Walking on Eggshells in Your PMDD Relationship

If you’ve ever looked back at a luteal phase fight and thought, “That wasn’t me,” this conversation is for you and for the partner who’s been bracing for the next blowup. We’re getting honest about something that’s easy to minimize in a PMDD relationship: the way monthly conflict can slowly turn into a pattern of emotional abuse, verbal abuse, control, and intimidation. When the lines get crossed little by little, both people can start treating chaos as normal and confusing loyalty with self-abandonment.

We break down what abuse can look like beyond physical violence, including walking on eggshells, silent treatment, character attacks, threats of leaving, location checking, financial pressure, and intimacy being withheld as punishment. We also dig into the PMDD mechanics underneath it: rejection sensitivity, fear of abandonment, intrusive thoughts that feel true, and how stress and cortisol spikes can magnify symptoms. A big theme is PMDD-specific tools, because generic coping tips often fail when the cycle shifts and the relationship gets pulled into the same monthly loop.

We also draw a clear line between intention and impact. “I didn’t mean it” doesn’t erase the wound, and apologies don’t automatically restore trust, safety, or closeness, especially when your partner’s nervous system is still on high alert. The goal we’re after is real repair, steady boundaries, and a step-by-step way to pause before reacting so love doesn’t keep getting buried under survival mode.

If any of this feels familiar, listen through, share it with your partner, and then subscribe so you don’t miss what comes next. If this helps, leave a review and tell us: what pattern are you ready to break first?

Transcript

When PMDD Conflict Turns Harmful

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Today, I want to talk about do not let being in a PMDD relationship make you abusive. And this could be for the partner that does not have premenstrual dysphoric disorder or for the partner that does have PMDD. And I really wanted to talk about this because I have personally been through so many situations and PMDD relationships. And what I've noticed with having premenstrual dysphoric disorder for over 20 years now and counseling hundreds and hundreds of PMDD partners and PMDD sufferers is that when you enter into a PMDD relationship, if you do not come into it, knowing that you're going to be dealing with certain levels of conflict, certain levels of fluctuations with, you know, moods specifically, then it can cause you to act out of character. And before you know it, you're looking back on a situation and you're saying to yourself, I can't believe, you know, I said that. I can't believe I did that. But then when someone from the outside or even within your relationship mentions the term abuse, you automatically think, well, no, I'm not being abusive or my partner isn't being abusive. And sometimes it's because it's crept in there little by little, month after month, the lines have been crossed, things have been said, hurtful words have been said, hurtful things have been done. And those little things eventually turn into a pattern of abuse. So that's almost a pattern of abuse, which I know for sure is way worse than just having one big blow up in the realms of PMDD rage, and then you're over it. When you do the pattern of abuse, the other person starts to think it's the norm. You start to think it's the norm that every single month you're yelling at each other, every single month you're fighting with each other, every single month you're disrespecting each other, and you begin to think this is what love is. This is what being in a PMDD relationship is. And it's without you recognizing that that is not supposed to be how you operate within a normal PMDD relationship. But you can begin to think that if I want to be with this person, this is the level of treatment that I'm going to receive. You almost think being in an abusive relationship is the norm. It's just how it has to be because my partner has PMDD. And I've heard this said so many times on client sessions. And I said, no, just because you're deciding to be in a PMDD relationship doesn't mean that you're opening yourself up to abuse in a way that it's supposed to be acceptable, that it's supposed to be for the partner that has PMDD. Oh, this is just how I am during my Lute phase. This is just, you know, I can't control my emotions, I can't control my moods, I can't control all of these things because I have PMDD. So therefore the partner is left with the choice of if I truly love this person, if I truly want to be with this person, then I guess I have to accept this level of abuse. And what happens is you make a choice between staying in an abusive relationship or leaving a person that you actually love. And I know that decision is so painful. I've had to make it so many times, even as an individual who has pre-minstrual dysphoric disorder, because what I want to let you know is if you have PMDD, you can't just be with anybody. I feel like I'm rhyming today. If you have PMDD, you cannot just be with anybody. You have to be with someone who has the level of tools to be in a PMDD relationship. And those tools are not something that is just taught to everyone. So I think the misconception is that if my partner is treating me in a way that is, you know, abusive or borderline abusive, then that means that I'm not supposed to be with them because they don't know how to handle me when I'm in PMDD. Well, the truth of the matter is you don't know how to handle yourself when you're in PMDD half the time. And I know that to be true because there's a lot of times when I'm in PMDD and it's like, I don't specifically know what I need during that moment, but I know that I need something. I don't know what I need from my partner specifically, but I know that I need something. It's it's literally every single month working through getting your needs met as the partner that has PMDD and the partner that doesn't. And I think when we put the pressure on the partner that doesn't have PMDD, the PMDD partner to automatically know how to treat you, automatically know how to deal with the fluctuations of moods, automatically know how to deal with the different dynamics of the fatigue, of the anxiety, the depression, the sensitivity to noise, the misophonia. Like there's so many symptoms that are within the realm of PMDD that we're requiring the partner to just be able to deal with or adjust to when they themselves do not have anything fluctuating within them. They are bouncing off the dynamics of the PMDD relationship. So things within them can change as a result of their environment, but biologically, they don't have anything inside of them that's telling them that things are shifting. So I think the biggest thing that you can do for your partner is to provide them with tools that are PMDD specific. And I will always say if you're dealing with PMDD, you have to deal with PMDD specific tools. It cannot just be tools for anxiety, tools for depression, tools for hormones, tools for the it has to be inclusive of premenstrual dysphoric disorder because if not, you're only gonna be treating one of the symptoms that your partner has. So, yes, when they have anxiety, you may be able to have the tools of what you can do about it. But then when they start getting depressed, like what is it that I'm supposed

Why PMDD Relationships Need Specific Tools

SPEAKER_00 5:29

to do? I created this course called the part my partner has PMDD Now What specifically for that reason. If you haven't gotten that course, I'm gonna put it again in the link below because I've been working with a lot of private clients. And I'm like, I don't think that your partner has gotten the basics of what it means to be in a PMDD relationship. So I'm gonna provide that for you. So that's my first thing is do not expect your partner to automatically know how to operate within the realms of a PMDD relationship just because they love you. Your partner loving you doesn't automatically give them and infuse them with the tools of how to be with you when you're in your luteal phase or even how to transition from how you are in your luteal phase to your follicular phase, to your menstruation phase, to your ovulation phase. It is an ebb and flow, and it's something that is very specific to you in your relationship because everybody is different. No two PMDD, you know, individuals are the same when it comes to their PMDD relationship. And a lot of that has to do with the amount of stressors that happen within your life. You know, I've had moments over the last couple of months where my PMDD has pretty much been non-existent. And, you know, you get those moments, those months where you hardly have any symptoms. You're like, oh my gosh, maybe it's finally over. Maybe I don't have PMDD anymore. And then you get into those months where you have a lot of stress going on, you had like have a lot of things going on in your relationship. Then all of a sudden the PMDD symptoms come back, and you're like, okay, yeah, I still have PMDD. And a lot of times you may be thinking, oh, my partner's the problem, my PMDD relationship is a problem. No, it's called you're going through life. And there are different things that are

Stress, Cortisol, And Symptom Spikes

SPEAKER_00 7:05

going through your life that are gonna cause you to have more stress, that are gonna cause your cortisol levels to increase, which is gonna cause your PMDD symptoms to increase. And we have to be able to adjust to that. It is not a matter of removing the stress from your life and saying, I want to be in a life that has no stress. I remember I used to think that. I used to think, oh, if I can remove all the stress, when I recognized that stress was such a big impact on PMDD, I said, I'm just gonna remove all the stress from my life. That within itself became stressful because if something happened that was stressful, I all of a sudden thought that I was doing something wrong because I wasn't able to ignore the stress. And this is what I want to tell you the stress in your life is not going anywhere. Stress is not bad. It is how we react to the stress that is happening in our life that causes damage to our PMDD relationships, or it's just a matter of, okay, we're experiencing this. Now I need to use a tool that is correlated with the stress that's going on in my life. So that's where I recognize as long as I have a tool, I'm okay to deal with whatever PMDD brings. If I don't have a tool, if I don't have anything to do, that's when you begin to feel helpless. That's when you begin to feel hopeless because you get into that mindset of I can't do this forever. That's where I always go. I always say, I can't deal with this forever. I can't keep dealing with this, I can't keep going through this every single month. Well, when you have a tool that is specifically designed to help you out dig yourself out of wherever PMDD drop you off at in your PMDD relationship, or just you who has PMDD, then you you know that you can handle it. There's a level of confidence that you're

What Abuse Looks Like In PMDD

SPEAKER_00 8:40

dealing with. So when we hear the word abuse, a lot of individuals immediately think about physical violence. They only think that they're abusive if they're physically putting their hands on their partner. And abuse in relationship, PMDD relationships specifically, a lot of times it's emotional, it's verbal, it's psychological, it's financial, it's sexual, and it's behavioral patterns that repeatedly cause harm, cause a sense of control, cause a sense of intimidation, makes you feel like you're being manipulated, or you're you're in a place where you're let's all say it because we've said it on every private session, walking on eggshells. That is the common way of really just understanding am I in an abusive relationship? Is do I feel that I have to walk on eggshells in my relationship? Just answer that question yes or no. You can answer it right now, and I can literally answer your question as to whether you're in an abusive relationship. If you feel like you verbally can't say things with your partner without fear that they're gonna go off, without fear that they're going to go off, whether it's physically or go off, you know, verbally, or go off psychologically. Maybe they're gonna shut down on you. Maybe they're gonna remove intimacy from you if it gets to a place of you're saying something that they don't like. Maybe it's financial. Maybe they're starting to control the finances. Maybe there's one partner that manages all the finances or pays all the bills. And then when you have conflict in your relationship, they're pulling the strings on the finances or they're not giving you enough leadway with the finances, you're feeling financially controlled in the relationship because it's based off of the mood that your partner is in. That's a form of abuse. It could be sexual, where maybe you have a high sex drive and then your partner has a lower sex drive, or you have sexual needs and your partner knows that you have sexual needs, but because of the conflict that's been going on in your relationship, because of the arguing, because of the fighting, all of a sudden they're withholding intimacy. So you're not getting your sexual needs met because it's based off of how your partner is feeling in the moment. And it can merely be behavioral patterns where you never know the mood that your partner is going to be in. Sometimes they're hide and sometimes they're all over you, like they are in ovulation, and then sometimes they're cold, and sometimes they're distant, and sometimes they shut shut down on you, and you're sitting there left with unmet intimacy needs. All of these things can cause the other person to feel as if they're in an abusive relationship and to operate as if it's something less than they deserve, but they can't make themselves get out of the situation because guess what? They love you. And what I want to let you know, and I had to say this, you know, just recently, is loyalty does not mean that you stay in an abusive relationship and allow yourself to be overtaken. Allow yourself to abandon yourself, your own needs, your own desires, your own wants, because for the sake of being in a relationship. If you have to abandon yourself just to be in a relationship, and what I mean by abandon yourself is you have to pretend that you don't need what you need. You have to pretend like you don't want what you want. You have to put all of your needs and desires on the back burner just to be in this relationship. And your partner may be saying, Well, if you love me, then you would do this dismiss. If there is a condition on you loving the other person, then you could be in an abusive relationship where loyalty is being held over your head because they're saying, if you really love me, if you're loyal to me, then you would put up with this. And what I always tell my private clients when you come to me is a lot of times they're assuming that because I have premenstrual dysphoric disorder, that I'm automatically going to tell the partner to stay in a relationship that is abusive. No, that is not what I'm going to do because that's gonna do harm not just to you, but it's gonna do harm to the both of you. Because my goal is not to get one partner to be comfortable being in an abusive relationship. My goal is to give you the tools so that the abuse within the relationship is removed. And it is possible. And I know that you may be thinking, oh, but we've done this and we've said this. If you haven't done specific PMDD tools, then I can't in good conscience say that you've tried everything and you should walk away from the relationship. I can't say that. This is why I created my PMDD pivot method. This is specifically designed for if you feel like you're walking on eggshells in your PMDD relationship, it's going to give you a way of removing the abuse from the relationship and allowing you to operate and address the feelings that are going on, address the moods that are going on, address the issues that are going on in the relationship, but not in a way where you have to sit and tolerate

Intention Versus Impact And Repair

SPEAKER_00 13:28

abuse. So abuse is not just intention, and this is so important for you to understand. Just because your partner didn't intentionally abuse you doesn't mean that they didn't abuse you. I've had so many partners come on and say, Well, I didn't mean it that way. Or so many individuals who have PMDD say, it wasn't my intention to hurt you like this. It wasn't my intention to manipulate you like this. It wasn't my intention to shout those words and be verbally abusive and say things that are below the belt. It wasn't my intention. But here's the thing: intention is different from impact. You cannot intentionally, unintentionally abuse your partner, but the impact of abuse is still there. I want you to really understand that. When someone has been impacted by abuse and within the relationship, whether it's verbal, physical, psychological, emotional, financial, sexual, behavioral patterns, moves, any way that you feel like you're walking on eggshells, if they've been subjected to that. And then you come to them and say, it wasn't my intention to hurt you this way or for you to feel this way. It doesn't take away the pain of the other person. Just because you tell me that you didn't intentionally do it doesn't take away the impact, doesn't take away the hurt. There's a lot of psychological pain that happens when you say hurtful words, for example, for verbal abuse, because then there's a level of rumination where your partner is remembering the hurtful words that you said to them. They're remembering the hurtful things that you did or did not do when you neglected or abandoned them or when you rejected them. Those memories don't go anywhere because you come and apologize and say it's not my intention. And I think a lot of times for the partners and then also the individuals that have PMDD, you're wanting to just get past it, right? You're wanting to say, okay, I'm apologizing, I'm taking accountability, and now I want to just get past it. What you're not, what you're asking for is not just forgiveness. You're asking for access. You're asking for put me back where I was in the position in this relationship before I did that hurtful thing. You want the same access that you had to them before. You want them to be loving again, you want them to be trusting again. What you're asking for is for your partner to feel emotionally safe before there's been any level of repair. And I'm gonna do a whole nother episode on that because I think the misconception is if you don't bounce back and you don't hurry up and be back loving with me and be back like we're on the same page, then that means that you're trying to start a fight with me or you don't really love me or you don't care about me. No, the fact of the matter is what you did hurt me at my core. And the the wound is still there. When you cut someone and you put a band-aid over it by apologizing and saying that, oh, that was not my intention. When you remove the band-aid, the wound is still there. It doesn't erase automatically because of an apology. Does this mean that you don't need to take accountability? No, what I'm saying is taking accountability doesn't erase the impact that the abuse has had on your PMDD relationship. It just doesn't. And there's nobody that is able to just erase it automatically unless they are shielding it and it's still within them. They're pretending like it doesn't bother them for the sake of having some good moments with you. But deep down, unless it's been really dealt with, they're still feeling the pain of it. They're just choosing to not harbor on it. Because I know a lot of people can have a lot of pride in, like, oh, it doesn't take me that long to get over things in my PMDD relationship. It doesn't take me that long to get over it. You're probably not dealing with it. That's why it doesn't take you that long. Because when someone hurts you on a level that's to your core, it hurts you on a cellular level. What this means is your body keeps the score of the pain and the trauma that you've dealt with when you've accepted abuse in your PMDD relationship. Your body remembers it. So you you and your mind can ignore it. You can just say, oh, it didn't bother me. Your body is remembering the way that you tensed up, right? Your body is remembering how you now have to walk on eggshells. Your body is remembering, this is why a lot of you have problems with intimacy. Because your body no longer feels close to a person that has been abusive towards you. And you're thinking it's a physical thing, like, oh, maybe I'm not attracted to them. Maybe I'm not. No, when someone has abused you, there's a level of safety that's no longer there physically in your body. So even if you physically want to be intimate with your partner, your body automatically feels like it's not safe. So you may be getting mad at your partner because they're they're, oh, they're turned off or they're not in the mood. You might have done something to them to where they no longer feel physically safe being intimate with you. And that needs to be dealt with. This is not an attraction thing. It's every single time that you do something to abuse your partner, the level of attraction goes down because the level of emotional and physical safety goes down. Because if you repeatedly hurt your partner and create that level of emotional unsafety, eventually it's not gonna be there anymore. The intimacy is gonna be completely gone and they're gonna feel trapped and they're gonna feel claustrophobic. And that's when the PMDD breakups come in because they're gonna be looking for a way out. They're automatically gonna be saying, How can I get the heck up out of here? Because their body and their mind is saying, This PMDD relationship is not safe. This partner is not safe. You need to get out of here. You don't deserve this, you deserve better than this, you deserve a supportive PMDD partner, or you deserve to be with someone who can treat you better when you're in PMDD. This is what's gonna begin to happen unless you take the time to heal some of the stuff that's happening in your PMDD relationship. Remember, if you're my private client, you know I always say this you cannot heal what you don't reveal. PMDD needs to rip the blanket off of all of the issues that you have in your relationship, and we need to deal with that. We need to deal

PMDD Rage, Identity, And Shame

SPEAKER_00 19:18

with that. And I really wanted to talk about this too because I just I had a client who recently came to me and I had a session even this morning. And because I wasn't planning on doing this episode, I just got back from Alaska, by the way. It's a whole nother thing. I'll do an episode on that. But I had this client come to me and I asked them at the end of the session if I was able to share. I'm not gonna share any names. And they agreed. But they came to me and they were devastated because every single month during the Ludio phase, she would become someone that she didn't recognize, another version of herself. And I really, as she was describing it, and this is why it's so important that you work with someone who has PMDD or has dealt with someone who has PMDD because you're able to recognize pattern recognition, right? You're able to give tools based off of actual scenarios and actual things that happen in your PMDD brain because PMDD attacks your brain. And if you've never been inside the brain of someone who has premenstrual dysphoria disorder, it's going to be very difficult for you to treat it. But when she was saying that, you know, she was becoming someone that she didn't recognize. I immediately thought about myself when I go into my luteal phase. There's these little comments, these little smart remarks that happen in my mind when I'm in my luteal phase. This version of myself is just rude, is petty, is it's just verbally abusive, actually, in my mind. And I know because certain situations will happen, and you, you know, you'll hear a thing of like, I don't know why they're asking you to do that. Like, it's just this level that can literally control you and can control your actions if you allow it. If you allow that voice in your mind to control you while you're in the ludial phase and you don't recognize that it's a different entity, then you will start to behave as if what you're thinking in your mind is true. And so she was telling me that her partner wouldn't text back fast enough, and her PMDD brain immediately went into a state of panic and abandonment. Even though she knew he was at work, she felt rejected. So all of a sudden, she would start spiraling with the intrusive thoughts like he doesn't care about me, he's pulling away, he's probably talking to somebody else. And by the time her partner got home, her PMDD partner got home, she was emotionally flooded with all of those thoughts that had been going around in her brain again and again and again. And so instead of her expressing the fear that she was feeling as a result of her PMDD brain tricking her, it came out as anger, it came out as rage. She began to go off on PMDD rage. She would interrogate him. Accuse him of not loving her, bring up old arguments, yell and threaten to leave the relationship. And then if she would eventually emotionally shut down afterwards, he would be trying to explain himself and say, no, babe, it's not that and she wasn't hearing it. When she was gonna say a PMDD rage, as as it happens, when we get into PMDD rage, you're not really listening to your partner. You're kind of going off to just get it out. Because the way PMDD Rage works is you don't feel better, and I'm saying better in a moment of feeling a release until you get it all out. And then when you shut down, after you've gotten all of it out, you said all the nasty things, you've done all the nasty things, you've been abusive. Let's just call a spade of spade. The next moment she would wake up feeling with what? Guilt and shame and regret and confusion. Because outside of PMDD, she was so loving. She was so self-aware. She was so compassionate. She was so into him, loving him, thinking about his feelings, thinking about how things that she could do would impact him. But when she got into her luteal phase and she got into PMDD range, she she was a different version of herself. So when we really work together, we had to work with identity. We had to separate the PMDD version of her and the version of her that was outside of PMDD, because a lot of times the two can get mixed. Because when there's an abusive version of you, sometimes you can begin to think I am abusive, right? You take on that identity. I did all of these abusive actions, so then I must be abusive. And we had to literally take off the layers of that identity because when you call yourself abusive, cognitively you start doing more things that are abusive. Like it's a catch-22 because you start to feel so bad about yourself and say that you've done these things, so you must be this person. And then cognitively, your brain is like, oh, okay, so we're abusive. And you start to do more abusive things and you don't recognize that you've just created that reality for yourself. And now we have to, we have to rewire your PMDD brain. And so let's just go into what it really looks like to be in a relationship and turn into being an abusive part of yourself because I want you to really recognize it. Because the first thing is when you have awareness that, hey, I'm being abusive, because a lot of times you can even, you can even look at the title of this episode and be like, oh, that doesn't apply to me. I want you to stick in here and listen because you may not notice it. I know for me, you can go back. Oh my gosh, I don't even know how many episodes I have, but you can go back to episodes way, and I'll try to remember which one it was, but I was abusive. And I can say that not as a badge of honor, but as a way of, and I am the most loving, nurturing, caring, compassionate. And I'm not saying that to toot my own horn. It's just the core of who I am. But the version of me when I was in PMDD and I didn't have any tools, I literally kicked my partner out of the car on the side of the road, kicked him out of the car in the dark after date night because of things that he was saying that were triggering me, and I didn't have any tools of what I could do. And I went off on PMD rage and told him to get out the car in the dark. And then I drove off. And then, of course, the whole ride home, I felt so justified for doing what I did. And then immediately when I got home, I was filled with guilt and shame of, oh my gosh, how could I do this? I'm such a monster. Then I started worrying about him, blowing up his phone. I hope he's okay. It was the weirdest thing. And I remember feeling like I was losing my mind because it's almost like the Ludial version of me, the PMDD version of me, had left the left the building. Then all of a sudden I was left with the true core of who I was. Because again, after PMDD rage, then you kind of come back to yourself a little bit because the rage part

Common Abusive Patterns To Watch

SPEAKER_00 26:00

has worn off. And so what this looks like is it turns into verbal aggression, right? This is the first way that you can be abusive in your PMDD relationship. This is for the part, and this is for the individual who has PMDD. If you have intense irritability, PMDD rage, overstimulation, meaning it's too much going on around you, right? Without tools that can help you, it turns into yelling, cursing, insulting your partner, criticizing them, attacking their character, screaming at them during conflict, that's emotional abuse. That's just one that's that's number one. If you've done any of those things, that's abusive. Right? Your pain explains your behavior. The way that you feel explains your behavior, but it does not remove the responsibility for repairing it. It does not remove the responsibility for acknowledging that was abuse. So, as a recap for this one, because I think we can all pretty much agree that we've been there. We've yelled, we've cursed, we've insulted, we've attacked their character, we've screamed. And again, a lot of that happens when when for partners that don't have PMDD, when your feelings were hurt, when your needs weren't met, when you felt abandoned, when you felt emotionally sensitive because your needs hadn't been being met, and you felt like, I don't even know if my partner likes me, more or less loves me, then you end up that that fear and that sense of rejection turns into anger. It turns into rage and it turns into abuse. The next thing that can happen is fear of abandonment. When you have a fear of abandonment, you think your partner is gonna leave you, you begin to adopt some controlling behaviors. Okay, so for the partner that has PMDD, we already have rejection sensitivity, meaning you always feel like your partner is rejecting you, you feel like they don't like you, you feel like they don't want to be with you, you you're always questioning your stance within the relationship. And then you have paranoia where you're starting to read into their actions and their words a bit more and assuming that they mean something that they may not necessarily mean. And then you have a fear of losing the relationship. You think that your partner's gonna leave you. You think that your partner's gonna abandon you. And so what that means is when you have those feelings of abandonment, that fear of abandonment, that turns into excessively checking. I recently was in a relationship where we shared locations. And this has been the most I've never shared my location with a partner before. My ex-husband that I had, we didn't even share social media. We were long distance. And so we just both agreed that it just wasn't a healthy thing for us to be on each other's social media because while we were long distance because you can get in your head. We were in different time zones. And now I see why we did it. And I almost wish I would have done it in this past relationship because it comes off as a way of like, oh, we're trying to stay connected and we're trying to see where each other is for safety reasons. But there can be good actions, good habits that you have into place, but when you mix them with negative emotions such as fear of abandonment and rejection, they can become controlling and they can become abusive. So what happens when you fear that the person is gonna leave you? You start excessively checking their social media, excessively checking their location. You start to interrogate them on their whereabouts, you start to demand reassurance when you start to feel like they're gonna leave you. You start to control your partner's time. Oh, I thought you were coming home in 15 minutes, or you said you were going just to the store. I looked at your location and you went over here. What were you doing over here? And so you start to give emotional punishment when your needs weren't met. For example, when you say things like, if you loved me, you would. That's a controlling behavior. That's an abusive behavior. You do not have the ability to define what love means to your partner. What I mean by that is your partner could love you, but that doesn't mean that their behavior is going to align with what you decide love means towards you. So if you loved me, you would have kept your location, because a lot of times what happens is when a partner feels controlled, what do they do? Turn their location off. If you love me, you would have never turned your location off. If you loved me, you would have never um not called me at night. This has happened so many times in long-distance relationships where you know your partner's had a long day. They say they're gonna call you at the end of the night. They don't call you at the end of the night, and then you start being controlling. If you loved me, you would have called me. Maybe they were just tired. Maybe they were just tired. But you don't give them any grace, you don't give them any leadway. You automatically start questioning their character because they're not doing something that is reassuring you when you're in that spirit of fear that you're gonna lose the relationship. Again, ask yourself, have I been there? Have I done those things? The next thing that can happen that is abuse in your PMDD relationship is intrusive thoughts become accusations. We all have intrusive thoughts, whether you're the partner that has PMDD and the partner that doesn't have PMDD. Intrusive thoughts are just unwanted negative thoughts about your PMDD relationship to break it down. The thing about PMDD intrusive thoughts is they can actually feel real. Whenever I've had intrusive thoughts, I really have to catch myself because what intrusive thoughts will do, what your PMDD brain will do, is it will tie the intrusive thoughts to actu actual things that have happened in your PMDD relationship. So you will be remembering things or thinking certain things about things that have actually happened. Like maybe for my client earlier, their partner probably really didn't text them back fast enough or text them back immediately. That actually happened. But the PMDD intrusive thoughts will start accusing them, will start assuming betrayal, will start attacking their intentions, will start projecting the fear onto their partner because of an action that they have done. When you start turning your intrusive thoughts into accusations, that is abusive because your partner starts to feel like no matter what I can what I'm doing, my partner has the ability to take my actions and turn it into something negative and turn it into as if I'm trying to hurt them. So they're gonna start to be feel emotionally unsafe because they're constantly defending themselves against thoughts and actions that they didn't create. They didn't create the intrusive thoughts in your mind. They're just having to deal with the ramifications of them. They're having to deal with the backlash, they're having to deal with the aftermath of you having those intrusive thoughts, right? It's almost like nothing that they can do. They can't go into your brain and take those thoughts out and turn them into something positive. So they start to feel like they're walking on eggshells, which is a sign of abuse. The next thing is you, your emotional pain creates these punishment cycles, right? So when a person has PMDD and they feel so emotionally overwhelmed and overstimulated with things, they can unconsciously want their partner to feel what we feel. Right. It's it's almost like you feel like you're suffering in PMDD and your partner doesn't really understand what your suffering feels like and you're trying to explain it, but you actually want them to feel the pain that you feel in order to, I don't know if it's to teach them a lesson or in order for you to feel more understood. I've done that before and I've done it consciously and subconsciously, right? Again, before I had the tools when my PMDD would show up, you know, it the ego was there. You know, it's like they're there, they don't know how bad I'm suffering. Like I want them to feel how bad I'm suffering and see how they would be reacting. They're telling me to control my emotions and control my moods and act happy and all these things. Let's see how they would feel when they're in that level of hurt and pain and discomfort and all of these symptoms. So the way that this can show up is the silent treatment. Your partner may be being happy, having a good day, and you're going through a lot of pain. And you consciously, again, consciously or subconsciously, give them the silent treatment. You're like, I'm not feeding into whatever they have going on because I'm suffering. You start withholding affection. You start having this level of coldness towards them. You start pulling back towards them. You start having this passive aggression, saying little comments, little petty words. You start getting into revenge behavior because your PMDD brain is tricking you into remembering things that they've said and done in the past, not even things that they've presently done, things that they've done in the past, and it makes you feel bitter in the moment. And it's a level of emotional sabotage. What I want you to recognize with this is you know how they say hurt people, hurt people. Hurt PMDD people don't seek comfort a lot of time. They want an emotional release. They want to feel like their partner understands how they feel. They want to not be the only one suffering. So there's a level of emotional release that happens, and that is abuse because it is a projection of pain onto a person that is not presently hurting you in the moment. Like maybe they apologize for doing a lot of those things, but now that you're bringing it up again, they're having to go through it all over again. And the the next thing is trauma.

Trauma, Chaos Cycles, And Intimidation

SPEAKER_00 35:33

When we have unresolved trauma, which is why I always use my PMD trauma transformational tools, it can come from betrayal in the past, meaning there was infidelity. It can come from abandonment trauma. Maybe in the past somebody has left you, right? In a relationship. And maybe it's childhood trauma. This is what I struggle with the most, is when there's behaviors that happen in my relationship that are similar to what I dealt with in my childhood trauma, it creates this cycle of hypervigilance. I become on high alert. So one of my things is hurtful words. I dealt with a lot of verbal abuse with my childhood trauma. My adopted father said horrible things to me that kind of stuck with me as an adult. And so when I got into a relationship or get into a relationship and there's a lot of verbal abuse, I automatically become hyper-vigilant because I feel like I'm being taken back into that moment. And what that relationship can look like is I begin to overreact to the raising of the voice. I begin to get defensive if my character is attacked in a way of like I'm not the good girl, because I have this level of good girl conditioning from my childhood trauma. That's like I've always wanted to be this good girl because that's what I had to do in order to experience love. And so it's very hard for me sometimes to take accountability for things that I've said and done, because it's almost like accepting that I'm this bad girl, right? And that comes from my childhood trauma because me being a bad girl was used as a way of not receiving love. Or it's it was kind of like dangled, like a carrot. Like I would love you, but you did this. So when whenever a partner kind of criticizes me or holds me accountable for something I've said and done, I kind of feel like, well, I didn't mean, you know, I didn't mean to say and do that in order to not receive love or care or anything like that. And it also turned into emotional explosions, interpreting neutral situations as threats. Like I automatically feel threatened when someone calls me out on something because I feel like they're trying to say that I'm a bad person. And in my childhood, being a bad person meant that I didn't receive love. So when I get into that moment of trauma, the relationship becomes survival-based instead of love-based. You go into a level of survival because you're not just dealing with the things that are presently happening in your relationship, you're actually dealing with things that happened before that you can't really go back and change, that you kind of have to address within that moment. The next thing that can happen that's abusive is you start to normalize abuse during conflict. If you consistently have the PMDD monthly breakups, if you consistently scream, if you consistently threaten separation, I'm gonna leave, I'm taking the kids, I'm taking the dog, I'm doing all these things. If you consistently emotionally spiral every single time you have a level of conflict, your nervous system, which is your stress response, is gonna start to normalize the chaos. Say, oh, this is normal that every single time we fight, we go through this, this, and this. And again, you become emotionally unsafe. You're walking on eggshells. It's unpredictable. And it's psychologically exhausting. When you feel like every single time that you're going through conflict, that you're gonna go through this toxic cycle, then and chaos becomes normal to your nervous system. It almost you get begin to get addicted to the survival mode. When thing that means when things become peaceful, your nervous system is programmed to view that as danger. All of a sudden, when things are peaceful, it's like you start making up stuff to argue about. I had a partner that did that, and I really was like so, I couldn't understand it. It's like we could not have a peaceful week. And it is like it went from every couple of months we would have a blow up, we would have a fight, we would have to we couldn't have a peaceful week. And I was again, you start catastrophizing, like, I can't deal with this for the rest of my life. Like I was literally feeling like I was losing my mind. Like every two seconds, I was watching out, what are they gonna say? What are they gonna do? What's gonna happen next? What are you gonna like? I I was consistently on high alert. And the next thing that can happen is PMDD rage can turn into intimidation when you your partner becomes scared of you. I I've been through this where I didn't know what this partner was gonna do. They're slamming doors, they're throwing objects, they're always yelling and getting aggressive, and they're they're you know, they have these emotional explosive outbursts, and I was just walking on eggshells because in the relationship dynamic became so unhealthy. And you know what? I it was so hard for me to because this relationship I actually had to walk away from because I my nervous system was wrecked. Like I would go on vacation and be in the most beautiful places, but if we were going through conflict and he was slamming doors and throwing stuff and having this aggressive tone, we were talking on the phone and what are you doing and all these accusations and stuff. My body was in such a wreck. Like I would start to have knots on my body in a sense of the tension because I go to get weekly massages. And they were like, they almost thought, like, I was making excuses because I really didn't understand what was going on. I thought it was like my morning routine. I was like, oh, well, maybe it's because I'm working out a little bit more. No, my body was literally tensing up. And then my cycle was all thrown off. I was having my cycle earlier. I was shaking I would have really bad anxiety, like panic attacks. My hands would be shaking. My PD symptoms were 1000% magnified with this person because it never turned into physical violence as in them putting their hands on me, but I kept feeling like that's what was coming next. You know, it was so, it was like we were we're on, we were so close to it. And I was walking on eggshells. And so because I think what made it so unhealthy is there were things that I was saying and doing that were genuinely not harmful at all, but they were being projected that way. Like they were twisting. And I don't want to say they were twisting, maybe their brain was. Like I was trying to understand, like, why are you turning me into doing this into that? Like it was like it didn't matter what I would do. They had this bias in their mind that I was this person or I was a threat to them, or they were fearing certain things. And I began to walk on eggshells and like I started to say less. I started to do less. I started to shrink myself. I started to abandon myself because I was scared, honestly, of what would happen next. Because I knew that every single time that they would have like that rage, I there was nothing I could do to calm them down. Number one, I had to just wait for them to get it out. And, you know, they would get it out and then apologize afterwards. And I would accept the apology just for the sake of moving on. But I was scared. I literally became scared because I was just like, I couldn't, my body was no longer responding to them on an intimate way because you just went from yelling and cursing and throwing things and all this stuff because your feelings were hurt and all of this, and then you want to you want me to be safe enough to be intimate with you. And then that became a problem because now I wasn't being intimate with them. And you know, your body holds the score. Your body doesn't lie. So even if you try to lie and say you're good, you're back on good terms, your body is like, no, we're not. This is a threat, this is a danger. We need to get the heck up out of there. I started to feel really claustrophobic until I really did have to leave that relationship because I could never calm down. Like every part of my body was impacted by that. And I think a lot of times we don't listen to our body enough. And I will say, like, I'm not a body practitioner, but being in these PMDD relationships has helped me to listen to my body more, specifically because I do my PMDD partner's morning routine, and I could feel certain things felt harder for me that used to be easier for me, or certain things felt more intense. Like I would go for a run, and instead of it being just a regular jog, like I would feel like I needed to get this anxiousness. This rage out of me. So I was running. I look like a serial killer on the treadmill. I felt so sorry for the people around me. I would even run to the point of exhaustion and I would be crying at the end of it. And then I would be shaking. My nerves would be shocked. I will say I lost a lot of weight during that time because I was literally running myself to the ground.

Your Body Keeps The Score

SPEAKER_00 44:20

I do not recommend that. But I did have a, I did use my morning routine and my physical movement as a way to get it out of me because I can't imagine what my life would have looked like if I would not have had that physical release. Because it's almost like you're taking the blows. It's like a boxer in a boxing ring. Every single time that your partner is verbally saying something, you're taking a hit. This is perfect. Every single time that your partner is saying hurtful words being verbally abusive, you take a hit. You take a hit and it creates a bruise on you, right? Then they start rejecting you. That's another hit. That's another wound that's on you. And just imagine every single time that your partner does something abusive. And one of my favorite movies is Rocky, Rocky Balboa, and they remade it into Creed. So I literally had to do this visual of every single time that my partner was doing something abusive, I was getting hit. I was getting hit. I was getting hit. Had they physically touched me? No. But every single time that they did something abusive, I was getting a punch here, a punch here, a punch to the gut here. And when I when they finished, when they got it all out, I was left with all of these bruises and these wounds. And they would come back and say, hey, let's move on. I was still in pain. I was still bandaging up my wounds. I was still in a place of feeling the, you know how, like when you have a wound and you touch it and it's tender? That's the way I was emotionally. That's the way I was physically, even in my body. I could feel the level of pain from taking all of those things. And you know how they say time heals all wounds? It wasn't just time. I had to address each bruise, each wound, each I had to patch myself up before I could really move on. And what that led to as I was patching myself up, because I had to do it like I do with my private clients. We have to go back to the places that hurt you. And we have to talk about it and we have to work through it and have to give you a tool for that specific thing. We have to do that for each specific wound because they all came from different places. They all hit you in different places. So imagine these wounds, and some of them are hitting you in the same spot. Have you ever seen a boxer get hit twice in the same spot and it hurt worse the second time? Because you've already had a wound right there. Just imagine someone getting punched in their rib. That's a hurtful word. And then if the boxer comes back and punches them again in the rib. Well, the second time it hurts even more because the first wound never had a chance to heal before you hit it again. And that's what happens when you're in PMDD is you're getting hit monthly with different wounds of abuse, and you've never even healed the other ones. So say if some ribs were cracked, now where they were trying to heal, you hit them again and they might be completely broken because they're fragile. So I want you to think about when you're dealing with abuse, it's like you're taking on the hits and the blows. And I hope that you're able to either visualize what I'm saying, because I had to do that and say, hey, like a lot of times when it's emotional and mental and psychological, you cannot physically see the wound. So it's harder for you to recognize that it's actual abuse. But what you can recognize is when you visualize it, then you can feel it and you can understand the impact

Accountability, Boundaries, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 47:36

of it. So what I want to let you know, if you feel like you've been walking on eggshells, maybe you're the one. Maybe you're the one that was abusive. Like I had to come to terms with. I had to come to terms with. There were times in my relationships where I've been the abusive one and I have to take accountability for that. And there's times where I've been the one that's been abused and I've been the victim in that. Both times I had to take responsibility for it. Remember, PMDD is not our fault, but it's our responsibility to manage. So even when past partners were abusive towards me, I didn't put the responsibility on them to heal me from the abuse that they did to hurt me. I had to recognize I've been abused and I had to go and deal with that. And that's a process. And if that's something that you need help with, definitely go get those individual counseling sessions, those private sessions with me so we can deal with that. But I did create something for you that is specifically going to help with if you're dealing with these abusive dynamics within your PMDD relationship. Because one thing that I want you to really remember sometimes the PMDD relationship is not the toxic thing itself. Sometimes it's the toxic things that have happened within the relationship. Okay. So if this is because of PMDD symptoms, if this is because of your lack of tools as to what you do when PMDD comes, you have to take that accountability for your behaviors, but then ask yourself this question did this really happen only because we didn't have the tools to manage our PMDD relationship? Like, is is that that's the real question. If you know that if you had the tools that you would both be willing to do something that would prevent this, then I'm encouraging you to do that. Right? I'm encouraging you to, if you recognize abuse, to get the PMDD pivot method that I have specifically designed for abusive PMDD relationships, whether you have borderline abuse, whether you want to prevent future abuse, or you just want to make sure that you're both good. So I want you to listen to this episode and you may have to listen to it again, and you may even send it to your partner to listen to. And if you want to hop on a call with me, we could do that as well to kind of figure out the best method for you with the PMDD method, the PMDD pivot method, because I've created a couple of things within that. Like if you're going through something and you're like 100% this is this is what we need to go through, then I have the course for you. But you can always email me rose at inlove with pmd.com. And then you can also go to my website, in love with pmd.com, to get it. And then also I'll put the link in the show notes. But if you recognize, I really want you to just ask yourself this question because I know I saw myself. Even recording this, I saw myself in this. And I'm like, yes, I've been through this. Yes, I've dealt with this. Yes, I've been this. If you recognize yourself in this episode, if you recognize your partner in this episode and you're tired of hurting the people that you love during PMDD or when your partner's in PMDD, I've created the step-by-step framework called the PMDD pivot method. It's gonna help you pause before reacting, deal with those intrusive thoughts so that they don't become a reality. It's gonna help you deal with your stress responses when your partner's in PMDD or you're in PMDD, and most importantly, communicate your needs and with your partner every single month without destroying your emotions and feeling like you have to break up every single month. So if that's something that you know that you need help with, I'm gonna put all the links in the show notes. And until next time, we got this. I love you.