as you being insensitive, as you being disrespectful, as you being all of these things that are that are triggering them. And all your partner can feel is the offense, the disrespect, the trigger. They're not understanding the why behind it. And I think a lot of times when you're in your luteal phase, your brain is so programmed towards the negative that as soon as you feel offended by your partner, as soon as they start stressing you out, you're looking at, see, this is what I'm talking about. They can never be supportive, they can never do this, they can never do that. And you get into that catastrophizing of saying all the things that they can't do. So when we're talking about how stress really impacts PMDD, we all know what stress feels like in our day-to-day life. And stress is never going to go away. Life is always gonna be filled with stress. But how do we kind of manage that when it comes to PMDD and really manage our responses to stress? What I want to really help you understand is PMDD already makes your brain more sensitive to emotional changes. Anytime that you feel your emotions go up and down and you're feeling really moody, when you add stress on top of it, it's like pouring gasoline on that fire. So, for example, you can be in ovulation one day. And I always think that it's so unfair because ovulation for me, and I'm for some of my clients, they kind of go down during ovulation. For me, I have so much energy, I have so much testosterone going on in my body. I'm like, go, go, go. I'm getting all of these things done. And then once I go through ovulation, I go into my luteal phase and everything just drops. And I think it's unfair because the drop is so drastic that I could literally wake up the next day, be in a cold sweat, be completely fatigued. And I try to stick to my morning routine, which I always do, but I try to stick to it with a specific timeline. Like I try to say, okay, I'm gonna get up at five o'clock and do my morning routine. And so what happens in my luteal face? I go, I will still get up at five o'clock, but it'll be so much harder. And then if I'm communicating with partners at times, it can feel like a stressor. It can feel stressful and overwhelming just for me to communicate at a time because I'm already so fatigued. So this is what I want to tell you. It's the compound effect. The reason why your partner may trigger you more when you reach your luteal phase is because you're already stressed, you're already overwhelmed, you're already in a state of fatigue, you're already having physical symptoms like the cold sweats, the anxiety, maybe it's a depression. You're already in that state. So anything that you add on it is like pouring gasoline on a fire. You are on fire when you're in your luteal phase, on fire with all of the physical, the mental, the emotional symptoms that you're already experiencing. So anything that your partner says and does, it's like, oh, you immediately snap and you're reacting. You're reacting from a place of what everything that you're already carrying in you from being in your luteal phase. You're not reacting from a surface level response of what they actually said and did. You're thinking, oh my gosh, I can't believe they did this and I'm feeling this way. Do they even know that you're feeling that way? Because a lot of times when you're in your luteal phase, you're not really communicating how you're really feeling. You're just got kind of like, I know for me, when it hits me, I would say around day seven, it's like it hits me like a wrecking ball. Like I just feel like a state of like it's almost like a numb and surprise. And it's like, I don't know why it's a surprise, but it's just this kind of like lasargic, like I'm just like an episode of The Walking Dead, and everything is just like, I almost feel like when I go into not almost feel like because I really do, I just go into autopilot. I go into doing the things that I need to do, but the emotion is not there, the energy is not there. It's just like even sometimes it can get to a point where you become emotionless with your person, someone that you really love, that you really care about, but you're you're doing the things to check in. Like I have a lot of clients that suffer with this where I'm telling them these are things that you need to do. You need to continue to check in with your partner, especially when you're in your looting phase. And I know that a lot of times you don't feel like it because you feel stressed, you feel overwhelmed, you feel sad, you feel depressed, you feel anxious, and you don't feel like checking in. But what happens is when you don't check in, you leave that big gap and there's a big gap in intimacy, and that really is gonna cause more issues in your relationship. Because when you pull back the intimacy in your relationship, your partner's automatically gonna feel triggered because they're gonna feel that disconnect. And so that means that you're putting them at risk to trigger you even more because they're gonna be coming towards you to get that love, that affection, that attention, that validation that they need to feel connected. The further further they come towards you, the more you're gonna go away. And this is this is where the the really the break in intimacy happens because you're not communicating, hey, I'm isolating or I'm pulling back or I'm doing this because I'm suffering. You're kind of just treating them like they're an annoyance. And guess what? The energy does not lie, the vibrations do not lie. Your partner can feel when you're pulling away from them, and they're automatically gonna go in their brain and start to question why. Why are they pulling away from me? Oh my gosh, what happened? What did I say? What did I do? And a lot of times they may come towards you and want to be more affectionate, be more caring, be more attentive. When you may be wanting space to isolate, they're one, they're wanting to connect with you just to know that we're okay. So this is why I say you have to do the check-ins, otherwise they're gonna start spiraling in their mind and they're gonna start to have doubt and fear about your relationship and and you know how you are, are you connected? Like then jealousy can come up, especially if you're in a realm. And I see this happen a lot where when you're in your ludial phase, you can connect to other people, but you cannot connect to your partner. So your partner is viewing you connect to other people in a loving and a caring way. And then when it comes to them, you're kind of short and you're kind of distant. So then it's like a slap in the face. It's like, oh, so you do have the ability to be emotionally open with other people. You just don't want to be emotionally open with me. Then they feel like they're the bad guy. Then they feel like I didn't do anything to you. And then it's all of this tension and this built-up, and it's adding to the stress. And all you're thinking is, I'm I'm completely fine. I'm completely fine, and you're not fine. Like you need to come to terms with you're not fine and being okay with not being okay when you're in PMDD. This doesn't make you weak, it doesn't make you a monster, it doesn't make you less than, but what it does do is allow your partner to understand, hey, I'm not feeling okay right now. I'm not feeling good. And so what stress really does is it increases cortisol. What cortisol is the medical term, it's the stress hormone, the hormone that is in your body that makes you feel stressed. And so what this does is it makes mood swings worse, it makes irritability stronger, it makes anxiety higher, and it makes the PMDD rage harder to control. Once you have gone to the realm where your stress hormone has been activated and you're in the realm of rage, it's hard to pull it back when you're so far in it. Have you ever heard someone tell you when you're a PMDD rage to calm down? It's almost that's the worst thing that you can say to someone that is in the midst of PMDD rage. You just need to calm down. They've passed the point of calm down. They've passed it. They almost have to let the PMDD rage run its course. This is why I always say you need to have something that you do when you're in the midst of PMDD rage that doesn't do damage to your relationship. You need to go take a walk. You need to remove yourself from the situation, but you do so in a way that's safe where you're saying, hey, babe, I'm I'm feeling this type of way. However, you're feeling, I'm feeling irritable, I'm feeling pissed off. It has nothing to do with you. But I need to go take a walk. I need to do this because you're taking accountability for the state that you're in. But you need to let your partner know that this has nothing to do with them in a sense of even if they did something to trigger you, you can let them know, I was already irritable. I was already stressed. I'm in PMDD right now. This is a me thing. So then that way they don't start spiraling and feel like there's something more that they need to do other than give you the space that you need. Because the more stressed that you are, the louder PMDD becomes. The more stress that is activated in your body, that cortisol level, the more it rises, the louder PMDD becomes. And all of your other symptoms that you have become activated. I know for me, my body and my traps, and I talk to you about this all the time. I get these like big knots in my traps, and I go to get massages, and they're like, Oh, you're like, you're so tight. And it's like my muscles, my body is literally reacting to me being stressed out. It's like from the inside out, it's starting to come out in my body. And so the next thing that really happens when I'm when I have a lot of stress, or when you have a lot of stress going on and you're in your luteo phase and you're in P and D D is it lowers your emotional tolerance. Tolerance during PMDD, your emotional tolerance is low. What that means is your ability to tolerate a whole bunch of different emotions, whether it's a high, whether it's a low, stress lowers it even more. Meaning, this is why you might have a hard time expressing yourself when you're in your luteal phase because you're stressed out, you're overwhelmed. Maybe your partner did something really, really nice for you. And instead of you being super bubbly and loving like you normally would, you're like, oh, thank you. And they're looking at you like, oh my gosh, you're so ungrateful. Why are you not reacting the way that you normally would? It's because you're stressed out. So things that you could normally handle suddenly become unbearable. Having a normal, joyous, you know, emotional response with your partner feels like a chore. It feels like something that you're not able to do. And in a normal comment, this happens so often. A normal comment that your partner makes, this happens a lot of times with jokes, where you always, maybe you're a person that jokes around with your partner. You always say funny stuff, you're really lighthearted, and then you get into PMDD, all of a sudden nothing's funny. Nothing's funny in your ludial phase. It's like, what do you mean by that? What do you mean? Like you're all of a sudden feeling like your partner's criticizing you, you're all of a sudden feeling like your partner's judging you, and they're looking at you like, what do you, what do you mean? Like we always have this joke and we always talk about this, and you're like, no, we don't. And you're so convicted in those moments that you're in your PMDD. When you're in your luteal phase, you're very convicted with delusion. You're very, you could say, I never found that joke funny when you really did. But when you're in that stressful state because of your luteo phase, because of your PMDD, you have these blinders on where you're only seeing the negative, you're only seeing things that are happening in this moment, and you cannot really recall a lot of the positive, joyous, positive things that that used to light up your relationship. You know, you're not really like you're not checking for those at the moment. And so a small conflict, like, you know, it can feel like rejection. I know for me, having fights in my luteo phase is one of the most harmful things that can happen because I really feel a lot of shame and a lot of guilt over things that maybe I said and done, maybe I overreacted, even if it's not that bad. Because I've had my partner say, like, oh, it wasn't that bad, or I forgive you. I will literally beat myself up and in self-loathing and really feel like I can't believe I said that, I can't believe I did that. And it'll take me a while to dig myself out of that. And then I'll start to analyze maybe like text, and you know, a delay in text may feel like abandonment, like all of a sudden my partner is abandoning me, or they don't want to be with me, or maybe they should be with somebody else. Like this is the thoughts that happen when you have PMDD and you're in your Luteal phase. Small little breaks in communication can make you feel like you're doubting your whole relationship. And the reason why I'm telling you this is because I want you to recognize it for what it is. Recognize that this is a stress response. This is a PMDD response. This is not the facts, this is not the reality of the situation. PMDD doesn't change your relationship. Stress changes how your brain interprets your relationship. The stress that you're feeling, your stress response being high changes the way your brain is interpreting everything that your partner is doing, everything that is going on in your relationship is creating a distorted vision of your relationship. And it's very convincing. It's very convincing because it's messing with your brain. It's hijacking your brain to believe certain things about your relationship that aren't necessarily true. And a lot of times you don't get the relief and you don't really see things clearly until you get out of PMDD and you don't have that heightened level of stress because then your brain can really calm down and the fog can really clear. How many times have you gotten out of your luteal phase and you've gone into your follicular phase or you've gone into menstruation and you look back at a situation and you're like, well, it really wasn't that bad. Or now I can see what my partner was talking about. Like you can have the same conversation that you had during your luteo phase and during PMDD, but it can mean something completely different. So when you're under when you're under chronic stress, your body fully comes out of survival mode. And what happens when you're in PMDD for seven, 10, 14 days, and sometimes even longer, you're in survival mode that entire time. And your body is not meant to stay in that constant state of stress. It's okay to experience a little bit of stress. That's healthy for the body. But but the problem with PMDD is that it's so long. Like your body doesn't get a break until it comes into menstruation, until your period comes. So when PMDD hits, your nervous system is already exhausted and very reactive. So it's a push and pull, it's exhausted and you feel like you don't have the energy, but then it's also very reactive. It's you're very hyper-vigilant, you're very much on high alert. So PMDD doesn't cause the stress response, it exposes a stress response that's already there, that is making you feel overwhelmed. So PMDD itself doesn't make you feel stressed out. There's the normal stress response that you will have that PMDD is exposing. And I think that's the difference where people think that if I just get rid of my PMDD, I'm not gonna have stress anymore. No, you're already gonna have stress. Remember, we're not removing stress, it is your body's response to the stress that PMDD is magnifying. And it's it's kind of like how we say with preventional dysphoric disorder. It's not that you have a hormonal imbalance, it is your body's reaction to the natural fluctuation of hormones that every childbearing woman goes through. So this is why you can go to the doctor and you can get your hormones checked. I just got mine checked. And I it's this is always so funny when I go to the doctor and my doctor is telling me how amazing my hormones are. And I'm just thinking, because, you know, I just turned 40. So of course you get everything checked, and she's like, oh, your hormones look great. And I'm just thinking, like, okay, okay. But to really explain to you what happens with the PMDD stress cycle and how it really impacts you and your relationship is stress builds up during the month in your relationship. There's little triggers, little things that your partner has said and done that are not addressed. So this is my number one tool for you. Do not let the stress build up because every time that your body is building up the stress, your mind is building up the stress, even your heart is building up the stress. You're just putting all of that money in the bank for PMDD to use when you get in your luteo phase. This is the best way that I explain it to my private clients when they say, like, oh, maybe we don't need to have a session this week, or maybe because they think that everything's going great. And then you get on the session and all of these things start to come up because they're stored. Just because your problems aren't at the surface level of your relationship doesn't mean that they're not there. Because I guarantee you, a lot of times when my clients get on the session, there's so much that their partner pours out and you can see them kind of looking at each other like, I didn't know that you felt like that, or I didn't know that you thought like that. You don't know because you don't take the time and pause and really process a lot of things that are just building up. So just think of stress as air in a balloon, right? So if all of every single time that you have something stressful happen in your life, you're blowing more air into the balloon. Blowing more air into the balloon. Slowly, slowly, slowly throughout the course of the month, you're blowing air, you're blowing air, you're blowing air, you're blowing air. You're not in your luteal phase right now. You're blowing air in your menstruation, you're blowing air in ovulation, you're blowing air even in your follicular phase where everything's supposed to be great. Little stresses are adding up. You're not addressing any of them, right? Finally, you go into your luteal phase. All that happens is one more breath of air causes that balloon to pop. And that is what we call PMDD rage because you're taking all of that built-up stress, all of those built-up triggers, all of those little comments, all of those little actions and reactions that didn't really sit well with you, that you didn't address. And then you get into your luteal phase and it literally makes that balloon pop because you are at capacity. You are at capacity. You have no more room in your balloon to hold any more air when you have pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder and you're in your luteal phase. You've reached the capacity. So it's not that PMDD is causing the stress because remember, you built up all the that's that air from different phases of your cycle, not necessarily when you're in PMDD. It's just when you get to PMDD, you are at your limit. So this is why it's so dangerous to not process all of the things that are coming up at the other phases of your cycle and then wait until you get into PMDD. You're you're not in a state to even address any of the things that come out. When you're in your luteal phase and you're you've had all of this built-up stress, this is not the time to say, okay, let's finally talk about the issues because you're you're such in a heightened chronic state of stress that anything that comes out is gonna be damaging to your relationship, damaging to your partner. So what I want you to do is, and this is why I'm opening up my books for February. So for February, I'm gonna be opening up my sessions. I'm only gonna be doing monthly sessions moving forward because it takes time to uncover to reveal what needs to heal in your PMDD relationships. It takes time. One session is not gonna do it. I've tried that in the past, and I just I noticed that it doesn't do my clients justice. So I'm only gonna be able to take a certain amount. What this means is I'm only gonna be able to take a certain amount of clients per month, but I'm gonna put you on monthly packages so we are meeting weekly to address the issues that you have so that you don't have this balloon that's being filled up with a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of this, so that when you get to your luteal phase and you experience that stress, that it doesn't pop the balloon. It's just adding a little bit of air, which is okay. And what happens when we go on our sessions is we we release that pressure. We're taking some air out of the balloon. This is how we're rewiring your nervous system to be able to handle and manage the stress that you're gonna have. Life is not gonna be a non-stressful life. The stress is not going anywhere, and we're not trying to make it go anywhere because we're not giving ourselves unrealistic goals. This is, of course, is the new year. You're like, I'm gonna remove all the stress, I'm gonna get out of this relationship. I'm gonna you can be single. I was single, I was just single and I still had stress, and I still had moments where I was stressed and overwhelmed. It was just directed at other things. You know, my daughter's in high school and I'm dealing with that, and you know, things are stressful. And I didn't remove the stress from my life because I wasn't in a relationship. And dating was a whole other thing. That was even stressful. It was fun, but it was also really stressful. So when I got into my Ludial face, like though I still had to deal with that, it still came up. So this is why PMDD can feel like a cycle that you can't escape because stress and hormones are feeding each other back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. So, what I'm gonna help you do is release the stress in your PMDD relationship. I'm gonna put the link in the bottom here for you to be able to book those monthly sessions. I will book them one month at a time. If you continuously get on a two month, on a three-month, there will be coming at a discounted price. But what I want to help you do is to reduce the stress in your PMDD relationship so that you don't take it out on your partner. You don't take it out, you know, because a lot of times with me, I tend to go straight for me. I go straight into the shame and the guilt and all of those things. So I need to be able to release the stress before I get into my luteal phase and it becomes so overwhelming. So I hope this episode has helped you. And until next time, we got this.