PMDD Is Not Your Fault

PMDD Pyramid Private Sessions

Me Before PMDD: Relationship Reset Toolkit-Couples

Click to Book a Private PMDD Session

Follow me on Instagram

Follow me on TikTok

PMDD can make you feel blamed for something you never chose, then trapped in a relationship cycle you can’t seem to stop. We get honest about the line that changes everything: PMDD is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to manage. When we confuse fault with responsibility, we slide into shame, toxic positivity, and silence, and that’s where resentment grows.

We talk through why waiting for a partner to “fix” your symptoms keeps you stuck, even when your partner is loving and well-intentioned. PMDD management isn’t one supplement, one script, or one perfect rule. It’s a personal process of tracking triggers, staying flexible as life changes, and using tools that fit your relationship, your nervous system, and your real needs. We also name something partners rarely hear clearly: it’s not their fault either, but it is their responsibility to manage how PMDD affects them, their stress, and how they show up at home.

You’ll hear a practical story about routines and expectations, plus why replaying the same argument month after month trains your brain to see the relationship as unsafe. We break down how to move from rehashing fights to creating a plan, and why breakup threats often become a form of self-gaslighting when you don’t truly want to leave. If you’re looking for PMDD relationship advice, PMDD tools, trauma-informed support, and better communication during luteal phase, this is a grounding reset.

If this helped, subscribe, share it with someone navigating a PMDD relationship, and leave a review so more people can find the support they’ve been missing.

Transcript

PMDD Is Not Your Fault

Toxic Positivity And Shame

Stop Expecting A Partner Fix

Responsibility For Both Partners

Curiosity And Defining Needs

Morning Routine Expectations Example

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today I want to talk to you about how PMDD is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to manage. And I really wanted to address this because I've heard so many clients come to me and really say, you know, I'm feeling like my partner is putting the fact that I have PMDD, like making it seem like it's my fault, making it seem like it's something that I can control, making it seem like it's something that I can that I asked for. And it's really causing issues in your relationship because you're getting to a point where you are frustrated with having to defend having PMDD when it's not something that you asked for. And I remember being in this place in my journey where I was so frustrated with the symptoms that I was having. And I was trying to pretend that I didn't have them at one point because I was so frustrated with being the problem. I felt like I'm the problem. If I'm the problem, then maybe if I didn't have PMDD, we would be so much better off. So I began to hold in having, you know, my symptoms and pretending like I was fine. And I remember there were months and months and months where I was holding it in and, you know, my partner would say, Hey, how are you doing? How are you feeling? And I'd be like, Oh, I'm doing great. I'm doing great. And I got stuck in the realm of toxic positivity because I was pretending that I was okay when I really wasn't okay, because I had all the shame around it. I had all this shame around having a disorder that I didn't really ask for. And I began to resent my partner at the time for forcing me to pretend like I didn't have PMDD when I knew that I did, when I knew that I was suffering, but I didn't feel safe enough to talk about it in my relationship. And that's when I said it on a session one time. I was talking to a client, and they were pretty much making it seem like their partner should be making their PMDD better, and their partner should be helping them to reduce their symptoms, and their partner should be easing the load, and their partner should be making their symptoms less. And, you know, I was trying to give them tools of what they could do to specifically combat some of the symptoms that they were having in their relationship. And they didn't want to take the tools because they kept saying, well, if my partner would just do this, my PMDD would be better. If my partner would do this, my PMDD would be better. And I remember, I was like, well, I similarly had that thought too, because I'm thinking, okay, if the point of being in a relationship is two or better than one, then I should be suffering less because I have this person that's going to be able to help me. And I remember everything that I had done to lessen my symptoms had nothing to do with my partner, meaning I had to do the work. I had to use the tools. And I really hate, I really didn't even want to say the word work because there's this negative connotation about like it's so hard and I don't want to do hard things, and I'm already dealing with these hard things, so I don't want to use the tools. The tools that I give to my private clients, they're not hard, but it is, it does take effort, right? I will never come on here and tell you that, you know, there's this magic pill that you can take and it's gonna make all of your symptoms go away. And you know, that's really in our community with PMDD, that's very prevalent where everybody wants to know everybody's supplements and what they're taking and how's it making them feel better. But it's very, it pretty much is um an individualistic journey of figuring out what works for you. And that is never gonna go away. As you get older, things are gonna shift and change, especially going into perimenopause and getting closer to menopause and not being able to track your cycle as you know as you were before because you don't have a predictable cycle. And so what works for one person really doesn't work for another. And this really is a journey of self-discovery as what works for you and specifically what works for you and your partner. Because I have had clients that have gone through multiple partners and still been working with me, and what worked for them for the previous partner definitely doesn't work with this partner. This is why I always tell you you need to study your partner, you need to continuously be looking for what really triggers you and what bothers you and what really works and what doesn't work, and keep that line of communication open to be able to be flexible in your approach because every month in PMDD is different. And the basis of what I want to tell you is that that is your responsibility. If you're the individual who has PMDD, it's your responsibility to manage. Did we ask to have PMDD? Absolutely not. PMDD is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to manage. The same thing for the partner. When you're coming into the relationship or if you're already in the relationship, it is your responsibility to manage how being with someone with PMDD affects you personally. I have a lot of partners where it affects them in their career, but they can't focus at work because it's stressful at home, or you know, it affects how you parent. You know, it affects that you literally have a different relationship with your partner every single month and you don't change biologically. There's nothing in your body that's going up and down that's shifting and changing, but the reaction to your partner being in PMDD, and you know, my dissertation was on partners, it was specifically on their lived experience of being with someone who has PMDD. And I know that as a partner, you go through ebbs and flows, and I'm saying the same thing to you. It is not your fault that your partner has PMDD, but it is your responsibility to manage how that impacts you as a partner. And that is something that you have to go through that discovery process with. And this is what I do with my private clients. And it is very, very, very specific to who you are as a person, how you operate. This is why I take time to get to know my private clients and see what your baseline is. What was it like when you first started dating when you decided to be with this person? What are you looking for? What are your needs? What are your needs now versus what your needs were before? These are things that we have to discover and then be able to communicate them to each other in a way that doesn't do damage, where you're not demanding that they change, demanding that they be different, demanding that they do all of these things. It has to come from a level of curiosity where you and your partner are both curious as to how can we make our PMDD relationship better? How can we ensure that it works? Because I know if you're in your PMDD relationship that you love and you care about your person. I always ask my private clients, and I always have talked to you about this for years. Ask yourself this question, is this my person? If the answer is yes, it is my person, then it's worth the work that it takes for you to make it work, to be able to come together and take responsibility for your individual role in the relationship. Yes, you are coming together, but there's things that are going on individually in both of your lives. Jobs have changed, finances have changed, children have changed, you know, they grow. They, you know, the everyday stressors change, and PMDD is going to be impacted by all of those changes. It's just for my trauma client clients that I have where they have PTSD. There's certain times that, you know, they have triggers that come up because of things that have happened in the past, and we have to address that. And I don't go and say, oh, you have the you have the ability to tell your partner that, oh, you had this traumatic experience. It's not my fault that I have to deal with it. No, when you accept a person, you're accepting everything that comes with them. And you're also accepting how you navigate that, what that looks like for you, how you show up, how it impacts you. And it's not about anybody's fault. Nobody comes into a relationship with no lived experiences. We're not just coming, we're not just born and then we end up in a relationship. Everybody has had something that they've dealt with. So whether you have PMDD or not, you're coming into the relationship with lived experiences that have impacted you. And a lot of those relationships or those situations that have happened, there's trauma behind it. There is trauma. This is why I give you my PMDD trauma transformational tools because it helps you rewire your PMDD brain into thinking that everything should just be perfect. Everything should just be so easy breezy. And maybe at one point in your relationship it was, and you didn't have to manage that much. I know, specifically for me, and the relationship that I'm in right now, I have to manage my PMDD completely different than I have to than I have with any other partner. Some parts of it is easier, right? The communication with us is amazing. So I'm not having to go and convince my partner to talk about something and convince them that we need to work on this. The communication is there. The desire to communicate, the desire to stay connected, the desire to address all of the issues is there. So that takes that pressure off of my plate. But then there's other things that I have to really drill down on where, you know, we're very different when it comes to routines. I have my PMDD partner's morning routine that I've been telling you about for years. And I'm with someone who doesn't like routines, who doesn't do routines, who's a very spontaneous person. And so we've had to navigate what that looks like with respecting those, hey, I respect that you're gonna do your morning routine, but I don't really need to do if I do it one time with you, I don't have to do it all the time. That was something that I was like, I had to manage my expectations. I had to say, okay, am I requiring this person to come into my life and automatically pop in on my morning routine? Because the times that he's came and done the morning routine, it's been fun. And I'm like, oh great. And I'm a very like, I when I do something one time and I like it, I'm I do it again. You know, it's the same thing when I buy something. When I buy something and I really like it, I buy multiple in all different colors. I'm I'm just like that. And it requires me to not to really manage myself and my expectations when I get into PMDD because I remember I would get a little, like I would feel bad. I would be like, oh my gosh, how come he's not doing this with me or how come he's not doing that? And I had to manage that. That was part of my PMDD. Because in my follicular phase, I really didn't care if he did it or if he didn't do it. If he wanted to do it, I would be like, great, come on. If he didn't want to do it, it didn't bother me. But I noticed what PMDD brought up for me was like, oh, he's not gonna do this routine with you. And you know, it's gonna impact your relationship and all of these things. And it really didn't. It really didn't. It took me managing my PMDD symptoms and my triggers that were coming up and say, you know what? I'm just gonna have a conversation, which I did. And he was like, I love that you have your routine. I want to give you the freedom to do that. But if I do something with you, Rose, I'm not gonna do it every single time. And I and I had to sit with that honesty. I had to sit with that and say, okay, so what does that look like for me if he doesn't do it every time? That means when he hops in, I appreciate it, I enjoy it, but I don't expect him to do it again because that is not his life, that is not his reality. And I really shouldn't require that. I shouldn't require a mirror in a relationship. I should require someone to give me the freedom to do the things that bring me joy and that light me up. And I had to ask myself that question. I was basically counseling myself. I said, does he give me the freedom to do my PMDD partner's morning routine without me feeling bad about it, without me feeling like I could I can't do it or it's gonna cause stress in our relationship? And the answer was yes. Yes, he allows me to do it. Yes, he supports me doing it. And even when I come back and I rewire my PMD brain and I come back and I'm so much better, he supports that too. He understands the importance of it. There was a time where earlier in our journey, he liked to connect really early in the mornings, and it was during my morning routine. And he got to a point where he had to manage what it was like to be with someone who had a PMDD partner morning routine. And now he encourages it. He says, I know you have your routine. I just want to talk to you for a little bit. And we've carved out the time to talk to each other before my morning routine, and then he would support me with continuing my morning routine. That was the work that we had to individually do. He had to come to terms with, okay, I know that I would like to spend these hours, you know, connecting in the morning and she's doing her morning routine at the same time. We had to come together and say, okay, I can do both. And in a way that no one was giving up something that they genuinely needed in the relationship. He needs to be able to connect with me first thing in the morning. That's when his mind is the most clear, it's the most sharpest. Same with me. I just, I just work on my mind differently with doing my morning routine. So we we have that in common, but it looks differently. So could I have said to him, Oh, it's not my fault that I have PMDD and I have to do this morning routine in order to ensure that my luteophase doesn't impact our relationship and blame it on PMDD? And I could have done that and we never would have come to a resolution. How many times have you had a conversation with your partner about things that you don't like and you come up with no solution? There's no action. This is when you start to get helpless because you start to think, well, what's the point of continuing this relationship if we're just gonna continuously have this problem? When you keep talking about problems that you're having in your PMDD relationship and you're not using any tools and you're not doing anything about it, you're gonna get burnt out. Cognitively, your brain is going to know what it feels like to feel negative about PMDD and about your PMDD relationship and tie it to your partner. This is what's gonna make you feel like you have to be single. This is gonna what's gonna make you feel like, you know, it would just be better if I didn't have this burden. Your PMDD relationship is gonna become a burden if you're not coming up with tools and solutions and if you're repeating the same patterns. This is why I tell you if you're not consistently working on your PMDD relationship with getting to the root of all of the issues that are coming up, you're gonna get burnt out and it's not gonna be your fault. Your brain is gonna say, this is not a safe environment. I want to get you where you're by yourself because this person is the one that's connecting you to the pain and the suffering. So your PMDD brain is actually gonna be working against you with being in the relationship. But what happens with your PMDD brain is when you take responsibility as the partner and as the individual that's suffering with PMDD, you take responsibility for what is coming up. And then you use the tools to address it. You get to the point where it's like, okay, now we can do something about this. Not, oh, you're triggering me because of this, and then we're just sitting there looking at each other, complaining about the specific scenarios, getting into the weeds of talking about who said what and who did what, and bringing up text messages and start recording each other at the reactions that we've had because of ways that we've been triggered and bringing up things that we said that we weren't gonna do, and do that doesn't do anything but bring you deeper into the realm of suffering. It's gonna make you not want to be with your partner. We need to be looking forward. We need to be creating a plan. This happened. We had this argument, we had this fight, and then this is what we're gonna do to prevent it from next time. When you have that level of accountability because you recognize PMDD is not my fault, PMDD is not my partner's fault, but it is our responsibility because we're choosing to be in a PMDD relationship. It is our responsibility to manage. Once you come to terms with that, everything else is gonna feel lighter because instead of going directly into breaking up, you're gonna go say, okay, so what is the tool that we need to use in this situation? What is the tool that we need to use versus the tool is to break up? A lot of you are in relationships and PMDD relationships where your tool is to just say, maybe we shouldn't do this. And you know what happens every single time you say maybe we shouldn't do it, and then you're continuously doing it, you're gaslighting yourself because all you're doing is you're threatening to do something that you genuinely have no intention of doing. You're causing your brain to not really trust the things that you're saying because you say, I'm not gonna deal with this for another month, and then you deal with it for another month. So then you begin to feel bad about yourself because the ego is gonna be like, I don't even know what you're talking about. You're not going anywhere. And then your partner may begin to think, why do you keep mentioning breaking up, but you haven't broken up with me? Yes, you picked up and you moved all your stuff in, but you always come back. You always come back because you genuinely love this person. This is your person. So stop wasting your energy on threatening to break up and use that same energy on getting the PMDD trauma transformational tools that's gonna get you out of that cycle of stress, that cycle of fighting and that cycle of saying the same things again and again and again because PMDD isn't there's nothing new. The issues are not going anywhere. And what you don't reveal is gonna continuously show up. PMDD is gonna rip the blanket off of every problem that you have. It's not gonna let you ignore it, it's not gonna let you pretend that it doesn't bother you. It's just gonna rip the blanket off of it and it's gonna cause hell in your relationship. I know I have been there digging and digging and in that cycle and spinning and spinning. Were my PMDD symptoms worse? Yes, because there was no solution. There was no relief. And your body and your cortisol levels are not meant to be that high for that long for years and years and years, months and months and months of every single month you're going through the same thing for seven to 10 to 14 days out of your cycle. That's not sustainable. And also being single and looking back at your relationship with that level of regret because you're thinking that genuinely was my person. I know that I love them, I know that I care about them. And giving that up, I've seen that with my own eyes. I've experienced that. And there's nothing like living with that level of regret of saying, you know what, I didn't give it everything that I could have given it. I didn't try everything that I could have tried. I didn't get the sessions with Dr. Rhodes to really get the tools that are specifically designed for PMDD. I was just talking to a client earlier who was frustrated with working with someone who claimed that they knew what PMDD is because PMDD is getting more well-known right now. And they claimed that they knew about PMDD, and basically they were on a session describing what PMDD was to the person. There's nothing like trying to get help with someone that doesn't know how to help you because you put yourself out there. It takes a lot to invest your time, your energy, your money into getting help just for someone to give you some generic cognitive behavioral tools that just say, just calm down or just talk nicely to your partner or just be loving. And one of my tools is just be loving, but that is the end of a whole series of tools that you got specifically for that. That's to wrap it all up. Nothing with PMDD can be cookie cutter. It cannot be. This is why I work individually with the client to get to know you, to get to know your partner, because cookie cutter tools do not work with PMDD. There are too many symptoms that are involved with PMDD for it to work like that. This is not a do-it-yourself thing either. Like I love that you're coming here and you're listening to the podcast, but this is not for you to figure out on your own because you it what is that saying you can't see the forest for the trees. I have childhood trauma. That is something that I have had to seek out help with. I have my own psychotherapist that I deal with whenever my childhood trauma comes up and I meet with them actually monthly to make sure that, hey, I want to make sure I know that this impacts my relationships. It makes my PMDD flare up. So I have to have that person on standby. I have to have those checkups. I never get to a point where I'm like, I'm so above and I'm so healed that I don't need to see them because then what'll happen is I'll have weeks and weeks and weeks of not seeing them. And then I'm piling on all of these things that cannot be solved in one session. Absolutely cannot. So do not gaslight yourself into thinking that you can do it yourself. I can't do it myself. And I have the training. Everybody that I know that's a counselor, a therapist, a coach, they have a coach. They have a therapist, they have somebody that they go to. So nobody is above this. I'm not above using my own PMDD trauma transformational tools, but I also have somebody in my corner to where it gets overwhelming so that it doesn't do damage and sabotage the PMDD relationship that I'm in and that the living the life that I desire to live while having premenstrual dysphoric disorder. There's a way that I want to live. I have a clear vision of it, and I know that I cannot do it alone. And I remember there was times where I was so isolated with beating myself up and wondering why I couldn't do it alone. I'm not meant to do it alone. You're not meant to do it alone. So if you know that you need help, you know that you're in the same cycle of stress and arguing and you're not coming up with solutions that are actually helping and things that you're bringing up, sometimes your partner can't hear it from you. The person that has Pand D can't hear it from you. They need to hear it from an outside party and it's gonna land differently because they're not gonna be getting offended, they're not gonna be getting defensive, but with you, they will. It's just something that happens in relationships, especially when you're the one that's been dealing with the relationship with them and you've gone through fights and arguments. There's too much hurt there for you to be able to counsel yourself, right? So do not put that pressure on yourself, but do know that PMDD is not your fault, but it is your responsibility to manage. So if it's something that you know that you need help with, I'm gonna put the link in the show notes for my calendar. Go get those PMDD trauma transformational tools, go get those private sessions with me. And until next time, we got this. I love you.